Tokyo Ghoul

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.

I literally wanted to kill anyone who was about 100 cm in radius within me after i finished the last episode.
Don't get me wrong, it was not because of the fact there were no episodes,NOT because there was a million dollar cliffhanger at the end but because of the emotional intensity of this anime.

Ah~ i remember Tokyo Ghoul manga- it was that one manga under the horror category which i didn't wanted to read- because i judged it's cover, but ultimately the manga rose to get a good rating and here we are the anime: the most wanted thing in the world for some ... people. Read the synopsis first- it would give you some clueless story about Ghouls and stuff- but don't judge just watch and experience.

Story:I actually forgot the watch this story in the 3rd person view so i can criticize and judge it accurately- but that failed because the story was one of those which you get immersed from the start. This one i get is filed under the horror category, which i began to wonder which freaking part was horror. The battle scenes should have been thought out more- or they could have created an epic battle system. Character pasts of the story was emotional- it could make you cry whether you are a man/woman or a child. (yes so apparently 13 and 8 year olds watches this too) There were hints of ecchi- a little bit throughout the anime- the character development of the main lead was epic but alas it was given at the last moment.

Art: Absolutely stunning, this anime has that vivid animating feature where you are in the middle of an epic battle or something important and something which is 100% reluctant to stay out of the safe zone comes inside and disturbs that epic scene causing it to be more intensifying for the audience. Kaneki's mask I'll wager is one of those popular Otaku iconic element in the 2014 for sure.
The Scenic atmospheric elements have been reorganized to suit the emotions of the characters: for example, When the theme "Hope" is given- you can see the sun rising and bathing the current scenery with sunlight to suit the mood. I personally loved how the Intro totally matched the opening theme- extremely good.

Sound:The opening theme was heaven to me. The ending was good. The lyrics of the opening matches Kaneki's situation so much that it seemed to me that it was made for this anime or something. There was good soundtracks but no signature ones i guess, all i know that it suited the mood perfectly. The Seiyus were superb. Also someone should stop giving Miyano-san which makes him look more like a sadistic bastard you know. *hehe*

Character: Kaneki is one of the iconic anime males in 2014, no doubt. You can see his image almost everywhere- his Ghoul mask illustrating most of his emotions. You get all sorts of interesting characters, their attitudes which justifies the situation- You get sadistic characters a lot in this one- all they think about is eating. We also see how people who get converted to be like animals- how they suffer in isolation and solitude. Their pasts dealing who they are mostly in every situation. The only personalties i took interest in was Hideyoshi/Uta/Kaneki and Suzuya. Take note of Hideyoshi that guy is very sharp, he is one of those memorable secondary best friend lead i've ever seen. and Suzuya's not what he is meant to be obviously. Mysterious symbolic elements are within this anime like a hidden object game which can tell it's own story to the audience if you can predict the future story by picking up the pace and the patterns.

Enjoyment: Before i started this anime- i knew it was epic to the core, everyone was talking about it, so many positive reviews. And yes i saved it for Halloween because i knew it was epic. I was literally crying at the middle of 11th and kicking the chair,shaking the PC with frustration during the 12 th episode along with my womanly tears for Kaneki- which i had no regret whatsoever for shedding them. There were some good humour in the anime- but would have liked more of it.

Overall: It's definitely must-watch, this anime gives out very good morales. Apparently doing good to people does not always give you good- you gotta need some luck for it. Also there were many negative complaints about this being censored- i'm not going to voice my opinion on this but indirectly i would say- I watched horror all my life and the best horror stories/urban legends whatever does not need gore or jump scares to make it good. It all depends on the emotions which can give to the reader/audience and the story itself being unique and interesting. This anime very accurately gave out that disregarding utter gore but nevertheless did not completely fail to be a horror anime. Also keep in mind it's the world that's messed up not you- you voluntarily gets messed up because you can't handle it. Those who are the strongest are not the ones who have the best powers or physical strength, they are the ones who can keep their sanity and move through this hell like world.

Happy Halloween 2014!
And a dedicated review to Kaneki Ken.

Shock censored anime

MC is a crybaby (Shinji Ikari tier).

One of those cliche white knight characters that wanna make a difference between 2 opposing entities.

8.0+ rating I dont get it

This anime is as cliche as you can get, he gets some sort of power that makes him different and unique, but hes still a bitch.

... He proceeds to get himself rekt by bad guys and good guys who try to bring him to reality and ofcourse its super cliche so someone innocent has to die for him to figure shit out.

The "bad" guy comes and he starts talking white knight bullshit to him.

"ghoul lives matter" even though the majority of them see no reason to not kill and eat humans. This is the type of anime where the bad guys are the main characters, and the "doves"(police) are the bad guys.

Who is the bad guy?, kinda hard to tell. Well just assume everyone is the bad guy.

IMO dubstep makes a crap soundtrack lol but this is just my opinion of course.

PS: Something very weird is going on, the first review I wrote for some reason got changed from a review for Tokyo Ghoul to parasyte(got me a alot of deserved hate)...The second review my overall score from 3 got changed to a 9.....sketchy.

Characters: Meh. Only ones that matter are the MC, Rize, and Jason. The rest are insignificant to the plot and its development.

