Tokyo Revengers features Takemichi Hanagaki leaping back in time to save the life of his Ex-girlfriend, Hinata Tachibana. This is one of the things that sets this anime apart from other Shonen anime.
Time leapers are people who possess the ability to travel back and forth in time with the help of a trigger, like Takemichi’s handshake with Naoto Tachibana.
In total there are 3 Time leapers- Takemichi, Shinichiro and the original Time Leaper (A homeless maniac). Bet you were expecting Kisaki on this list.
The handshake that riggers Takemichi’s Time Leapining ability is a drawback in one sense: If something ever happened to Naoto, Takemichi would forever be stuck in his old self.
Takemichi goes back and forth in time, trying to save Hinata, and any change he would cause in the past would cause a massive ripple of consequences and lead to an entirely new reality in the present.
It’s like you can’t really mess with the threads of fate. You untangle one problem, and then another arises.
Also, a big restriction is that he could go back in time, precisely twelve years; this means that he is unable to affect any events that occurred before that.
Interestingly, when Takemichi goes back to the past, he doesn’t get transported physically. Rather, he is seen to be in the body of his younger self.
Meanwhile, in the present, his original body is in a comma-like state.
Don’t you think that this ability is the coolest? It comes with a price, though, as you have to be extremely persistent, and you don’t really know the outcome of your actions.
Also, when Takemichi would go back and forth in time, he isn’t aware of what situation he was stepping into, which is quite perilous since he is dealing with gangs.
With this, the simple murder plot gets elevated to a whole new level, and this also gives rise to questions like, where did this ability come from? Are there more Time leapers?
Now, let’s get to the cake you have all been anticipating.
How many Time Leapers are there in Tokyo Revengers?
With the conclusion of Tokyo Revengers manga in November 2022, it’s been official that there are only 3 Time Leapers in the show.
I was kinda expecting Hamna to be one of them, as Kisaki had already confessed that he couldn’t time travel, but time and time again, he was always a few steps ahead of Takemichi.
It would add up if Hanma were a time leaper, as Kisaki must have learned about the Time leaping ability from someone, and having one by his side would have aided him in his schemes.
Anyways, let’s dive into the 3 Time Leapers.
1The original Time Leaper
The original Time Leaper was a mysterious, insane-looking homeless man; his name and backstory haven’t been revealed, though. He got this ability after killing the previous owner.
Maybe he had actually lost his sanity because of this ability, he looks really aloof. God knows that stuff he saw that enlightened him and sent him La La land.
2Shinichiro Sano
Shinichiro Sano is the other Time Leaper, and as you might have connected the dots, he killed the original Time Leaper to save Mikey.
Apparently, in the original timeline, much before the current one of Tokyo Revengers, Mikey had passed away due to some fatal accident or illness.
Then, when he was at a bar with Wakasa Imaushi, he overheard another group talking about a homeless man who deemed himself to be a “time leaper” and joking about his ability to leap back and forth in time.
In desperation to save Mikey, Shinichiro met that homeless man to learn the secret of gaining that ability. Since the homeless man was obviously as insane as he looked, he refused and left like only he could wield that power.
When he learned about Shinichiro’s goal of saving Mikey, the insane dude laughed right at his face and slipped out that he killed the previous wielder to attain that power, and no way in hell he would pass it on to Shinichiro.
Little did he know that he was aggravating the leader of the Black Dragons, Shinichiro lost his cool and killed him with a metal pipe.
Filled with regret for killing that man, Shinichiro jumped off a bridge to end his life, but he traveled back in time to the moment when Mikey was playing with a plane. Shinichiro was able to prevent Mikey’s death in this manner.
Regret is another crucial aspect here; it’s this intense emotion that causes this ability to work, like Shinichiro’s regret for killing that man and trying to commit suicide, but it ended up triggering the ability.
Later on, even Takemichi was full of regret that he hadn’t achieved anything significant in life right before his ability was triggered.
3Takemichi Hanagaki
Takemichi is the protagonist of the show, and we are all aware of his “Time Leaping” ability.
Turns out, he had been given this ability by none other than Shinichiro when he was a kid.
It’s that incident where some kids were trying to bully and hurt Hina, and Takemichi, with that gold heart of his, stepped up to them even though he was getting beaten into a pulp.
Shinichiro was in awe of Takemichi’s desire to help people, even if he was weak.
Takemichi asked him how he could be a “hero,” and that’s when Shinichiro took his hand and passed on the ability of being a Time Leaper to protect people.
About Tokyo Revengers
Tokyo Revengers is a manga written and illustrated by Ken Wakui. It began serialization in Kodansha’s Weekly Shōnen Magazine on March 1, 2017, and ended its run in November 2022. It is compiled into 31 tankobon volumes.
The story revolves around Takemichi Hanagaki, who learned that Tokyo Manji Gang had killed his only ex-girlfriend from back in middle school. After learning about the incident, Takemichi was pushed from the railway platform.
Landing on the tracks, he closed his eyes, accepting his death, but when he opened his eyes, he had time-leaped 12 years into the past.
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