Revisions is an anime series directed by Goro Taniguchi and animated by studio Shirogumi. It first premiered in Japan on January 10, 2019. Later, Netflix picked the series up as an original and streamed it worldwide from May 14, 2019.
The story centers on Daisuke Doujima, a second-year high school student who, as a child, was kidnapped and then rescued by a mysterious woman named Milo who told him that something will happen to him and his friends in the future and he must protect everyone when it comes. One day, Daisuke, along with his friends Gai, Luu, Marimari, and Keisaku, get wrapped up in the mysterious phenomenon known as the "Shibuya Drift." The central area of Shibuya rises up and is transported at least 300 years into the future. What awaits them is a vast wasteland and forest dotted with ruins. They're then attacked by monstrous creatures called "Revisions", which begin grabbing random people to kidnap. Daisuke then meets Milo again, although she doesn't recognize him this time. Milo informs Daisuke that he and his friends are the only ones who can operate the "String Puppet" mecha weapon and protect Shibuya. Daisuke and his friends must figure what who the Revisions are and what they want, all the while trying to find a way back to the past.
The anime had received a manga adaptation and a light novel adaptation during the anime's run. However, it is available only in Japan, and an official English translation hasn't been announced as of 2021, which might be unlikely.
General Tropes
- Affectionate Nickname: Marin Temari is called Mari-Mari by her friends.
- All Love Is Unrequited: Keisaku has had a crush on Marin since they were children, but she has a crush on Daisuke, who's Oblivious to Love.
- Beware the Silly Ones: Nicholas presents himself as cutesy looking Teddy Bear and likes to crack jokes, but he's also the most dangerous of all the Revisions. Mukyu also counts due to her similarly cutesy look and demeanor.
- Bittersweet Ending: On the positive side, the bad guys are defeated, the city and people of Shibuya are returned back to their original time, and there is hope that Keisaku can be saved. The bad news is that there are still more pockets of Revisions waiting in the future who aren't going to give up their plans, Nicholas is still out there as well, and the last moments of the anime reveal that other locations around the globe are disappearing in time jumps as well.
- Blood Knight: Daisuke is so obsessed with the idea of protecting everyone that he will violently assault people at any excuse, including beating up a cyclist who bumped into Lu and didn't apologize, despite Lu ordering Daisuke to stop it. Heck, he even broke a complete stranger's ribs after seeing him talking with Marimari and all the poor guy did was ask her for directions!
- Break the Haughty: Happens to Daisuke, whose initial recklessness, bad temper and initial hero complex get him on the receiving end of a Reason You Suck Speech every episode or two. Following the death of Keisaku, he gets a lot better.
- Brother–Sister Team: The twins Chang Gai and Chang Lu Steiner.
- Cool Uncle: Daisuke's uncle Mikio not only is a nice and wise doctor, he's one of the few who can make Daisuke think.
- Despair Event Horizon: The SDS hits it hard after Keisaku's death.
- Dirty Coward: Mayor Muta is a sniveling coward who is perfectly willing to sell out his citizens if it means he can save himself.
- Emergency Transformation: The Revisions augmented themselves with cybernetics to prolong their lives as the virus degraded them, then turned to hunting immune humans as spare parts for their own failing bodies.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Mukyu truly cares about her sister Chiharu.
- Fair Cop: Kanae Izumi is a very pretty police officer.
- Faux Affably Evil: Nicholas may act all silly and polite, but he feels no remorse in making the people from the past suffer so he can get what he wants.
- Fusion Dance: Nicholas fuses with Keisaku's memories and body, while having his own abilities as Gespenst.
- Grandfather Paradox: The Revisions capture the ancestors of living Revisions and protect them, and one proposal made by the Shibuya Disaster Control government is to kill the rescued ancestors to paradox the Revisions out of existence. However, those ancestors whose descendants have already been killed are turned into Human Resources, so presumably paradoxing the already dead doesn't matter.
- Gratuitous English: Nicholas occasionally adds English to his sentences for no other reason than to act cool.
- Gravity Master: Nicholas has the ability to create localized gravitational distortions, increasing the gravity in small areas so that even the String Puppets can barely move.
- Hair-Trigger Temper: Both Daisuke and Gai are guilty of this, with most of their interactions ending in either a screaming argument or outright physical violence.
- Hidden Buxom: Marimari is pretty buxom beneath her clothes, which Lu and Izumi point out.
- Human Resources: The Revisions abduct humans so they can harvest their bodies and stave off their own deaths.
- Hypocrite: The Revisions in spades. They are more than happy to play the victim card because they suffer from a plague, but show no remorse for kidnapping and liquefying other people, even taking sadistic glee in killing the relatives of those that oppose them right in front of them.
- Ideal Hero: Daisuke is The Protagonist and Gai is The Leader, so who is The Hero? Funnily enough, Keisaku. It turns out that he was the one AHRV foresaw being the most important person in the Shibuya Drift and thus selected to be the first one to man a string puppet, with Daisuke only being considered a backup. He's also shown being able to keep the team together, defusing the fights between Daisuke and Gai ,and his death really hit all of them hard. The finale also explains that Nicholas tried to kill Daisuke several times in the past but Keisaku's remaining consciousness always prevented him from carrying it out. When he tries to kill Daisuke outside the confides of time, it is Keisaku who helps the others to reach out to Daisuke to help him get home and when Nicholas tries to take over Keisaku's body again, he nonchalantly shuts him up, explaining that since they're now connected, Keisaku can just do the same to Nicholas. Coupled with the fact that he was the only one who remained close friends with Daisuke in the seven years that followed the kidnapping, Keisaku is almost like a Guardian Angel to Daisuke.
