Well, let me tell it this way. It didn't just fall flat on its face, it fell with its mouth wide open on dog shit and remained like that until another dog came and shat on its head. Yes, it was THAT bad. The first season at least had nice animation and sound to back it up. What did Root A have?
WARNING:SPOILERS
Story:
Story? What story? All that I've seen are random shit with no build up, no explanation, no logic, and worst of all, no point. Things just happen out of nowhere and go nowhere. The plot points just appear one moment and gone the next. And unless you haven't read the manga(like me), you won't understand what the hell is happening on screen.
One episode we see Kaneki working with Aogiri to free a certain somebody from the ghoul investigators. Why? Never answered. The other episode we see him breaking in a jail to free another someone. A few moments later that someone is fighting with Kaneki. In the end something happens and that person is never mentioned again. In the next episode Anteiku is being attacked out of nowhere by ghoul investigators. What the fuck happened? Why the fuck is this happening? How the fuck did it end? Absolutely nothing is explained and you are left with your head scratching and thinking what the hell you have just seen.
Also the outrageous logic? Like- the ghoul investigators take the newbies when launching an all-out war with the ghouls of a ward. But when they attack a coffee shop, they take with them ghoul investigators from all around the world with god-like powers. This is nonsense.
Characters:
Destroyed. Whatever development or role they had in the first season is completely ignored. Kaneki is still as whiny and useless as he was in the first season. Amon is still the biggest hypocrite of all time. Touka does absolutely nothing but run in the entirety of the twelve episodes. All the other characters except the Manager are irrelevant.
And yet the anime introduces a ton of new characters just for the sake of moving the plot forward. And none of these characters get enough screentime. Mado's daughter, that crazy Jason fanatic, the buttload of ghoul investigators, and Hide, who stalks around the CCG headquarters for.....whatever. Most of the major and some minor characters from both seasons are killed for no reason af all other than cheap drama and shock value. But to me it wasn't much of a big deal since I barely know anything about them.
Animation and Sound:
Whoa!!! Is this shit real? Root A has THE worst animation I have ever had misfortune if watching. Seriously, animation was seriously lacking. The fight scenes were so badly choreographed, it almost made me vomit. I can't believe any action anime can actually have this shit quality animation. And the last fights? Most of them happened in the smoke so you can see nothing. The ones that didn't lasted for less than a minute.
The music was on par with the animation, i.e. bad. The opening and endings sucked. The dialogues were long, boring and misused. The whole thing seemed pointless.
The last 10 or so minutes of the series consisted of Kaneki walking in the snow, his hair, his eyes, walking, his hair, his eyes.....while the song 'unravel' playing in the background. It was supposed to be sad or something as it involved someone's death. But showing the exact same thing for freaking 10 minutes is EXTREMELY boring.
Overall:
I think someone stole whatever money the producers earned from tbe first season. So what they were left with was a shitty budget and this was the result. Or they perhaps have stopped caring and wanted to milk as much cash as possible from the fans without spending too much of their money.
Tokyo Ghoul Root A has earned the worst anime sequel ever rank in my list. It will always be a mystery as to how I completed this. I won't recommend it to anyone, not even to fans of Tokyo Ghoul.
