The Tokyo 24th Ward Season 2 anime TV series seems very unlikely based on the way Episode 12 ended with finality. But could the anime continue the story of RGB trio Ran, Kouki, and Shuuta now that the mystery surrounding Asumi has been resolved and a new third system has been introduced?
Now that the people have chosen their ending, and Asumi’s lingering consciousness has been put to rest, it’s still possible that similar to Psycho-Pass the ramifications of the all-seeing KANAE System 2.0 could be the subject of a sequel. After all, the ending of Episode 12 offered the two alternatives of libertarian freedom versus an authoritarian surveillance state only to offer a third alternative as a government control system that is a… “reflection of open public opinion”?
What does that even mean? Oddly enough, the anime pitches this concept as a happy ending, but such a system is often the topic of dystopian techno-authoritarianism fiction.
Depending on how KANAE 2.0 is implemented, the concept sounds suspiciously like China’s social credit system, which judges citizens’ behavior and trustworthiness and then controls and punishes their actions. The Orville episode Majority Rule also examined mob mentality and the role that technology can play in the court of public opinion.
Still, RGB obviously intends KANAE System 2.0 to be a happy answer where love is the motivation for everyone’s actions. As such, the anime writers might intend the story to be a standalone product with a complete ending, and a Tokyo 24th Ward sequel isn’t even being considered.
Regardless of whether a story sequel was intended to be possible based on this premise, it’s a real question of whether a Tokyo 24th Ward sequel will be renewed considering the production issues, but if it is, when will Tokyo 24-ku Season 2 come out?
The Tokyo 24th Ward anime TV series is an original story by Japanese animation Studio CloverWorks, which is known for producing the popular Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai anime, co-producing Darling in the FranXX, the Fate/Grand Order anime series, the good-yet-abbreviated Horimiya anime, and the well-reviewed Wonder Egg Priority, which which was also an original story.
In 2022, CloverWorks also released the popular My Dress-Up Darling anime, Akebi’s Sailor Uniform, In The Heart of Kunoichi Tsubaki, and the Shadows House Season 2 anime. CloverWorks also collaborated with WIT Studio on the 2022 Spy x Family anime, which had a split-cour Spy x Family Part 2 that was released later.
The main staff making the Tokyo 24th Ward Season 2 anime hasn’t been announced yet.
For the first season, the anime project was helmed by director Naokatsu Tsuda. He’s best known for his directorial work on JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure Parts 1, 3, 4, and 5.
Writer Vio Shimokura created the series scripts and story composition. This is his first anime production credit, although he’s best known as the writer for the 2009 Steins;Gate video game.
Character designers Shuji Sogabe and Kanako Nono created the original designs, while Takahiro Kishida (Haikyuu!!, JoJo Part 5, Gleipnir, That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime) adapted the designs for animation. Composer Hideyuki Fukasawa (Fate/stay night: Unlimited Blade Works, Orient) created the music.
The Tokyo 24th Ward Season 2 OP (opening) and ED (ending) theme song music hasn’t been announced yet.
For the first season, the Tokyo 24th Ward OP “Paper Sky” was performed by Survive Said The Prophet, while the ED “255,255,255 (the RGB value for white)” was performed by Junya Enoki, Yuuma Uchida, and Kaito Ishikawa, the Japanese voice actors for characters Shuuta Aoi, Ran Akagi, and Kouki Suidou, respectively.
The anime’s first season premiered with an hour-long special episode on January 6, 2022. If the reports of major production issues are true (see below for more details), then it’s possible that later episodes will suffer from (potentially long) delays.
Unfortunately, this prediction came true on February 15, 2022. The Tokyo 24th Ward Episode 7 release date was delayed to February 23, 2022 (it was originally scheduled for Wednesday, February 16, 2022). The official website states that they “decided to postpone the broadcast to maintain the quality of the main story.”
On March 11, 2022, the Tokyo 24th Ward Episode 10 release date was delayed to March 24, 2022. A recap episode, Tokyo 24th Ward Episode 9.5: Reversal Film, was broadcast in its place on March 17, 2022.
