Thoughts on Tokyo Ghoul



Anime - Passable/Overrated
Since the anime is a bit easier to talk about, I'll start with it. The first half is decent in my opinion, but it does leave out a few things that you could only find out in the manga. However, the manga does leave important questions unanswered, but I'll get to it when I talk about it. If you can enjoy the anime without the origin of ghouls being explained, who the doctor was that operated on Kaneki and why, and why Kaneki just left his friends, then you'll like the first half. The second half, root a, is much worse both for fans of the anime and manga. The producers of the show change more of the plot for some reason I can't think of. Kaneki is now on the side of his enemies to get stronger instead of starting his own little group. He doesn't talk much. More questions are raised rather than answered. At this point in the show, it seems like the producers just gave up and said, "They'll read the manga" even though the anime should stand on its own without the source material. I don't know why, but the anime version of this story is boring compared to the original. It might be the direction of the anime or because I got the manga all in one go. The visuals for the anime are largely decent but don't really catch your eye.
At this time, the series didn't interest me, but since my mom liked it, I watched it with her.

Now around the time of this blog post, Barnes and Noble had a buy two get one free on manga. I had plenty of money to spend and since Tokyo Ghoul is only fourteen volumes, I got them all as pictured above.

Manga - Good
The manga is more fleshed out than the anime and better. The art style is great just look up the covers and the plot has better pacing. The one thing that I would've liked is if the author explained what ghouls actually are. The best theory I have is that they're just a mutation or evolved form of a human (backwards evolution because of things in the plot but still). The ending is just a cliffhanger for the sequel series Tokyo Ghoul RE and leaves you wanting more, so I wish that was different. Besides those things and maybe a few minor things I didn't pay too much attention to.

I liked Tokyo Ghoul. It isn't one of the best series out there, but I can see why people would say that. I'd recommend the manga (not the anime) to people who like fantasy/dark fantasy manga/comics or even novels.

Novel side-note
It has a novel feel to it for some reason and would be a good novel if it was written this way. Maybe the creator of Tokyo Ghoul is a fan of novels and they inserted that personal taste into Kaneki since he loves books (There are a couple light novels for Tokyo Ghoul, which I haven't read, but I heard they're decent).

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