Tokyo Ghoul

1) This is a rewriting of one of the first reviews I ever made, I deleted it because I did not know what the hell I was talking about.
2) There will be some minor spoilers, you've been warned ye little b-

You know those stories that have these special entities that live in a world and pretty much kind of like x-men? Well recently that idea has been done a lot, out of most of the things that have done this idea recently, Parasyte is the only one that succeeds in doing it well, Beside it is this mess. Tokyo Ghoul, when I saw this show ... I thought it was gonna be some generic mystery show and when I started watching it......it was a generic x-men idea show, how wonderful? And guess what?It became popular and people praised it, now I'm currently taking my time reading the manga (which is better than this) so I won't be mentioning it.

Story: 3.7/10
So in this world there are entities known as 'Ghouls' who feed off human corpses and drink coffee. Yes, coffee. So one day a freshman college student goes out with some girl and it turns out, SHE'S A GHOUL! DUN DUN DUN DUUUUUUUUN!!!! So after an accident before getting eaten, doctors thought it was such a smart idea (not) to take the ghoul's organs and stuff them into our MC. What happens? The MC is know a half ghoul, half human and struggles to maintain each side.

Cool idea right? Well you're wrong, the show fails to make the plot understandable, its such a mess, the reason why is that it never explains jackshit. For example, how do people turn into ghouls? What the hell is a ward? How do ghouls drink coffee but nothing else except water? What is this world? and so on. The show does the thing were it tries to solve everything in just 12 episodes, and this show fails it miserably, this show needs 24 episodes to space everything out, everything feels so rushed, cause of this it leads to the plotholes and cause of the plotholes its more confusing. I'll give it points for its idea but thats it.

Characters: 4/10
Our MC is Kaneki, I talked about him in my story segment, here I'll say whats good about him and whats bad. Now the good is we find out his life is pretty tragic, his mom dies as a kid, he can't eat normal anymore, it really makes you feel for him. The way he tries to keep his humanity and ghoulness is so well done and I give prontos to that. The bad side, the show hardly focuses on him, it tries to focus more on the world around him, this is really the main sector of why everything is messy. Cause of this Kaneki feels more like a plot-device more than anything.

Now the other characters, there isn't really much to say about them, there's Touka, there is meant to be some development between her and Kaneki but there isn't, its like the show is saying, hey look developme- NOPE FUCK YOU! As soon as the development can happen its just vanishes. This leads to so much under-development.

The other characters, there isn't really much to them and usually don't matter to the plot at all, there's so many chances for some good development and the show fucks that up too.

Sound: 9/10
Ok now the music, is just....epic. Its really well done and is so memroble. The OP, I don't know what to say. It is amazing and it looks at how ghouls and humans are equal and makes you question yourself and humanity? Are monsters really created by humans? The ED, is pretty meh. And thats really it for sound.

Art: 6/10
The art is pretty OK with some really well done backgrounds that shine, I'd give it a 7, but I won't cause of something in the animation which actually made me want to drop the show and its.....Censoring. There's a lot of blood in this show and it tries to censor it, but it does it so poorly, it uses black bars to censor things, it literally blackens nearly the whole screen and you wonder what the fuck is going on?

Enjoyment: 5/10
Welp really, the only reason I didn't drop this was cause of its action scenes and litlle cliffhangers at the end of each episode. The action scenes are really well done and put you on the edge of your seat. The cliffhangers, man these cliffhangers are a reason to continue the show, they usually leave big ones making you what to see what happens next.

Overall: 4.5/10
This show is a mess, it has some well done music and thats the best thing it has to offer, the rest is just either poorly done or rushed. This show could have been something really good but it falls on its ass everytime it has a chance. The ending is a cliffhanger which is just a cheap move and a reason to watch Season 2. I don't really reccomend this, shows that have done a better job of this are Parasyte which is STILL ONGOING (by the time this review is posted) and Tokyo Esp which is an OK show, its more light-hearted but it does a much better job than this. Tokyo Ghoul is meh. I'm out.

The only thing you'll be left with after watching this series is an extra song in your playlist and a very sour taste in your mouth.

That is, of course, if you manage to wrestle the choppy pacing of eleven episodes of underdeveloped characters that live in the shadow of a wasted premise, beautifully presented through the familliar eyes of the melodramatic queen of a main lead.

Bonus feature: imbecillic censorship.

WTF kind of anime that I just watched?

That's my reaction after watching the last episode and according to the forum commentators, it was pretty much rushed and they were certainly right. I guess you might said that some manga would have better be left as mangas than be adapted as an anime...that is, if studios such as studio Pierrot won't do it right, so I'm gonna keep my review of this anime simple as I present my ratings for each of this anime's category:


Pathetic 1.

Story- it was basically another one of those plot where the protagonist become somewhat of a........let's just say being able ... to get intertwine in the middle of two worlds in this case Kaneki being a half ghoul and a half human. What makes it pathetic was how he get to be one, where he almost becomes a monster's snack if not for some weird accident that befalls the monster where she get's killed (where the scenario for the lady ghoul was too stupid to say the least) and the victim (Kaneki) become a victim of the doctor's malpractice where he get's organ transplant from his attacker. Now, this is the part where I would ask as to wtf was this series writer thinking Sui Ishida for coming up with such dorky concept as how Kaneki become a half human/ half ghoul kind of thing? If I were Sui Ishida I probably make Kaneki as some sort of lab experiment that got away, that would have have been cool than some scenario that is too stupid.


Overall- because it was rushed, it was pretty obvious that studio Pierrot should have extended it up to 20 episode, also we should have seen as to how Amon's rematch with Toka had transpired. Since the anime ended in a sour note, I wouldn't be surprise if the manga only run for about 13 volumes, pretty obvious that the whole series whether it's a manga or anime was more like gore porn than anything else.


Good 7.

Art- what can I say I love the blood and gore that see in this anime and that's that.


Poor 3.

I don't like the opening and the closing theme, I don't like Kaneki's pussy voice, expect of course for Mado, I like the way that he voice out his pleasure of killing ghouls.


Dreadful 2.

Character- the reason why I gave it such rating was basically the way on how they were double standardize, now Nishiki Nishio and Shū Tsukiyama where suppose to be dead and yet we still see them alive and kicking. Now, if them ghouls can't be killed then Rize Kamishiro should still be alive and them Doves would have been exterminated easily by them ghouls, also how the fuck did a half ghoul like Kaneki become a super ghoul after being tortured by Yakumo? Now he's a half ghoul right? So he should have some form of limitation, so how come he doesn't? I'm guessing that since he is the main protagonist he should come on top which it would be such a pathetic idea coming from series writer Sui Ishida. Now, the only characters that I see whose roles were right are Toka, Mado, Amon and Hinami.