Animation: Good. Fighting is odd and I felt like there wasn't any flow to it causing my eyes to try and find a focal point in the midst of it all. Also, CENSORS THAT BLOCK THE ENTIRE SCREEN

Soundtrack: Meh.

Story: Meh.

Overall: Good watch, doesn't live up to hype though. Go watch Zankyou no Terror instead for this season.

Tokyo Ghoul feels like a show that really wanted to be something dark and grown up, but had to be pulled back into it's shonen roots. I'm unfamiliar with it's origins, so I can't comment on that, but the show itself has a decent premise - the idea that there is another breed of humanity (?) called Ghouls. These ghouls have enhanced strength, speed, durability, an odd power-signature called a gleam, and an overpowering hunger for human flesh. They HAVE to eat it - and I like that the story has built in reasons as to why. At first, I thought this was just going ... to be another take on the "vampire who chooses not to drink blood" trope, but no, a ghoul who starves themselves will inevitably go mad/rabid from hunger. Their tongues develop different taste buds, making natural foods taste rancid, and eating human food can even poison a ghoul.

However, what, exactly, a ghoul is isn't explained very well. Are they like mutants, just an off-shoot branch of human evolution? I'd buy that, but then what is their gleam? The show has several gleams manifest throughout and they're all slightly different. They all originate from the back of the ghoul, and many appear to be tails of bright colors, but there are also wing-gleams or more blade-like gleams. Just what are these supposed to be? And there's the fact that they're apparently removable.

This hidden society is policed by the Doves - as they're nicknamed by the Ghouls - and the Doves use weapons called qinque. A qinque appears to be the gleam of a ghouls removed from their body. How this works without the body, I don't know. How the qinque, which often change shape or move according to natural instructions, function without their natural form, I don't know. It's never addressed in the body of the show.

The series itself features a number of ghouls and (largely) two Doves, but our star is a Normal, Quiet, Average Young Man named Kaneki. He's pretty boring and largely uninteresting until he has ghoul parts put into his body and thus, he becomes half-ghoul, and we follow him into this world.
I have to say, I didn't like Kaneki all the way through the show. He's too quiet and too withdrawn for a lead character. He falls into each situation, barely manages to make it out alive, and makes no decisions. Everything he has in the show is handed to him and that REALLY bothered me - until episode 12. I won't go into details, as the Guidelines say to avoid spoilers, but episode 12 explains Kaneki's motivations from the beginning. It also breaks those motivations and suddenly I'm much more interested in where he's going. It's actually a shame that the change in character happens only at the end because New Kaneki suddenly has a bite to him.

The show also throws in the "he's a half-breed, so he's more powerful!" trope, which only bothers me because the nature of what creates a ghoul is never explored in this. Given that Kaneki is the first human turned into a ghoul by science (it appears), that would make me think that he should be critical to the ghoul/human situation. Isn't there some kind of gene test to see if someone is a ghoul? I would think that if a body can only process human flesh, there HAS to be something going on with that. But again, we get no explanation, just that Kaneki tastes better than any other human and when another ghoul eats some of him they get super-charged and on and on.

There are a smattering of side-characters that are vaguely interesting. For me, Amon - who is one of the Doves - is the most interesting character in the show. He's a lawman, looking to bring the ghouls to heel, but the loss of someone close to him pushes him further. I don't quite buy the logic of this drive, as the character who dies is kind of insane and really unrelatable, but at least Amon makes decisions and CHOOSES to do something about it.

As I said at the start, the show really starts to push itself into darker themes - ghouls predation on humanity, how hunting ghouls affects the Doves, how ghouls interact with each other, and how both sides tend to view the other as something less than human. But then it also pulls back at nearly all of these story points. Amon's partner, Mado, comes off as a ghoul-hunting-psychotic, but we're never shown why, and it's hard to care for him when he laughs as he kills people that the show goes out of it's way to make you care for. The show seems to be presenting neither side as right, and positions Kaneki to be the bridge between the two, but he's so busy getting the crap beaten out of him and being indecisive that nothing ever comes from this.

The show LOOKS good for the most part. Character designs are clean and effective, no two characters look alike, and the fighting animation looks good. The visual effects for the gleams were really well done and often pretty neat looking.

Despite my overall complaints about the show, it's watchable, although I did have to kind of drag myself to the finish line once I got to the last three episodes. There are a lot of interesting concepts brought up in the show, but it fails to explore those satisfactorily. I'm hesitant to say that maybe if it ran for longer, it would have, but I kind of get the feeling that it wouldn't have. Thankfully for it's narrative, an interesting world and interesting side characters make the show entertaining enough to string the watcher along. I wouldn't ever put this on my Top Ten list, but it isn't horrible either.

"To be, or not to be" says William Shakespeare in Hamlet. If Sui Ishida was a poet, he would maybe have written something similar to this, "To be, or not to be a ghoul". But Mr.Ishida is Japanese, not English and that's why he wrote a manga and made a lot of Otakus very happy. In 2014 an, on this manga based, anime came out, with the same name. May I present...TOKYO GHOUL!

