After much procrastination, i have decided to do a review of my own about Tokyo Ghoul(Season 1). Before i start, everything that i will say is only my opinion. You can disagree with my opinion but please note that it is only my opinion so i would like you to at the very least, respect what i am about to say. Do note that i will be grading this as an ANIME standalone and will ignore the existence of the manga(which is better, imo).
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For this review, i will grade the following categories according to a score, whereas the max possible score is 10, and the
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least possible score is a 0.:
-Animation
-Audio And Voice
-Setting And Story With Character Development
-Pacing
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ANIMATION:
-Generally the animation of Tokyo Ghoul is decent, neither bad nor good. The character designs is straight and on-point and spots a somewhat Gothic look which really fits the theme of the anime.
The background of a few scenes also looks spectacularly drawn, with quite a huge focus on details.
However, when you get to the animation of the characters, that's when things gets somewhat inconsistent. Pierrot's style has always been simplistic which is neither bad nor good but one thing which i could not stand is the INCONSISTENCY of it. There would be a few frames in the anime where the characters looks deformed with faces that do not look human and such scenes are so BLATANTLY OBVIOUS that you would think Studio Pierrot did not check some of these scenes.
However, such scenes aren't the majority of what is in the anime. Most scenes are decently animated without much "derpiness". Close-up shots of the characters looks magnificent, with emotions and facial expressions done pretty well.
Medium to long range shots however, are bad and lack detail, with missing eyes, deformed faces, and etc. That happens when you look at a character from a distance. It's at the very least tolerable unlike a few "derp" scenes as mentioned previously.
My score 7/10.
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AUDIO AND VOICE:
-If there's one thing that Tokyo Ghoul did really well in, it would be in this category. For starters, Tokyo Ghoul presented to us one of the best Openings of 2014, namely Unravel. Not only did Unravel sound nice, it also describes Kaneki, the main character's life and journey in Tokyo Ghoul with accuracy. Unravel is just such an impactful and meaningful song that really is a nice addition to the anime.
-To complement such a strong opening, the anime has also one of the best music tracks of the year. The music used in most, if not all scenes were REALLY in place to help stir up hype or emotion depending on the scene. Yutaka Yamada really shows his skills and talents of composing in the anime. However, despite wonderful soundtracks, one of the greatest flaw in Tokyo Ghoul is the REPETITION of some of these soundtracks. For example, Symphonie which is played in most battles, loses it's impact after you listen to it a couple of times, sometimes in the length of an episode and Symphonie is a dang good OST, it's just that it has been overused way too much in the anime.
-As for sound effects, the anime has quite decent sound effects for various scenes such as explosions scenes and the effects for the Kagune is also very well done. Overall, the sound effects is pleasing and contributes to the overall enjoyment of the anime.
-Voice acting is also another thing Tokyo Ghoul did extremely well in. All of the voice actors are extremely believable, and has a great tone and depth to it that really brings out the emotion of the characters vibrantly. Among the cast, i really found Hanae Natsuki(Kaneki's VA) to be the star over here. Throughout the anime, he was able to voice Kaneki's emotions really well, from being sad, to being scared, everything he said as Kaneki was downright believable and felt as if i was REALLY witnessing the scenes in the anime myself. He was also able to switch voices from "Pus** Kaneki" to "Badass Kaneki" really well.
My score:9.2/10
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SETTING AND STORY:
-Most people would simply call Tokyo Ghoul's setting "another vampire setting" and to some extent, they aren't wrong. Vampires drink blood to survive and Ghouls eat human flesh to survive. However, unlike vampires, Ghouls tend to eat more "messy", as eating human fresh is always more messy than simply drinking blood, and that is a big differentiation over here. So instead of calling the setting cliche, it would more preferable to call it "A new take on a cliche setting". What is SAD is that despite having such an interesting setting with multiple possible explorations on a few questions like "Where did the ghouls come from" or "Why do normal knives not work on ghouls", the anime decides NOT to venture and answer any of the questions which is a HUGE PITY as it would have given the anime more depth into it, to make it feel more lively and engaging.
-As for the plot, the first season of Tokyo Ghoul was incredibly CLICHE and PREDICTABLE, with your typical "Weak Guy Turns SUPER OP" kind of story that you would expect in many other animes of a similar genre. That doesn't mean it's a bad thing though. Despite being cliche and predictable, the psychological elements here and there are what really made the story at least half-decent. Combined with excellent voice acting, the plot of Tokyo Ghoul was decent but cliche and highly predictable until despite having severe pacing issues which i will will address later on.
-Character development wise, the only real development that any character had was Kaneki. In the anime, he was quite well developed, and easy for us to sympathize with him, especially after an extremely well done 12th episode that really gave his character some needed depth and personality.However, character development for side characters was severely butchered or hardly explored. A few good examples would be Rize and Juuzou which were really interesting side characters and i would like to know about their pasts, their personalities and their interests but they were hardly explored at all, which was once again a real pity, and i did not really care for them as much as Kaneki.
My Score:6/10
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PACING:
-I am going to be honest over here, when i was an anime-only, i did not notice pacing issues till around episode 5 but i didn't think of it as a serious problem at that time. However, despite my own experiences, i have to criticize Tokyo Ghoul's garbage pacing, with events that escalate so quickly and so unnecessarily that you did not have enough time to digest new information and plot-lines of the episode. A good example would be episode 10 where the anime introduces more than 5 characters in a single episode, making it a clusterfuck. I am not even going to elaborate any further but 66 chapters+ in 12 episodes is WAY TOO MUCH. This is the main turnoff tokyo ghoul has and yet, it's one of the most important PART of the anime that Tokyo Ghoul failed hard in. I'm giving it a 3/10, and not a 0/10 only because some episodes had decent pacing, while the rest are bad.
My score:3/10
OVERALL: 6.3/10------SLIGHTLY ABOVE AVERAGE
RECOMMENDATION:Read the manga
Mar 24, 2015
Tokyo Ghoul
(Anime)
add
After much procrastination, i have decided to do a review of my own about Tokyo Ghoul(Season 1). Before i start, everything that i will say is only my opinion. You can disagree with my opinion but please note that it is only my opinion so i would like you to at the very least, respect what i am about to say. Do note that i will be grading this as an ANIME standalone and will ignore the existence of the manga(which is better, imo).
============================== For this review, i will grade the following categories according to a score, whereas the max possible score is 10, and the ... |