Decent 4.

Enjoyment- Well it was a bit enjoyable from episode 1 to 11, but the last one was shit all the way, I didn't even get to see Amon's duel with Toka which was a bit disappointing.

(This is my 1st review)

I was looking forward to this show because friends told me how good the manga is & how excited they were about it getting an anime. Tbh I wasn't expecting that much from it but entertainment. Didn't think it would be the anime of the season but still a cool thing to watch !

Story: It starts off with that guy getting mixed blood with a ghoul & becoming some kind of half human / half ghoul dude. That part was ok I guess, you kinda think ghouls are gonna be scary etc since they eat humans. But like every ghoul is ... some kind of emoteen... almost feels like the author thought only gothics could fit the role.
To be fair I really didn't pay much attention to the story since it was so confusing. Not like complicated or anything but just borrinnnnggg as hell..

Art: I guess it well animated, I just don't really like the design it's so shonen & basic.. I guess the manga is like that too but it can be fine in animes with an actual PLOT. The art is the best part of the anime though

Sound: Wow! Not gonna hate but you really gotta be into that anime opening J-HARD ROCK/METAL kinda music which I really don't feel. It really deserves the DREADFUL 2 I gave it

Character: I guess some are bearable, the MC is a whining bitch, dude can't get over being a ghoul. PFFF... I hate that kinda character, just slowing the pace of the story/action bc he keeps whining. If they actually put content every time he was crying the anime would've been a lot better.
Most the bad guys are crazy dudes on LSD / good guys are emos or just regular people.

Enjoyment: Can't hate on the action scenes & the art which are the only things making this anime somewhat relevant & watchable.
The story made no sense, the characters had no depth, the sound was terrible.

Boring show overall, I don't recommend

Tokyo Ghoul was easily one of the most hyped titles in 2014.
That's an undeniable fact. The manga got lots of attention before and all the fans were happy to see their new favourite thing animated. But oh boy were they disappointed when it started airing.

The animation in general was, for 2014 standards, below average for the most part. Certain visual effects, such as the Kagunes were well-done The character figures were a mix of good and bad, with the good ones leaving memorable expressions on the viewer and the bad ones being stereotypical character designs everybody will have forgotten about in a week. The backgrounds, ... however, were all largely well-done and one could see the effort being put into them, a quality which is still present in the lower-budget sequel that is Route A. But well, this is where the good parts end. The general animation looked horrible for the most part to the point where one could see the weird looking limbs during fight scenes.

The soundtrack wasn't too memorable but it fit the atmosphere of the show. The Opening was not too happy yet a bit too happy in general to completely capture the feeling of the show.
The voice acting wasn't too outstanding either. Most characters weren't too memorable and there wasn't too much effort put into it for the biggest part. It was average voice acting, perhaps a bit less considering the modern anime standard.

Let's now move on the important parts:
the story and the characters.
If one were to get vulgar, one could simply say "they sucked ass" but since I want to give a reason as for why that is so, let me elaborate on it:
The premise was basically ghouls living in Japan among humans.
It is above average for originality and differing from the modern "haha, everything is moeblob or medieval fantasy action" standard. Bonus points for that. Unfortunately, that's where the pros end and the cons begin. It was wasted. For the biggest part nobody ever seems to do anything against them, save for one special unit and warning signs telling kids not to leave their houses once the sun has sunk, and the ghouls themselves have close to no kind of order. The humans acting completely normal despite knowing there are dangerous beasts out there is somewhat questionable as well. And saying "they are an urban legend" is no excuse because there obviously is an anti-ghoul squad.
The pacing of it was goddamn awful and was faster than a Ferrari. One could tell that the directors simply wanted to get the boring parts over with and show some scenes that "kick ass".
It had no kind of complexity to it and was mainly just X moving to place 1 because event Y required him to do so. It was plot-driven and the characters were reacting instead of acting.
The story itself ended with a cliffhanger after having shown Kaneki getting super insta speed character development over the course of 10 minutes and going from a crybaby to a "badass" that wouldn't bat an eye even if he lost his legs.

Which leads us to the next section, the characters.
These are mainly made up out of semi archetypes like the crybaby protagonist, the strong female, the cute loli and the mysterious old leader. But cliches are cliches, right? Yeah, no.
Touka is a generic tsundere girl for the most part and has largely any kind of conflict until the Tsukiyama arc is over. This was a good backdrop yet provided no kind of development for her as a character since it was simply forgotten 10 minutes later.
Kaneki is a crybaby who has lived a hard childhood which gave him the mindset "it's better to be hurt than to hurt" which for a large part excuses his actions. His development as a character was fairly interesting to see yet whenever he seemed to finally do something on his own, he turned into the baby he was at episode 1. In the final episodes he seemed to receive some sort of development which, unfortunately, happened way too quick to feel like proper development. It was like he was turned into another character.

And now for some good excused scorings:
Art section : 4/10

General art: 4/10
Character figures: 4/10
Animation: 4/10
Backgrounds: 6/10
Visual effects: 6/10

Sound section: 5/10

Voice acting: 5/10
Music themes: 4/10 for not entirely fitting the atmosphere
Sound effects: 6/10

Story section: 4/10

Premise 4/10
Pacing 2/10
Complexity: 3/10
Conclusion: Not available/10. Therefore it can't be taken into account

Character section: 4/10

Personality: 4/10
Backdrop: 4/10
Development: 4/10 since only one character develops which also happens way too fast to be semi-realistic.

Final score: 4.3/10

"Tokyo Ghoul is so deep and mature!"
- A random pretentious edgy 12-year-old

After the ending of Attack on Titan, the anime community realized that they needed something to fill the void that was left behind. Another anime about humans vs. monsters, with beautiful music and visuals (aimed at 12-year-olds who believe that everything with blood is mature), but that in reality is just an advertisement for the way better manga was exactly what the community wanted. And then we got Tokyo Ghoul, one of the most overhyped anime I've ever seen. If you heard the fans talking about it, you almost believed that this was ... the best work of fiction ever created, with deep philosophical themes, well developed characters and a brilliant story. In reality there was another damn story about humans vs. monsters (and one of the humans becomes a monster, so original), a bland cast and an attempt to raise the question "are the ghouls or the humans the monsters?", but even Elfen Lied handled this better.

