Disclaimer first, English is not my native language, sorry in advance for weird anythings, also this might be less of a review and more of a rant (though granted I am simping hard for a handful of the characters, so I guess I do have a soft spot for the series somewhere), and this definitely contains spoilers.

If you haven't read this manga yet and wanna give it a shot and are fine with a title being carried, for better or worse, by a range of mostly shallow but still memorable characters, go for it, but don't bother if you're in it for the plot, and either way, I'd suggest reading only up until chapter 185. it has its moments where it manages to be exciting, but it's overall very disappointing to a point where it will taint your enjoyment, especially if you care for a story to make logical sense, and the ending is pretty ridiculous and, for a lack of more fitting word, bad.

Anyways, with the constructive part out of the way, if you have already read Toman and were unsatisfied with what you got, or just really don't give a damn about literally having the series spoiled for you, dive right in!

So from the get-go Toman didn't shine with its good writing, whether the story, its worldbuild, or the actual quality of writing is concerned (I'll elaborate in a bit). The by far strongest point it has once you actually get into it, and that kept me personally hooked enough to see this series through, are the characters - decidedly not all of them, some are more the Joffrey-type of characters you love to hate, or just actually genuinely hate, but I'll dive into this later -, however, I don't think that any character feels fleshed out enough, or has enough depth, to feel like more than just a character, or a stereotype even, that's filling a specific role/moving the plot along, and some were essentially just used as fodder in that way (and imo the character background extras the mangaka keeps pumping out are not changing that), which kinda blows, considering Toman lives off of these characters... but that aside, I think what really breaks the neck of this trainwreck of a story, which admittedly does have a pretty cool, interesting and certainly explorable premise - the time travel! the gangs! the potential! - is the incredibly weak, one-trick-pony writing, in terms of drama, in terms of the mechanics behind the story/worldbuild, in terms of logic... kind of everything, really. Like, how do you have such a good foundation and manage to mess it up like that?? Weird flex, but okay, I'll get into the specifics.

So starting from the beginning, I never got over how Takemichi became aware of his ability, along with Naoto, and how conveniently they understood right away that Takemichi was indeed time traveling, that the time traveling was restricted to 12 years, and that the handshake with Naoto was the trigger? Like yeah, sure, we got that weak, very much implied, "explanation" from Future#1!Akkun, iirc, regarding how it first managed to be triggered, claiming that Takemichi, after he was shoved onto the tracks the day he unlocked his time traveling, was supposedly saved by Naoto reaching out his hand to him (which in itself is already so convenient of a set up lol, like that's some real fate stuff right there, having all 3 of them there together by chance when they haven't been in contact for ages, or ever, but alright), BUT this is literally never clarified, and even so, this whole ordeal still makes especially Naoto stupidly insightful.

Then this concept of time traveling generally - and, I guess this is the point where a lot of time traveling stories fall flat, but that won't stop me from still going off on it - it's so underdeveloped and underexplained, like how precisely does this work? Takemichi always keeps his memories/aquires the memories of whatever timeline he's in, whichever version of his life he's living, which is questionable to begin with, but then, since Past!Takemichi is essentially out of nowhere "possessed" by Present!Takemichi and his knowledge, literally how the hell does barely anyone ever get suspicious?? How does no one notice the, what I would assume to be, drastic change in personality, when it always takes the knowledgable Present!Takemichi to get into action, implying that the Past!Takemichi that exists before Present!Takemichi takes his place, is not aware of any of the time traveling? I don't know, it's all just very surface level writing to me, and imo the "but it's all just a curse with all the gimmicky writing freedom that brings" take still does not fill these plot holes and weaknesses. And especially considering the actual explanation behind the time traveling, with the curse it created due to Shinichiro killing the homeless guy - How has no one that Takemichi saved, which includes like half the cast, not become similarly as fucked up as Mikey? Am i supposed to speculate that Shinichiro doing a kind thing, passing this ability on to Takemichi, somehow lifted the curse? Then why wasn't it lifted from Mikey before he ended up making more people miserable? It just really doesn't add up is what I'm saying even when I try to make it fit.
And to add more to this point - the cause & effect within this time traveling concept is also very whacky. Everytime Takemichi made it back to the Present, it seemed as though Naoto had literally just been waiting for him - I can again speculate that if Past!Naoto were aware of Takemichi's ability/would have memories of Future!Naoto, then he could do the maths and wait around for Takemichi, but it very explicitely seemed as though Past!Naoto was NOT aware of any of that, so I'm ruling that out. Generally speaking Naoto's insight on the whole thing is one of most blatantly unsatisfying parts of the concept for me. Sanzu essentially filled the same role for Shinichiro as Naoto did to Takemichi, but we learned in the end that Sanzu only had his knowledge because Shinichiro himself passed it onto him; with Takemichi and Naoto, it was always Naoto who did the most figuring out, not in a way that makes me believe he's very smart and good at linking information, but in a way that feels very unnatural and scripted in order to move the plot forward, which I guess is the actual answer for this, so I'm glad I managed to solve this one after all and I will be moving on to my next point!

