The New Show in Town: Tokyo Ghoul
Finally! This week I get to review what may be the
most talked about anime of the summer! That’s
right, this week I’m reviewing Tokyo Ghoul! I wanted to wait until I was a couple of
episodes in before I did a review. Well,
I’ve already seen four episodes already.
So I’m going to go right ahead and start.
Tokyo
Ghoul follows Ken Kaneki, a young college student who is also part ghoul. It all started with a date gone horribly
wrong. What started out as a pretty
great time ended in disaster when Kaneki realizes that his date is a ghoul, a
creature that eats humans. After a
brutal attack in a construction site, a couple of iron beams fall on both
Kaneki and the ghoul. This kills the
ghoul, but severely injures Kaneki. Then
in an attempt to save his life, doctors try to save Kaneki by transferring the
ghoul’s organs to him. After this “life-saving”
operation-if you could call it that-, Kaneki becomes a half-human, half-ghoul
being. From that point onward, much of
the series chronicles Kaneki’s adjustment to this situation.
Though I haven’t seen much of the
show-mostly because it just recently -, thus far, I’ve been very pleased! That’s
why, for the time being, Tokyo Ghoul gets
four out of five stars. The animation is
well done, enough said. And despite the
fact that there is very little going on at the moment, the plot is pretty well
done. Although, I could be wrong when I
say that there is little going on because if you’ve seen the latest episode, you know that there is a lot going on. I don’t tend to go for horror, or at least I
claim that I don’t. But I have to admit,
I like seeing monsters, and that’s what really got my attention with Tokyo Ghoul; there certainly is a “creature
feature” in this show. However, there
are times when this gets a little out of hand, which leads to the next topic.
Despite all the good things that I
have said about Tokyo Ghoul so far,
there certainly are some bad things about. The big one, well, really has to deal with
level of comfort. If you’re not
comfortable with the idea of people being eaten, this is a show to avoid (then
again, this same idea is seen in Attack
on Titan, if you think about it. And
that’s been extremely popular now.). What
makes it even worse is the fact that the ghouls in the show can easily pass off
as humans, which makes the idea of eating people even worse. But aside from that, there were some questions
about the show-and more spoilers-that I had.
For instance, why is it that ghouls can’t eat human food, and yet they
can drink coffee? And also, whose idea
was it to put the organs of a dead ghoul into Kaneki? Okay, I’ll admit, that’s a bit rhetorical,
and the doctor probably didn’t know that the girl was a ghoul. Still, it does bring that question up. Anyways, the biggest thing to watch out for
is the fact that people get eaten.
While watching this show, I have
compared Tokyo Ghoul to another anime. Of all the animes that I’ve seen, one of the darkest
and most brutal of them was Hellsing
Ultimate (as well as the original Hellsing
anime). Though both series are
pretty violent and pretty gory, I think that Tokyo Ghoul is just a notch darker than Hellsing-and that’s coming from a Hellsing fan. It all comes
down to the fact that people are getting eaten.
Now I will admit, this is not an orginal idea in anime. Hellsing
has this somewhat, and I mentioned Attack
on Titan earlier, which for a fact has that all over the place. But think about this: most of the titans eat
humans by choice, and Alucard doesn’t necessarily eat humans, but attacks them
with gusto. Kaneki, on the other hand, refuses
to eat humans, despite the fact that he’s half-ghoul. This is a huge conflict with Kaneki as well
as the show because Kaneki still clings to his human half even though his ghoul
half tells him otherwise. And that’s
what takes the dark level up a notch. That,
and people get eaten!
So to finish this week’s post, Tokyo Ghoul, though new to the anime
scene, has made quite the impression. It’s
a pretty good show, but it’s pretty dark because-once again-people get
eaten! The Japanese dub is currently
streaming online, and I have found two places where the show can be watched. I’ve seen all four current episodes on
YouTube. They’re not in perfect
quality, but there good none the less.
But thr safest and guaranteed site to find the episodes is
funimation.com. Funimation-an American
anime company that produces English-dubbed anime- bought the rights to the show
earlier this year and is streaming the episodes. However, to catch the latest episode, you
have to subscribe to Funimation. Finally,
before I sign off, below is a link to the promotional video for Tokyo Ghoul. Check it out when you get a chance! It’s
really good! Anyways, that’s all I
have. As always, stay posted for more!
-Hanime
on Anime
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