Tougen Anki Episode 1 Review: The 1st episode of Tougen Anki is here, and it looked decent enough to me. Let’s discover how this episode plays out.
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Tougen Anki Episode 1 Director
Yū Kinome & Ato Nonaka
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Tougen Anki Episode 1 Release Date
11th July 2025
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AKA
桃源暗鬼
Tougen Anki Overview
Tougen Anki is a dark fantasy manga by Yura Urushibara. It began serialisation in Akita Shoten’s Weekly Shōnen Champion in June 2020 and quickly garnered attention for its gritty themes and intense action. This is set in a world where cursed bloodlines grant powerful abilities and deadly consequences.
In May 2024, an anime adaptation was officially announced, and the series made its television debut on July 11, 2025, as part of Nippon TV’s Friday Anime Night block. Produced by Studio Hibari, the anime is directed by Ato Nonaka, with Hiroyuki Hashimoto as assistant director. Yukie Sugawara oversees series composition and screenplay, while Ryoko Amisaki handles character designs, and Kohta Yamamoto composes the music, with production support from Pony Canyon.
The anime features the opening theme “Overnight” by The Oral Cigarettes and the ending theme “What is Justice?” by Band-Maid. Its global distribution is handled by Remow, making it accessible via major streaming platforms like Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and Crunchyroll. It is also being simulcast on regional services such as Samsung TV Plus (North America), Anime Onegai (Latin America), Bandplay (Brazil), Animation Digital Network (Europe), Anime Generation (Italy), and Anime Key (Middle East and North Africa). Netflix and Prime Video are additionally streaming the series worldwide, with the exception of Mainland China.
Tougen Anki Episode 1 Review
The first episode of this anime sets the premise of the story, where things will follow the Momotaro fairy tale from Japanese folklore. Here, we witness the life of Shiki, a troubled teenager who has an immense interest in guns. Though he is not blood related to his father, he loves Shiki nonetheless. However, Shiki suddenly gets attacked by a white robe clad man who starts to talk about Shiki being a descendant of Oni or monsters. Apparently, Momotaro and Oni have been constantly at war with each other, and that is also the case for their descendants.
Their hatred gets passed down from generation to generation, and the Momotaro descendants decided to band together to hunt the oni children. Despite being a part of the Momotaro agency, Shiki’s father decided to defect and take care of a descendant of an Oni. While getting hunted, Shiki awakens his true powers, and we get to see just how menacing he can be.
The first half of this episode was not that great, and it started off pretty bland. However, the fight sequence that came in the second half was really intense and cool. But we can notice a very ample and prominent use of CGI in many of the sections, which made the episode look uneven at times. The animation in general is not something that is going to impress you, but the story has enough promise to become successful.
Verdict
This anime was nothing that you haven’t seen before, but it is still entertaining. I’m having a feeling that this will have a very typical plot progression, where the hero first experiences loss and then goes on a journey of self-discovery. But even then, if they can execute it properly, the series can be a good watch.
For now, I will just wait for more episodes to release and see whether this will be worthwhile or not.
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