English Dub Review: Tokyo Ghoul Re “Place: And So, Once Again”

The world is changing.

Overview:

Eto comes out to the world as a ghoul.

Our Take:

I won’t hide it: I’ve read all of Tokyo Ghoul, both the original and Re. As a result, I pretty much know everything that’s going to happen,  so nothing is particularly surprising to me. However, the original manga has a lot of content, characters, dialogue, and subplots, some which are less important than others, so I’m not sure how it will end up being condensed. I haven’t watched the original TG anime, although I know the changes they made (and wondering how they’re going to retcon that), so this is fresh and not fresh to me.

Onto the content.

Ishida’s art style is very particular, vivid, and colorful, something that looks far better in color spreads than black and white, but also it’s not something that can easily be translated to anime. It’s much easier to turn the characters into something that looks more generically anime than retain the original style, just to save on budget. However, this also loses a lot of Ishida’s charm, namely the contorted facial expressions and the dynamics of the action. Ishida is really, really good at facial contortions as people become really gruesome, so this is a shame.

And that’s what TG mostly is: action. So it’s extremely awkward when the action scenes are animated so blandly? I’m not saying that every production has to be Mob Psycho, but you can really tell they’re conserving budget. Which is kind of surprising, because it’s not an unknown series, it has a large and established fanbase that spends enough on it to garner a movie and stage play, but the anime can’t animate their fight scenes well? They’re probably not going to break Blu-ray sales with this quality, that’s for sure.

As for the plot it is really, really condensed- almost ten chapters in one episode. It’s a shame, because them rushing the plot (which I admit, is out of necessity) makes it almost too fast, and lessens the gravity of the situation. These were some of my favorite chapters in Re, I’d read them multiple times upon release, so to have it be so simplified is a very strange feeling. These are important moments too, like Eto revealing her ghoul status to the public and Furuta being overt in his plans, so I was hoping for something more impactful. I didn’t get it.

Altogether, I’m not impressed, especially because I know the anime team could do so, so much better.