Highlights
- Takemichi's time-traveling attempts to undo tragedies are causing futures that worsen with each leap, leading to the death of Mikey and the takeover of the Tokyo Manji Gang by rival organization Tenjiku.
- Emma Sano, Mikey's half-sister, plays a crucial role in the chain of events that lead to the bleak future. She and Mikey share a close bond, and her death leaves him devastated and vulnerable.
- Kisaki and Izana scheme to weaken Toman by targeting Emma, ultimately killing her to break Mikey's spirit and take control of the gang. This sets off a series of events that lead to Toman's downfall and the transformation into a criminal syndicate.
The following contains spoilers for Tokyo Revengers: Tenjiku Arc, now streaming on Disney+.
While attempting to undo tragedies in the present through his time-traveling exploits, Takemichi Hanagaki became wary of how he was creating futures that grew worse with each leap. The recurring death of Hinata Tachibana, and the demise of Keisuke Baji, highlighted this throughout Seasons 1 and 2 of Tokyo Revengers — peaking with Mikey's death in the future after the Christmas Showdown. To make matters worse, Takemichi's next leap resulted in the death of the adult Naoto Tachibana, which eliminated his time leaping ability.
What greeted him there in the future, was a scenario where the Tokyo Manji Gang had been taken over by their rival organization Tenjiku, and transformed into a crime syndicate that had killed off most of its founding members. In many ways, the route towards this bleak future was triggered by the death of none other than Emma Sano — Mikey's half sister — an event that spurred his descent into darkness. Here's how this chain of events took place in the storyline of Tokyo Revengers.
Who Is Emma Sano?
After spending the early years of her life with her mother, Karen Kurokawa, and adoptive sibling Izana Kurokawa, Emma was dropped off at the Sano family household by her mother when she was just a child. This was essentially an act of abandonment, as Karen never intended to return to her daughter, and put the entire responsibility for her upbringing on her grandfather, Mansaku Sano. Manjiro, Emma, and Shinichiro all shared the same father, and the two younger Sano siblings were only a year apart in age.
Subsequently, Emma spent her childhood in the Sano household, but had a difficult time adapting to her new surroundings due to her foreign appearance, name, and the fact that she was abandoned by the only family she had known. On seeing her struggle, Mansaku, Shinichiro, and Manjiro all tried to make her happy as best they could. Manjiro even chose to go by the name "Mikey," which made Emma's name stand out less whenever anyone noticed that they were siblings. In time, Emma grew to love her new family, as her sense of loneliness disappeared.
Mikey's Pillar Of Support
By virtue of how close they were in age, Mikey and Emma became quite fond of each other, especially because of how much concern Mikey showed for his younger half-sister during her early days in the Sano household. Eventually, she made friends of her own, learned to fight at the Sano dojo, and developed a crush on Mikey's close friend Draken. Unfortunately, it seemed as if all Draken cared about was bikes, fighting, Mikey, and the Tokyo Manji Gang that they led together.
Within the Sano household, Emma took care of a lot of the day-to-day chores and aided Mikey and his exploits with the Tokyo Manji Gang. In turn, she was one of the people Mikey cared about the most, alongside Draken, and became a constant source of emotional support for him. It is for this very reason that Kisaki and Izana of Tenjiku chose to target her during the Kanto Incident where they went up against Toman. Over time, this gave rise to the bleak future that Takemichi would witness after the events of the Christmas Showdown Arc, where Mikey was a wanted fugitive who had murdered many of Toman's founding members.
Kisaki And Izana's Scheme
Due to his expulsion from the Tokyo Manji Gang, Kisaki harbored an intense grudge against Takemichi and his subordinates, for their role in exposing his deceitful and manipulative ways. To gain vengeance against them all, Kisaki enlisted the aid of Emma's adoptive brother Izana Kurokawa, who was already a well-known delinquent and the former leader of the Eight Generation Black Dragons. For this reason, the pair founded Tenjiku along with the members of the S-62 Generation, and conducted a citywide assault on the Tokyo Manji Gang's divisions in an act of provocation.
On gaining Mikey and Draken's attention, the pair hatched a plot to gradually weaken Toman and force Mikey to submit to them, with Emma as the linchpin of this scheme. After strategically taking out several of the Tokyo Manji Gang's Division Captains, Kisaki decided that killing Emma was the easiest way to break Mikey and Draken's spirit, and took matters into his own hands for the first time. Mounting a surprise attack on a bike, Kisaki fatally struck Emma with a metal baseball bat during a meeting between Izana, Mikey, and Seishu Inui, before the grave of Shinichiro Sano.
Taking out Mikey's only remaining sibling, who was also his moral compass and greatest pillar of strength, left him an empty shell of a person, as he could not bear to confront his guilt at being unable to save her. As per Kisaki's plan, Izana was to step in to comfort Mikey, due to his role as his step-sibling and a younger brother to Shinichiro Sano. With this, Mikey would begin to rely on Izana as his pillar of support, despite the latter's deranged and sadistic worldview. This sparked the start of Toman's downfall from being an idealistic group with the goal of creating a new world for delinquents, to a criminal syndicate driven by greed and violence. Over time, Mikey would also lose his way and give in to the anger within him, following Izana on his path of hatred.
