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Episode Review: Tokyo Ghoul


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swienke



Joined: 18 May 2009
Posts: 245
PostPosted: Sat Aug 30, 2014 5:35 pm Reply with quote
Zhou_BR wrote:
Likewise, I lost all sympathy for spoiler[Touka once she decided to avenge Hinami's mother by killing an investigator who had nothing to do with her death, which obviously just served to escalate things between Ghouls and Doves. Why couldn't she just take revenge on Mado directly, which would have had the same effect on the plot?]


I'm not going to say that what spoiler[Touka] did is morally justified, but there's a couple of things to keep in mind that make the situation murkier:

First, that inspector spoiler[actually was involved in the death of Hinami's mother. He was one of the two backup guys who helped Mado and Amon pin them in the alley. He didn't actually kill Ryouko, but he's not an innocent bystander either.]

Secondly, all spoiler[Touka knew was that inspectors assigned to the 20th ward had killed Ryouko and seen Hinami's face. She didn't know exactly who had struck the finishing blow, so she didn't know to focus on Mado specifically. But even if she had, all of the inspectors that were present when Ryouko was killed were a threat, because they had all seen Hinami's face and were capable of identifying her]. That doesn't make what spoiler[Touka] did right and I think the series goes to great pains to point that out, but it's consistent with the actions of a spoiler[young, brash ghoul desperate for not just revenge, but to protect one of the very few people near and dear to her.]
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Zhou-BR



Joined: 28 Feb 2008
Posts: 1419
PostPosted: Sat Aug 30, 2014 6:09 pm Reply with quote
swienke wrote:
I'm not going to say that what spoiler[Touka] did is morally justified, but there's a couple of things to keep in mind that make the situation murkier:

First, that inspector spoiler[actually was involved in the death of Hinami's mother. He was one of the two backup guys who helped Mado and Amon pin them in the alley. He didn't actually kill Ryouko, but he's not an innocent bystander either.]

Secondly, all spoiler[Touka knew was that inspectors assigned to the 20th ward had killed Ryouko and seen Hinami's face. She didn't know exactly who had struck the finishing blow, so she didn't know to focus on Mado specifically. But even if she had, all of the inspectors that were present when Ryouko was killed were a threat, because they had all seen Hinami's face and were capable of identifying her]. That doesn't make what spoiler[Touka] did right and I think the series goes to great pains to point that out, but it's consistent with the actions of a spoiler[young, brash ghoul desperate for not just revenge, but to protect one of the very few people near and dear to her.]


You make some good points. I honestly didn't recall that spoiler[that inspector had helped Mado and Amon trap Hinami and her mother.] As you said, it doesn't make what spoiler[Touka] did justifiable, but it does make it a bit less stupid.


Last edited by Zhou-BR on Sun Aug 31, 2014 10:41 am; edited 1 time in total
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BWLJ



Joined: 11 Jul 2014
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PostPosted: Sat Aug 30, 2014 11:34 pm Reply with quote
The anime is rush if you've read the manga. Like Kaneki's shift into the ghoul world feels more natural in the manga and other characters are given more screen time.

Another thing about the manga is that there is a lot of detail in the back ground. Like there are hidden Tarot Card symbolism for the characters; Kaneki=Hangman (later the Chariot), Touka=High Priestess for example.
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TropicaliaSoup



Joined: 02 Jun 2014
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PostPosted: Mon Sep 01, 2014 6:23 pm Reply with quote
I have a lot of feelings about this show. I thought the first few episodes were okay. I really enjoyed the action and liked how the story developed but I didn't think much of the show. When Shu showed up I was annoyed at first but things became so ridiculous that the show was a lot more fun. Since the climax of his arc the drama has been disappointing. I suppose the show has begun to focus more on human and ghoul relations, but I really wish they would go deeper into this subject. It's not clear how much of a problem ghouls are. If I was in charge there would be way more programs for dealing with ghouls than just doves. Basically I'm upset that the world isn't better developed.

