I'll start off by saying that Tokyo Ghoul and Tokyo Ghoul :Re are two of my favourite manga that I've read and they both hold a significant place in my life. The anime adaptions before :Re had been iffy to say the best, Season 1 of TG whilst not terrible left out a lot of content due to how few episodes they had and Root A was flat out awful.
So moving onto the anime adaption of :Re I was very apprehensive about how it was going to play out. Would they try and mish mash anime original and manga canon material again like they did with Root A or would they ignore Root A and stick to the manga? At the time of these thoughts it wasn't clear on the direction the show would take, thankfully they decided to forget Root A completely and pushed forward with adapting the :Re manga.
The fact that the :Re anime ignores the Root A anime is going to leave a lot of anime only people confused, my advice along with the advice of the creator of TG, go read the original manga chapter 1-143 and then you can watch :Re but perhaps you should read it instead.
How well have they done? The short answer is not great, worse than season 1 better than Root A.
The long answer, well buckle in. :Re's biggest problem is its budget. The animation and general art in the show are poor, it is clear that this is the work of people who aren't the best in the business and that are working under time constraints. There is very much a real lack of soul in this anime and I think a lot of that is due to the budget.
The next major problem for the :Re anime is the pacing. Just like season 1 they've got very few episodes / minutes to tell the story of the first 57 or so chapters of the :Re manga and as manga readers will know :Re starts slow and has a lot of content in those first 50+ chapters. Several episodes adapted 5-6 chapters worth of content the rest around 3-4 chapters per episode. Due to the budget and pacing, a lot of details were left out most notable Haise touching his chin and Fluffy hair Touka. These small details are what made the manga so good.
Now :Re's anime didn't do everything wrong, once again the score has been generally A+ The opening Asphyxia is almost as good as Unravel and the closing isn't too shabby either. As well as the opening / closing tracks there are several other songs the names of which I do not know that are really quite good, especially the song when Haise and Touka meet.
Another 1+ for the anime is in regards to the VA, there are 1 or 2 that sound odd (Suzuya and Kanae both sound pretty bad imo.) However, the rest of the cast put in a very strong performance and I was very pleased to see some familiar names return to voice characters that had previously voiced in past seasons.
Ultimately the anime falls short it was handed a fantastic story on a silver plate and they did it a disservice with how cheaply they made this show. A lot of the focus was put on the fighting which is just a small part of what the manga is and when the animation is as bad as it is in :Re there is nothing to be but to be disappointed.
If you're a fan of the Manga my advice is watch it if you've really got nothing better to do, if you're an anime only well I'm sure you're pretty confused in general about :Re and it's probably best you go and read TG and then TG:Re if you really want to experience the story as it was intended.
Overall rating: 5.4/10
