Tokyo Ghoul - Reviews

It is amazing and engaging and has very interesting characters 100% recommend

As some others pointed out, and as I feel compelled to point out as well; Tokyo Ghoul (TG henceforth) has a lot of thematic similarities with Parasyte (which ran concurrently).  I don’t want to waste my review of TG comparing it to Parasyte around every turn; but I will boldly proclaim that Parasyte was a far better show than TG; for taking more time to focus on its cast and explore its themes (while TG decided to instead waste all of its time of pointless slugfests and characters no one cares about).  Despite being inferior to Parasyte, TG had a lot of potential in my opinion.  Before proceeding further I will disclaim that there may be minor spoilers within, so we’ll call this my obligatory ***SPOILER ALERT***.  Additionally, I acknowledge that this show has been approved for a third season.  Though almost any show expresses qualitative differences from season-to-season, I prefer to review the experience as a whole.  This means that once the third season comes out, and I’ve had a chance to watch it, I’ll be happy to return to this review and update it where applicable.  Let’s dig into the specifics and see why this show’s potential feels so unfulfilled. 

ART: 8/10 – For the most part I thought this show’s art was pretty good.  The character figures were solid; being well drawn, well proportioned, and well emoted.  Likewise the backgrounds and general scenery was fantastic. 

My complaints venture into the realm of the animation and visual effects.  It was to my chagrin that this anime chose to focus more on combat than it did theme exploration; and what’s worse yet is that the combat scenes simply weren’t that good.  Despite the complete inconsistency to what the ghouls or humans could do in a given encounter, there was too much happening behind the smoke and rubble for you to have any idea why one party defeated the other.  This effect doesn’t always bother me in anime, but if you’re going to choose to focus on combat rather than your themes and your cast, I’m going to be more picky here.

SOUND: 10/10 – The show’s sound was largely fantastic.  Watching the show in English dubs; I thought all performances were very good.  I thought Kaneki and Touka’s  (the male and female leads) performances had a lot of demands, and the actors did a terrific job meeting them.

Likewise, this show’s music was nothing short of spectacular.  As an individual who works a lot, I watch anime late at night on a relatively budgeted time schedule.  And I never once skipped through the OT or ET’s for this show.  They were just all so good; most notably the second season’s OT; which is easily one of my favorites of all time.

I don’t have much to say about the show’s sound effects, but everything felt in place to me.  Gunshots sounded like gun shots; broken bones sounded like broken bones; and the sounds of people (or creatures) getting torn limb from limb sounded gory enough to me.

STORY: 3/10 – Man, what a waste.  I really enjoyed the way this story started out.  It had good tension, a creepy and mysterious atmosphere, and the main character’s personal struggles were well done and fun to watch.  Despite granted the premise a full score for these reasons; there was one element that I really disliked:  The fact that the existence of ghouls was common knowledge to all of humanity; but civilization seemed to barely care.  A world full of extremely intelligent, and extremely strong human predators (who look like humans) with crazy unpredictable natural weapons should look a lot different.  Combat training should be part of the mandatory curriculum for humans; and the streets should be militarized with patrols almost everywhere.  Nothing logically follows with the human societies existing almost exactly as they do in our world with the existence of these creatures (ghouls) running rampant in their world.  I’ve deducted this point from the “plausibility” section, though.

This show has to be one of the worst examples of poor pacing I’ve ever seen to be honest.  If a show flubs up pacing, it’s usually because it’s too slow.  In fewer instances it’s too fast.  In TG’s case, it’s both!  This is to say that it completely rushes sequences that need more time (for the “umph”-teenth time, character development and theme exploration), and then wastes entire episodes on side shows (such as the gourmet capture sequence, the prison break, and many pointless battles).  There were parts toward the end of season two where I was actually mad with how the show ignored its main cast, to force us to watch tertiary characters fighting each other.  And then dialogue scenes were extremely slow and vacuous.  Season 2 was especially guilty of this mess, but it was so bad that this show has to lose full score on pacing.  I wanted to see Kaneki interact with Touka and Hide more, but the show pretty much forced all three of the characters into the background to try and make room for its ever expanding cast.  And the result was a cast too big for a short running series to be able to focus on and develop.  I remain hopeful that season three will try to reign in these errors.  But I’m skeptical at current…

I’m feeling nice in giving the show even a partial score in complexity.  The original portrayals and mystique surrounding the main character’s transition from the human world to the ghoul world was actually pretty good and interesting.  And the show promised to explore the way these two worlds blurred; even though it failed to deliver.  This is what I meant by the show failing to explore its themes.  The “ghoul lead” (Kaneki) and the “human lead” (Amon) literally both talk and raise these questions with themselves and each other.  But rather than explore this relationship they’re both just like “f it, let’s fight to the death instead”.  And away goes pretty much the entire theme the show tried to focus on.  Sure, there were other human-ghoul relationships; in fact every ghoul in the story who would fall anywhere in the ball-park of “protagonist” seemed to have a human connection that they’re risk their life for.  The trope was so overdone and similar across them all, that it was almost sort of boring.  But even worse than that, the relationships were completely unexplored!  They were all painfully simplistic (not to mention similar) where the human part was all “I love you no matter what” – with no friction in any of those relationships…  Of course Kaneki and Hide’s friendship is the most annoying.  It’s background noise for pretty much the entire series so far.  Kaneki ignores him the entire series, and you’re stuck with voicemails, flashbacks, and side scenes of Hide snooping around.  This is to say that we’re constantly told how close and good of friends they are, but we’re never shown it.  Nothing about their interactions ever feels organic or makes their friendship endearing; it’s just terrible exposition altogether.