~Story~ 2/10
Kaneki is your average shy and boring protagonist, who has a date with a girl who's at least ten times as hot as he is. Then she turns into a ghoul (a monster that eats humans) and tries to eat our poor hero, because of plot convenience some kind of organization drops a bunch of metal bars exactly on the girl and she dies, the wounded Kaneki who magically survives, gets some organs from the girl and he turns into a half-ghoul. Of course it's totally possible for a doctor to transplant organs from a ghoul into a human without getting trouble and of course our hero is now special, because he's both human and ghoul. He teams up with a bunch of ghouls who only eat death people and befriends a tsundere called Touka. Then we watch how the ghouls are victimized, because how can humans be so evil that they try to kill monsters who try to eat them? Only 99% percent of ghouls is evil, there is no reason to kill all of those murderous, psychotic monsters because 1% of the ghouls is good, right? What kind of logic is that?! "We have to make sure that the audience feels sorry for the monsters, let's make the humans kill a little innocent ghoul girl's mother and laugh psychotic while doing it, that's not obvious and cheap right?" It is, all the villains in this show look like comic book villains, laugh while murdering innocent people and probably strangle little cats for fun, they're not realistic at all! Everyone tries to kill poor Kaneki, because apparently half-ghouls are tasty, why? I have no idea. There is something going on between episode 1 and 11 that can be described as a plot, but you can summarize it in one sentence: people try to kill Kaneki and ghouls are victimized, the end. But then there is a shocking, extremely original plot twist....... victimization- power-up. Oh and an unsatisfying conclusion, read the manga or wait for season 2!
{CONCLUSION}
The story consists of the constant and never ending victimization of monsters. No, there is no reason to sympathize with the ghouls. Yes, of course they just want to survive, but the same thing goes for the humans. And the humans aren't victimized 24/7 in this show. The ghouls aren't 100% evil, but neither are they 'misunderstood' like the director of this anime seems to think. The story is weak and there are unanswered questions and plotholes EVERYWHERE! Like why do the humans keep living the same way as before, when they are surrounded with murderous psychotic human eating monsters? Where are Kaneki's parents? Why does a certain persons hair turn white? How do metal bars fall exactly on the right spot? How can ghouls drink coffee, but no other kind of drinks? Why is every human either pathetic or evil?Why didn't the humans just force everyone to eat food and then checked the people who started vomiting, would that be too logical? And the most important question: why do people claim that this anime has a good story?!

~Animation~ 9/10
The backgrounds were detailed and gorgeous, the character designs were original and the battle scenes looked epic. I have only one problem with the animation: censorship. I personally hate it when half of the screen is covered with black bars, and I assume that most other people aren't a fan of black bars either.
{CONCLUSION}
It looked great, even though the story is (supposed to be) dark, the animators used vivid colors, I think that this was a good idea. The gouls looked beautifully creepy during the fight scenes (look at those eyes), but the censoring was horrible.

~Sound~ 9/10
'Unravel' was amazing. Yes, it was a bit edgy, but I don't even care. The OST's were all somewhere in between decent and almost perfect and they were used in the right scenes. The Japanese voice acting was also top notch, especially the voice actors of Rize and Tsukiyama brought their characters to life.
{CONCLUSION}
The sound was extremely good, the ending song was forgettable but the opening makes up for that. The (Japanese) voice acting was great and the OST's were used at the right moments.

~Characters~ 1/10
They were a pain to watch. The most side characters just were there for 2 minutes and then disappeared just to never come back again. Kaneki is a walking punchbag, who cries a lot, pretty much the whole anime. And I don't feel sorry for him, because he is an overvictimised whiny brat. His development/ character swap in the last episode was weird and unrealistic (Spoiler: when most people are almost tortured to death, they don't turn in a badass). The best thing about him is his masker, great main character! Touka is your average tomboy and all her development is thrown out of the window in the last episode. Then you have bestfriend-kun, oldinspirationalman-kun, psychomurder-kun and victimizedlittlegirl-chan. Boring. Rize was an okay character during her 5 minutes of screen time and Amon seemed to think like a rational human being, those two were endurable. Special mention for Shuu Tsukiyama, he was great meme material and another horrible sadist, obsessed with our amazing main character, really what this anime needed!
{CONCLUSION}
One of the weakest casts I've seen in a very long time. The main character is a joke, the rest of the cast a nuisance. The were either bland or over-the-top evil and sadistic. None of them was memorable and their development was either nonexistent or it came out of nowhere. A plain bad cast, but the voice acting was pretty good, what a waste.

~Enjoyment~ 4/10
Beautiful music, great animation, shitty story and characters, what's new? This seems to be a trend of the last few years (yes, there are exceptions, but in general most new anime follow this pattern). This anime was enjoyable, but so damn forgettable, nothing about the story or the characters was memorable. If you turn of your brain and just want to watch an action series with nice visuals and sound, then Tokyo Ghoul is made for you. But if you want something with substance, don't watch this show. Also the last episode was predictable and the lack of a conclusion is annoying. Maybe that's the biggest problem, it ends with an open ending (watch the sequel) and leaves the viewer with a lot of unanswered questions, but it's not a cliffhanger. I don't want to watch the sequel, because I don't care anymore. If they ended it with something less predictable, I might have felt the urge to watch the damn sequel. Right now I just don't care.
{CONCLUSION}
It could have been great. Imagine: an anime with amazing visuals, great music, an actual story about prejudice an discrimination and well written characters. Sadly enough, the last two things were nowhere to be found in Tokyo Ghoul. It's just another shounen anime, that's trying way to hard to be a seinen, but fails miserably. It was overhyped, overrated and a waste of time. If you want to watch a mindless shounen with epic battles, Tokyo Ghoul is great choice, but if you want anything with substance, then I would advice you to skip it. Peace!

Hey it's a good anime ... I rated it low cuz I couldn't handled the terrifying scenes of last few episodes at the end of 1st season on kaneki ... I watched it when I was young it's been almost 9 years because of this anime, it took me 6 yrs of break from anime to recover from those scenes... I watched only 1st season..

Btw I was watching this with clanned which is very bad combination uk sadness + terrifying scenes 😂 it's very bad combination trust me.

At the end i would say tht if u can handle to watch torture scenes u can watch ... this...
If I get the courage to watch I will do watch it (probably not cuz I watch for entertainment not for stress and depression or trauma). BUT, MAYBE on tht time the mental state of mine was not the right time...

I came in with a positive mindset, and went out with a negative one. I haven't read the manga, but I really felt like this could be the next best thing I was going to watch. But oh man I was wrong.

It isn't that bad actually, in fact the universe and concept is VERY well done, but just like SAO, it's excecuted more poorly than a backwards bowling shot. The series itself looks great, and the OP and ED sound awesome. However, the characters was what really ruined it for me.

