TOKYO GHOUL:re
I have seen the first two seasons of Tokyo Ghoul. The first one wasn’t too great if I’m being honest, but it wasn’t the worst thing I’ve ever seen. The second was just abysmal, with nothing good about it whatsoever. Sure the animation is smooth, but I cannot care about characters fighting if I don’t care about why they’re fighting.
So naturally, I was apprehensive about the adaptation to the sequel, Tokyo Ghoul:re. Would they once again deviate from the source material and create an obnoxious mix of “what if” scenarios, or would they deny the previous season’s existence entirely and create something better, something that Studio Pierrot is actually capable of? To put it simply, they decided to completely forget the events of Season 2 and began following source material from the Tokyo Ghoul:re manga.
If you are deciding to watch it, my advice and the advice of the creator of Tokyo Ghoul are to read chapters 1 to 143 of the original manga. Well, how has Pierrot done this time? To put it bluntly, not too well.
Right off the bat, an increasingly prominent problem for the Tokyo Ghoul:re or Tokyo Ghoul, in general, is the terrible pacing. Like the first season, they have got a small number of episodes to showcase the story that took up 57 Chapters in the Tokyo Ghoul:re manga. As I’m sure most manga readers will know, Tokyo Ghoul: Re starts slow and consists of a ton of dialogue and other content within those first 50 chapters; mostly, none of it is action.
Many episodes adapted around five to six chapters each, whereas others adapted four to five each. But due to the terribly low budget constraints and the boorish pacing, a ton of details were left out from the series, crucial details which made Tokyo Ghoul what it is. Tiny details gave characters an innate sense of personality, such as; Haise stroking his chin or Touka’s cute and fluffy hair. These small details are what made the manga for Tokyo Ghoul: Re so darn good, and the missing elements do hurt it a lot.
Sadly, the characters aren’t saving the series this time around either. Full of bland attitudes and tone-deaf dialogue, the Tokyo Ghoul:re anime adapts the characters terribly. In the manga, the characters did seem generic at first, but their constant evolution through slow and proper development turned them into such lovable protagonists and antagonists.
Unfortunately, the pattern continues as Tokyo Ghoul:re makes the same mistake as its predecessors, not giving the characters enough time to develop. Apart from Haise and maybe Urie, every single character in the series has a rushed development.
They literally gave some characters five minutes’ worth of flashbacks and called it a day instead of giving them actual episodes like they deserved to get. The silver lining here is that the developed characters, Haise and Urie, get integrated into the world beautifully, with their characters progressing a long way throughout the series. Although it’s still disappointing that I cannot say the same for the rest of the cast of beautiful characters that never once got the spotlight.
Well, this is a part where the downgrade from Tokyo Ghoul shows. Tokyo Ghoul:re's biggest weakness is the production budget restraints. Studio Pierrot is definitely known for throwing cash when they want to. Still, apparently, one of the best-selling series which made them a ton of money despite the adaptation being terrible wasn’t worth it.
The animation and art design, in general, are EXTREMELY poorly made. It is super obvious from the get-go that the art and animation work was done by a group of amateurs or people who were forced to work under harsh time constraints. There is a genuine lack of passion that oozes out of the screen when you watch this, and budget constraint is definitely a factor contributing to that for sure.
When the first episode aired, the animation did look pretty decent to me. However, it was a genuine downward spiral from thereon. The animation seemed super bland, lazily created with a ton of boring overtones used as backgrounds for scenes. Gone are the vivid, destructive colors of Tokyo Ghoul Season 1 and Season 2. The art style wasn’t anything that I expected, it was super generic for the most part, and I felt like I was watching a random low-budget series instead of the “ACCLAIMED TOKYO GHOUL.”
I did enjoy the ending song for Tokyo Ghoul:re. I was already a massive fan of Queen Bee from the start, so the music just resonated with me. I don’t care much about the opening song, though, as I feel like it doesn’t represent Tokyo Ghoul in the best way.
The music is lackluster; it’s just a couple of random uninspired synth beats used as background noise to keep the filler up. It genuinely feels boring, and I cannot remember a single track from the series I liked aside from the ending song. It is also evident that the voice actors were not happy doing this job, especially Natsuki Hanae. His voice acting is usually magnificent, but here he sounded stiff and tired of what he was doing, which hurt the series.
Tokyo Ghoul:re is nothing like its prequels, the first and second seasons were full of adrenaline-pumping visuals and dark satirical moral warfare between the Ghouls and humans. That’s all gone here, and there honestly isn’t much to keep people fascinated.
The story in the anime is just tiring, and even the visuals and music, which were a selling point for me, are mediocre now. There is zero consistency in terms of quality. Everything that held the first two seasons from being good is still present, whereas the things that made them better are gone, a shame.
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