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I'm going to start publishing some of my own reviews of anime which I have been watching in recent weeks. This list will grow over time. I very much welcome your comments and feedback. You will find more anime reviews listed in the News and Reviews section.

Tokko (Collection):-

 

Shindou Ranmaru is a young man who has recurring dreams about a half-naked woman. Lucky for him. Unfortunately, the dreams also involve humans being slaughtered, with more body parts on the walls than you would find in a panel beater's shop. He wakes up to find a very shapely pair of breasts dangling in his face. Turns out they belong to his sister, Saya. At this point I was starting to get worried. Will this series turn out to be some sort of horror show starring a hillbilly couple who spawn deformed kids? Turns out I need not have worried.

The goofiness of the relationship between Ranmaru and Saya is just a bit of nonsense thrown in as comic relief. Tokko is a good, old-fashioned thriller/horror story. Kudos to script writer Mitsuhiro Yamada and director Masashi Abe who have managed to assemble a story which develops over time, with new information revealed as the story progresses.

The guts of the story relates to an event which happened five years earlier, when almost all the residents in the apartment block in which Saya, Ranmaru and their parents lived were horribly killed. The two youngsters survived, and the memory of that event is what has led to both the bro and sis joining the police force, to find out who, or what, killed their parents and all those other people.

Ranmaru has just graduated from the police academy and finds himself drawn into the investigation of a series of ongoing gruesome murders which are happening in the city. Tokko is a special branch of the police force, who seem to be able to kill the monsters using just swords. This mysterious group of people hunt these "carniverous killers" and seem to know why they are in the city. The half-naked woman in Ranmaru's dreams is one of the Tokko officers.

Turns out that a group of alchemists has opened a portal between this world and the world of beasts, which has allowed 108 of these monsters entrance into our world. This is very bad news for all humans who happen to get in their way. And so the story develops, as Ranmaru learns more about the folks at Tokko, he also learns how he is involved in what is happening. A mysterious tattoo-like shape forms on Ranmaru's arm, which seems to be able to repel the beasts. We don't know why yet.

I like this series. It's unpretentious. The storytellers know how to reveal information progressively. There is enough blood and gore to keep the guys happy, whilst the characters are handled sympathetically and do seem to develop as the series unfolds. I would definitely watch the rest of the show, just to see how the loose ends are tied up, or perhaps not. Not for little kids. The MA rating seems fair to me.