Meet Kaneki, a boy who doesn't want to stop crying. Now I know that he's ... turned into a ghoul, but sometimes I just feel that he goes overboard with the complaining. I'm not gonna spoil about what happens in the end, but for me it was very underwhelming.

Also there's Touka, your average fangirl favorite. She's just there to make her seem like the perfect character, which I found extremely bland. Also the relationship between her and Kaneki was weak at best.

There are also other characters, but I don't feel like they are too important.

The BIGGEST complaint I have, is the fact that every ghoul is a handsome young boy or girl. First of all, why. This was the perfect opportunity to show off the dark and gritty life of being a middle-aged man in Tokyo, but no. Of course everyone had to be handsome and long-haired.

Also, why is coffee the only human beverage the ghouls can drink? I mean REALLY? That is so pathetic

Overall, I'm giving this a 4, because I really like the universe and the art. Although it's pretty dissapointing that GIFs on Tumblr are more interesting than the show itself

the manga? absolute masterpiece. Work of art. Made by a God.




the anime? disgusting. they skipped so many details from the manga and even made up stuff, the animation looks weird and overall they did the manga so dirty. please read the manga, it's way better than the anime.
the story itself is great, the characters too obviously, but the way they executed this could have been better imo, they skipped the whole kagune explanation, they did whatever they felt like, they skipped a lot of parts of the story and in some angles the animation looks weird, they did NOT respect the original manga artstyle. ... if I was Sui Ishida I would be devastated if this was the anime adaptation of my manga, I would enter a severe state of depression to the point I would try to take my life. This is just disgusting. The opening slaps, ofc, but wut da heeeelllll man, this could've been better! was the budget of 20$??? you know what, hold my drawing tablet imma make the reboot myself and y'all see it gon turn way better than this did fr fr.

This review goes for both seasons of Tokyo Ghoul (so far), and despite the fact that I don't think of Tokyo Ghoul as an anime that falls on the 'good' end of the spectrum, I will still be watching the third season. Why exactly? I don't really have a good reason. In fact, I expect to be asking myself why I am watching the third season of an anime I don't care about right up until I have finished the last episode.

* Note that I haven't read the manga, and even so, this is a review about the anime as a standalone work.

[potential minor spoilers ... ahead]

The very first episode of Tokyo Ghoul requires a strenuous amount of suspension of disbelief and overlooking clumsy storytelling. The first episode of a show is supposed to pull you into its world in an immersive way that leaves you with many questions and wanting to find out more, not dump a whole load of information on you solely through forced dialogue. While explanation via dialogue is often necessary, especially in sci-fi/fantasy settings, there is a point at which "show, don't tell" really has to come into play.

Despite the over-explaining, it is still peppered with plot holes that beg for an explanation: for example, how can a knife break in half when thrust at the abdomen of a ghoul because "human weapons can't harm ghouls", yet a bunch of shit falling off the roof of a building can actually kill one while simultaneously leaving its organs unharmed enough to transplant? (sidenote: what was with the exchange between the doctors when they transplanted the ghoul's organs into Kaneki? I have never heard such unrealistic dialogue in my life). There are plenty of other scenes I could talk about that made me raise an eyebrow, but I don't want to spoil it for those that still intend to watch this show after my review.

What I will say in favor of the show, however, is that at times, the art and animation can be quite emotionally evocative - the soundtrack is also very good, and the art in general is smooth and well animated (aside from the incredibly annoying enormous black lines that appear in most versions of the show to block out the gore. God dammit. Gore is to me what fanservice is to others) but that's really the only genuine compliment I can think of for this show. Had it not been for these elements of it, I would absolutely have dropped it out of sheer boredom.

The characters are very flat and seriously lack any real substance or relatability. Especially Kaneki. Though, in comparing TG to Sword Art Online and Mars of Destruction, it is a practically masterpiece in this respect. While one could protest that the fact that Kaneki basically stops being a lil bitch because the shit is tortured out of him is 'character development', I beg to differ. A 180 degree flip in a character's personality (or whatever little personality Kaneki has) over the course of one episode does not constitute realistic or interesting character development in my opinion. Even in the case of a severely traumatic event, like, for example, the shit being tortured out of you, you don't just switch from being whiney as hell one episode prior to being totally emotionless and abandoning everyone who has ever accepted you the next. Kaneki starts off as a total crybaby, before taking on a somewhat Kirito-esque Jesus-Kun aspect to him. Although there were hints of development of his character before he totally changed, it really wasn't enough to make his shift from one personality to another believable or realistic. Of course, there's always the way he is supposedly 'torn between good and evil' etc, but I have seen that premise done a thousand times better elsewhere, and with less dimensionless characters.

As for the supporting characters, none of them seemed to show any real development at all. The only character I actually got much enjoyment out of was Juuzou, and honestly, even he was a shit character. I think I like him because I'm biased towards childlike psychotic nutcases who enjoy ripping people to shreds with scythes, no matter how shittily they're written.

The characters just aren't believable or realistic. They are too black or white - even Kaneki, who is meant to play the part of grey, is too one-dimensional. The problem is that the plot doesn't leave any room for ambiguity to keep the viewer guessing, to get the viewer caught up in the turmoil of the characters. My general rule of thumb is that if you can easily summarize a character in one sentence (or god forbid, one word - eg. tsundere), the writer is probably doing something wrong.

As for the course of the plot... As far as I'm concerned, I'm not actually sure I could see that it had much direction. If you want to see the same basic concept TG follows applied in a more realistic way, I'd recommend Parasyte: The Maxim. I get the feeling that Tokyo Ghoul was trying to be somewhere between slice of life ghoul style and a dramatic thriller, and I didn't feel like it quite worked. There wasn't enough back story to most of the other ghouls in the cafe to make it possible to really keep track of what the hell was going on, especially towards the end of season 2.

I suppose, what I have to say about Tokyo Ghoul is that it tried. I mean, it managed to hold my attention, and it wasn't completely unwatchably idiotic and putrid. It was a good time killer at least, and a small part of me vaguely looks forward to seeing the third season.

I have never written a review before but seeing lots of people giving this serie good votes and hyping like crazy fangirls, I felt the urge to write.

Where should I start?

Story: 2/10 "Pardon me?? Was there a story did I miss?"

Most of the episodes feels like they are arcs of themselves and have no connections at all. Plotlines just start to pop up out of nowhere and very bad written scripts don't help at all.

The last half was rushed and felt so empty. Characters were trying desperately to tell something but they failed miserably.

And for the last part it becomes like a DEUS EX ... MACHINA thing and turns the things from gore/horror/action/drama/blabla anime to a cheap shounen shot.

Art: 4/10

The actual art is fine but the gore scenes which should be the shining star of the show are CENSORED SO BADLY that it makes you want to puke.