Plot and Story Line
Okay, before I start with the plot and story I have to make one thing clear. Although the manga and the anime are similar, they are not the same. Funimation ... changed the chronology and a trifle of the main plot and added some annoying censorship (more about it in animation section).The main story line however, remains the same, and let's review this thing already.
We firstly need a setting for this story. Tokyo, Japan. In recent time the city is being haunted by half-human half-monster creatures called Ghouls. The ghouls have special abilities and enormous strenght, but have to carry the "curse" of not being able to eat human food. They have to eat human flash in order to survive. But eventough it's hard for them to survive without it, some ghouls try not to eat humans. At least not the living ones.

In such a crazy world lives Ken Kaneki, a rather ordinary 18-year-old university student. One day, Kaneki decides to go out on a date with a very intelligent, as he thought, girl called Rize. Poor Kankei, he didn't know what was waiting for him. While walking Rize home, she suddenly attacs him and reveals her true self. Yes Kaneki, Rize is a ghoul. I am sorry. Luckily, an accident on the construction side, stopped Rize from eating Kaneki, yet he had to be hospitalized. In order to save his life the doctor Kanou transplanted some of Rize's organs into Kaneki. But what Kaneki thought was a kidney was actually Rize's kagune (a ghoul's predatory organ used as their weapon). Dear dr.Kanou, that usually makes experiments with ghouls, turned our cute, innocent Kaneki into a half-ghoul. And that's my dear readers when everythings starts.

I mentioned the Hamlet quote for a good reason, because most of the anime turns into a fight of human-Kaneki and ghoul-Kaneki. The steady struggle inside kills him (not literary). Just imagine the pain he had trying not to eat human beings, being one too just a day ago.
His moral and attachment to humanity kept him up all this time. And as such, he also tryed to make the humans and ghouls understand each other. In a couple of moments he spares the life of ghoul investigators trying to explain that ghouls also have a human side, like him and the other non-human-eating-ghouls at Ainteku. Unfortunately, that didn't work. His dream as a half-ghoul to be the linking bound between those two worlds turned into a nighmare and made him realize on thing: "This world is wrong".

If you decide to watch or read Tokyo Ghoul, be prepared. There is so much action, so many fights and so many bloodshead. It is just amazing. I really love action and there were some action scenes I watched twice. I just had to, because they were so epic. If you are a action-adict as me, I am sure that you will love Tokyo Ghoul. I garantee you an intersting story from the very beginning making you imaptient for the third season to air.
The only little disadvantage of this anime are some plot holes in the background stories but they are negligible.
I became a huge fan of Tokyo Ghoul after watching it. You should see my school notebooks. Full of drawings of Suzuya, Touka and my own Tokyo Ghoul O.C.s. Now let's see the characters.

Characters
Hmm...Wahat to say about the characters. Just great. There are so many different charactes, unique personalities and awesome character developments regarding their background stories. I loved almost every character in this anime, whether he was a villian or a hero. The "almost every" is beacuse of the one and only guy I hated in this anime. Ayato Kirishima, the younger brother of Touka. I just didn't like his attitude and the way he thought about the world. Nevermind, let's move on to the three I want to talk about.
KEN KANEKI as said in the beginning, an ordianry 18-year-old student that loves to read in his free time. Although most people would call him weak and a cry-baby, I wouldn't. His pain is so damn hard to bear because he was made as a ghoul, he wasn't born as one. You have to look at it from his point of view. I envied him on his humanity and attitude, I really did.
There she is. TOUKA KIRISHIMA is such a badass of a woman. She is so strong and independent, and although she looks cold-hearted, deep inside she is a very caring and nice person always ready to save the ones that are close to her. I also have to mention the way she manages to have a normal human life despite being a ghoul. I am actually a bit sad about her loosing her tuff and badass personality in the end, not fair Mr.Ishida and Funimation.
This is my favorite character of all. JUUZOU SUZUYA is a childish, optimistic and crazy person that went trough a lot of pain in his childhood. He is so funny but detremine and careless that makes him the most unigue character I've ever seen. His personality developes to a more responsible ghoul investigator in the Tokyo Ghoul: Re manga series. It's still airing...

Animation and Style
As said in the previous review I decided to add "Style" to this review section, so let's see. Firstly the animation. As expected from a 2014 anime, the animation is awesome. Bright and dark colors when needed, awesome backrounds and what's most to pride is the caharacter design. The style of this anime is also outstanding. One of the best I've ever seen. It's unique and special, just beautiful.I have to mention the fact that that's the reason that made me watch this anime. A good friend of mine told me about the epic animation of Tokyo Ghoul and I thought :"I have to see that one". I wasn't disappointed and became a great fan in an instant.

Conclusion:
Watch Tokyo Ghoul folks! It is amazing and has already become a cliche anime in the world. You have an interesting story a smooth plot, some awesome characters and unfrgetable fights. I truly recommend you to watch it and please don't judge it on the first glance, there is a lot of deep stuff in this show. My dear readers, Tokyo Ghoul!

Your AnimeGirl

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.

Lately i have found much enjoyment in Dark animes, Tokyo Ghoul was to much satisfaction giving me all the Dark Fantasy anime i needed. This show really gets going quite early and with only 12 episodes in the first season, that is expected. Regardless there is enough material in those 12 episodes to leave me wanting more.

