I knew I had to jump right into the sequel after finishing up the original Togari. This one has the daunting task of needing to wrap everything up in 18 chapters. There were still 3 big villains on the loose so between 18 chapters that should be easy right? Wait….there’s a whole new villain group on the loose? Let’s goooooo!!!! Ambitious times have arrived. Ultimately I would probably even say it beat the first series although it does have the benefit of being able to basically be nonstop action.

The story starts off about 2 weeks after the first series ended. There is just one day left for Tobei and only one more sin to collect. Here’s the problem, there are multiple villains on the loose as I mentioned and when Tobei gets the last sin, he will automatically teleport back to Hell to be reincarnated. So in a sense if he does this too fast, then he will be leaving the world to be defenseless against all of the villains. So Tobei has to try and work this out but it’s a difficult problem. Additionally, the Angels have had enough of this and have decided to destroy the world. Great timing folks…looks like Tobei will be busy.

That’s a whole lot of story to go through here though and I can tell you that by the halfway point we’re basically in the same situation so you’ve really got 9 chapters to deal with all of that. The first half is to deal with Sena’s right hand man. The most impressive thing about this villain is that he has the longest fight in the series and is around for a huge chunk of it but they somehow manage to not even use his name during any part of that. So I’ll just call him the grinning villain.

This guy is really crazy but also makes for a really good villain. His abilities are basic in that he can absorb objects and people and turn into a clay type monster. Yet he is really strong as he really dominated Tobei in their first fight and nearly won the rematch. What I liked about this villain is he fought back against the whole second chances guilt trip and just kept on taking everyone out. He’s not a mastermind kind of villain, just someone who likes chaos. He was even planning to take down Sena for basically no reason. He was a real scene stealer.

In comparison, Sena starts to fade a bit. This villain was a roller coaster because he looks tough at first, pathetic in the middle, and then good at the end. He reminded me a lot of Light Yagami in some instances. He likes to play god with everybody and just be a general master manipulator. His goals may not have been the best and deciding to even temporarily ally with the angels was super risky as well. I don’t really see what the benefit was and by the end it was hard to really untangle his goals. His final scene was really solid though. It made everyone else look absolutely terrible by the way but for him he still managed to get the last laugh in.

I would say in a lot of ways Sena is one of those villains who really works as a good sanity check on why too much mercy is a bad thing. The heroes keep talking about needing to use peace and violence isn’t the answer but then they are opening themselves up to cheap shots. If they had just taken care of business then things would have been easier. You just have to be honest here, some villains are not going to have a change of heart. Sometimes due process isn’t going to work as both the heroes and villains admit the legal system would not be able to do anything. Sena is a mass murderer and they all know it but there will be no proof since it’s supernatural. When you have a glaring flaw in the system like that, it’s time to take action.

So by extension Itzuki doesn’t look very good here. She’s just too passive and lenient as she drops her guard down time after time. The worst decision was going to the house of a murderer by herself without telling anybody. Especially when the guy called for her to drop by. He couldn’t have made it a more obvious trap if he tried. I figured she’d bring a weapon or something but nope, she just came unarmed and figured she would be able to do something.

Ose was a solid right hand man to Tobei once again. By this point he has really come a long way from being a skeptic or just another government stooge. It was nice to see him proactively fighting for justice and having Tobei’s back. He’s a high quality character by this point and really came through. Meanwhile Tobei is also really solid as he finished his character arcs last series. He is fully committed to stopping the villain and helping out humanity. There is nothing selfish or evil about him anymore. He has been a hero for a long time at this point and only continues to get stronger.

I do feel it was a bit odd how he seemed to not have any of his super abilities anymore though. He unlocks a new power by the end but the first series made a big deal of finally becoming one with his Togari. I guess we can probably blame the Togari for that though. It looks awful petty in this series and sure gets in the way a lot. I know it wants a body and to end all of this but suddenly being a sabotage type of character just doesn’t fit. It just felt like an odd character decision.