You will find yourself mostly watching the dark parts which is 90% of the screenplay and wonder why did they hire artists...

Sound: 5/10

Liked the Opening so much. Ending was OK. Other than that OST? WUT? NAH.

For the voice acting it was cool. I mean actors tried to act like the script was good. Poor them.

Character: 2/10

BORING.

Worst character designs ever.

Kaneki=Yukiteru=BAD
Touka=SO BAD BEING A TSUNDERE
OTHERS=CRAP and MOST OF THEM DON'T HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH THE STORYLINE.

I can't express my feelings towards how badly characters could be written. You watch a couple of eps. then you will understand me.

Enjoyment: 2/10

Because it is rushed as hell and censored so badly. No. I didn't even enjoy this serie.


Overall: 3/10

I still can't get why Tokyo LOLOHUL is sooo HYPED.

And they call Sword Art bad xD

*This review covers both seasons, and contains spoilers.*

This show was terrible. I guess I was expecting a lot going into this anime, and I wanted to like it so badly but every time I think about it I just can't. I might have mixed up this show and Tokyo Ghoul Root A in this review but I hope you can overlook that because I see them as the same show. I guess I'll do this review systematically as well just to be fair.

Story: 1/10
I guess it started off with a pretty good idea, but the farther I got into the story the less faith I ... had in it. I'm trying hard to be as blunt as possible here but it really made very little sense. Characters would go somewhere for a very vague reason and at the end of the arch it would still be unclear what they were doing there and what had been accomplished. Kagune's and Quinques were not explained at all, and there was no development in the origin of ghouls; there was just a deficiency of reason in anything that happened in the plot.
I am not the kind of person who likes fighting in anime because it doesn't progress the plot or character development or anything really. Fighting needs to have a really high quality of animation like what we see in Fate/Stay Night or martial art style like Avatar for me to enjoy it. Tokyo Ghoul's fighting animation really didn't impress me and there was quite a lot of it, which left me with a lot of moments thinking about what they were doing and if that scene needed to be that long. The scenes had a painfully low amount of frames, and it made me cringe how badly they were animated.
My other piece of criticism with the fighting is that it really doesn't match the theme of ghouls very much, who I thought were supposed to be hidden among the masses of Tokyo, and expected something much more like a "wolf among us" kind of violence. Instead it was a hack and smash, storm-trooper level accuracy gunfight. There was one part that still bothers me to this day (SPOILER).
(SPOILER) Amon, a squishy human with a melee weapon, is fighting two ghouls, who are supposedly knife proof, super fast, have teeth that can rip a man apart, and have tails that can also rip a man apart. Two ghouls. One man. Amon suddenly has a flashback to something his teacher says: "in a toe to toe battle, a human will always lose to a ghoul. So be sly. Be sneaky." With that being said (remembered, thought, whatever) Amon reveals that his sword can split in half and he defeats each ghoul with each sword. How could a squishy man defeat two ghouls with close range weapons in the middle of a losing fight? Secondly you're already in the fight, it's already too late to be sneaky. Sneaky is dressing an animal up in your clothes and releasing it as you make your getaway to make the enemy think you transformed. Sneaky is wading underwater breathing through a blow gun with a poison blow dart until twilight and assassinating their ass while they're drinking tea under the gazebo. Sneaky is covering yourself in a rock shaped blanket and waiting to shank their ass when they least expect it. In no way is splitting your sword in two sneaky. (SPOILER END)
(SPOILER END)
I'm sorry for digressing so much but that part just made no sense and it still bothers me just thinking about it. I have a feeling it's meant to be a long anime like Naruto or One Piece so they thought they had time to answer questions in the future, but they just left me confused and now I'm not going to watch that far. I spent way too much time being confused by the story of this anime.

Art: 3/10
I'll say this right at the beginning: the style of this anime was amazingly good. The dark, night-lit Tokyo where ghouls with awesome kagune's lurk in the shadows left a good impression on me when the title of the show appeared during the theme song. I was completely enchanted by the idea of ghouls, their cool looking masks fighting special police forces.
But the drawing was a complete let down. The characters were crudely drawn, the frame rate was painfully low, the extras were not believable.
The style and the idea was mind-blowing, but the execution was terrible. I chose this rating because it has the word that best describes my impression of the art: poor. Giving this rating makes me sad that I don't like this show.

Sound: 10/10
The theme songs were absolutely mind-blowing. The lyrics, genre and sound were all appropriate to the show. The sound during the show was not really that impressive, but the opening and closing themes were good enough to pull my rating to a 10. Even if you don't watch the anime, it's worth it to check them out.

Character: 3/10
I really didn't like Kaneki. He was so stupid and a lot of the time I was wondering how he was still alive. He's a ghoul but doesn't want to eat meat. I understand you don't want to eat your own kind, but I'm sorry if you don't eat you die, and you should be dead. Same with Amon. I see that he is insanely buff and manly, but there is no excuse that he should be able to fend off a lightning fast centipede kagune who is literally balls to the wall bat-shit crazy, can smell the sweat on your balls while you can't even see in the smoke, can rip your throat out with his toenails, while you're only wielding two little sticks.
Putting stupid characters who really should be dead aside, there were a bunch of characters that left me wondering: why are you here? Examples being Touka's bffl, Kaneki's bffl, every member of Aogiri Tree, half the members of Anteiku, and last but not least, pretty much everyone on the police force. These characters have zero development, serve as pretty much filler in the plot, and do absolutely nothing except get crudely drawn.

Enjoyment: 3/10
I did enjoy parts of Tokyo Ghoul like how each ghoul had a different kagune and different mask, and there was a moment that nearly touched my heart when they showed us that ghouls had feelings too, but the next rating level was called "decent" and I'm afraid this show fell short of that.

Overall: 2/10
"Dreadful" is a great word for me to describe this with. As much as I wanted to enjoy this show, I was let down. For those of you who rated it highly I wish I could see what you see. I even watched Root A hoping it would get better but I wasted my time. Don't watch this show unless you want to support crappy work.

They take the manga and completely destroys the anime adaption. This show would have been so much better if it gotten a 24-26 episodes to start with which was to bad that it didn`t because the manga is actually pretty good in my opinion.

So i really recommend that you watch the anime first and then read the manga from start otherwise if you read the manga and then watch the adaption you will be hugely disappointed. Sorry for being so negative but its really hard to be positive when one of your favorite mangas get one of the worst anime adaptions.

Tokyo ghoul is a horror?


..
First of all don't expect a good story around it, OK it has a kind of good story but don't expect it to deliver something good, which is what it supposed to do, but they failed hard.