First off the story of Tokyo ghoul is a frightening dark one, more so then what i was expecting. Our main character Ken Kaneki is faced with the burden of becoming a ghoul (Not by choice, watch and find out why.) he must find ways to deal with ... the many problems a ghoul faces, for example being hunt down by Anti-Ghoul investigators or learning how to accept eating humans. On the way he meets other Ghouls who become his friends and help guide him through these hard trials. It is your typical Dark Anime story: A character accepting his new way of life. Eventually we learn there are good ghouls who try and co-exist with humans and bad ghouls who want to rid of the humans. The story leads to a 3 way battle between the "good ghouls" (Anteiku), the "bad ghouls" (Aogiri Tree) and the Commission of Counter Ghouls.

I have not much to say about Art and Sound as I do not watch anime for those reasons, But i will say i had no problem with anything of the sort in Tokyo Ghoul.

Back to our main Character Ken Kaneki, a human who becomes a ghoul. His character does not take well to the transition of becoming a human eating ghoul (who would) alot of crying and weeping occurs for Ken Kaneki, sadly enough it takes along time for it to end. I was hoping the transition to him accepting his new life and becoming the hero of the story would happen sooner. There are a few moments were we see the potential he holds but it doesn't come to full capacity until we near the end. Outside of Ken Kaneki we dont get a view into any of the characters other lifes, and once again with only 12 episodes it is quite hard to. Toka's life (One of the first "good ghouls" ken encounters) is still much of a mystery come the end of season. As well as Hide, kens bestfriend who is a human. On a side note i did enjoy the character Shū Tsukiyama who really embraces the Dark side of this anime with his fond appetite and sadistic ways.

Overall Tokyo Ghoul was quite dark and a few times made me cringe, and in a way thats what makes me like it. Backed up by an interesting story of the life of a Ghoul and i find myself pretty satisfied.Still, 12 episodes was not enough and i hope the 2nd season explains alot more about the background story of some of the characters. Also quite excited to see the new Ken Kaneki. Tokyo Ghoul season 1 receives a solid 8.2 thriving off the interesting life of a Ghoul!

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.

Most peple on the internet declared it to be the greatest anime of 2014. Beautiful fan art of it filled my feed. My friend literally begged me to watch it. And so, I watched the all twelve episodes of Tokyo Ghoul.

Story

Yeah, well, you probably know the story by now.

Characters

The characters are pretty much standard fare anime characters. We have the whiny, powerful main character who does almost absolutely nothing during the entire show except for cry and wonder why he is so weak without bothering to try to make himself stronger. The only hero who bugged me even more than the brilliantly named 'Kaneki ... Ken-kun' was Yuuki from Mirai Nikki. If you can even call that guy a hero. But it hurts more in Tokyo Ghoul because Kaneki has so much potential, and can easily be one of the strongest Ghouls around, but decides to spend 95% of the anime wailing. The last ten minutes give him credit though. And he looks freaking awesome with that mask.
Rize has far less screen time than most other characters, but is more important than most of them. It is because her organs are transplanted into Kaneki that he develops his ghoul powers, his kagemune, and becomes a one eyed ghoul. She appears time to time, usually seducing our main hero while trying to convince him to accept his ghoul powers and use them.
Touka is kind of a mix of two characters. On one count, she reminds me of Mikasa Ackerman of SHingeki no Kyojin because of her attitude and her raw power, besides her latent arrogance. I mean, the moment I saw her, I thought 'Mikasa'. There's one huge difference though. Touka is a tsundere, while Mikasa is a partial yandere. Not Yuno level, but she is obsessed with Eren.
The second one, and I realized this immediately too, is her appearence resembles Mei Misaki from Another. They both have navy-blue hair that covers one of their eyes. I don't know, it just popped into my mind.
She's probably the most interesting of all the characters anyhow.
We then have a bunch of characters who, as usual, I didn't really care much for. There's the painfully and blatantly evil Mado (I think that's his name), the heroic Amos who has a couple of minutes wondering about the morality of what he's doing, the cooking guy who is basically the Orochimaru of this anime (pedophilic, continuously licking his lips). Not to mention that white haired kid who looks kinda like a girl, and a bunch of police guys. I mean, I don't even remember hearing their names. And there's Jason, a sadistic and overly-violent ghoul.
Another character is Hide, who is basically Kaneki's best friend, but his importance basically diminished as the show went on.
Unfortunately, I didn't really like many of the characters of the show, and I kept feeling like I saw all of them somewhere else.