Ema gets a big role here as she really arrives to help out and balance the odds. It was nice to see her more and she also has a little more fun while in rebel mode. She continues to save the day from the shadows on multiple occasions so I have to give her a lot of credit. You really get to see various characters showing their true colors and not just being yes men anymore. A terrific plot development if I do say so myself. Also she has a real 4D chess moment where she has a conversation with someone that she can’t even see and predicts their responses. Is it maybe stretching disbelief a bit? Yeah but it was still cool and that’s what counts. Rule of cool prevails here.

Sawazaki’s role is much smaller this time though. He sees a vision of his old partner telling him not to die yet which feels rehashed and the villain outtalks him at one point. Eh not his best moments but he gets credit for quickly picking up on the signs of danger and arriving to help out. It was more than anyone else on the force did. Additionally with such a short amount of chapters, it makes sense that some characters had to be sacrificed. I would say the same thing happened to the guard dog Ami but technically he appears a lot. The direction his character went in was just a bit odd.

He basically still wants to cause chaos but is practically a hero by this point. He helps them out on a few occasions and we get a little more closure for his more personal subplot. He ended up being a fun character to the end but it did feel like he took a back seat to the Angels. I would have liked at least one big fight for the guy even though it seems like he wasn’t as powerful as he seemed to be initially.

As for the Angels, I think that whole plot could have been removed. They just didn’t add much to the story and acted just like the folks from Hell. They feel super important and think humans are all chumps. They fly around waving their authority in everyones faces and then run off. You can’t really take any of them all that seriously since they’re not the most powerful guys out there and the leaders seem super out of touch. It is impressive how much lore we have about the series by this point but at the same time I think it was lore that didn’t actively add onto the series.

The focus should have stayed on Tobei fighting Sena. You already had a really interesting premise with the villains launching a bunch of new sins in the world to taunt the guy since Tobei has to avoid finishing any of them off. That had a lot of interesting moral questions that basically had to be skipped by the end. I will say that the ending had me super nervous for a minute there but fortunately the final chapter went the right away. Not fully, I still think the ending could have been a lot better. It just wasn’t as bad as I had feared. I’ll have to accept that.

Naturally the art is pretty good. The fight scenes are on point and you can really feel the intensity in every panel. The artist is definitely operating on a solid level here. Then you also see the cruelty of humanity constantly as they are drawn like monsters. One of the big morals of the series I would say is that most of the humans are just pretty awful. When we get a national day of crime a bunch of people immediately jump into it and then try using legal loopholes to stay out of trouble. What a bad look for the citizens, it really shows why the monsters got so much traction. It must have been easy for the sins to start taking control of all of them.

Then you have both Heaven and Hell being shackled with endless rules and regulations. You would think they would be above such things but apparently not. In particular the Angels keep talking about all the rules they have to follow and all of the restrictions that are placed on them which prevents them from stopping evil. It just feels a bit silly that they have to do all of that. The whole point of being an angel should be that they can do what they want and stop the villains as needed right? If they have to overlook evil because it is out of their jurisdiction, then the whole system is messed up. Which is certainly is but even by the end of the series that isn’t really addressed. It’s fair to say that the world of Togari is super messed up. Definitely not somewhere you would want to live since nobody is really going to help.

The series also goes a bit too far with showing how evil the angels are so you can’t really believe it when they start trying to act nicer later. They literally look at babies as future harbingers of sin. They have no compassion and believe the human race are a failed experiment. They act meaner than the wardens of Hell which is crazy although both sides are shown to be morally bankrupt. Maybe Togari will change the system…but it doesn’t seem like that’s going to be happening anytime soon.

Overall, Togari Shiro was a solid sequel series. It may have been a tad too ambitious by adding more content than it could ever really hope to finish in time, but it was a fun sequel. The battles were long and there was a ton of nonstop action here. It’s a real page turner as you want to see how it all ends. The ending leaves things on a nice note and the series could definitely get a sequel if the author ever wanted that to happen. It does feel like this could have just been added to the main series but I’m assuming there’s a reason why the first one just had to end abruptly.

Overall 7/10