Story:
One of the biggest problems of the Tokyo Ghoul can be described as trying to fit 1 liter of water into a 0,5 liter glass. There's just so much of the story that has straight up been left out. I could have somewhat understood if they only left out some dialogues that wouldn't have mattered that much, but even in scenes that are in the anime they chose to leave out minor characters like in the ghoul restaurant episode in which there are several humans alongside Kaneki that are going to be served. Leaving out even minor characters like these severely weakens the impact of the story in general. There are also story that is replaced by an "anime only" type version. An example of this would be Kanekis interaction with Banjo and his group including their escape attempt and due to this being removed its replaced with Banjo and an anime only couple working with Banjo being a clean up crew in the room Kaneki is tortured in. Not only does this severely reduce the impact of the couples death compared to who dies in the manga it also reduces the bond form with Banjo and the feeling of betrayal by knowing that Yamori didn't let Banjos group escape. Not only does this weaken the story, but it won't impact the viewers as much as the story to its fullest would have.
As for the art aspect of the story the main issue is trying to make an R rated manga into a pg 13 anime by inane censorship. I can understand lessening gore as the animation costs would be quite hefty, but censorship is not the way to go. There's a reason for Tokyo Ghoul being classed as psychological and horror and to reduce the impact of this by censoring as much of it as you can is not good although this is a problem with anime in general. For example when Kaneki walks in on Hinami feeding that is supposed to affect the viewers as well, but instead you only get the reaction from Kaneki which doesn't impact the viewer as much if at all. To truly make an anime within the psychological and horror genres have impact you can't censor the things that are meant to have an impact on the viewers, it would be like making a porno with just massive black censorship boxes and still claim for it to be porn, it simply wont' have the same impact with censorship as it would have without it. In my opinion censorship has got to go in anime in general as it doesn't do anyone any good.
Characters:
The characters of Tokyo Ghoul are also essentially been reduced to rubble by various factors. The story is mainly at fault in this aspect as much of what is shaven off the story of the manga helps build the characters. Even minor dialogue and interactions help builds the characters and shows the viewer who they are, what they feel and so on. Due to the large amount of supporting characters that get backstories and have an impact on the story at least in the manga I feel like it would be wrong to have it almost dismissed in the anime as these supporting characters do not only have their own characters built up, but also help build the characters of the main characters.
Another massive factor that is absolutely laughable is the voice acting. Voice acting is extremely important to make characters come alive, but the voice acting in Tokyo Ghoul is sub par at best. Perhaps the most glaring voice acting flaw in this anime is that of Shu Tsukiyama. The reason for this is two-fold, the first is my biggest pet peeve in anime voice acting which is the pronunciation of non-english words which is something Tsukiyama does a lot and making him have some broken Japanese sounding version of the words is not going to cut it as it makes Tsukiyamas character seem like a moron. The other part is to capture the essence of the character from the manga which I will say can be difficult to achieve, but it seems like not much effort was made at all. The voice actors also seem to fail to truly capture the emotions of the characters as can clearly be noted in the torture scenes as Kanekis voice acting doesn't make you feel like its as bad as it is portrayed to be despite all the censorship.
Sound:
The choice of background music and the sounds used are also horrid although most of the time background music can be overlooked, but in certain scenes they are meant to capture the spirit of the situation which is something the music choice in Tokyo Ghoul has completely failed to do. The sound effects for the fights are not optimal either, but sounds can be overlooked for the most part if it hadn't been for this being a horrible adaptation. To make it even better both the OP and ED are horrible and don't catch the theme of Tokyo Ghoul at all.
Conclusion:
READ THE MANGA INSTEAD
If you absolutely hate manga or reading then you can watch this adaptation because as a stand alone it would have been ok.