In the worst-case scenario, there could be delays similar to 86 Season 2 Episode 12, and the Tokyo 24-ku Episode 12 release date could be delayed by months. Thankfully, that didn’t happen, and the first season’s finale, Tokyo 24th Ward Episode 12, was released on April 6, 2022.
The 12 episodes will be released as five Tokyo 24th Ward Blu-Ray/DVD volumes in Japan. Volume 1 is released on March 23, 2022, Volume 2 on April 27, 2022, Volume 3 on July 27, 2022 (delayed from May 25, 2022), Volume 4 on August 31, 2022 (delayed from June 29, 2022), and Volume 5 on September 28, 2022 (delayed from July 27, 2022). The official website stated that Volumes 3, 4, and 5 were delayed with the “aim of improving the quality of the main story”.
- Updated April 6, 2022: BD/DVD Volumes 3-5 delayed.
- Updated March 11, 2022: Tokyo 24th Ward Episode 10 release date delayed.
- Updated February 15, 2022: Tokyo 24th Ward Episode 7 delayed.
This article provides everything that is known about Tokyo 24th Ward Season 2 (Tokyo 24-ku Season 2) and all related news. As such, this article will be updated over time with news, rumors, and analysis. Meanwhile, let’s delve down into what is known for certain.
Crunchyroll and FUNimation Tokyo 24th Ward English dub release date
The anime premiered in Winter 2021 and was streaming with English subtitles on Crunchyroll, FUNimation, and VRV (not Netflix, Hulu, or Amazon Prime Video).
The Tokyo 24th Ward English dub release date was on March 16, 2022. The first two dubbed episodes were released on that day. From there, new dubbed episodes were released weekly.
Here is the Tokyo 24th Ward dub cast:
- Shuta Aoi is voiced by Bill Kametz
- Koki Suido is voiced by Landon McDonald
- Ran Akagi is voiced by Zeno Robinson
- Asumi Suido is voiced by Xanthe Huynh
The FUNimation Simuldub schedule initially only listed the Tokyo 24th Ward anime’s first season as only a Simulcast. FUNimation releases new episodes on Wednesdays at 12:00 PM EST.
Tokyo 24th Ward production issues are plaguing CloverWorks
CloverWorks has been establishing quite a bad reputation for production issues in recent years. First, there was the much-maligned The Promised Neverland Season 2. Then, the Wonder Egg Priority anime production turned into such a trainwreck that the finale episode’s release was delayed by months. Wonder Egg Priority’s animation producer even had to be hospitalized… twice!
Prior to the premiere of Tokyo 24th Ward, chief animation director Kiminori Ito began detailing on Twitter how the TV show’s production issues were already piling up. The animator has previously worked on shows like Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn, Fairy Tail, Horimiya, and Sword Art Online, so it’s not like he’s new to the industry.
On Oct 24, 2021, he tweeted, “CloverWorks has three shows lined up for January. The fact that Tokyo 24th Ward was announced last is because its schedule is the most behind, I’m guessing.”
Starting in the next week in November he began to chronicle how the production was behind schedule.
“You’ll see this happen all the time in recent anime: The layouts will be submitted, and the episode director will be progressing with the layout checks, but there is no animation director,” he wrote. That means there was no one checking for consistency between the frames!
The animator’s mood quickly went downhill from there since he tweeted: “I’m aboard a sinking ship! We’re about to go under! Hahaha!” The next day he wrote, “I’ve been involved in a lot of jobs with low-quality drawings, but it looks I’m about to experience an animation breakdown this time… I’m only half-joking.”
On November 15, 2021, he tweeted: “The schedule is (poop emoji), which brings to mind the dark history of CloverWorks (formerly A-1 Pictures Koenji): Qualidea Code.” The animator then joked that they could fix the problem with outsourcing: “*In a state of enlightenment* Don’t worry, we can always outsource to overseas—the key animation, the in-between animation, the painting, and the compositing!”
