Tougen Anki's Nikko arc brings three new villains on 2 October
REMOW has dated the Nikkō Kegon Falls arc of Tougen Anki for 2 October, added three new villains and confirmed a streaming spread from Netflix to bilibili.
The second arc of the Tougen Anki anime has a date, a new visual and three new faces. REMOW announced on 19 September that the Nikkō Kegon Falls arc begins on 2 October, running in NTV's Friday Anime Night block at 23:30 JST across a 30-station network in Japan, with BS NTV picking it up from 5 October at 23:30.
Three villains join the cast, all of them from the Momotaro Agency's Kegon Falls branch: Kenichi Suzumura as Kusabi Momoura, the branch chief; Yūki Kaji as Hizumi Momotsugi, captain of the 10th Unit; and Kishō Taniyama as Senritsu Momoo, vice-captain of the 3rd Unit.
Themes, recaps and how to catch up
Hiromitsu Kitayama performs the opening theme, “Backlash”, with TRACK15 on the ending theme, “Hand in Hand”. Two recap episodes run first: the Kyoto arc on 30 September and the Nerima arc on 1 October, which is the studio's way of saying that a second season starting mid-story expects you to arrive prepared.
Where it will actually be watchable
Outside Japan the arc starts on 2 October at 25:00 JST – which is 1am on 3 October in Japan's own clock, so set your expectations accordingly. REMOW's platform list is long and deliberately unglamorous about it: Netflix, Crunchyroll, Amazon Prime Video, Rakuten Viki, It's Anime on YouTube, Anime Generation, Aniverse, ADN, AMEDIATEKA, the It's Anime FAST channels on Samsung TV Plus, VIZIO WatchFree+, PS5 Live TV, Pluto TV and Prime Video, plus KT genieTV, SK BTV, LG U+TV, KT Skylife TV, cable VOD, TVING, WAVVE, Laftel, WATCHA PLAY, JBOX, DAEWON's ANIWON and ANIBOX, bilibili, Bahamut, My-Video, HamiVideo, LINE TV and friDay.
That list is a broad roll-out beyond Japan rather than a promise about any one country, and the JST timing is the only one the announcement gives. The arc follows Shiki and the Rasetsu Academy students to Nikkō, where Kegon Falls stopped flowing some time ago and a large research facility now stands; the story turns on Yaoroshi rejecting Mudano's lessons on friendship and drifting towards the Oni Brigade's call for the total eradication of the Momotaro.
The season keeps the staff that built the first: Ato Nonaka directing, Yukie Sugawara on series composition and scripts, Ryōko Amisaki on character design, KOHTA YAMAMOTO composing and Studio Hibari on animation, working from Yura Urushibara's manga in Akita Shoten's Weekly Shōnen Champion.
Our opinion
Escalating a dark-horror shōnen show by adding middle managers is a funnier pitch than it sounds, and it is the right one: Tougen Anki works because the Momotaro Agency is an institution with ranks, not a nameless evil, and a branch chief arriving with a unit captain and a vice-captain signals that Nikkō is a bigger operation than Kyoto was. The recap episodes are the tell that the production knows exactly who its audience is – people who watched the first arc a year ago and have forgotten the details. The streaming list is the genuinely unusual part. A show that lands on Netflix, Crunchyroll, Prime Video, bilibili and a dozen regional services on the same day is the industry quietly admitting that exclusivity was never the point.