English Dub Review: Tokyo Ghoul: Re “Beautiful Dream: Daybreak”

Victory is an end itself, and death can inspire new things.

Overview (Spoilers)

As the CCG laid waste to Tsukiyama’s final corporate holding, Sasaki went up to the roof to capture Shu himself. When we saw them meet there, a helicopter exploded in the distance. We were left to believe that this was Shu’s getaway. In reality, this was Special Investigator Washu’s helicopter, torn to shreds by the One-Eyed Owl. He manages to escape, but is unwilling to join the fray himself.

In the meantime, Shirazu and the other Quinxes find the battle against Noro to be more than they can handle as they are. His regeneration shrugs off just about any damage they do. In his frustration and desperation, Shirazu pulls out all the stops. His kagune evolves mid-battle, engorging to the size of his body. Its projectiles grow in size and potency, and he even gets the ability to launch the main body of the kagnune as an even bigger missile.

He does an insane amount of damage to Noro, but even this isn’t enough. Spurred on by Shirazu’s effort, and afraid his friend might fall prey to the enemy while he regenerates his kagune, Urie launches an all-out assault on Noro’s core. The attack finishes off the ghoul. As its corpse drops, so does Shirazu, a massive chunk of his gut missing. Slowly, his senses fall away until… so does he. Shirazu dies in Urie’s arms, as the entire team cries.

On the rooftop, another death of sorts happens. One-Eyed Owl unleashes her augmented Kanae on Sasaki. With her insane drive, Kanae beats Sakaki near to death. In this state, Sakaki meets with Kaneki. In his mindscape, Sakaki realizes that it is not Kaneki that is the construct, but himself! Sakaki is nothing more than the daydream of his true self, an entity created to shield the true self from the harsh realities he has been facing. Since he is not enough to allow the full self-survive, he decides to fade away.

Kaneki is back, and he’s using his full power to tear every combatant there a new one. He disables Shu and one-shots Kanae, but those aren’t the only ones there. He does battle with Eto, and it’s an epic ghoul battle indeed. In the end, he manages to bisect her, but he has a feeling she’ll be back. When other investigators arrive, they find him chomping on what remains of her Kakuja. He makes a big show of dropping Shu off the building, but Kanae sacrifices what is left of her life to redirect him into some trees to break his fall.

As the credits roll, CCG mooks catch up to Shu, but familiar ghouls from the coffee shop: Re come to his rescue. The Quinx team mourn Shirazu’s death, but Urie can’t do so at his grave. It’s an empty coffin. The truck carrying Shirazu’s body got ambushed by Aogiri Tree, who were tipped off by Kijima’s “henchman” Furuta. What is he plotting?

Our Take

As the final episode of this season, I have to say it went out with a bang. Not only doe sit have some of the best animation, cinematography, and voice acting the season has seen, but the story tugs at the heartstrings. I liked how the Kaneki/Sasaki dynamic completely flipped, returning Kaneki to his natural state before he went nuts from his torture. We are also given a visual marker of this change, as his hair goes back to being black, as it was in the first season.

However, I find his brusque manner a bit off-putting. It feels like he’s suddenly behaving like his Eyepatch self, while secretly feeling like his Sasaki self. He obviously let Shu survive, but in a way that he wouldn’t get in trouble. He then immediately calls Urie on the carpet while he’s upset about Shirazu’s death. It doesn’t feel like the season one Kaneki, or Sasaki, so I don’t know how I feel about this… fourth version of the character?

Shirazu’s death was brilliant writing. Starting with his triumphant defeat of Noro, we feel like he has finally moved from being a wishy-washy wannabe to the inspirational leader he needs to be. After all that, however, his death sucks the joy right out of the room. For once, a long death scene is understandable. His powers attempt to repair the damage, but its just too much for him. As he bleeds out, we are given things from his perspective. We hear as everyone’s voices muffle and fade away. In the manga, he told the team that if he doesn’t make it, they should let his sister die. He’d rather let her pass peacefully than suffer, and suffer without him to help her.

The voice acting, understandably, has depth and strength. I had no problems at all with the voice actors. They dug deep and put it all out there. Good work. The animation must have used up all of the remaining budgets, since they even leveraged a CG building so they could have the fight rotate around it. I wish the fight against Eto was a bit more exciting, but it wasn’t bad. It merely paled when compared to Shirazu’s situation.