Before I get to the main antagonist of this story, I wanna gloss real quick over the runner up, the man Kisaki himself (kinda ironic he even fell short in the end of taking the bad guy spotlight, like damn, sucks to be him), who I thought was a good picture book villain as in that he was very mean and very unlikable, and I didn't expect the latter to change, but damn, all he got was really that incel backstory?? Boohoo if I can't get the girl I want then no one can? Like damn, that's what we dealing with here?? And then he was just so easily dealt with never to be seen again (like wasn't he literally run over by a bus or something?), after all that set-up, wild...

Even wilder still is how Mikey turned out! I'm sure some people will feel differently about this, but I personally really hated how Mikey ended becoming so stereotypically evil, all while beeing portrayed as a martyr weighed down by this DaRkNEsS inside of him, like oh my god that was so bad to begin with, and it didn't even have any deeper-going explanation other than ThE CuRsE!, like even stereotypical it could've been a set up for some sort of Monogatari-style psychological issue that manifests itself as something destructive, if it was gonna go down the supernatural route anyways, but it was really just that curse Shinichiro created by being a maniac, lmfao (to gloss really quick over that too, yea the man's been stressed out, but he sure did casually kill another man just to later acknowledge "he could've just asked" to get the ability, like man the moral standards are low with this one). From all of his ultra-evil future incarnations, over to him building up a new gang of meanies to be an asshole with, up to maiming Sanzu's face (let me dive into this one real quick too: he literally carved into the sides of Sanzu's mouth, that's not a spur of the moment kind of thing, that takes some really malicious intent put into action) and stabbing Takemichi to death, then having the nerve to cry and weep and demand Takemichi come back to him while literally still holding the sword he killed him with, I genuinely don't know, was this supposed to evoke sympathy? Pity? Was it supposed to be dramatic, emotional? I mean, I did feel something, it was kind of tragically hilarious, so I guess there's that.
But yeah, anyways, so that is the guy Takemichi threw the secure future with Hiina out of the window? That's who Draken was sacrificied for, after all the tension and emotional trauma we endured to see him saved?? This is why the manga coudn't just end after the Izana arc, to watch Mikey's dumb ass terrorize the neighborhood, just for it to have no consequences whatsoever?? Wild! And hey, don't get me wrong, obviously this was gonna be an ending sponsored by the power of friendship, Toman made this clear on day 1, and yeah, Draken was alive too, yadda yadda. But it was still incredibly underwhelming and unsatisfying imo, not to mention unenjoyable.

Speaking of, final ending/timeline is... really cringe, I guess, though it is befitting of the quality of Toman overall, and I think that a good way to sum this up is that it's a cool premise with cool characters, both of which feel as though they were finalized by a 6th grader. I honestly wasn't even that offended by the ending, like yeah it was ridiculous, whatever, I think I spent myself too much being bewildered at how we got there. Like, there's much more I could tear into, much more that didn't make sense, that was W I L D, if not to say bamboozling - but I'm all spent, I'm dry now.

With that I'll see myself off. Feel free to disagree with me, though I do wanna say that all in all, I absolutely did get some enjoyment out of the series, by which I 100% mean its characters (and some of the first half mystery/excitement), the good and the bad alike. I also personally rated Toman better than I will rate it for this review simply because I score my lists by enjoyment, but in order to finalize this absolutely objective and professional review, my "quality score" is a gracious 5,5/10, gg.