Blair Loveday
Tokyo Ghoul is one of those anime series I have always meant to watch, but never got around to.
Well, now there is a 10th anniversary box set, showing how long I have actually put it off. I was really glad to finally correct that in style with this box set.
The first Season of Tokyo Ghoul follows the young Ken Kaneki. He meets a pretty women, who turns out to be a ghoul. The ghoul attacks him and he finds himself in critical condition after the attack, but fortunately for him some construction girders fall and kill the ghoul.
Kaneki has some of her organs transplanted into him, and this turns him into a half ghoul half human. In this world, ghouls look like humans but are way stronger and with some distinct red eyes. The kicker is they have to feed on human flesh. In many ways it feels like a different take on the normal vampire type of show. Just flesh eating instead of blood drinking, and they walk around in the light.
Kaneki has to adapt to a life as a half human half ghoul. This means he has to learn that eating human flesh is something he needs to do, but also he’s still kinda a human. Of course as he is learning to live in these two worlds there has to be a bad guy right? There’s a few.
And they attract the attention of the CCG who hunt down ghouls to protect humans from being eaten. The issue is that some ghouls do everything they can to avoid killing humans, and the CCG doesn’t see that.
The second Season has the CCG fighting the Aogiri Tree which is a group of ghouls. Then Season 3 has our protagonist joining the CCG after he gets amnesia. Tonally there is a sudden change from Season 2 to Season 3, and it turns out there is a reason for that.
Apparently the second Season varies from the manga a fair bit, and then Season 3 pulls it back more in line. I liked Season 2 plenty so wish they kinda just followed that. The early stages of Season 3 are pretty hard to follow, but when you power through it does become plenty of fun.
The biggest issue, outside of that weirdness with Season 2 and 3, is that the show never really gives characters a lot of development. We get slices of their personality, but not really enough of their motivations. What I found was the show was plenty of fun, and the world is interesting, but it winds up being surface level. This box set has all the Seasons, some OVA’s and a heap of special features which I really enjoyed watching afterwards. It is all encased in blu ray discs in a gorgeous hard cover box that looks fantastic on the shelf.
Tokyo Ghoul isn’t a perfect series, but it’s a hell of a lot of fun. An interesting world, interesting story, and some great animation makes it a great chill watch. And this easily makes it worth watching. If you haven;t seen it before this box set is a great way to enjoy it, just be ready for that sharp change from Season 2 to 3.
