RogerBW's Blog

Tokyo Ghoul 03 January 2015

2014, 12 episodes: AniDB

Modern Tokyo is infested by ghouls, who eat humans. Kaneki is about to become their latest victim.

OK, they're called ghouls, but this is basically a vampire story: these ghouls have organisation and agreed hunting grounds, and they're indistinguishable from humans except when they feed. They each have unique magical powers, the "gleam", which is only usable when they're under stress. Oh, and there's a special police unit which has the job of fighting them, which is about as nasty as the ghouls are.

This is a very dark fantasy, with pretty much everyone accepting the grottiness of the world and wallowing in it. Kaneki is an annoying wimp, and this series is basically his progress from that state to the far more common might-makes-right, practically objectivist philosophy that the other characters tend to share. Except that he stays whiny right up to the final episode, as worse and worse things happen to him, and if you thought Ikari Shinji was bad you really don't want to bother with this.

There's lots of torture (not graphic, but none the less nasty for that), and endless gory fighting with blood exploding all over the place, and death. Lots and lots of death. Yay.

This cuts off right in the middle of the action with absolutely nothing resolved. There's a sequel coming next year, but I shan't bother with it.

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