Much of the ground I’ve already covered tackles issues of this show’s plausibility.  Unlike Parasyte, the combat properties of the ghouls are entirely inconsistent, and this even includes the weapons used by the humans fighting them.  Some ghouls shot projectiles, while others were beasts half the size of a building.  Some were killed with a single gunshot, while others could get torn limb from limb, just to eat themselves to recover.  It was ridiculous; and these elements made none of the action sequences even remotely interesting to watch.  It was ass-pull-central; where the properties of almost every single character were barely even consistent with themselves (major human badass gets killed by inexperienced child); let alone each other (again some ghouls died from single gunshots, while others needed to be eviscerated a thousand times over.  Also, what was with Yoshimura’s choice to go out guns blazing?  The entire point of his faction was living through peaceful and discreet integration.  He had every warning that the café was going to get hit.  It seemed entirely antithetical for him to opt to “fight it out”, rather than to try and get his entire faction to regroup elsewhere.

I can’t possibly give the show a good score for its conclusion.  Even assuming that the reason it is entirely unresolved is because there will be another season, it’s still my belief that any given season of a show should have some sort of viable resolution.  Nothing felt closed, no questions answered; there’s no meaningful catharsis at the last episode.  Season one was a bit better; but not still very open (and in the middle of a big invasion).  I hope season three corrects these issues.  I will gladly return and boost the score here if season three actually bothers to tie the loose ends, rather than muck things up even worse…

CHARACTERS: 4/10 – Many of my problems with characters have been addressed above.  The shows scope with regards to its cast was quirky and erratic.  The first season focused almost entirely on Kaneki, and then the second season somehow thought it was a good idea to host as many point-of-view characters as it had episodes – and it simply didn’t work.  It created a feeling like all of the actions of all the cast (most especially Kaneki, the series lead) was background noise to the… ...well I’d say plot.  But it’s again more like pointless slugfest.  Most of second season’s premise was “I’m with the bad ghouls thrashing the city ‘cause powerups”.  Swift~.

I feel this way about the personality of the characters.  Dynamics are cool, but being blood thirsty murderers in one episode, and tender cutesy human lovers the next (Nishiki and Touka).  It remains the case that their premises are just pure hack.  It introduces them both as cold remorseless actors; all while having significant human relationships?  What a mess!  I thought Kaneki’s character was actually outstandingly handled up until the second season.  But then he just became a “rule of cool” action piece who spent the first three quarters of the show throwing down with non-adversaries ‘cause powerups, and the last quarter of the show feeling sorry for himself for not actually being there for any of the characters he gave a damn about in the first place…

The show doesn’t provide much back-drop; but it provides some.  Almost the entirety of Kaneki and Hide’s friendship (which is portrayed as a key element of the series) is done via backdrop.  The same can be said for Kaneki’s mother who was very important to him before she died.  Amon actually has a rich backdrop which is nice; but it’d be nicer if the show figured out which characters are main cast and which aren’t…  It seems to me like it needed 24 episode seasons to accommodate its robust cast…

I gave the show a partial score in development for purely one reason; I actually found Kaneki’s development through the first season to be flawless.  His transition into the ghoul world was done slowly and over very minute integrations (with malignant circumstances sprinkled in between).  It was actually a very well done.  I even thought the torture sequence (though macabre); was actually really well done.  Sure, it seemed more or less like an excuse for a rigid power-up, but that makes it actually good!  Kaneki’s power-up was not an ass-pull!  It was his humanity being flayed away through physical AND psychological torture!  The abuse tore down his human spirit and gave way for the monster to take over.  I even sort of liked the way he adopted the masochistic quirks of breaking his fingers and stuff when he was about to throw-down.  Add anything to story?  Hardly, but it was well excused.  It’s too bad this transformed character fell into the background in season two…

As explained above, there was no catharsis.  The show spent almost all of its ending exhibiting characters (most of whom you don’t even care about) fighting other characters… …who you also don’t care about.

OVERALL: 5.5/10 – So the shows great production values and interesting (albeit underdeveloped) themes pulled it just past average.  I guess that’s about fair.  I’ll be tuning into the third season after it’s all out there (and as time allows) to see if the trainwreck that which it is its story gets in any way salvaged.  But I’m not holding my breath.  I’m half tempted to recommend the show just for how good the music was.  If you really need a time waster with interesting themes, give it a go.  But if you’re sitting at a fork in the road with only time for this or Parasyte, choose Parasyte; hands down.

