English Dub Series Review: Tokyo Ghoul Re: Part Two

A horror that’s not horror.

Our Take:

Tokyo Ghoul focuses on despair, and Re focuses on clawing up the ladder to regain hope. The main story has focused on the divide of human and ghoul, especially with the CCG being posed to hunt ghouls out of existence. As the story goes on, we begin to see that ghoul and human are far closer than ever before. With Kaneki and Haise being the same person, having taken a foot in both worlds, he is able to act as a bridge between the two. He is also, for better or worse, able to assess the strengths and failures of both worlds and choose one. Kaneki ultimately chooses the ghouls, but he does so in a way that allows both worlds to connect. He is no messiah or even a savior, but someone who wants the people he cares about on both sides to be at peace. In the end, he succeeds and is even able to make a family with Touka. It’s not a perfect story, but it’s reasonable.

Don’t get me wrong, the source material is flawed. You really do get the feeling as you’re reading that Ishida became more and more tired as he continued on (which, considering the stress of a weekly schedule, isn’t that surprising), and so the writing suffers. Too many characters are added, and most importantly, those dead don’t stay dead. The audience likely got into Tokyo Ghoul because it’s a dark story, and one of the pieces of darkness that Ishida focused on is that everyone suffers from prejudice. One highlight of that is that people die in the fallout, and not just bad people too. Those with lives, who just want to be left alone, those who are victims of circumstance- those people die as well. Bringing back the people who have died, either as new ghouls or as ‘just happened to be alive’ feels like a huge cop-out. Shirazu’s death is one of the most impactful deaths in Re, and even though his death really upset me, at least he stayed dead. I, unfortunately, can’t say that about a sizable chunk of the cast.

Flawed animation can of course, sometimes be the result of hiring artistic teams whose talents don’t lie in action, but also one big thing plays into that: the schedule. Anime episodes are created and finalized with a shockingly short deadline, sometimes even encompassing the week before the episode airs. It’s a rough schedule, and the anime industry is known for being incredibly brutal. The manga industry isn’t that much better. I feel that it’s not exactly right to criticize the art for being what it is, considering how absolutely horrible general industry working conditions are.

That being said, the product itself is pretty horrible. Ishida’s art is notoriously hard to adapt into animation, all you need to do is turn to any page of Tokyo Ghoul to see what I mean. All parts of his art; his linework, his coloring, the dramatic poses in fights; all make for a very interesting visual experience. At the same time, that art style in animated form would require an even larger animation team, because the end product would end up looking something very visually dynamic like Mononoke or Gankutsuou. Some studios just plain don’t have the budget for that, so the story being adapted into something cleaner and visually simple would make logical sense, even if it is a shame. You can also tell that action is not this animation team’s strong point. They’re very good at still images, which can be clean from the manga, but in terms of timing and making a fight dynamic, this show is laughable. Considering there is a lot of fighting in this series, that makes the visual experience a very harrowing one. I can’t imagine anyone but die-hard fans buying the Blu-rays/DVDs if this is the animation they get.

I do truly believe that an anime has to be animated. People get excited for anime for voice actors and soundtracks, yes, but they really want to see their favorite stories in an animated form. They want the still images of cool fight scenes to move, to see how scenes flow into each other, to see monstrous creatures look even more intimidating. If animation can’t show action well enough if the still images of manga convey movement and power better than the animated product, then what’s the point of having an anime? Fans have frequently expressed disappointment in what they got, and I’m inclined to agree with them. It’s not the worst anime out there, but it sure isn’t good either.

In my opinion, just read the manga. You’ll get a better visual experience, Ishida’s excellent art, and a compressed, stressful story. It may not be perfect plot-wise, not even close, but it is definitely a lot better than the anime.