My other big issue is not caring much for the characters, some are interesting but for the most part their just okay. The drama is pretty hit or miss with me because of this, and I'm having trouble staying invested in the story. I especially have trouble sympathizing with ghouls because I see them as parasites. It just makes sense for humans to react with fear which turns to anger when it come to ghouls. Even interpreting their emotions as mimicry of humans is a reasonable perspective. The moral lines in this show aren't that grey. The nicest ghouls would be perfectly happy as humans, which leads me to question why ghouls need to exists if all they are good for can be fulfilled by humans. This conflict would be a lot more interesting if there were movements from sympathizers on both sides and attempts at nonviolent resolution (like developing synthetic human flesh). Basically, I wish the conflicts presented in the show weren't so small scale.

Ultimately, I wish the show had more depth and really dug into the issues presented by the setup. The humans vs ghouls stuff is actually quite simplistic (Kaneki can't be the first person to figure out that ghouls have feeling like humans do), and it really seems like we don't have a wide enough perspective on the issue.
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wahboo



Joined: 02 Sep 2014
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PostPosted: Tue Sep 02, 2014 2:56 am Reply with quote
Tokyo Ghoul has taken an average roll of characters from shy to potentially powerful young awkward boy to distant strong willed hormonal pre teen girl. Fallowing along these lines its lead into a vaguely unique story. What's lead up to the most current episode it seems the character development is growing steadily. Especially in the main character Kaneki. Seeing this show staying for the long haul though seems like a dream only the Ghouls could have. Lets see with how it develops.
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Agent355



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PostPosted: Wed Sep 03, 2014 1:07 am Reply with quote
TropicaliaSoup wrote:


I especially have trouble sympathizing with ghouls because I see them as parasites. It just makes sense for humans to react with fear which turns to anger when it come to ghouls. Even interpreting their emotions as mimicry of humans is a reasonable perspective. The moral lines in this show aren't that grey. The nicest ghouls would be perfectly happy as humans, which leads me to question why ghouls need to exists if all they are good for can be fulfilled by humans. This conflict would be a lot more interesting if there were movements from sympathizers on both sides and attempts at nonviolent resolution (like developing synthetic human flesh). Basically, I wish the conflicts presented in the show weren't so small scale.

I have a problem with this, too. The themes and tropes of this show have been told so many times in much more engaging ways--reluctant vampire, human/monster relations, humans are the real monsters(!), and "don't fear what you can't understand--even monsters can be sympathetic!" were all themes in the vampire anime Shiki. Shiki didn't have the same gory violence and action, but its psychological examination of its characters and their plight had a lot more depth without delving into melodrama and pathos.

I just can't get over how, well, monstrous the ghouls are. Even the "good" ones get their sustenance by destroying the corpses of suicide victims without permission from their families (or consequences of stealing corpses, apparently). Synthetic human flesh or even sympathetic people donating their or their family members' bodies to their ghoul friends for their benefit, heck, even people choosing to sell their bodies or body parts to ghouls for money, would go a long way at making ghouls more sympathetic to me. The story simply does not support any kind of middle ground where ghouls and humans can coexist peacefully, even at a conceptual level.

It makes me look forward to the upcoming Parasyte anime, another story that excels in its human/monster hybrid story. spoiler[It doesn't really try to "humanize" its monsters, and it doesn't have to for the story to work]. If the Parasyte anime is anything like its manga source, it will have all the gory action Tokyo Ghoul has with a more interesting take on monsters to boot. At least, I hope it will!

Talking about manga, I'm getting a bit annoyed at people who come to an English language website in order to complain that an unlicensed manga or light novel is *soo* inferior to its licensed adaptation, with the implication that everyone should be up to date with scanlations.
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BWLJ



Joined: 11 Jul 2014
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PostPosted: Wed Sep 03, 2014 5:10 pm Reply with quote
Agent355 wrote:
TropicaliaSoup wrote:


I especially have trouble sympathizing with ghouls because I see them as parasites. It just makes sense for humans to react with fear which turns to anger when it come to ghouls. Even interpreting their emotions as mimicry of humans is a reasonable perspective. The moral lines in this show aren't that grey. The nicest ghouls would be perfectly happy as humans, which leads me to question why ghouls need to exists if all they are good for can be fulfilled by humans. This conflict would be a lot more interesting if there were movements from sympathizers on both sides and attempts at nonviolent resolution (like developing synthetic human flesh). Basically, I wish the conflicts presented in the show weren't so small scale.

