Tokyo ESP is a 12 episode anime based upon the manga series. The anime starts by pushing you right into the thick of things. Taking place in Tokyo, the world is suddenly attacked by people with extrasensory perception (ESP). Their abilities range from anything such as teleportation to magnetic powers, seemingly only limited by imagination. They take over the city, causing havoc in the process and indiscriminately killing.
As the people experience this in despair, one name that kept coming up was the White Girl. Naturally, this holds no meaning to the viewers and thus we then get the backstory of how it got up until this point. We're introduced to the heroine of the story, Urushiba Rinka, who was a normal girl up until she saw some glowing fish floating in the sky. As the fish came near her, she ended up gaining special powers. Rinka's power is one of being able to pass through solid objects at will. We're quickly shown how she discovers her powers and then gain control of it. She meets Azuma Kyotaro, a teleporter who becomes her friend and ally. Various other people with ESP powers appear and Rinka inadvertently assists in taking them down.
The plot is mostly about how Rinka meets the antagonists, who are extremists. They believe that they have evolved beyond mankind and by using violent, take over and create a new future. They try to recruit Rinka and through their actions, we see how they have steered Rinka towards the person that she is. Rinka is forced to question herself, what are her motivations? What is she fighting for?
There are some interesting powers which leads to interesting fight scenes. Not only does Rinka quickly grasp her own power and being able to use it effectively in combat, we see how annoying a teleporter is to fight against, or how overpowered someone with an impassable shield is, or even how despairing it could be to fight against someone who can cast illusions and simulate the feeling of pain.
The pacing is fairly fast in the beginning as it quickly explains the source of the power, being the glowing fish (although that was pretty obvious). You could also feel the lead up to the opening scenes being swiftly set into place. Unfortunately, this quick pacing stalls and eventually slows to a crawl by the midpoint. The midpoint of the series is where you feel that it is still so far away from the opening scenes despite the pieces being set up in earlier episodes. We slowly see Rinka's team eventually form, although it never feels as if they had camaraderie and they all aren't equally likable. We see Rinka start to become serious, training in martial arts such that she'll be able to stand on her own.
Tokyo ESP tries to explore the political side of things when the "normal" humans try and deal with Espers. They start developing behavior akin to racism, although the Espers don't help when a lot of them cause damage just for the fun of it. The final few episodes are the culmination of all the build up and it quickly skips over the opening scenes and goes straight into the climax. While you can surely sympathize with them, at the same time, it doesn't give them free rein to just take all those human lives.
Unfortunately, since the anime only adapts part of the manga, it doesn't have a satisfactory ending. The lead up and explanation of the backstories were done well, but the conflict is far from over and there is no proper resolution to wrap things up. Overall, Tokyo ESP is an okay anime. It starts off really strong but falters before the midpoint and it never quite recovers. The ending was explosive but at the same time, also lacking in terms of a proper stopping point.
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