Tokyo Ghoul:re Episodes 2-3: I feel like I’m missing a lot of references

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I’m still kinda behind on this show, but I caught up a bit. Honestly, I think the amnesia aspect of this series has been more interesting than anything I remember from the second season. My main issue so far has been that the character backgrounds for the Quinx squad have felt like they were thrown into the episodes.

The stuff Haise says in this conversation is pretty interesting. It’s the kind of mushy thing you’d expect from a typical protagonist, but it seems to have a different meaning when coupled with the fact that Haise is a second personality.

While I’m grateful for the explanation, this doctor is very clearly saying this for the audience. Oh, you should already know this, but I’m going to say it anyway.

Haise’s reaction in the cafe is actually really interesting. There’s a pretty common idea that love is mysterious and hard to explain. In this situation, Haise has trouble explaining why he’s attracted to Touka, but we as the audience know exactly why.

Oh, I guess this character needs to be part of the story now. That was random.

I’m sure this will be explained later, but this character building scene feels as random as Urie’s scene in the first episode.

What a good friend.

Tokyo Ghoul:re First Impressions (1): Seems fine

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I feel like I might regret saying this, but my first impression of this series was fairly positive. I didn’t have the highest opinion of the original Tokyo Ghoul, but the stuff I saw in this episode seemed, at the very least, promising. I just hope I’m not opening myself too much to a flood of manga veterans…because that’s always fun.

One issue I had with this episode was that it seemed to jump past explanations a bit more than I would have liked. That’s not to say that jumping into the action is a bad thing. I just think that the episode used too much jargon without giving context, as if it expected me to know more than I did from the beginning. It’s especially weird given that the episode starts with a fairly useless narration introducing ghouls.

I don’t know what’s going on here, but this line is pretty funny.

I find the competitive atmosphere of Sasaki’s squad to be pretty interesting. I hope this goes somewhere. I also quite like the idea of having two different teams arrive at the culprit through different routes of investigation.

Surely, there’s a more natural way to introduce the special nature of the Quinx squad than this.

I was really hoping for more from the fights in this episode. To be fair, I thought the scenes showing a materialization of a quinque looked great. However, the fights themselves felt really jumpy with very little focus on actual fighting. It felt more like a composition of slash animations.

This scene also seemed a little odd to me. It felt somewhat self-explanatory. This guy gets triggered by retreat orders because his father died as a result of one. It seems like a fairly complete explanation of a character trait, which seems strange in a first episode. Maybe it’s okay…I haven’t figured it out yet.

Boy, this guy looks familiar…

Tokyo Ghoul Root A Final Episode (12): Another one down

Am I nuts or did this final episode seem really boring and lazy to anyone else? Basically half of the episode was spent showing Kaneki walking through the investigators’ camp holding Hide’s body (I might just be more mad at myself for not skipping through it, though). Lots of lazy scenes, like showing the blanket blow off of Hide and then showing Kaneki holding a blanket afterwards…or too many repeats of Kaneki’s black hair blowing in the wind. All of it just rubbed me the wrong way.

At the end of the day, Hide’s death wasn’t all too surprising…given the amount of blood that was falling in Anteiku and the way that they were disguising the source of the blood, it couldn’t be Kaneki (since he was more obviously injured). All in all, another series is done. I know there’s a sequel manga, but I’m not sure I’m interested enough to read the existing manga or watch an adaptation if it was ever created. I think we’ll just leave it at this…

Tokyo Ghoul Root A Episode 11: Battle

It’s getting hard to judge life or death in this show. Was this week enough to kill Amon? Is the manager just clinging to life for a little bit to have a final conversation with his daughter or will he actually recover after his fight? Kaneki also looks pretty close to death himself. I’m assuming he’s fine, though…he’s still the main character of Tokyo Ghoul: Re, right?

Anyway, it looks like next week will end this series. I recall seeing some stuff on forums a while back about Hide being involved in the ending of the manga, so I’m guessing this is an adaptation of the actual ending of the manga? If I recall correctly, it doesn’t end up well for Hide, but I can’t remember if I read what actually happens. I still think he will get caught in the crossfire somehow and die…he really seems like the type of character to do that.

Tokyo Ghoul Root A Episode 10: Mission over?