I have a problem with this, too. The themes and tropes of this show have been told so many times in much more engaging ways--reluctant vampire, human/monster relations, humans are the real monsters(!), and "don't fear what you can't understand--even monsters can be sympathetic!" were all themes in the vampire anime Shiki. Shiki didn't have the same gory violence and action, but its psychological examination of its characters and their plight had a lot more depth without delving into melodrama and pathos.

I just can't get over how, well, monstrous the ghouls are. Even the "good" ones get their sustenance by destroying the corpses of suicide victims without permission from their families (or consequences of stealing corpses, apparently). Synthetic human flesh or even sympathetic people donating their or their family members' bodies to their ghoul friends for their benefit, heck, even people choosing to sell their bodies or body parts to ghouls for money, would go a long way at making ghouls more sympathetic to me. The story simply does not support any kind of middle ground where ghouls and humans can coexist peacefully, even at a conceptual level.

It makes me look forward to the upcoming Parasyte anime, another story that excels in its human/monster hybrid story. spoiler[It doesn't really try to "humanize" its monsters, and it doesn't have to for the story to work]. If the Parasyte anime is anything like its manga source, it will have all the gory action Tokyo Ghoul has with a more interesting take on monsters to boot. At least, I hope it will!

Talking about manga, I'm getting a bit annoyed at people who come to an English language website in order to complain that an unlicensed manga or light novel is *soo* inferior to its licensed adaptation, with the implication that everyone should be up to date with scanlations.


That's kind of the point. So this is explored more in the manga (no, not by the further chapters, but the scenes the SKIPPED in the anime), but you kind of see a little of it in the anime when Touka says that all she wants is to live. A lot of sci-fi science is used to described the ghouls, and their possible origin, with some wondering if they are just an evolutionary dead end.

That's the point. Imagine being you as you are now, just wanting to live a life, but at the same time being something so monstrous that you start to wonder if you deserve to live. Wanting a place in the world, but also feeling like you are just a biological accident that doesn't belong here.

THAT is why I like tokyo ghoul so much. . . well the manga, again lots of missing scenes. The anime feels like just one of those anime that was made just as an expensive commercial for the source material. Or maybe fanservice for the fans who wanted to see some of their favorite scenes from the manga be animated.

I can understand why you would feel tired of hearing about how the manga is better, but in this case it's because of all the stuff they skipped. Like they are basically putting 40-50 episodes worth of material into 12 (it's pretty obvious from the OP and trailers where this season was going to end).

PS- Sorry if that's too hard to read through, i'm tired right now, I'll come back and fix it later.
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JacobC
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PostPosted: Wed Sep 03, 2014 6:15 pm Reply with quote
BWLJ wrote:


That's kind of the point. So this is explored more in the manga (no, not by the further chapters, but the scenes the SKIPPED in the anime), but you kind of see a little of it in the anime when Touka says that all she wants is to live. A lot of sci-fi science is used to described the ghouls, and their possible origin, with some wondering if they are just an evolutionary dead end.

That's the point. Imagine being you as you are now, just wanting to live a life, but at the same time being something so monstrous that you start to wonder if you deserve to live. Wanting a place in the world, but also feeling like you are just a biological accident that doesn't belong here.


Honestly...? I got all of that out of it too, even though I'm just watching the anime. Despite the lack of worldbuilding and specific details about how ghouls came to be or how their predatory organs specifically work or etc., those themes still come through really strong. That's why I addressed them in my review of eps. 1-8: the ghouls are hard to root for as a "creature that deserves to exist," harder than almost any other "misunderstood monster" character like brooding vampires or (Fallout) ghouls. The story really challenges you to accept that all sapient life is worth protecting, because even the ghouls see themselves as "an evolutionary dead end." But they still have that drive to live. They can't just lay down and die, so they try (and sometimes fail) to live decent lives. That's hard-to-swallow stuff, truly morally ambiguous in the best way, and most of what I find so captivating about the story besides the great action direction.

