Tokyo Ghoul is a dark fantasy and seinen anime adaptation of the manga made by Ishida Sui, and the TV anime was produced by Studio Pierrot containing 12 episodes. There are also some horror elements, but they aren't that present on the animation.
The main character of the story is Kaneki Ken, an ordinary college student, and his life changes when he meets Rize at the café he frequents with his college friend Hide. Little did he know that she is actually a Ghoul, a carnivorous species only able to feed on humans and even other ghouls too, and during the night, he is attacked and almost got killed and eaten by her. He got saved by an emergency operation, when he got ghouls organs transplanted into his body.
Basically he became a half-ghoul half-human, or, like many people say, one eyed Ghoul.. then the struggle and the tragedies start for him since he is now inserted into the ghoul world.
Anyway, how is it? Well, the anime has a promising start in the first episode (usually I would be complaining about the censorship, which is indeed weird, but there are the uncensored episodes available already since a long time already) and at first, as an anime-only watcher or not, you will be looking forward to the storyline, although... Pierrot simply rushed the anime A LOT, skipped so many things and they even changed the order of some events (manga readers know what I mean), which is... really disappointing.
Also, the studio tried TOO HARD when they made Kaneki expressing his emotions and his struggle while he became a half-ghoul, even though he did some work there, the anime made him look like someone who mostly cries and keeps whining a lot until a certain point, so yeah, he looked like a wimp unfortunately, and there wasn't much development along with the evolution and progress on Kaneki unlike on the manga where these were strong points of his character... his characterization had many problems too. Yes, he suffered a lot with the anime changes on his character.
Not to mention other scenes that they did some weird changes especially on some fights and some censored scenes during the time that the anime was airing, some scenes were so hard to understand to guess what was happening.
Thankfully the Blu-ray came out on Japan and you can check out the uncensored episodes already since they are available on the internet.
Now, talking about the animation, you will probably enjoy the quality on it during some fights, even if there are some awkward and sloppy moments on the animation quality like it happens on other animes from studio Pierrot. The kagunes and the quinques were well made though, especially the first one... to be honest, some kagunes (including mainly the Ukaku from Touka) were even beautiful to watch. The animation during the episodes isn't particularly that amazing and the exception happens mostly on the fights or important scenes, so they actually did well on the animation there.
The story itself is actually pretty interesting and there is a lot of potential on it, and it's nice to see how it shows the perspective from both sides, Ghouls and the humans too, especially on the investigators from the CCG (Commission of Counter Ghoul), it explores characters from both of these sides, which is really interesting, it makes you wonder which side was like the right one and who are the monsters, it makes you wonder a lot about those details, since you will eventually see that not every single Ghoul is evil, and also that the human side also got some bad people, and it gives many possibilities on the storyline but there aren't enough episodes to explore it pretty well, and the studio didn't focus so much on these concepts and ideals involving humans and ghouls, they just jumped into the violent scenes and the action.
And unfortunately, 12 episodes means that you won't really see a developed plot and character development wasn't the best thing since the story was sooo fast paced and rushed by the studio, and you couldn't really know much about the characters or get attached to them, except for a few ones who got more screen time.
Also, after the first episode, the events there felt like all over the place sometimes. However, the 2nd half of the first season was more entertaining, especially the last episode.
The original soundtrack and the voices of the characters on the anime are great though (especially on Kaneki, his voice actor did an amazing job, and other characters like Touka, and Tsukiyama too, which made his scene even more hilarious... and weird too). I must admit, they did a pretty good job at the soundtrack aspect of the anime. And yes, the opening song of Tokyo Ghoul, Unravel is so addictive and it fitted perfectly on every aspect with the anime... just like the ending, Seijatachi. Anyway, the music was a good thing on the anime, it did fit pretty well, and OP and ED are pretty catchy.
As you can see, I made some complaints regarding the anime and its studio ruining some aspects of the adaptation while I tried to not compare too much with the manga (it was inevitable though), but... I must say, it was kind of enjoyable for me when I was new to the series, it had potential like I said, but the feeling that you will get after finishing the first season is that it could have been sooo much better, and there could have been more explanations with many elements of the series like the Kagunes and the RC Cells who were skipped, along with the development of the storyline and the characters... it's like throwing the whole potential away.
You can clearly notice in the anime that Pierrot didn't pull out so much effort and their budget wasn't really the best (there is a reason why many people had bigger enjoyment with the first and episode 12, since it looked like they invested a lot more on these two episodes) while they made that first season.
Sometimes even I imagine that Pierrot just wanted to do that shounen treatment at Tokyo Ghoul's anime since they didn't have the best idea in how to make an adaptation. It even felt like an insult or a disrespect towards most of the manga fans/manga readers, since that first season felt like a prototype version of the manga storyline. I do hope that the anime will be remade in the future and do justice to be as great as the manga.
Is the anime enjoyable after all? Well, if you are new to the series, give it a try... you can either love, or see its potential and wonder how it could have been then watch season 2, and check out the manga to see that potential being developed to something amazing, or then hate it due to what the studio did on that adaptation.
