I've been with this series for 4 years now. First introduced via the first season of the anime in 2014 and quickly afterwards jumped onto the manga. The series as a whole has a special place in my life every Monday I'd anticipate happily because a new chapter was about to release. It made Mondays that little bit better.
The first manga was great, truly a wonder to read with Ishida's beautiful art style and watercolour coloured pages, as well as a rich and vibrant world with clues and hints of deeper meanings, sprinkle throughout. The series also commanded a large cast of great characters, Kaneki, Touka, Arima, Eto, Yomo, Uta, Furuta, Marude, Ayato, Akira, Amon, Suzuya etc etc etc.
TG:Re in the beginning only built on that starting us off 2 years after the events of part 1 with a new cast of characters all with their own charm. Slowly things were revealed that only made the experience better. The first 86 chapters of Tokyo Ghoul:Re I would consider a masterpiece, on par with the likes of Berserk and Vagabond. Ishida put so much work into the manga in those chapters and it paid off.
However, the story declined in quality after those 86 chapters of :Re We still had amazing chapters like 125 and 146 as well as a dozen other truly great chapters, but those great chapters were mixed in and overshadowed by mediocre chapters and that continued on until the end.
The Dragon Arc whilst like I mentioned had a lot of great chapters suffered heavily due to the pace that Ishida set. Everything sped up and in those last 20-30 chapters, it felt incredibly rushed, like Ishida just wanted to finish it. Which I understand it's been 7 years of work for Ishida with very few breaks I'm surprised he was able to put out such great work for so long without any major illnesses.
The last chapter felt like a kick in the gut, I'm happy with how things turned out for a lot of the characters but the way it was presented in this last chapter wasn't good. It felt like a fanfic, so much exposition just piled into 36 pages. Even with so much stuff shovelled into an extended chapter we are still left with questions about certain plot points and some characters.
I don't know why Ishida chose to end it so quickly. The story would have done well to have had 30 more chapters to pace out the ending properly. The only thing I can think of is that Ishida was tired and wanted to end his story and instead of taking a break and possibly screwing up the flow of the story for fans for xx number of months decided to push hard to get it finished as fast as he possibly could. I don't think he intended to the story to end in such a shoddy manner I think he loves his story and his fans but after 7 years he couldn't do it anymore and decided to get us to the end no matter the cost.
In closing, TG and TG:Re are fantastic mangas that are well worth reading, the manga and Ishida made me look at the world and myself in a different way and really made a positive impact in my life so I'm grateful for Ishida and his story and I'll continue to read and to love it for the rest of my days and I think others will as well.
So thank you Ishida, Here's to you.
