English Dub Review: Tokyo Ghoul Re “ACT: Encounters”

The finale begins.

Overview:

It’s a race against time to fight the dragon.

Our Take:

The major battle starts, with everyone having to get a jumps-start on the dragon’s awakening as monsters attack them from all sides. Owl’s resurrected corpse is being used as a murder puppet, and the Clowns are once again causing trouble.

The fact that a large chunk of the episode is dedicated to Priest and Amon is a bit of a letdown. Unlike Uta and Renji who we’ve known since very early on in the series, Father is a relatively new addition, and the last time we saw him, it was a fight between him and Urie, not him and Amon. He and Amon have backstory of course, with him being Amon’s foster father that turned out to be a ghoul, but it isn’t something that’s been brought up recently. If it has been brought up, it was a very long time ago, something that a die-hard fan might remember, but not something that the average fan would, especially with Re doubling the cast in size. As a result, even though it’s important as in the finale to take down extremely powerful ghouls like Priest, it has significantly less of an emotional punch. Of course, this isn’t an issue with the anime, but the source material itself, but it didn’t earn the anime any points either.

As for Uta and Renji, this has been a dynamic that’s been there for a while. Rather, Uta has been a rather enigmatic figure, with their backstory related to mostly snippets of conversation rather than flashbacks, and Uta not giving much information about himself overall. He helps Kaneki but he’s also part of the Clowns, and it’s hard to tell what his motives are. Now we get a little bit of a snippet of what he wants- he’s fascinated with Renji and wants to consume him whole. Renji, who’s been the more level of the two, declines, not just for his own well-being, but because he doesn’t want to end up killing or being killed by a friend. For Uta, his way of expressing affection is through violence, and for Renji, it’s by staying alive and being able to look out for them. Ultimately, it’s Renji that wins the fight and solidifies his ideals by letting Uta go. By taking Uta to safety, it confirms that Renji understands his friend- Uta can get another chance at him, but only if he lives. He understands his friend’s ideas, and is willing to let that continue.