Let's see what i expected from the first episode and what i got from the anime, i expected a good story, then i knew it'll be a hyped up anime of how the first episode went.
After that the rest of the Eps came over the weeks and every week is worse, they didn't make much of progress and started to kill random people so ... the main character all he does is watching what's happening which means HE'S USELESS.

And then they gave us a rush ending which I'm not a fan of.

The anime considered a mystery genre at MAL! you know why? i really don't know why too.

I didn't get the experience i wanted, they censored so much stuff in fights that it hurts to watch.

Story:
Is about Kaneki he's half ghoul and half human, he can't get along with what ghouls do, which is eating people! but he got along with ghouls and became a friend with them. So what we saw after that they didn't know WTF they should do they got lost in what Kaneki wants and they kept into giving us BS episodes. i give it 5/10

Art and sounds:
The way they censored everything about cutting people, made it harder to watch the anime, and it wasn't something special. But the opening and ending songs is just great and really liked it. I give the art 3/10 and the sounds 8/10.

Characters and enjoyment:
What a bad experience i had with the characters they deleted them all in the last episode and they just gave 0 F*cks about them, yeah Kaneki is a bad character he's just lost, till the last episode came and got his shit together to finish the anime only. They forgot about the rest it was just Kaneki trying to survive the whole show.
Do you want a good character development? just kill the little girl's dad and mom! loved this idea from them. Enjoyment didn't actually deliver that to me. So characters is 2/10 and enjoyment is 2/10

Overall i give it 4/10, i didn't get much excited about what will happen over the course of watching the anime and everything turned into a fail try from this anime.

It set up really well to then leave the scene, and give the spotlight to the angsty pizza boy.

The show started out looking promising but failed to keep a good pacing. It gave one of the most forced and painfully pretentious protagonists I've seen.
It keeps trying to convince you you should like him, although his timid and naive nature is just too unconvincing. The show then wants you to believe his Jesus transformation syndrome, which is a thing that's always really corny but it's done really poorly here by not even having the story events really arc into this transformation and character development. Which ... comes off as (a thing very common in anime) the creator's self-insertion. When you can't mistake the feeling, of the artist trying very hard to live out his fantasy through a fictional character in their own personal project. Usually this character will come off as lacking depth or any sort of realistic reaction to what happens around them. Which leaves the viewer with a feeling that they're just looking at someone's personal ego boosting. This protagonist is the big problem, but sadly not the only problem.

Tokyo Ghoul started out really well. It had an interesting idea and a first episode that really paced itself well. It was shrouded in mystery that gave you the sense of "All will soon be revealed to you". All was indeed revealed. With little to no fanfare whatsoever. It was explained in a manner as if what is going on here is as normal as drinking your morning coffee. And it comes off with the message that they're just different, and you shouldn't hate others for being different. Insert a whiney "Don't judge me!" here. The show really hammers in how pretentious it is, and I'm pretty sure the writers are completely unaware of it.

There was something of potential here, there really was. But it casts away society and the general public view on this problem of ghouls living in the city. After the first episodes it all shrinks into this really small world. Just a couple of small groups of people, and gives the spotlight completely to characters that are frankly not strong enough to carry the show home. It would really have been nice if the show had kept consistent for one thing, but even more importantly, treated its premise with care. It starts out like it should, addressing the existence of ghouls as a problem to society. But it shrugs it off and just becomes small gang skirmishes... and barely even. We don't get any reason to why the ghouls even exist. There's no endeavor to make the viewer actually care about what's happening. This should've had a bigger plot. It's just a series of small forgettable events, and no plot.

Its art style is pretty nice... the animation is pretty good too. Nothing amazing but it's good enough. What I really think is done well in Tokyo Ghoul is lighting. Lighting, shading and character outlines. The voice acting isn't really anything to critize either.

The opening sequence was decent with a decent song, but the real feast, is the ending sequence, that sets a tone the show in general should've tried to mimic. The songs fit the aesthetic really well.

So to sum it up. Tokyo Ghoul had something going for it. If it had just treated its premise with better care. But the main problem is an extremely lacking protagonist that steals the show, but has nothing to show for it.

Ever had that moment where someone told you, "hey wanna hear something?" and they end up saying never mind? Any normal human being would feel like they've been left hanging and leaves one thinking "what was he/she going to tell me? is it bad? good?" This is the experience you will get with this particular season of Tokyo Ghoul. After watching it, you will be left with a void; and not the kind of void where you hunger for more, rather one of those "read the manga" kinda trolled feeling. As of writing the review, there is a second season but I will be focusing ... on this first season.

The story/plot is nothing to write home about, however, it isn't something to completely brush off as a generic plotline that is highly predictable either. There are 2 beings, Ghouls and Humans. Ghouls eat humans because their the only ones that are considered nutritious to the body of a ghoul and humans are pretty much defenseless outside of the CCG (anti-ghoul operators). Then comes in our MC Kaneki Ken who somehow becomes an oddball to society after an encounter and it makes him half human, half ghoul.

The problem with the whole story line is if you're interested in backstories of how things come to be, then this show does nothing to fill that hole. There is no explanation of how ghouls came to exist, how humans have dealt with ghouls and why is society the way it is even though they have been together for 70+ years (going off one of the ghoul characters in the show). These are things that if left unanswered, makes some viewers think where the show is headed towards. For this kind of show, just turn your brain off and enjoy the censored violence/action scenes. Don't try to delve into a deeper concept of the show or you'll turn up empty.

Characters are fairly standard. They introduce a boatload of characters, but in 12 episodes, there really is no room to bring out any character traits for any of them. What you see is what you get. I felt Ken was the only character in the show to have some kind of motivation to answer one a question of the show's plot being if humans can coexist with ghouls. Every episode kept bringing forth new characters and it became more of a violent, fighting show more so than for other aspects that people may enjoy such as character development/story development.

Sound is pretty good, its hype when it needs to be and music fits the mood of certain scenes in the show. If whoever is reading this hasn't watched the show, you can watch the opening and call it a wrap because its probably the only thing i enjoyed in the series besides the last episode.

Tokyo ghoul definitely had the pieces it needed to be a more thought provoking and conceptual show, but it falls flat probably to please a certain audience that I'm unaware of. I've not read the manga for this, but if it disproves my thoughts on the show then so be it. This is strictly a review for the first season.

Final thoughts- watched too many great shows and need something to ease up with? Grab some popcorn and enjoy the blood/violence. Make sure to turn your brain off because deeper and more meaningful themes are not present in this first season.

Notice: This review covers both seasons of this anime.

