TOKYO GHOUL √A

DESCRIPTION

CAST

MANGA ActionTokyo Ghoul
ANIME ActionTokyo Ghoul:re
ANIME ActionTokyo Ghoul

REVIEWS

• 

  KoZ2029

  10/100
  An anime original that could be good, but went horribly, horribly wrong.

  Note: This review contains spoilers. I've hidden them under the spoiler tags. If you haven't watched the show and hate spoilers, you better be careful reading this.

  Have you ever wondered about an alternate 'what if' route spun to a good story? If it is utilized properly, it could be a good alternative route that could possibly rival the original story. But, if it was handled poorly, it can turn horribly wrong and end up becoming a trainwreck.

  Unfortunately, Tokyo Ghoul √A is a show with the situation of the latter.

  A continuation to the an adaptation to the manga with the same name, Tokyo Ghoul √A tells an alternative route diverging from the manga, which follows Kaneki's adventure after the event of the Aogiri arc, which has him joining Aogiri to protect his friends.

  Note: From here and out, I'm going to review Tokyo Ghoul √A from standalone, not relating or talking about the manga to determine its quality, because the two as a whole are very different things.

  While the concept of Kaneki joining Aogiri is interesting to say at least, it comes off as horribly executed and came out of nowhere, and feels forced. First off, what for did Kaneki join the group that tortured the living shit out of him? The show did not explain it further and executed it without any thoughts. What's worse is, the subplot was abandoned when he decided to leave the group in Episode 7 which is made more confusing since they did not explain how did he left the group, and the plot adds nothing to the main story as a whole.

  √A also had a habit of introducing subplots that came out of nowhere, and ends vaguely without adding any meaningful development to the main plot at all. For example, there is an instance about them saving a guy named Shachi from Cochlea. A few episodes later, Shachi disappeared without any explanation at all. Then, the twins also did nothing to the story at all, and like Shachi, they also disappeared after the Cochlea raid.

  The ending of the show would be the biggest disappointment of the plot. It just had Kaneki walking through the road with Hide in his lap, then he meets Arima and BOOM. The screen goes black all of a sudden. The ending did not solve anything at all, leaving holes open wide for the story.

  Most of the time, the characters would compensate for the poor plot. Unfortunately it's not the case for √A, since it handles the characters so poorly. Kaneki, who is the most prominent character in the previous season, is downgraded to a doll with no emotion. He just spends most of his screen time wailing and screaming in agony. His motivations are also vaguely hinted, and they had him joining Aogiri for no apparent reason other than 'protecting his friends' which is of course illogical.

  The other characters are also pushed to the background. Touka becomes completely useless, Tsukiyama has no role other than being a comic relief, and the rest are just there. From the CCG side, the show had a habit of introducing them, and then pushing them to the background and it's hard to connect with the characters when you know almost nothing about them. The only developed characters are probably Ayato, Suzuya, Amon and Hinami.

  The soundtrack is good. Most of the background music are well-handled and fits to the show as a whole, and the ending theme is definitely superb. The main criticism would have to go to the opening, which lyrics are unreasonably very un-catchy. The voice work is average, although I have to admit that Kaneki's screaming can get irritating sometimes.

  Now another criticism goes to the animation. Most of the time, the animation was fine, but when it gets poor, it was really bad. Take a look at Shachi and Kaneki's fight in Episode 4, as well as the scene of Irimi jumping at Hachikawa and his squad in Episode 11. You can see that the budget of the show went down when you see the keyboard scene in Episode 6. The art is good, although sometimes it gets QUALITY art, such as Arima's chin being too long and Kaneki being poorly drawn after jumping from Tsukiyama's attack in Episode 10.

  One merit to this show however, is that the fight scenes are still brutally entertaining, and can be a good watch if you're looking for some action.

  With all that said, Tokyo Ghoul √A had little to no redeemable qualities in my opinion. This is a show that I would not recommend to most people, given its convoluted plot, forgettable characters, and average to poor animation.

  SCORING LIST
  Story: 1/10 (Convoluted and full of plotholes)
  Art and Animation: 5/10 (Fine, but very bad when it gets poor)
  Sound: 6/10 (Great BGM/ED, average voice work, opening is poor)
  Character: 2/10 (Forgettable, only a few of them are developed)
  Enjoyment: 1/10 (Definitely not)
  Overall: 1/10

  Continue on AniList
• 

  OVERPOWERED99

  53/100
  Suffocated by poor execution, the story of ghouls and humans has decayed into a bundle of disordered and confused mess.