Presentation

On the animation front, I have absolutely no problems. I don't think I've paused the video in order to absorb in the beauty of the animation this much for any other show. And this is remarkable, because Tokyo Ghoul entirely takes place in a mundane metropolitan background. They don't even get chances to render stunning vistas like Sword Art Online did, but it impressed me all the same. The sound didn't really stick out much, but the voice actors play their parts well and match the characters. The opening is something to be admired and matches ethereal vocals with beautiful imagery. The animation studio is the same one that took care of Bleach, so they're pretty experienced.
Something I should mention about this show: it's very gory. I mean, not like Corpse Party gore. Or maybe it is. Unfortunately, the anime right now is only available in the censored version, which means your experience will freqeuntly be marred by unnatural black shadows running acorss someone's stomach. But when the uncensored version does come out, you're gonna see lots of graphic imagery. Ghouls eat humans after all, so don't be surprised if you see one bite off a chunk of meat.
As for how the idea is presented...that's what I really wanted to talk about. Once again, Tokyo Ghoul feels like a collection of various ideas that I've seen in various other shows. For example, its moral ambiguity. Throughout the entire show, Tokyo Ghoul wants to make you wonder whether humans are right to kill ghouls as monsters or not. Many anime before this one have tried this idea, but the only other show that has it this fleshed out is Shiki, and I know most people won't agree with me, but I think Shiki did it better. Shiki was more of a mystery, and less intermittently splattered with blood. Because of this, it humanizes (is that the right word here, considering what I'm talking about?) both sides until you actually care for both races. On the other hand, Tokyo Ghoul's viewpoint is primarily from the Ghouls, with humans mostly being depicted as arrogant people who kill ghouls and look down upon them. Throughout the series, you'll be supporting the ghouls without a second thought for mankind. In fact, humans are made so easily hateable that you'll wish all of them were dismembered without a second thought. The only morally grey character is Amos, and he felt to perfect and heroic, and loaded with judgemental ideas to be likeable, so I wanted him to die too.
Another thing is those eyes. Those eyes. Seen them somewhere? Maybe, maybe not. If you have, it just might be Shiki, where black eyes with red irises are used to distinguish the Shiki from humans. Sound familiar? In this anime, it's what is used to differentiate between ghouls and humans.
I can make a vague reference to Lucy's hands in Elfen Lied about Kaneki's kagemune, but that isn't really valid because Kaneki's power looks more like tentacles. Let's hope that doesn't go down the wrong road one day. Just kidding, Tokyo Ghoul is too good to go down the same road that Sword Art Onine went on.
Then, as you approach the final episodes of the show, we get an extended and mostly unnecessary torture scene that brought up memories of RIN: Daughters of Mnemosyne, whose first or second episode features a similarly sadistic antagonist and a similarly fast-regenerating protagonist. Of course, RIN was far more explicit and would probably have to be completely censored (for a good reason this time) but you know what I'm talking about.
The show contains some shounen elements like Kaneki not wanting to hurt anyone, but that gets rectified by the end of the series.

Overall

Tokyo Ghoul feels more like a prologue to something else far more interesting. While the animation was well taken care of, the idea of thrusting 60 chapters into 12 episode is not logically sound, and led to us losing most of the interesting details in the process. It also feels like there were too many arcs in such a short span, and seeing someone who was absolutely hated three episodes earlier helping our heroes is kind of jarring. Besides that, it also feels like an amalgamation of ideas from other anime piled into one. While most others may like the idea, I sat there and throughout the show I thought 'Hey, nice idea. But it was better done in (insert anime name here)'.
Overall, watch it, because it's still pretty good despite its faults. Be prepared for a blood-fest, though. With a lot of black lines.

Story: 7
Art: 8
Sound: 8
Character: 6
Enjoyment: 7
Overall: 7

NOTE: I'm enjoying the second season more, although the opening is now crap.

OK so i'm gonna start this review by saying that this may contain spoilers so if you don't want that then move on to the rating sections.



OK so this show had a lot of hype before it started and with one of the most popular manga I can see why.
it really had a lot of potential and i'm sad to say that was wasted and I mean big time like the censoring this show had was horrendous censoring and almost made me drop the show.
Like at that part where that one women I forgot her name she was killed by mado
and as soon as it ... happend guess what? it completely went off screen and at this point I was pissed off because there i'm left wondering if she was alive or not there was so much more then this that was completely left out of the show from the manga and adding top that kaneki's annoying ass whining throughout the show damn.

Story (4)
the story was more less rushed to death with plot holes and censoring that almost killed it for me a lot of scenes from the manga were not even in the anime so a lot went unexplained.

Art (8)
one of this shows saving graces and I mean i love the art and animation in this show now it's not like it is anything special but from I what seen it was great but there was to much censoring for me to enjoy it fully.

Sound (10)
the best part of the show was the music damn the OP is one of my all time favorites now and top that with amazing sound during fight scenes and a good ed adds up to amazing music.

characters (7)
and finally the part I wanted to talk about most of all the characters there's the over dramatic annoying Kaneki there's Tohka the best character in the show IMO she kicks ass and babysits kaneki to because well he's to much of a whining ass to do anything until the end that is but you would have to watch it to see what i'm talking about then there's the crazy villan mado Kaneki's best friend and so on.
kaneki is more or less your typical do gooder who wants to help everyone in danger and become stronger to protect them but he can be annoying like hell at times because of his whining but other than that he's OK and then tohka man I love her she's my favorite character in the show badass is all iv'e got to say about her.
supporting characters are nice to there's Uto who is not in the show as much as I would have wanted him to be but he's ok while he's in it then there's mado the villan idiotic but nice and then that detective dude who is more like mado's partner I guess but he's okay to.