Excused Scorings (thanks to Roriconfan for the template):

ART SECTION: 8/10
General Artwork 2/2 (great)
Character Figures 2/2 (unique and well emoted)
Backgrounds 2/2 (well done)
Animation 1/2 (sometimes lazy)
Visual Effects 1/2 (sometimes lazy)

SOUND SECTION: 10/10
Voice Acting 3/3 (well done)
Music Themes 4/4 (outstanding)
Sound Effects 3/3 (solid)

STORY SECTION: 3/10
Premise 2/2 (interesting)
Pacing 0/2 (awful)
Complexity 1/2 (good themes, but poorly unexplored)
Plausibility 0/2 (none)
Conclusion 0/2 (pretty much absent)

CHARACTER SECTION: 4/10
Presence 1/2 (strong 1^st season, terrible 2^nd season)
Personality 1/2 (interesting, but too loose [see above])
Backdrop 1/2 (some)
Development 1/2 (there, but weakly done)
Catharsis 0/2 (rushed and open with no time for catharsis)

VALUE SECTION: 4/10
Historical Value 2/3 (popular, and hopefully useful for its unfulfilled potential)
Rewatchability 0/3 (slow, and the action was mostly boring)
Memorability 2/4 (Amazing music, memorable for being wasted potential)

ENJOYMENT SECTION: 4/10
Art 1/1 (ok)
Sound 2/2 (amazing)
Story 0/3 (interesting premise gets hacked to bits)
Characters 1/4 (interesting, but poorly explored and developed)

Verdict: 5.5/10

One of the anime hypes in 2014 was a show called "tokyo ghoul" a dark fantasy story set in japan. It's an anime that makes the watchers shout YES and fall off their chairs. My name is bilguun alix and today i'm going to review TOKYO GHOUL.

Plot  

In an alternate version of Tokyo Mysterious creatures called Ghouls are devouring humans. Our main protagonist Kaneki encounters a beautiful girl named Rize but soon turns out that the girl was not actually human but a ghoul and she tries to eat him. However due to an accident he got saved but is extremely wounded. After recovering, Kaneki discovers that somehow he underwent a surgery that transformed him into a half-ghoul which means he must consume human flesh to survive. He is then taken in by the ghouls who manage the coffee shop "Anteiku", who teach him to deal with his new life.

Now a plot of any dark fantasy anime is determined by how well the story world is shown as well is what over arcing storyline is trying to accomplish. In my opinion the world of ghouls is researched poorly. There are so many questions such as: why can they drink nothing but coffee? Since when did ghouls actually appear?

 Also the story it self just happens to be going on it’s  own without any goal until the end. Things just happen and Kaneki just seems to be the part of it. And at times things seems to be a bit too rushed and unbalanced. They were like “Screw the logic we need more fighting”. And the show never actually gave us a solid ending. Now I’m not an idiot, I clearly know that the second season is going to start soon enough. But the first season should have stand on it’s own but it seems rather a kick starter for the second season.

Characters

Now the sad part of this show is that the villains are one dimensional. The crazy old man from the “We hunt your ghouls” company a.k.a doves, Rize, Jason, Tsukiyama the hyperactive ghouls, they don’t have a redeeming quality other than being crazy and well…gay. As for the less crazy ones there are a few good characters that I want to point out.

When I first saw kaneki I thought he was just some typical teenager with a typical bitchiness but my thoughts were changed Literally 180 degrees at episode 11 and 12. I just didn’t realize how deep he was until then.

Another character I liked was Touka who is badass but also a kind person. I wish the show developed her more.

Also there is Amon who is badass as well. And we saw some development in him as well as his back story of how he become one of the doves. He might be the best character of this series and I hope he will show up more in the second season.

Overall I do think the show could have shown more back story especially for the villains cause from what I heard things were very different in the manga. And I wish Tsukiyama too would get a less crazy side because he was FUCKING ANNOYING.

5.5/10 

Animation

One of the Good sides of Tokyo ghoul is that it has rather dark but wonderful art style. The kagunes truly look amazing and the fighting scenes are very well drawn without any laziness The animation from the final episode was absolutely terrific and I wish that the fighting scene was bit long.

But however there is a problem with the censorship. Tokyo ghoul of course have a lot of bloody moments but the censoring company went over board and censored everything from blood to a… harmless leg. It’s as if they are just trying to censor everything they see.

But there is an uncensored version so no worries.

Sound

The opening song for Tokyo ghoul was… how should I put it… EPIC.

The song matched the show almost perfectly showing us what ghouls think of themselves and what they feel. And it was an amazing mix of guitar.piano,drum and violin. When I watched the whole series I NEVER skipped the opening song and that tells something.

As for the soundtrack there were some good music during the fight scenes but not much in non action scenes.  

Recommendation 

Watch it if you like: greatly animated fights, Gore.

And don’t watch it if you hate: gore, want more intellectual experience, soild ending.

i love Tokyo ghoul, loved it when it first came out. Still do and always will

This was a very good story & great characters. I found myself unable to stop watching, like when I have a good book I can't put down. I knocked off 1/2 a star because of the ending.