- Idiot Hero: Daisuke is practically a Deconstruction. He may have good intentions, but his recklessness and childishness make him a liability to his friends.
- Innocent Fanservice Girl: The Isurugi twins have temporary bodies that are rife with Fanservice, but both are oblivious to the fact. They simply chose those forms because they deemed them useful for communication with other humans.
- Instant Expert: Justified Trope. Because they were made specifically for them, Daisuke, Gai and Lu all manage to control the String Puppets very easily.
- It's All About Me:
- Daisuke believes he should be the hero of the story, he is the one who should lead the team, he is the one with the great destiny. Snapping out of that mentality is a major sign of Character Development for him.
- The Revisions prove, time and time again, that they only care about their own survival at the expense of others.
- Nicholas doesn't mind dooming all the other Revisions so long as he can achieve a form that ensures his continued survival.
- Little Bit Beastly: The temporary bodies of the Isurugi twins have dog ears and tail.
- Manchild: Daisuke's biggest flaw is his refusal to mature and face reality, acting like a hyperactive child and throwing tantrums when things don't go his way. While his instincts do help him on occasion, it also makes his friends grow exasperated with his self-centered attitude.
- Medium Blending: The scenes in the past, several backgrounds and many of the smoke and dust effects are in 2D instead of the usual 3D animation used for everything else.
- One-Winged Angel: When confronted by Daisuke and Keisaku at their base, Nicholas reveals his true form, and unlike Chiharu and Mukyu's forms, he can move on his own.
- Only Sane Man: Keisaku is usually the one keeping Daisuke's rashness and Gai's pessimism under control.
- Properly Paranoid: Daisuke spent years acting crazy and paranoid about some sort of unseen danger, and when they're transported to 2388, he was very right about distrusting the Revisions.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: The Gespenst nearly breaks Daisuke by shoving his hero complex back into his face.
- Roaring Rampage of Revenge: After his mother is killed in front of him, Keisaku launches a massive one against the Revisions. And he doesn't stop until he's killed at least one of them, even when he's about to die himself.
- Sequel Hook: While Shibuya returns to its true time, Milo is still out there somewhere, Daisuke declares he will find Keisaku, and in the final moments of the anime, several areas of the world suddenly disappear in the Space-Time, all while Milo watches from London.
- Set Right What Once Went Wrong: This is what AHRV, which Milo works for, is doing against the Revisions, who want to change it for their own needs.
- Split-Personality Merge: Nicholas' merge with Keisaku has the unintended consequence of Nicholas also being able to manipulate the main body. However, he winds up being Hoist by His Own Petard because Keisaku can prevent Nicholas from dragging anyone else through the time stream.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: If you ignore orders, sortie without permission and end up provoking casualties (although without fatalities), you will get imprisoned.
- Taking You with Me:
- Finding himself blinded by rage, Keisaku decides to crush Chiharu's real body before he dies as well.
- And in the finale Keisaku's consciousness drags Nicholas back into the flow of time, erasing both their existences and allowing Daisuke to return to his time.
- Teacher/Student Romance: Yumiko, who's a little cracked at the time from fear and guilt, tries to handle her feelings by giving herself to Daisuke. Daisuke is extremely weirded out and does not reciprocate.
- Team Prima Donna: Daisuke's childishness and self-centered attitude doesn't make him popular with the rest of SDS. When the people were cheering for the team, he scowled at the fact that they weren't cheering for him specifically. He even ruins his birthday party by throwing a fit when told that Gai was made the leader of the team (although, if Daisuke were as Genre Savvy as he believes himself to be, then Gai's red suit should have been a dead giveaway...)
- They Called Me Mad!: After spending years being ignored or written off as a lunatic, Daisuke becomes all giddy when there's an actual danger and he can play hero.
- Timey-Wimey Ball: Milo's instructions to the kids in 2010 rely on a Stable Time Loop, but Shibuya being pulled out of its normal spacetime did not affect the past of 2388. Shibuya returning to normal spacetime with a potential cure for the pandemic is definitely not in the history of 2388. Nicholas' power leads to changes to 2010 manifesting in 2017 in San Dimas Time, probably due to him having a perspective in both time periods - when child Daisuke is supposed to be killed in 2010, his friends suddenly remember his death - and then when adult Daisuke saves him, their memories flip back and they don't know why they remembered him dead. When Milo is stranded in 2010, she avoids any paradoxes by living down The Slow Path and not contacting the students until 2017. Appropriately, in the quantum crystal, time looks more like a ball of yarn than a line.
- Was Once a Man: The monstrous Civilian Revisions are humans who were horribly mutated by the pandemic that almost exterminated humanity 350 years prior.
- Wrong Genre Savvy: Daisuke is convinced he should be the leader because he's the most hot-blooded and wants to save others, ignoring orders, acting on his own and running straight into danger. Rather than a hero, he's seen as a nuisance, a loony or a loose cannon by his friends and companions.
- You Are in Command Now: After Kuroiwa is killed, Izumi assumes command of the remaining police officers.
