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.