The situation didn’t improve in December 2021. Episode 1, which would be airing in less than a month, still had incomplete layouts. Halfway through the month, he complained about not having a life and then he speculated about the entire production process breaking down: “When will the animation break down? It’s the job I’m currently doing!!”
The studio pulled in a bunch of animators to finish the job in the nick of time. On December 21, 2022, the animator posted a picture of himself lying on the office floor with the caption: “I’m camping here tonight.”
CloverWorks was created in April 2018 by rebranding the A-1 Pictures subsidiary Kouenji Studio. In October 2018, CloverWorks officially separated from A-1 Pictures, but it remained a subsidiary of Aniplex.
And that’s where the nexus of all these high-profile production issues meet: Aniplex. Anime industry insiders have also pointed the finger at Aniplex for bad anime production planning for the 86 Season 2 anime by not giving enough time for pre-production, never mind the main production stage.
In order to understand the overall picture, I recommend checking out this excellent article on Sakuga Blog about anime production schedules. As they put it, “Smart management within studios themselves so that they don’t essentially self-sabotage … and committees being more flexible about release windows can be a whole lot more meaningful than the exact timespan of a production.”
And they’re quick to highlight Aniplex as being the “villain” for not being honest when production issues do arise.
“If that was all, though, this [Wonder Egg Priority] would simply be an unfortunate accident. But since this is the anime industry we’re talking about, there are outright villains, and no one has embodied that better than Aniplex. To put it simply, companies will shamelessly lie to you about the state of their productions. Now, it’s not as if they think that there’s a massive market in animation geeks and viewers concerned about the wellbeing of the workers, but rather that they don’t want their titles to be tainted by a poor reputation of messy behind the scenes situations. And so, rather than making sure that such things don’t happen, they will simply hide those problems behind a curtain of PR lies. … The companies responsible for situations like this refuse to own up to their mistakes, to the point of denying they happened in the first place. As viewers, it’s important to keep ourselves properly informed, listening to different people across the industry to get a more accurate read on the situation.”
Let’s just hope that Aniplex begins to take the problem more seriously as more and more of their productions fail under the spotlight of the public’s gaze. Let’s also be glad that the entire production didn’t meltdown and the animation quality only suffered a little in later episodes.
Tokyo 24-ku Season 2 release date predictions: Is renewal likely?
As of the last update, Studio CloverWorks, Aniplex, or any company related to the production of the anime has not officially confirmed the Tokyo 24th Ward Season 2 release date. Nor has the production of a Tokyo 24th Ward sequel been announced.
Once the news is officially confirmed, this article will be updated with the relevant information.
In the meantime, it’s impossible to speculate about when, or if, the Tokyo 24-ku Season 2 release date will occur in the future.
The anime’s first season suffered from tonal whiplash in the earlier episodes. The opening episode was a promising start only to stutter when the story transitioned into slice-of-life elements that did little to move the main cerebral plot forward.
The problem is that the anime was essentially juggling two distinct types of stories. The first episode and the third drew in audiences with its supernatural fantasy where a mysterious prediction system superpowered young before pending crises that follow the trolley problem thought experiment. Then the slice of life story focused on the trope of citizens trying to save historic areas from being gentrified by a big evil corporation.
The anime began to quickly feel formulaic as it spent screentime developing characters so it was difficult to feel for the characters’ deadly dilemmas. On the other hand, the anime was willing to surprise everyone by killing off characters important to character development early on (RIP sensei Kaoru Shindou).
Perhaps due to these issues, the anime suffered from average reviews in January 2022. However, as newer episodes began to refocus on the main mystery instead of interconnected side stories the episode scores began to pick up.
Still, the feared production issues did seem to affect the animation quality of the anime’s second half since the later episodes never again reached the level of Episode 1. The ending of Episode 12 was a marked improvement but it certainly was not the peak.
Therefore, even though the story itself barely left the door cracked open for a sequel, it doesn’t seem likely that the anime production committee will have Tokyo 24th Ward renewed unless the ending surprises everyone by going the extra mile. Stay tuned!