It looks like Kaneki wasn’t quite in time to save everyone. Oh well, he theoretically saved two more people than I expected (I’m assuming they’re no longer in danger of dying). Also, I guess gaining power really was the only reason Kaneki joined Aogiri…I still have trouble accepting that, but I’ll just have to deal with it. The manager seems to be beyond rescuing, though, just based on the dramatic dying scene they gave him this week (not too unexpected, though).

There seem to be a lot of things to resolve in the remaining two episodes: the Owl’s child needs to finish fighting the investigators, Amon has to fight against Kaneki, Hide has to reveal why he’s on the battlefield, and Touka needs to do something useful (anything will suffice). I suppose it’s very likely that Hide recognizes Kaneki and somehow gets caught in the crossfire, so maybe that one isn’t so hard to resolve. I know there’s also a new separate season of the manga being released right now, so maybe the ending isn’t a resolution at all.

Tokyo Ghoul Root A Episode 9: The battle begins

Time for war, I guess. Last week, I predicted a loss would move Kaneki into action because I didn’t expect them to just broadcast the fact that they were attacking a coffee shop on the news. It looks like Kaneki will be joining the battle. I was also surprised that Youmo allowed Touka to leave go to Anteiku so easily. Is it because he knew the battle would already be lost by the time she arrived?

I’m glad Kaneki’s decided to finally be useful and not run away like the rest, but will he actually be able to help? This battle feels like it’s the fight of the previous generation, a battle that is usually lost. If the new generation joins in the form of Kaneki and Touka, then there should be a higher probability of actually winning the fight. Are we headed towards an ending where the two kids join the battle, but are helpless to stop the deaths of their elders?

Tokyo Ghoul Root A Episode 8: Final days of peace

The shopkeeper’s story turns out to be pretty standard…the story of the assassin who finds love, but can’t escape his past isn’t anything I haven’t heard before. I’m not entirely sure what he was trying to accomplish by telling that to Kaneki, though. Some sort of last request?

It looks like they’re preparing for some sort of standoff between Anteiku and the investigators. I’m assuming Anteiku loses and this is somehow used to move Kaneki into some kind of action. I suppose it’s possible that Aogiri and the one-eyed Owl join the fight and build it up into a final battle, but that just doesn’t seem as interesting in my eyes.

Tokyo Ghoul Root A Episode 7: Anteiku is busted?

Well, Kaneki finally returns to the coffee shop after being in Aogiri all this time. I find it really hard to believe he’s serious. He can’t really be in Aogiri just to get strong enough to protect the people in Anteiku, right? I feel like there just has to be another reason. Also, what exactly was his reason for returning to Anteiku now? Surely he wasn’t just talking to the manager about returning…must be related to how crazy he’s been acting.

In other news, it looks like the investigators have figured out that Anteiku houses ghouls. Wouldn’t it be ironic if they get attacked and Kaneki is unable to protect them because he’s busy training himself to be strong enough to protect them? Maybe that’s a little bit too much suffering for him, though.

Tokyo Ghoul Root A Episode 6: Calm before something

Given what’s been happening in the rest of the episodes, this week’s episode was pretty slow. Akira and Amon get some more bonding time, I guess…not exactly the greatest thing to watch, though. There were a lot of flashes to Kaneki writhing in pain, which I’m assuming means that he’s trying to maintain humanity after losing it in the previous battle.

I guess the other thing that happened this week was the brief background on the crazy investigator with all the stitches. Exactly how appropriate was that? It seemed a bit random to me…the only link was to the fact that the armored investigator was revealed to be alive. Anyway, it looks like the CCG is preparing for a full-on assault on Aogiri. There’s been so much focus on Aogiri lately that it seems like the Anteiku characters have fallen into the background. When are they going to become relevant again?

Tokyo Ghoul Root A Episode 5: Kaneki losing it some more

I guess Kaneki’s job now is to confuse the crap out of Amon. His mind’s already laboring over the idea of a human becoming a ghoul…now I’m sure Kaneki’s actions are a pain to reconcile. Is the point to make Amon the one that realizes that despite his actions, Kaneki is trying to retain his humanity? Also, is the armored investigator officially dead? I was under the impression that he would become somewhat of a recurring enemy for Touka’s brother…

So next week, will Kaneki get a chance to talk with the one-eyed owl? Or will the owl just drop him off somewhere and disappear? This seems like a good chance to get formally introduced. And are we ever going to really find out why Kaneki joined Aogiri? It’s been out in the open for a while now. It can’t just be that he wanted to get stronger…