I feel like people maybe get too hung up on "literal faithfulness" over "spiritual faithfulness" sometimes. I haven't read the manga, but all the stuff people say is missing from this adaptation is either stuff I completely got at some point in the material (Touka's "I just want to live like everybody else" dialogue when taking down Mado, for the above example,) or it's world-building details not integral to understanding the conflict that I can just read about on wikipedia. (Hey, ghouls' predatory organs develop in different parts of their torso depending on their genetics and power level. Cool. Gross.)

I'm not saying the manga isn't a superior experience, it might very well be with the medium change allowing for more in-depth exploration of the premise, but that doesn't mean the show itself doesn't work. It's working great for me, and does make me want to read the source material, without seeming like a commercial for it that doesn't make sense and have merit on its own. Based on what I'm reading in this thread, it seems to me like the anime is communicating the ideas of its source material very well, just opting to cut out worldbuilding details, a lot of Kaneki's internal monologue, and truncating flashbacks to show them mid-action rather than in their own extended chapters. That's okay. If you're making an action show and you want the action consistent, as it is in Tokyo Ghoul, barring budget limitations, this is a valid way to go about it.
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BWLJ



Joined: 11 Jul 2014
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PostPosted: Thu Sep 04, 2014 12:09 am Reply with quote
JesuOtaku wrote:
BWLJ wrote:


That's kind of the point. So this is explored more in the manga (no, not by the further chapters, but the scenes the SKIPPED in the anime), but you kind of see a little of it in the anime when Touka says that all she wants is to live. A lot of sci-fi science is used to described the ghouls, and their possible origin, with some wondering if they are just an evolutionary dead end.

That's the point. Imagine being you as you are now, just wanting to live a life, but at the same time being something so monstrous that you start to wonder if you deserve to live. Wanting a place in the world, but also feeling like you are just a biological accident that doesn't belong here.


Honestly...? I got all of that out of it too, even though I'm just watching the anime. Despite the lack of worldbuilding and specific details about how ghouls came to be or how their predatory organs specifically work or etc., those themes still come through really strong. That's why I addressed them in my review of eps. 1-8: the ghouls are hard to root for as a "creature that deserves to exist," harder than almost any other "misunderstood monster" character like brooding vampires or (Fallout) ghouls. The story really challenges you to accept that all sapient life is worth protecting, because even the ghouls see themselves as "an evolutionary dead end." But they still have that drive to live. They can't just lay down and die, so they try (and sometimes fail) to live decent lives. That's hard-to-swallow stuff, truly morally ambiguous in the best way, and most of what I find so captivating about the story besides the great action direction.

I feel like people maybe get too hung up on "literal faithfulness" over "spiritual faithfulness" sometimes. I haven't read the manga, but all the stuff people say is missing from this adaptation is either stuff I completely got at some point in the material (Touka's "I just want to live like everybody else" dialogue when taking down Mado, for the above example,) or it's world-building details not integral to understanding the conflict that I can just read about on wikipedia. (Hey, ghouls' predatory organs develop in different parts of their torso depending on their genetics and power level. Cool. Gross.)

I'm not saying the manga isn't a superior experience, it might very well be with the medium change allowing for more in-depth exploration of the premise, but that doesn't mean the show itself doesn't work. It's working great for me, and does make me want to read the source material, without seeming like a commercial for it that doesn't make sense and have merit on its own. Based on what I'm reading in this thread, it seems to me like the anime is communicating the ideas of its source material very well, just opting to cut out worldbuilding details, a lot of Kaneki's internal monologue, and truncating flashbacks to show them mid-action rather than in their own extended chapters. That's okay. If you're making an action show and you want the action consistent, as it is in Tokyo Ghoul, barring budget limitations, this is a valid way to go about it.


Ok so there was a bit of a misunderstanding. I'm not very good at getting my thought across to other people with words (but i'm getting better, so that's something), and I sometimes forget to include points i intended to talk about.