Tokyo Ghoul was one of the most hyped titles of summer 2014 but it quickly proved to be far weaker than what its first episode promises. It starts off as a psychological thriller about the main character suddenly turning to a man eating monster. His freak out was done masterfully and you were made to think the rest of the show would be a constant internal struggle between his human and monster sides. Maybe he will accept it and go on a murder spree or maybe he will find a way to control it.

But nope, turns out ... the whole thing was just an excuse to have a lobotomized main character entering a world where everything needs to be explained to him. He is just used as a plot device for lazy infodumping, a guide for the viewer to explore the society of these man eating monsters. Basically the show is not a thriller about his internal struggles at all; it is about a poorly conceived world inside a fighting shonen and the whole thing falls apart early on.

Just like it happens with all shonen stories, this one too takes its material way too light in terms of exposition and way too silly in terms of unnecessarily violent scenes. You are mostly busy watching flat characters cutting people to pieces while throwing in some very simple and yet over the top reasoning for whatever is going on. Thus, not only the ghoul society is cartoonishly simplistic, but it is also presented in such an extreme way that it’s impossible to take it seriously.

These ghouls are supposed to be hiding amongst humanity and praying upon it since forever, yet humanity isn’t living or acting any differently because of that. Ok, they have anti-ghoul squads but everyday people behave as they would in our world. All they do is have a few posters as warning to kids not to be going in dark alleys alone. That makes it seem like these monsters that constantly kill and eat them, are as worrisome as teaching children how to cross the street. If this show was trying to be remotely realistic, the world would be a completely different place, since humans are not at the top of the food chain and are hunted all the time as if it’s still the prehistoric times instead of a civilized modern world. It is especially laughable when they keep saying it is very hard to find the ghouls hiding amongst them because they look like people, when they know their skin is very hard. All they have to do is sting someone with a needle. If that person doesn’t bleed, voila, it’s a ghoul.

The ghoul society ain’t that better either as there is no way to tell what these monsters really think or want as a whole. Some are complete maniacs who slaughter and arrange arena death duels for pure entertainment, and others behave like normal humans who coexist peacefully with them. The fact that they can have normal humans as lovers or can successfully transplant their organs to them, further proves that they are simply humans themselves who for no given reason can only eat human flesh and have superpowers. Oh, and just for the heck of it, they also drink coffee without a problem. Whatever.

Thus all attempts to flesh out their society are crock; they are just people themselves, not a different species. They have so much diversity in mannerisms amongst them to the point they have no identity as a whole. They even lack reason in having their own secret society. Heck, the very fact that they can feed on corpses they find in morgues or cemeteries further proves they don’t even need to kill people; they do it for fun, and not because their instinct compels them to do it. This trashes the interesting concepts the show was setting up in the early episodes, such as the internal struggle of the protagonist, or the need to murder people in general.

And the problems don’t even end there. As far as storytelling goes the pacing is extremely fast, as the anime attempts to cover a hundred manga chapters in only a dozen episodes. Nothing lasts long enough for you to care about. Even in terms of aesthetics there is very little to hook you besides a few cinematics here and there. And even those are ruined because of the ridiculous amount of censorship. All action scenes consist mostly of white beams, black beams, and color swaps, which hide everything that is going on.

The protagonist is another issue. He is a complete pussy, screaming at everything, being worthless in battle and oblivious to common knowledge. I mean, it is normal for him to be terrified when thrown in such a situation out of nowhere, but this doesn’t make him a good protagonist. Why do you think so many people dislike the protagonists of Tokyo Revengers or My Hero Academia? Such leads are always the least interesting. The fact that they constantly survive in every battle with crappy plot armor further damages the appeal of the show.

Speaking of which, there is no consistency when it comes to who can survive what. Anyone the scriptwriter deems plot relevant ia plot armored with 10 inches of titanium walls. He constantly tries to make it seem like anyone can die in this show and yet several times per episode people will be jumping in out of nowhere to save plot related characters, or the characters themselves will have superpowers activating exactly when they are about to die. For a show that is constantly trying to excite you with gore or to make you think nobody in it is safe, this saps away all the tension from the battles. You know right away some characters will always be conveniently surviving in the lamest way imaginable. There is literally a scene where a super elite ghoul hunter has overpowered the good guys and out of nowhere a little defenseless girl sprouts super tentacles and wipes the floor with him. And all of that, while she was crying, had zero experience in combat, and didn’t even want to harm him. Power levels mean absolutely nothing; even if you can blow up mountains you are still going to get killed by a little defenseless girl if you are not plot relevant.

Even death is meaningless in this show since people who are dead will be magically coming back to life or will be replaced by others who have the exact same character. A ghoul gets chopped to pieces? No worries, it can eat itself and heal completely. A little girl lost its parents? Nothing was lost, she gets to use their superpowers as if they are still around. There is no finality to anything; death is as meaningless as it is in Dragonball or Bleach.

The biggest troll of them all is how they constantly try to make you think the protagonist is slowly learning and becomes less of a pussy. But that is a lie since every time his superpowers activate and gets ll angry, leads to nothing after the battle is over. Furthermore any so-called character development he gets is basically mimicking others instead of having a personality of his own. His fighting powers are not his; they are a copy of the ghoul whose organs got transplanted to him. His behavior in battle is again not his; it’s a copy of how his attackers behave, meaning he heads for childish poetic justice by treating the bad guys exactly as they treat him. Oh, hi Jason, I am going to be like you now! That is what a spoiled 10 year old would do, not a mature character.

Tokyo Ghoul is pretty much the same thing as Deadman Wonderland. Promises excitement, mystery, and internal conflicts but all it delivers after a few episodes is a gorefest regarding poorly conceived superpower battles, shallow world building, and characters that come and go as the plot demands for it. There is literally a war going on in the last episodes and you have no idea who are these people, why do they kill each other like it matters, or why would you even care if there weren’t more than 2 minutes worth of screentime dedicated on making us care about them.

But wait, maybe the manga will be better. Everybody who reads it will tell you it is a masterpiece. Yeah, don’t believe them, it is still crap. It’s so poorly thought out it can’t even explain why don’t the ghouls simply camp outside morgues and be done with it. You will be reading hundreds of chapters and you will be getting zero progress or meaning out of them. It will be just nonsense about flower symbolisms and people fighting each other with inconsistent power levels. The very creator eventually got bored and ended it all in a hurry.

With shows such as Guyver from the 80s and Parasyte airing along with it, Tokyo Ghoul comes off as a complete trainwreck that a lot of people liked because of the premise and not its execution. It’s basically another Elfen Lied or an Akame ga Kill.

