- A random pretentious edgy 12-year-old
After the ending of Attack on Titan, the anime community realized that they needed something to fill the void that was left behind. Another anime about humans vs. monsters, with beautiful music and visuals (aimed at 12-year-olds who believe that everything with blood is mature), but that in reality is just an advertisement for the way better manga was exactly what the community wanted. And then we got Tokyo Ghoul, one of the most overhyped anime I've ever seen. If you heard the fans talking about it, you almost believed that this was the best work of fiction ever created, with deep philosophical themes, well developed characters and a brilliant story. In reality there was another damn story about humans vs. monsters (and one of the humans becomes a monster, so original), a bland cast and an attempt to raise the question "are the ghouls or the humans the monsters?", but even Elfen Lied handled this better.
~Story~ 2/10
Kaneki is your average shy and boring protagonist, who has a date with a girl who's at least ten times as hot as he is. Then she turns into a ghoul (a monster that eats humans) and tries to eat our poor hero, because of plot convenience some kind of organization drops a bunch of metal bars exactly on the girl and she dies, the wounded Kaneki who magically survives, gets some organs from the girl and he turns into a half-ghoul. Of course it's totally possible for a doctor to transplant organs from a ghoul into a human without getting trouble and of course our hero is now special, because he's both human and ghoul. He teams up with a bunch of ghouls who only eat death people and befriends a tsundere called Touka. Then we watch how the ghouls are victimized, because how can humans be so evil that they try to kill monsters who try to eat them? Only 99% percent of ghouls is evil, there is no reason to kill all of those murderous, psychotic monsters because 1% of the ghouls is good, right? What kind of logic is that?! "We have to make sure that the audience feels sorry for the monsters, let's make the humans kill a little innocent ghoul girl's mother and laugh psychotic while doing it, that's not obvious and cheap right?" It is, all the villains in this show look like comic book villains, laugh while murdering innocent people and probably strangle little cats for fun, they're not realistic at all! Everyone tries to kill poor Kaneki, because apparently half-ghouls are tasty, why? I have no idea. There is something going on between episode 1 and 11 that can be described as a plot, but you can summarize it in one sentence: people try to kill Kaneki and ghouls are victimized, the end. But then there is a shocking, extremely original plot twist....... victimization- power-up. Oh and an unsatisfying conclusion, read the manga or wait for season 2!
{CONCLUSION}
The story consists of the constant and never ending victimization of monsters. No, there is no reason to sympathize with the ghouls. Yes, of course they just want to survive, but the same thing goes for the humans. And the humans aren't victimized 24/7 in this show. The ghouls aren't 100% evil, but neither are they 'misunderstood' like the director of this anime seems to think. The story is weak and there are unanswered questions and plotholes EVERYWHERE! Like why do the humans keep living the same way as before, when they are surrounded with murderous psychotic human eating monsters? Where are Kaneki's parents? Why does a certain persons hair turn white? How do metal bars fall exactly on the right spot? How can ghouls drink coffee, but no other kind of drinks? Why is every human either pathetic or evil?Why didn't the humans just force everyone to eat food and then checked the people who started vomiting, would that be too logical? And the most important question: why do people claim that this anime has a good story?!
~Animation~ 9/10
The backgrounds were detailed and gorgeous, the character designs were original and the battle scenes looked epic. I have only one problem with the animation: censorship. I personally hate it when half of the screen is covered with black bars, and I assume that most other people aren't a fan of black bars either.
{CONCLUSION}
It looked great, even though the story is (supposed to be) dark, the animators used vivid colors, I think that this was a good idea. The gouls looked beautifully creepy during the fight scenes (look at those eyes), but the censoring was horrible.
~Sound~ 9/10
'Unravel' was amazing. Yes, it was a bit edgy, but I don't even care. The OST's were all somewhere in between decent and almost perfect and they were used in the right scenes. The Japanese voice acting was also top notch, especially the voice actors of Rize and Tsukiyama brought their characters to life.
{CONCLUSION}
The sound was extremely good, the ending song was forgettable but the opening makes up for that. The (Japanese) voice acting was great and the OST's were used at the right moments.
~Characters~ 1/10
They were a pain to watch. The most side characters just were there for 2 minutes and then disappeared just to never come back again. Kaneki is a walking punchbag, who cries a lot, pretty much the whole anime. And I don't feel sorry for him, because he is an overvictimised whiny brat. His development/ character swap in the last episode was weird and unrealistic (Spoiler: when most people are almost tortured to death, they don't turn in a badass). The best thing about him is his masker, great main character! Touka is your average tomboy and all her development is thrown out of the window in the last episode. Then you have bestfriend-kun, oldinspirationalman-kun, psychomurder-kun and victimizedlittlegirl-chan. Boring. Rize was an okay character during her 5 minutes of screen time and Amon seemed to think like a rational human being, those two were endurable. Special mention for Shuu Tsukiyama, he was great meme material and another horrible sadist, obsessed with our amazing main character, really what this anime needed!
{CONCLUSION}
One of the weakest casts I've seen in a very long time. The main character is a joke, the rest of the cast a nuisance. The were either bland or over-the-top evil and sadistic. None of them was memorable and their development was either nonexistent or it came out of nowhere. A plain bad cast, but the voice acting was pretty good, what a waste.
~Enjoyment~ 4/10
Beautiful music, great animation, shitty story and characters, what's new? This seems to be a trend of the last few years (yes, there are exceptions, but in general most new anime follow this pattern). This anime was enjoyable, but so damn forgettable, nothing about the story or the characters was memorable. If you turn of your brain and just want to watch an action series with nice visuals and sound, then Tokyo Ghoul is made for you. But if you want something with substance, don't watch this show. Also the last episode was predictable and the lack of a conclusion is annoying. Maybe that's the biggest problem, it ends with an open ending (watch the sequel) and leaves the viewer with a lot of unanswered questions, but it's not a cliffhanger. I don't want to watch the sequel, because I don't care anymore. If they ended it with something less predictable, I might have felt the urge to watch the damn sequel. Right now I just don't care.
{CONCLUSION}
It could have been great. Imagine: an anime with amazing visuals, great music, an actual story about prejudice an discrimination and well written characters. Sadly enough, the last two things were nowhere to be found in Tokyo Ghoul. It's just another shounen anime, that's trying way to hard to be a seinen, but fails miserably. It was overhyped, overrated and a waste of time. If you want to watch a mindless shounen with epic battles, Tokyo Ghoul is great choice, but if you want anything with substance, then I would advice you to skip it. Peace!