It's not just world building that get's shafted, it's also characterization. Manga Hide and Kaneki are awesome at this point, and other characters like Touka and Yomo get more characterization too. They humanize characters who happen to be ghoul, rather than ghouls as a whole (it's what i was trying to say in my "what if you were a ghoul bit", which on hindsight I would've just said THIS first).

Another thing is that I haven't been saying this stuff to dish on the anime, or anime only fans. Let's see, how to put this without spoilers. . . Ok, so in ASOIAF I liked Sansa, because she grew up from this naive young girl with her head in the clouds into a capable more down to earth young woman. In the show like all those scenes get removed, so when THAT scene hits on the tail end of season 4 it comes out of nowhere. Something like that will happen in Ghoul. . . twice.
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BWLJ



Joined: 11 Jul 2014
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PostPosted: Thu Sep 04, 2014 1:05 am Reply with quote
BWLJ wrote:

Another thing is that I haven't been saying this stuff to dish on the anime, or anime only fans. Let's see, how to put this without spoilers. . . Ok, so in ASOIAF I liked Sansa, because she grew up from this naive young girl with her head in the clouds into a capable more down to earth young woman. In the show like all those scenes get removed, so when THAT scene hits on the tail end of season 4 it comes out of nowhere. Something like that will happen in Ghoul. . . twice.


*I like Game of Thornes, because like you said it keeps with in the spirit of the books, but the Sansa thing is still one of the things that bothered me. I'm not saying that the anime is inferior to the manga.

This is something that shouldn't be a big deal. It somehow ended up as me rambling on things that don't have that much to do with with I tried to say at first. Which is something that tends to happen to me with conversation in real life. Like I could start talking about why I'm a vegan, and 20 minutes later I'm rambling about self aware robots.
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ChibiKangaroo



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PostPosted: Thu Sep 04, 2014 6:10 pm Reply with quote
I watched episode 10, and I promised myself that I would be good. I think we all know what I'm talking about lol. But anyway, your review was good. Among the three of the more hyped shows (Aldnoah.zero, Terror in Resonance, and Tokyo Ghoul), Tokyo Ghoul continues to consistently beat the other two in pretty much every category. I still get annoyed by Kaneki's insanely slow burn development and his general weakness, but the story is more dynamic and much better executed than the other two, and there are much more interesting characters in the world of Tokyo Ghoul.
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ichii_1



Joined: 02 Sep 2014
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PostPosted: Thu Sep 04, 2014 9:07 pm Reply with quote
No way did the publishers expect the anime to be this big, this isn't like SNK and you can clearly see the rushing has slowed down some which is some proof that there is gonna be a big cliffhanger and a possible second season.

I like that they switched the dove and gourmet arcs around, it flows better than stopping and completely changing the atmosphere/setting twice.
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Lain'sHairline



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PostPosted: Thu Sep 04, 2014 11:08 pm Reply with quote
Jason 4 Prez.

What about this?! Lol.

Something about ghouls killing doves makes my day. Hope to see more.
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byeh8er



Joined: 05 Sep 2014
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PostPosted: Fri Sep 05, 2014 10:59 am Reply with quote
I actually am enjoying Tokyo Ghoul and don't rip me a new one saying that it sucks and that I should read the manga cause I already did. I personally think that it's going well and I honestly think that this art design is waaaaayyyy better than the manga. I don't think it's poorly done at all. But it also frustrates me that you people so easily criticize without knowing how much work gets put into an anime. Do you think that wanted 12 episodes? You don't know what happened, what if they didn't have enough funding to do more episodes. That what you guys don't get. It really does aggravate and I actually love the series. That's right LOVE! So say what you want but personally I think the audience is enjoying it and it's probably the highlight of this summer's anime.
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HaruhiToy



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PostPosted: Sat Sep 06, 2014 12:23 am Reply with quote
The beat-down Jason dealt out to Kaneki even had Ayato (Touka's brother) wincing. I thought that Kaneki was also completely impaled through the chest but even his shirt showed no signs of it a few moments later.

"I can't break him!" Jason yells. Does Kaneki have some sort of resilience power that other ghouls don't have?
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