(Non-spoiler review)
Tosochu’s issues are apparent from the outset, but it falls to two overarching problems; its action is stiff and drab, and its story is kneecapped by poor structural choices. A few exceptional episodes and decent cast members do little to alleviate the show’s overall jank and tedium.
As a kids adventure show, where the weekly running action is its main draw, the animation and art is very subpar. The running itself is usually the worst looking part of every episode, with awkward arm loops and jerky movement dominating. This is compounded by complicated runner designs that inhibit dynamic motion, in addition to making the overall aesthetic feel scattershot. Interesting parkour is rare, with most chases devolving into flat dashes across flat street corners and flat hallways that do little to make any game stages feel distinct. Special powers and gadgets are relegated to one-off moments that are occasionally better animated but still mostly weightless.
Making the Hunters chasing the contestants CGI 90% of the time often reduces them to running in straight paths. Some later episodes get more inventive with their use, even leaning into the spectacle of making over-the-top entrances that are delightfully campy, but the chases that dominate so many episodes almost always play out the same. The in-game villains that occasionally provide other action and combat challenges are still largely standard action-adventure fare with little flair.
Not helping are many dire-looking episodes laced throughout with incredibly dumpy art, melting and stiff animation, and even abrupt editing that make some a total mess to sit through. The art direction only compounds this, which tries to make environments tense by smothering them in muddy and dull tones. Some later episodes avert this for more unique-looking locales, but they’re almost equally offset by other locations (and even entire arcs) where all the background buildings are very jagged and poorly integrated CGI. A few episodes feature much cleaner art and inventive choreography and direction, but they are too infrequent to make up for how drab the majority are or how abysmal some can get.
As an actual narrative, the show’s story is consistently kneecapped by the way it structures both the game worlds the contestants compete in and the tiny stretches between them regarding the Lunar Colony setting. Since the game stories the contestants play dominate so many of the episodes, any of the overarching plot that does happen is either so sporadic that it leaves no impact or feels truncated when developments have to get squeezed in before each game’s end. The contestants get so locked into the games’ stories that it seems like everyone forgets about the main plot or even ongoing character rivalries until the very end. Most of the game stories and the NPCs that tag along with the runners are bland, and the in-game villains or monsters almost never have any charisma or interesting traits, which makes the stretches of episodes focusing on them feel inconsequential.
Additionally, the escalating action and plots of the game stories feel disconnected from anything involving the Hunters, who either conveniently step away when the game plots need to progress or suddenly show up when the runners get too close to winning. This also makes many taggings feel arbitrary or even cheap, especially when main cast members get tagged more so at random than from any discernible mistakes they make compared to the other times they escape.
Pacing for the games varies, with some feeling like new missions get constantly added or extended, but they all follow a similar formula of getting dumped into a world, slowly solving rote challenges or puzzles, eventually fighting some kind of monster, and surviving a last-man-standing chase to close the stage. Because the Hunters have no involvement in the actual goals of the game missions, it often feels like an adventure game show periodically interrupted by random bits of running.
With how many contestants there are, several episodes devote much screentime to sudden chases solely dedicated to slowly thinning out the side runners. This gets comical when runners who barely do anything for most of an arc suddenly get an unexpected central role in an episode and are then almost always tagged and removed by its end, deflating any sort of tension or interest in fleshing them out.
Combined, this makes so many of the episodes and challenges within feel very repetitive. Numerous episodes have nothing happen aside from a few game-story changes and random chases and taggings, not to mention the staggering number of times other contestants (especially the female ones) get captured or possessed and need to be rescued. While the game climaxes and challenges can escalate, they still feel largely generic. Later stages never feel more challenging than the earlier ones aside from Hunters occasionally getting new abilities.
The core cast is functional if predictable. Tomura Sawyer is a standard teen protagonist, and his goal of trying to help his sickly brother Hal is plain but fine. Hal also follows the usual routine of trying to prove he’s helpful, but he gets sidelined for large stretches of the show even as it tries to add mysteries around him. The highlights are the charming thief Sigma and the weaselly but amusing Penta who steal every scene they’re in, but the other recurring main runners are fine if unnoteworthy. The many, many side runners in each game are centered around occasionally amusing gimmicks, yet they feel interchangeable, even when some return in other games. The main gamemaster duo have little personality aside from being mysterious, as they are mostly relegated to announcing the missions or having momentary musings that take too long to get followed up on.
As to the overall plot, the premise of a semi-dystopian future where people compete in dangerous games to escape poverty has potential, but it never dives into any substantiative points. The plot drags its developments and revelations because of the way the game stories dominate the episodes, where even the small bits of the Colony story shown in cutaways or referenced in game feel fleeting. The episodes in-between the games have small bits of character intrigue and change, but said events are almost immediately pushed aside again when the next game starts and only return near the games’ climaxes or the next in-between stretch. Most egregious are the large portions of these in-between episodes taken up by one-off runner introductions and people racing to the starting area of the game before it begins, wasting time that could have furthered the overall story.
Speculating about the production is imprecise, but the series feels like its spinning its wheels and making its story up on the fly. The few larger developments that do happen are either set aside, undermined later, or truncated in their resolutions such that they leave little lasting change or even sudden excitement. This haphazard pacing extends to both an attempted midway shakeup and the finale, where tons of new developments are thrown in at the start, but then it progresses in a normal game until it crams its final events in the last two episodes.
Additionally, while this is more due to how the actual game show works, the show never has much inter-character competition since everyone largely cooperates to clear the missions. Even the game finales mostly involve everyone running off and trying to escape on their own rather than actively competing against each other. A few characters sometimes undermine the main group, but the fact that everyone has to work to the same goal together with no real team or contestant competition makes even the reality-show adjacent aspects of this feel unexciting.
For positives, the music is very bombastic and energetic and carries most of the scenes in every episode (some abrasive ED themes notwithstanding). The chase music especially tries its hardest to make the running exciting regardless of how repetitive the setups are, as does the hammy announcer/commentator. None of the characters are overly annoying, and a few of them are entertaining or endearing enough to carry amusing side diversions. Some of the gimmickier one-off contestants get either cool or funny moments that at least make their scenes decent. The rare episodes with much better production manage to achieve striking visuals, entertaining situations, and even engaging climaxes, but the gulf between those and most of the others only reinforces how lacking the show is on average.
A few occasionally entertaining characters and episodes aside, Tosochu has little of interest and is somehow both a huge mess and a total wash at the same time. The running is tacked on to such underwhelming action and plot that there’s little point to watching this over other action-adventure anime or the actual game show.
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