  

  Tokyo Ghoul √A decided it would be acceptable to slash away the good elements found in the first season. I can say that you're probably a deranged ghoul if you thought such a thing was a great decision. Now here we are, looking at this pile of mess we call the second season. Without a doubt, it has become a depressing scene that'll make you say "What a bummer”.

  To describe this season, it's a lot less of the solid psychological massacre from the first season and more of a lousy breather to expand on the world of ghouls and humans. Or actually, breather might not the best term to describe it knowing that the majority of its potential was ruined. Yeah, it's more of a suffocating gas. You tried hard to breathe, tried as much as you can to understand and care about what's happening in the narrative, but the gas turned you into doziness and confusion. Shifting the spotlight away from the ghouls of Anteiku towards the bigger groups from both sides, the CCG and Aogiri, is a key factor that contributes to the poor execution as a whole. The appearance of many characters while lacking the knowledge needed to know their role feels really pointless in the grand scheme of things. They appear to fight and talk, and well, that's pretty much it. Introducing all these characters with little explanation or minimal context is a turf where questions arise. Why is everything happening? Who are you? What just happened? Even for existing characters, particularly Kaneki and Touka, they too suffer from this mess, getting downplayed into characters who leave a phantom trail behind. Along with the jumbled up pacing, the story turns into a disconnected piece deprived of coherence. It's not good for what should have been a multidimensional world mixed with ghouls and humans. Short glimmers of backstory are not enough to expand on things. Small dialogues that come and go can only give us a gist off their relationships, but that's not enough to be impactful when they die or mourn. Investment is never there in the first place. A lot of plot elements are hanging at the end, barren and abandoned in the midst of everything.

  If the story and character bring things down, then it's up to the art and sound to score a few points. And well, at least the audiovisual is better when it comes to presenting enjoyment. The muddied up colors of purple and red bring in a depressing tone, fitting the miserable state this anime consistently spews out. I'm not saying that in a bad way because it did refine how the characters feel with how much they were surrounded by violence and darkness. Of course they'll find themselves fighting each other quite a lot. However, a lot of the fights feel awkward with lacklusting choreography and drawn out attacks. Connected loosely together with the narrative, the miniscule amount of tension packs little impact and serves only to show clashes with no motives. Thankfully, from the climax thereon, the fighting animation becomes an improvement, somewhat increasing excitement towards the end. While the characters may be empty inside, their outside appearance is a shell giving off prominent coolness. We have the ghouls with their menacing looks bursting with predation and the folks of CCG equipped with their titanic armors and weapons. It's not lying to say these fights have a badass side to them, especially when they were backed up by good soundtracks. Sentimentality floats in the air with the atmosphere reeking despair for both sides. It's not a fight that comes without consequences, and the deaths and grieves the characters face complement with the music. Deep trembling of orchestral music is truly some powerful stuff. As for the insert songs, they have a profound feeling of emptiness which matches the hollow story. It's weird, but them playing is kind of ironic knowing they're probably meant to be emotional, not insubstantial. Just like the visual, the sound didn't fix much in the end anyway as it becomes an individual piece of enjoyment rather than a balanced whole with the narrative.

  It's such a shame how Tokyo Ghoul √A decided to scrap away numerous aspects, degrading a lot of things from interesting all the way down to meaningless. It's a season where I could only grasp the surface of what's going on, and that's not going to do anything good to my enjoyment, safe for a couple of episodes. What a bummer.

  Continue on AniList
• 

  Danickcoolman

  50/100
  Tokyo Ghoul Root A is the perfect example of why you should not derive from the manga.

  
  
  Tokyo Ghoul is without a doubt one of the best series out there. The way it gives us the character development, story telling, world building and all just feels really really nice. It has been months since I watched the anime adaptation of Tokyo Ghoul and at that time, I was an anime-only. I jumped in the show without knowing what to expect, and I liked it. Then I watched the two other seasons and that was pretty much it, until I decided to read the manga to see how faithful the anime is to the source material, and MY GOD, I couldn't believe how ____BAD____ Tokyo Ghoul Root A is in terms of adapting the story and giving the audience what they need.
  