Overall (6) this has got to be the biggest disappointment of the entire summer damn the censoring the annoying ass main character damn just about everything went wrong I hope a season 2 is made or something because this was bad compared to the manga

Enjoyment (8)
this show was disappointing yes compared to the manga but as a standalone anime show I can say that i enjoyed it quiet a lot just hope there's a season 2 to redeem itself.

It's okay for just an anime watcher but if your a manga reader and hoped that it would be as good as the manga then boy are you
gonna be disappoited unless you take some pain killers to stop the pain from coming every time they skip huge parts of the manga but other than that avoid this like the plague manga readers anime only watchers try it out.

Tokyo Ghoul was one of those anime packed with action and adventure. I felt the story was very intriguing and kept bringing me back to watch it every week. The characters had their own unique personality and the art was a very delightful thing to watch. HOWEVER I did not like the intense gore that was included in this anime. I'm fine with stabbing and some violence in an anime I watch but this one was very violent. The level of gorey-ness, as one may put it, was too much for me, which is why I didn't give it a ... 9 or 10.

So if you dont mind the intense gore that this anime will bring, then go for it. You will enjoy the anime.

[I HAVE NOT READ THE MANGA, SO THIS REVIEW IS FROM SOMEONE WITH NO KNOWLEDGE ABOUT IT]

My first impression of this anime was; "Wow, this actually could be a decent one". I was right, but I was also wrong at the same time.

I was surprised to see an anime with a dark theme which also was assiciated with the shounen genre, since of the year having lacked such deep, griddy and dark elements in an anime. So I was actually pleased to see something different. Now since it was a shounen, I was expecting no more than a mediocre anime that everyone will forget about ... in a couple of months, though this anime seems to have left a mark in the community, even if the story progression was not all that great.

I have to say that the first half of Tokyo Ghoul was pleasing to watch, to a certain extent that is. This is because it had a nice progression and didn't rush anything to explain the situation that every character is in. After all the first impression is the most important one. Though I wish I could say the same thing about the second half. The second half seems rushed compared to the first, since it was not as slow paced and well organized as the other one. They introduced many characters that did not play much part in the anime for the rest of the series. This is also the point where I think that the story telling itself got sloppy. The main character, Kaneki Ken, lost almost all of the attention and the position for main character seemed to have switched off the the secondary characters. I have to say though that the last episode did make the first half justice.

The story is very tragic and the way the studio presented it with the art complimented the story accurately. It had a lot of shadows but not too many to keep one confused (this is, of course, if you ignore the constant censoring). The character designs, were pretty down to earth. No one had insanely unnatural aspects about them, ignoring the hair colors chosen. The way the characters are drawn were to be expected from a modern shounen.

They had different variants of characters, though they were mostly stereotypes or copy paste characters from different shows.

Since I have a kind of love/hate relationship with this anime I could not let it go even if my brain told me to. It was mediocre at best and will never rise above mediocrity. That is why I am rating this anime 5/10

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.

No, I haven't read the manga. As the other reviewers noted, Tokyo Ghoul is a dark fantasy set in Tokyo. Our hero, Kaneki Ken is an average, bookish fellow whose life takes a drastic turn after his first date with an attractive girl. Turns out the girl has an uncontrollable case of munchies. No, this is not a love story. Spoilers ahead.

For 11 episodes, Tokyo Ghoul is an anime that deserves praise. An anime that isn't afraid to delve into philosophy: What does it mean to be human? Should you be considered human if your biological default is to eat another human? Does denial ... of the self serve friendship? What does it mean to be selfish? When is it time to be selfish? Good stuff. One of the things that made this series so enjoyable for me is that it asked questions.

Animation 9/10, Sound 10/10

The visuals are well-done, even though certain scenes bordered on the meme territory (e.g. copious amounts of tears, extreme close ups of characters shouting and roaring in their emotional moments). The artsy and obviously half-hearted blood censorship (color inverts) made it more stimulating. The music and the sounds were decent.

Story 8/10, Character 7/10

The pacing is all right, striking a balance between moving the overall plot and providing the necessary back story. Granted, not all important characters were given the back story treatment. I don’t get the complaints that the pacing sucked because it didn’t match the manga.

The world building is decent. The series refrained from explaining everything, possibly because the manga has not provided the materials. That works for the story because it’s unlikely to have Kaneki undergo a massive information dump on ghoul living. As far as the story is concerned, Kaneki is an average citizen, trying to live the life of a murder-free ghoul. He's not being schooled as a secret agent, so giving the audience a major intel on Tokyo ghouls and a rigorous course on ghoul mythology is a fat the series does not need.

For the 12th episode, Tokyo Ghoul deserves to be panned. I'm aware that the manga is ongoing, that's why I can forgive some missteps, like the certain fight subplots in episode 12. On second thought, those missteps are rather unforgivable. I guess they didn’t decide to wait for the manga for this cash grab. Instead of making a semi-satisfying conclusion to these encounters, the studio decided to leave it hanging.


