English Dub Review: Tokyo Ghoul Re “MovE: Confluence, Confusion”

Monsters and men.

Overview:

The ghouls restructure and try to find a way to heal Mado.

Our Take:

I didn’t hate this episode, which was a pleasant surprise considering how bad the season has been thus far. I really do think that it’s because this episode had barely any action sequences, barring the one fight between Kaneki and Nagi. The animators have a huge weakness in animating actions, but are pretty alright in slower movement and still shots, which this episode was mainly comprised of. It made the entire experience much more watchable by a significant degree. Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing overall is something to think about but at the very least, this episode as a standalone worked just fine.

The tone problem is also fixed because the whole episode revolved around one large theme: bridging the gap. Now that the raid against Aogiri Tree is over, human and ghoul- and former humans turned ghouls- need to plan their course of action.

In trying to save Mado, Kaneki encounters a group of doctors that treat anyone, human or ghoul. Which, they say, is simply because one can’t choose how you’re born. If you’re born a ghoul, that means you deserved to be hunted down and killed? If you’re born a human, then you’re automatically superior? These doctors don’t believe that. It is very much in line with a theme that’s discussed a lot nowadays, namely who is the monster and who is the man, especially since ghouls are shown to do the same things as humans. There’s a more intrinsic fear involved, the fear of predation, but that has nothing to do with who deserves to live and who deserves to die.

With the case of Mado, she and Touka finally have a face to face discussion, one that doesn’t end with a fight. It ends with the revelation that there is a pain on both sides and that both sides have caused harm. Touka knows that she ruined Mado’s life by killing her father. At the same time, Mado’s father created the orphan children that they encounter. By both sides actively dehumanizing each other, they both ended up creating a cycle of pain. This cycle is finally ended when the two women embrace, both admitting that they’re both confused and lost, but they’ll figure it out. It’s an extremely important moment.