  So first things first, this anime adaptation doesn't do the manga justice, ____at all____. When we begin to watch the premiere of Root A, we jump right back where the first season left us, the aftermath of Kaneki's torture and the end of the battle between the CCG and Aogiri's Tree, alongside the ghouls from Anteiku. When Kaneki reunites with Tohka, he fights Ayato and... he apparently exchange some blows with him and that's it? No. This is wrong, wrong and wrong. In the manga, Kaneki proceeds to break literally ____HALF____ of Ayato's bones while even naming the bone he is breaking, like what? I didn't understand why this moment was taken off after I finished reading the first part of Tokyo Ghoul, and it just feels like Studio Clown didn't really care at that point. Then, after everything is done, Kaneki announces that he's going to join Aogiri's Tree, the same group that Jason was apart and Jason tortured him, so shouldn't he join the side with people that didn't want him to get abused? When I watched it at first, I thought that it was a little bit weird, but I didn't care that much, until I eventually read the manga and hear me out, it gets even crazier.
  
  In the manga of Tokyo Ghoul, Kaneki says that he won't go back to Anteiku nor Aogiri but instead, he will create his own organization/camp to find what the hell happened to Rize, that girl that almost ate him alive in the beginning. What's even more funny is that he actually recruited some of his friends to help him in his cause, except for Tohka because he wanted her to stay at Anteiku with everyone else. At this point, Root A is a terrible adaptation and I don't think that it was a good idea to make Kaneki edgy as f*ck by making him join the people that captured him and rejecting all of his friends. From now on, everything was anime original and made no sense at all. It's just weird to see Kaneki as a bad guy when he was that cheerful person before getting tortured. Now, I know that his whole personality and ideology changed, but that's not a reason to become a bad guy because you want to protect your friends. Where is the logic in this type of mind set? His manga counterpart makes more sense because he isn't a bad guy nor a good guy, he's just the guy that does what he wants and what he wants is to find Rize. Now, I won't be explaining everything that Kaneki of Aogiri made in the manga since he only helped some ghouls evade and attacked Cochlea where he awakened his Kakuja, but just know that in the manga, the thing at Cochlea never happened and instead, it happened at Kanou's Lab. So, without further ado, I'm going to talk about the most frustrating parts of Root A, which is Hide's bad-written death and Kaneki vs Arima.
  
  In the anime after Kaneki fought Amon ____Koutarou____, one of my favorite characters by the way, he arrives at Anteiku where his bestie is waiting and tells him that he already knew he was a ghoul but that doesn't change their relationship. Then, I don't remember the events of the anime correctly, Hide dies. Yes, you heard me, he dies. His death was so anticlimactic and I don't understand why the writers killed him off in a totally not sad situation. Ok, I will admit that the acoustic version of unravel made it seem a little bit "sad" but that's it. Now if we compare this to the manga, it's a way ____way____ different story. In the manga, the wound that Amon gives to Kaneki isn't healing and he's literally about to die, when his best friend Hide appears and tells him: "Heyo bro, just eat me and go fight Arima real quick", which is why his face looks that way it did in :re. The thing is that Root A really screwed all of the anime-only's since when they watched :re, they didn't understand what was going on with everyone since they thought it would explain the aftermath of the events of Root A, but no. Everything just felt wacky and the anime should have included the fight between Arima and Kaneki so the anime watchers would understand why Kaneki has amnesia in :re.
  
  Overall, Tokyo Ghoul Root A failed to deliver us a sequel for the first season and because of that, I decided to change my rating of it from 7 to 5.

  Continue on AniList

SIMILAR ANIMES YOU MAY LIKE

• ANIME

  ActionAjin 2
• ANIME

  ActionAjin
• ANIME

  ActionMirai Nikki
• ANIME

  DramaRanpo Kitan: Game of Laplace
• ANIME

  ActionOwari no Seraph
• ANIME

  ActionYakusoku no Neverland 2
• ANIME

  ActionElfen Lied
• SPECIAL

  ActionWonder Egg Priority: Tokubetsu-hen
• ANIME

  ActionChainsaw Man
• ANIME

  ActionBungou Stray Dogs 2nd Season
• TV SHORT

  ComedySakuretsu! Amabie-hime. Season3