The character development is superb... for 11 episodes anyway. The biggest disappointment is that Kaneki went through the personality vortex and came back another person... almost like another character! I'm certain the manga has a good excuse as to why the introspective Kaneki, who constantly negotiates with his inner psycho and determines that empathy should win every time, suddenly turned into a cold "bad ass" that served the revenge fulfillment of some audiences. Trauma, perhaps. This "bad ass" engaged in casual cruelty: torturing an already subjugated villain, oh just because hmm plot device. We’re supposed to derive some emotional closure to this? Problem is, the audience is well-aware the character has been traumatized and is engaging in acts he would not normally do... and yet the studio decided to package this as some sort of triumphant ending.

*sigh*

Eleven out of 12 episodes are well done, so the series is worth a chance, even with the last episode taking a bit of dive.

Tokyo Ghoul was one of the anime I was admittedly on the fence about watching. However, I decided to give it a shot, and what I will say is that it was definitely worth my time, and just might be worth your time as well. To save everybody some reading, I’ll break it down as simply as I can. I’m sure other reviews can give a good enough basis of the plot so we’ll go ahead and skip that.

Not many anime compel me to want to go back and read the manga, but Tokyo Ghoul did. Not only because I had heard the manga ... was better from others, but because the story isn’t as fleshed out as I would have liked. Now I haven’t read any of it yet, so I can only give this review in terms of somebody who has only seen the anime.
I will say that I love the concept; it just lacked the proper amount of time to fit everything in nicely. The pacing feels incredibly rushed, and for the story that lies underneath it all, it definitely deserved more... a lot more. So while it’s an enjoyable experience, it feels like pieces are missing at times, character development falls a little flat, and that dampens the overall effectiveness of the presentation. Again, I still found it to be enjoyable, and not nearly as mediocre as many claimed, but I can understand why manga readers in particular may be upset.

The art style is good, I love the designs and everything is pretty aesthetically pleasing even though I’d say the animation is just about average when compared to some other current anime. Oh, and yes of course it’s better uncensored. The censoring that this anime originally received is what put me off of it to begin with, but now it can be watched in all its original gory glory, the way it should be.

The music is definitely fantastic. It’s probably my favorite aspect to the entire presentation of the show. The intro is absolutely beautiful, and as somebody who generally skips intros to save time I had to refrain from that for Tokyo Ghoul. I’ve found myself sitting through not only the intro but also the end credits of every episode. The voice acting is also great. All of the characters do a good job and at the end of the day that definitely helps keep the viewer engaged in what’s going on. So thumbs up on that!

Overall, will you like Tokyo Ghoul? Honestly I think it’s hit or miss, but it is definitely something you should at least watch a couple episodes of to see if you personally like what it has to offer. I had a hard time giving this a 6/10, it has so many things that are good about it, and yet so many glaring flaws. You may end up being pleasantly surprised like I was. It's a flawed yet worthy adventure. Just remember, if you want the *full* Tokyo Ghoul experience you will have to pick up the manga!

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.

Tolyo Ghoul was recommended to me by a friend. He said this anime had blood, battles and an awesome main character. So after giving it a watch I can call it only one thing: Disappointing (I haven't read the manga btw).

Tokyo Ghoul centres around a boy named Kaneki. Ghouls are monsters who look like humans and eat human flesh to survive. After an incident with a ghoul Kaneki undergoes an operation where his organs are replaced by ghoul organs. Now he is a half-ghoul and must eat human flesh in order to survive. He also meets ghouls who are living in secret and ... makes some of them his friends.

The first two episodes and the opening sequence were awesome. They perfectly showed Kaneki's hunger and how he struggles with it. We see Kaneki trying to keep his humanity as his ghoul hunger seems to take over his mind. It also promises to delve into the subject of insanity and show us a psychological warfare between Kaneki's human and ghoul personalities.

Sadly, what follows are nothing that even come close to these topics. Instead, what we are given are filler episodes that mostly consists of Kaneki whining about himself. Kaneki's mental war between his two personalities are completely forgotten until the very last episode. And whatever happens in all the other episodes contribute almost nothing to the plot or Kaneki's development as a character.

This anime has a very large cast of characters. But each of them get very little screentime to make any kind of impact. On the ghoul side we have the Manager, Touka, Jason and some other characters I won't bother to mention. On the human side we have the ghoul investigators Mado and Amon, and some others who appear later in the series.

Mado was actually my favourite of the bunch. Maybe because he was just plain evil and badass, but also because he is a nice guy when it comes to work. All the other characters ( with the exception of Jason) can be summed up in one word: Hypocrites. Especially Amon, whose hypocrisy knows no bounds. Their actions made me want to scream at the screen because of how self-contradictory they were.

The animations and sounds were good, nothing too special. However, the opening and ending songs were some of the best I have seen in anime. The fights, especially the ones in the last episode were very good. It's a shame, because the censoring blacked out half the screen during the bloody parts.

Overall, this could have been an excellent anime if it focused more on Kaneki's development in the middle episodes. I can only recommend watching the first and last two episodes since only these are the ones that are not fillers.

Note: This anime ends with a cliffhanger good enough to make you want to watch the second season. But don't get your hopes high.

When I watched Tokyo Ghoul I felt mixed emotions. Although the great ambiance and what in the first look seems like well developed characters, the history is not well developed, and some characters simple became two-dimensional. Especially in the final half, the choices and the focus seems to be in the wrong scenes and characters, and it is made poorly.

