I’d already heard of Tokyo Ghoul from one of my best friends, but it wasn’t until learning of my boyfriend’s obsession healthy appreciation of it that I became curious about its contents. So, early in our relationship, I bought all 14 volumes of the original manga and the first artbook on an impulse. Unfortunately, I did not turn out to share this particular taste with my boyfriend, and the books ended up abandoned on a shelf for the better part of a year. I liked the concept — the apparently impossible coexistence of humanity and a predator species, ghouls, who are pretty much normal people except for their taste for (well, need of, really) human flesh — and the ethical dilemmas it brought up, but the type of storytelling just didn’t speak to me; I did not care for the characters; I seriously could NEVER tell what the hell was happening during fighting scenes… and so, being a busy person with a very, very long backlog of all sorts of media, I did the logical thing — putting the series down.

This year, however, I finally finished my 4-year specialization in Family Medicine, which suddenly left me with very little to do. The shock was — is — so great that I’m actually having trouble adjusting to it; so far, coping strategies have included binge-watching and -reading of several titles on said backlog, and Tokyo Ghoul, being the only manga I physically own in this house — all others are back in my parents’ place –, ended up making the cut (there’s just nothing like actual paper — to me, anyway).

In my defense, I did a pretty good job of finishing it in the blink of an eye.

One thing had not changed — I still couldn’t (and can’t) make shit out of the fighting illustrations. I did make a better effort of getting invested in the story and characters, though, and by the end of volume 14, I thought the series deserved a solid 7/10 — which, by my standards, is not at all bad. I had not, however, found it as dazzling as my boyfriend apparently had, and so I looked into the sequel, Tokyo Ghoul:re. I was disheartened to realize it was even longer and had a lower rating than the original; when I asked my boyfriend about it, however, he said he liked the sequel much better — what? This intrigued me, and that’s how I ended up gobbling down the 16 volumes of :re as well. My thoughts on the whole thing are as follows.

Why the fuck call it a sequel?

:re is a direct follow-up of the original Tokyo Ghoul series; so direct and natural, in fact, that it just doesn’t feel like a sequel. There is a time gap of two years, yes, but the existence of a jump itself is so irrelevant to the plot that I find it difficult to see :re as a *sequel*, and not just the expected progression of the original. It occurred to me that it might have been because the author himself had made a pause between the two series, but… he had not. He had just kept at it, seamlessly, and that’s how the story feels from one title to another — seamless. I guess “:re” just sounds cool. Somehow. (?) #nihon #<3

Who the hell rates these things and what drugs are they on?

If we must split the story in two, then :re is infinitely superior to the original — if not for anything else, because it is the natural completion of everything, from world building to character development and exposure of ethical issues. To me, in fact, it almost felt as though :re was “the” Tokyo Ghoul, and the original just an introduction — every scene, line or plot point that matters and makes the series what it is is in :re, really; in comparison, the previous 14 volumes are rather unremarkable. I do maintain, however, that I see no logic in the division itself, and that the series should be assessed as a whole — and if doing so, :re is the story’s natural extension, with everything that implies: it is the point where things really start to get interesting and making sense. If all you read is the original Tokyo Ghoul, I’m afraid you’ll be left with little more than the promise of an interesting idea (I, for one, most definitely would not have felt any lasting attachment at all).

Why you should read it.

I picked up Tokyo Ghoul for the second time shortly after getting to know and reading all of what’s out of The Promised Neverland, a series that may just become one of my very favorites of all time. This did not help, seeing as how the premise is not so different (humans vs ghouls who need to eat humans to stay alive in Tokyo Ghoul, humans vs demons who need to eat humans to stay a rational species in TPN), and I like TPN‘s version and development of it much better. There are things exclusive to Tokyo Ghoul, however, that made it well worth it for me.

The art. First things first. Sui Ishida is an incredible artist; his style is mesmerizing (case in point: all of the illustrations in this post), probably my favorite ever in a mangaka. All of his artwork is a delight to look at, and battle scenes aside, the series is full of eye candy of all types. The character development. While most times it feels like Ishida tried to fit too many characters into one series, to the point where you have to Google who’s who every couple of minutes if you want to stay on top of the story, the truth is that he does make good out of pretty much all of them individually. All of the characters in TG are fucked-up in one way or another, with different levels of likability — morally grey as it is, your favorites probably won’t come down to who’s bad and who’s good, but to whose journey touches/speaks to you more. I personally detest Kaneki (not many do), feel neutral about Touka (a very popular waifu) and have Urie as a favorite (by most standards, a secondary character). I deeply dislike Mutsuki — “feel repulsed by” may be a more accurate description –, but I think her story is incredible. Terrible, but incredible, in the sense that it keeps shocking the hell out of you until there’s nothing left to shock (I am not fond of how she ended up, though — her redemption feels cheap and out of place, and is probably one of the least well thought out character development points in the story). There are so . many . characters, yes, but, in TG‘s case, this translates into many characters to love, many to hate and very few to feel indifferent about, which speaks highly of their construction. The originality of medium. With only images and text to get his message through, Ishida makes use of subtlety and sensation more than any other mangaka I’ve read. When characters are losing their minds, for example, their lines are often replaced with symbols, or chapter titles become illogical sets of letters. Insanity is extremely well channeled to the reader through every medium available, making it surprisingly easy to get truly immersed and invested in. Another fantastic example is Shirazu’s death — in his last moments, you can tell that his senses are fading because his lines show that he can’t hear what the others are saying; he thinks (and is mad) that they’re not replying, when, in fact, it’s his own conscience that’s too far gone already. This puts you right in his shoes in a manner very rarely explored, and the moment’s loneliness is horrifying. It’s a page turner. While, as said above, TG wasn’t exactly the most fun I’ve had, :re was pretty much impossible to put down. I’m not a very easy person to entertain — I’ve read, watched and played too much –, but :re definitely managed to keep me in expectation from one chapter to the other. This is an important factor in any sort of media, and one in which this series surely isn’t lacking. The real message. TG initially comes across as being about the attainment of peace between fundamentally incompatible species, but all of that falls apart quite prettily in :re. The real message, of course, is far less innocent than that. At its core, even beyond the (already well buried) layer of absolute social corruption, TG is scarily nihilistic, with a joyful taste of Camusian absurdism. You think it’s about peace, but it’s not, because the system is absolutely corrupted on both sides; you think it’s about that corruption, that duality, but it’s not: it’s about how corruption — or duality, or peace — simply doesn’t matter: because nothing does. Being very much at odds with the notion of death and inexistence myself, the latter volumes were almost too painfully real for me to go through. Many titles deal with these notions, but not many tackle them as crudely and as realistically as TG. The series is psychologically violent, hopeless, and very much not for children. In a way, for some people, I suppose this might be a reason NOT to read it — to me, it’s its strongest point.

Early in the series, referring to the moral greyness of the dispute between humans and ghouls, characters often comment that “this world is wrong.” Near the end, however, Kaneki, already at the end of a very long journey through both the world and himself (one and the same, maybe?), changes his mind in regard to this, remarking “this world isn’t wrong: it just is.” The title for this post is also a quote from the latter chapters, and expresses the views of a pacifist faction of humans who wish for coexistence with ghouls. What these two lines have in common is that they both point towards the randomness of life — towards how severely your whole existence is affected by on what side and to whom you happen to be born. And randomness, while unjust, cannot be considered wrong or right — it just is.