Tokyo Ghoul - Review

"What's 1000 minus 7 ?"

World:

Tokyo Ghoul is set in an alternate reality where ghouls, carnivorous monsters who look exactly like normal people but can only survive by eating human flesh,

live among the humans in secret, hiding their true nature to escape from Anti Ghoul Squad.

Including enhanced speed, senses, and regenerative ability, a regular ghoul is several times stronger than a normal human. They have piercing weapons and has at least one special predatory organ called a "Kagune" & this mutation is known as a "kakugan."

Ken Kaneki

In the case of a half-ghoul, only one of the eyes undergoes the transformation. A half-ghoul can either be born naturally as a ghoul and a human's offspring, 

or artificially created by transplanting some ghoul organs into a human. In both cases, a half-ghoul is usually much stronger than a pure-blood ghoul.

Review:

For the most part, Tokyo Ghoul’s storytelling was decent. It explored the different aspects of the ghoul community and made its point simple and concise. There isn’t anything too fancy or well done with its storytelling.

Tokyo Ghoul is quick to establish the lore with the Wards (sectors), the Doves (anti ghoul police), and different types of ghouls.

This last point emphasized by Anteiku and it’s here that Kaneki spends most of his time deliberating between his new and unique situation. 

The plot itself didn’t seem to be headed in any clear direction, but splits itself into different ‘mini-plots’ (similar to different story arcs in the manga) as Kaneki observes the different ghouls coming in and out of the cafe, and learns their own perspective of being a ghoul. 

Touka

While this in itself is fine, it creates other problems for character development and overall pacing. 

This is clear at the show’s 9th episode when there is a ghoul invasion in one of the other wards.

It’s clear that this is the climax of the show, yet it feels blatantly out of place from the ‘mini-arc’ format the show was using so far.

There was hardly any buildup leading up to the massive invasion and the last 4 episodes seemed to compress as much content as possible by amplifying up the pace, shown by the sudden high stakes and side characters being quickly introduced.

It’s clear the ending was very rushed. 

Simply put, the show’s plot lacked focus. It did not take advantage of the interesting premise they had to work with.

Overall:

Tokyo Ghoul is one of the more hyped up anime this season for a number of reasons. Mainly because it was, as I have heard, a very popular manga.

To conclude in one line, we can say that the anime creators had done a poor job in adapting the manga master-piece.

I felt that Tokyo ghoul is purely overrated after watching the anime.

But, for the case of manga, you can see a huge difference in storytelling and it paces with clarity whereas anime includes some confusion as it moves on.

Many of my trusted & well-known sources agreed unanimously, that Tokyo ghoul falls under those anime which has an excellent source of manga but didn't succeed that much in anime.

It will bore you out in the middle of season 1 and picks up in last few episodes with some real good action sequences.

Season 2 can generate some interest on the show as it reveals more backstories of all characters.

Rating:

Season - 1 :  7 / 10

Season - 2 :  8 / 10