I will try to judge it based in the anime only, since I didn't had read the manga yet when I watched it. But I still have to do some reservations specially regarding the character development and changes in history.

The first half episodes are ... quite enjoyable, I would even said that it is better than the manga begging. The rivalry between Rise and Jason, that help to the creation of the final climax, and the much darker and dreadful ambiance than what manga presents. I got truly worried about Kaneki issues.

The second half is where everything goes downhill. A lot of information bad presented or not presented at all, that always keep you in the dark. Scenes with no context, crucial scenes to the character's development excluded. The changes in the order of events don't help either, they instead made appear that Kaneki strength development is equal to none.

I think my biggest issue is how some characters and parts of the history are so radically different from manga. There is no "Yamoru" in the anime only a psycho Jason 24/7. Aogiri? These guys are to cool to you to know anything about them, instead we will just show these dialogues that don't offer no context at all. Good fights? Sorry we only have 12 episodes and we need the extra time to the no-context scenes.

Although the flaws, especially in the second half, I think that Tokyo Ghoul is quite enjoyable. The manga is far superior, but if you don't wanna read it you will be fine with the anime (as long as as you don't watch season 2).

Please note that this is a review for two seasons that are released at the time of writing this review, not just the first season.

You might like this anime if:
- You are new to anime
- You enjoy dark anime
- You don't care about the bad things, and instead, focus on the good ones
- You are looking for some decent fighting scenes

You might dislike this anime if:
- You watched a decent amount of anime, especially the top ones
... - You dislike edgy shows
- You hate weak main characters
- You are looking for well-developed characters
- You hate shows with weird pacing
- You hate forced romance
- You are looking for an anime with a good, consistent plot

Story: 6
The biggest problem with the story of Tokyo Ghoul is that it's all over the place. It may be caused by the length of the series, but I honestly cannot tell. The story also tries to make you feel bad for a couple of good ghouls, and portray humanity as stupid, cruel bastards, who can't understand that 5% of ghouls (who EAT ONLY HUMAN FLESH) are not evil, and instead they just eat already dead bodies, as if that's okay or something. Also, the romance feels inappropriate and forced in for the sake of appealing to the younger audience. There are redeeming qualities, as the ghoul "culture" is actually quite interesting. Their behavior and backstory, as well as their attempts at blending into society, proved to be something that grabbed my attention more than what was actually supposed to do it. Some scenes were also okay, but the longer I watched, the worse it got. At some points, I felt genuinely insulted by the stupidity of the plot. In the end, it made too many stupid decisions with the direction it was taking, trying to take itself way too seriously, while some aspects of it were really dumb.

Art and Animation: 7
Both are for the most part decent, with a few drops here and there and a few really pretty scenes. The main problem I have with the art style, however, is its darkness. I understand that it's a dark show, and the art style should complement it, but at some point, I got bored of seeing blue, dark blue, black and gray. It jumps from those colors from time to time, but while watching, you will mostly see these ones. The character designs, for the most part, are fine, but a few are just plain stupid. Not going to say which ones though, because of spoilers. Overall the art style is okay, but nothing too memorable, maybe except for a few scenes scattered around.

Sound: 9
The best part of the anime in my book. I can hear the care, that has been put into the soundtrack and overall its really enjoyable. It fits the scenes well. Extra points for the first opening, and the endings. I would consider that opening to be one of the best ones ever. Ironic how I have the least to say about my favorite part of the show.

Characters: 4
Sadly, the characters, that at the beginning seemed interesting, were turned into stereotypes one after another. I don't want to write an essay on every single one so I'll try to sum it up in two sentences. There are about two moments where the characters develop at all. There should be more care put into them, as the show tries hard to be heavily focused on the characters. That should be enough. This is not the biggest problem though. The biggest problem is the side characters. Basically there are too many of them, they are introduced way too fast, and you never get a chance to care about 90% of them. There are one or two exceptions, but that doesn't change the fact, that they are also massively underdeveloped. So was there anything that I liked about the characters? Well, while their motives were mostly trash, in some scenes they seemed believable. Not often, but sometimes. Overall I felt disappointed by the lackluster characters, as some of them had some serious potential.

Enjoyment: 5
I didn't care for most of the characters, so I had to push forward without anything good to cling to. I had hopes for this, I really did, and even while the quality gradually dropped, I hoped that it would become something more. It never did. There were a few scenes that grabbed my attention, but between them, I had to watch something, that I wasn't really interested in. Disappointment is a word that describes my experience with this anime the best.

Overall: 6
It had potential, it had good core material, it had a good idea of where it wanted to go, it had an interesting setting, but it lacked way too much to deviate from the pile of mediocre anime. While it's not the worst thing that happened to humanity, as some people may lead you to believe, it's not worth a watch unless you just don't have anything better to watch. But hey, if you do decide to watch it, try not to think too much, as this anime is clearly not made for that. And you should watch it, in order to witness how can something with high potential be easily ruined. Also, read the manga, it's actually really good, which surprised me drastically. But hey, in the end, everything is just my opinion. Just try no to call it the best thing in the world, and I won't mind.