"Tokyo Ghoul" is an anime of the year 2014 based on the eponymous manga Sui Ishida.
The anime has a plot is not very attractive, in the sense that immediately attracts the viewer, or at least that is what I thought I, the person who likes splatter. The picture presents many problems, both technical and in terms of plot and presentation of the latter.
The plot: we are in a Tokyo where over humans in everyday life there are the "ghoul", the "ghoul" are and are not human beings, let me explain better, but they are humans with no human characteristics resistance as well above average, regeneration ... capacity and beyond, not deepen to avoid ending up in spoiler. And it is in this reality that the souls takes place. The protagonist Ken Kaneki will one day to flounder from being human to ghoul and here begins the story of the anime.
The plot has trouble setting level or there are parts very, very boring like the dialogue in "Cafè Anteiku" between the characters that are really unnecessary and boring parts, such as fighting, that could have been better but were a hole in the water. What this leads to is largely the poor quality of the animations from the studio Pierrot who not only organized the evil souls but also produced animations of high level at all; one of the reasons why many people are found to suspend the series, and I'd be lying if I said that I'm not even I was tempted but in the end I decided to go on, but you will be back after this speech.
The characters are not at all to remember with the typical protagonist "mollaccione" Kaneki, the typical girl strong and tough on the outside but tender and fragile inside, Touka, and various characters among which you could save Hide, friend of the protagonist, However, that has almost no importance in the history and conduct of the anime.
The technical sector as mentioned above is not the best with little animations cured and sometimes unnatural, but not too much to luck. As already stated before this is a big problem because a person from an anime of 2014 expects graphics and animations done in a certain way, certainly not perfect, but even rough. The voice acting is really poorly done except for the dubbing of Kaneki that is made well enough. The fund sound is bad and almost always annoying and does not help to give depth to the scenes, you can save but the opening that is cute.
Completed the review I can say that I do not recommend these souls especially to lovers of souls horror, splatter because most likely remain disappointed and instead I can say to those who do not fit the above categories to see it only if you have no more to see in the list.
Final score: 1.

I don't think it would be an exaggeration when I say Tokyo Ghoul is one of the more recently hyped anime series but I did not go in with any expectations, rather I went in with an open mind and zero knowledge of the story or characters. That being said, it probably would have been better if I had researched before watching and I will explain later.


STORY:
This starts off as a very well executed, extremely well paced story of transition, isolation and adaptation. It builds very well off of the character's plight and pathos, going from a well established life that include friendships and goals ... into an unknown life where the future seems vague and uncertain for our protagonist and even the supporting characters.

Up until that point, which is only the first few episodes, I was honestly ready to give this a 9 or even a 10, the direction is excellent, the pacing is perfect and even the characters are well defined through actions more than through dialogue. This is very high quality stuff, but it seems that as soon as the setup is complete, the writers did not know what to do with the story because it collapses in on itself very quickly and we get a rehash of pretty much any modern vampire story. And make no mistake, this is a vampire story.

But I digress, the issue comes when after the first few episodes, the pacing completely falls flat, dragging for about half the series and then jumping into hyper drive in the last few episodes rather than gradually pacing the events as a good series would do. It culminates in one of the most anti climactic 'endings' I've seen for an anime series and I understand that there are more series after this one (Tokyo Ghoul root a follows I believe) but I am judging this one on its own merit rather than on the merit of the future episodes.

The story is incomplete, the characters begin as very relatable , understandable and even a bit mysterious but the series blows its load from being so excited that they become mockish cartoon cut-outs of what they started out as being.

As always, that is the best non-spoiler review I can give for the story.




ART:
The art was serviceable. I found some of the establishing shots and a couple of the fight sequences to be absolutely beautiful, but for the most part the color palette is very drab and unfocused. I understand that the point was to take us from a bright cheerful world into a darker, unfocused world, I get it, I really do.... but in doing and focusing so intensely on setting the mood, they completely forget to draw us in through the artwork the way they did in the beginning of the series.

Again it's as if they had a fantastic idea for a series but once they finished the setup, they had no idea what to do or how to do it.



CHARACTER:
As stated earlier, I found the characters to be interesting, unique, mysterious and well defined... at first. But then their actions completely defy all logic. Characters that are established as being untrustworthy or antagonists to the main cast are suddenly taking actions that contradict their previous development. It's just very poorly written and the characters have no consistency whatsoever after their initial setup. Again they are done very well at first and then after the story collapses, it just becomes a bunch of nonsense.

But worst of all;
There is absolutely no consistency with the internal logic of the character strength. One character can get stabbed a good 40 times through the series (You'll know what I mean when you see it) and they'll be fine... whereas other characters are cut once and they're down for the count. I would guess that it has to do with weak points such as a part of the body or head... or perhaps even a special weapon that works against the Ghouls, but this is never established at all. It just so happens that some characters can randomly take, nearly insurmountable levels of punishment, whereas other characters cannot.

There is absolutely no consistency. This completely made me lose interest in most of the characters because I realized that whether a character dies or not is entirely at the mercy of the writers; I know this is true for all series but at least other series establish some rules that the writers must follow, here they're just blatantly making it up as they go along. It's terribly written.



ENJOYMENT:
I adored the first few episodes and if I had to review just those, I would not hesitate to give it a 10, but as the story, characters and even the art got worse as the series went along, I can only tell you that if you are like me and expect a good story to stay good, you will be disappointed. Your enjoyment will melt away with each episode.



OVERALL:
It earns a lot of points in my book for the first episodes. After that it just isn't any good. I would not recommend this, nor will I watch the next series. It lost its nerve and threw away the magnificent levels of quality it set out to achieve.

This is an anime that you think is the best anime in the world, then two hours later it's the worst thing you've ever seen. Or it was for me.

Story: 5/10
I never fully understood the story of Tokyo Ghoul. The idea of ghouls 'suddenly' taking over is very complex. I must admit this has pretty good execution, but never really liked it. But everybody wants to be a ghoul just to have a kick ass kagune, right?


Art: 6/10
The art was pretty average for an anime, in my opinion. My favorite thing was how all the characters had their own unique ... thing, like Kaneki's one eye, Juuzou's weird personality, Touka's confusing human life, etc. But overall, I mainly enjoyed everybody's kagune.


Sound: 4/10
Pretty self explanatory, the only good 'sound' in the anime is the OP and the ending.


Character: 4/10
As explained while while I was talking about art, the best part is everybody's personality and uniqueness. But honestly, every character in anime with white hair is usually crazy as shit. :/


Enjoyment: 5/10
I binge watched this anime, and of course it's a lot different than waiting for the next episode to come out. The ending of the first season was not as epic to me as it was to most people.


Overall: 4/10
Wouldn't watch again.