Tokyo Magnitude 8.0

“The world should just break.”

After having typed this in her cell phone, Mirai Onozawa looks in shock as the bothersome world around her falls apart. The story mainly involves two siblings (Mirai and Yuki Onozawa), and their journey to find their way back home after Tokyo is wrecked by an earthquake with a local magnitude of 8.0. Along the way, they’re assisted by a woman named Mari Kusakabe, who just happens to have a family that lives not too far from their home. So they all travel together, and deal with typical problems that everyday people face. Sounds exciting, right?

Well no, it’s not. About the coolest thing that happens throughout the entire anime is the gigantic earthquake that happens in the first episode. After the climax, the rest of the falling action (aka the rest of the series) deals with earthquake aftershocks and rather predictable character developments followed by a predictable ending twist. The only exception to the predictable character development is Mirai, who never really finds out what she wants to do with life. Believe me, it’s not a terrible spoiler, it’s just a subplot that never really got the attention it needed.

There were definite moments in the series that seemed extremely unnecessary. One of them was an episode where they wasted about five to eight minutes showing one of the characters needing to go to the bathroom. I understand that we’re dealing with an anime that’s trying its hardest to be a serious story about people in a real life situation, but come on! I’d rather see the characters have to charge their phone batteries (it’s never explained, but somehow they charged their phone batteries without phone chargers…don’t ask me). The other moment was the montage that followed the extremely predictable ending twist. Yeah, they used extremely sappy music and a montage to try and get some reaction from their viewers. Nice guys, real nice.

Aside from all this, there’s hardly any background music worth remembering, and the animation is just weird. The backgrounds look really nice, but the characters look cheap. The series felt a little too long as well, at least for the limited amount of ground they covered. It probably would have been better off as an OVA.

If you enjoy dramas and watching people suffer, then by all means, Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 is the series for you. Otherwise, I’d say skip this one.

3/10 Nyaa’s

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