Tokyo Ghoul:re-view

Oh Tokyo Ghoul, what a wild and crazy ride you’ve been. Even from it’s inception some 4 years ago, Tokyo Ghoul struck a really interesting note being very artistic between the art, voice work, music, and sound effects. Additionally, it served as a great horror fighting series as our protagonist began to acclimate to life as a ghoul. Or as they more accurately describe in this series, a half-ghoul. I admit season two was a bit of a let down compared to the sheer awesome of season one, but I decided to finally give season three a chance and man did it hook me and keep me entertained.

 

The kicker to Tokyo Ghoul:re is that our dear Kaneki is now a Dove, or Anti-Ghoul inspector of the CCG or Commission of Counter Ghoul, going by the name Haise Sasaki. Beyond that he’s actually rather well ranked, as a 1st Class Inspector, with his own team of Quinx, who are individuals infused with the ghoul organ that enables them to maintain ghoul like regeneration and strength, even being able to summon a Kagune. We follow Kaneki as he mentors Quinx squad and it’s pseudo-half ghoul members. Quinx squad consists of 2nd Class Inspector Kuki Urie, the stoic self serving Quinx Squad Leader; 3rd Class Inspector Ginshi Shirazu, a sharp toothed punk who eventually becomes the Quinx Squad Leader; 3rd Class Inspector Toru Mutsuki, the squad Trap (seriously, it becomes a plot point later on); and 3rd Class Inspector Saiko Yonebayashi, the NEET of the squad who is absent for a couple of episodes because she just says at home playing PSP games.

Off the bat Quinx squad is on the hunt for a ghoul known as Torso, who predominantly devours the torsos of women. Over the course of a couple episodes we find the quirks of the team and eventually Toru finds Torso, who had been operating as a taxi driver to find women. When Quinx finally corners Torso, a masked ghoul fights them, resulting in Quinx getting beat down hard and Sasaki/Kaneki has to step in and unleash a bit of his repressed memories upon the mysterious ghoul. After defeating him, he finds under the mask his former colleague, Nishio and then goes rampant resulting in Nishio escaping and Sasaki being shot in the head to restrain him. With this, we have Quinx squad go undercover to attempt to find a human trafficking organization of ghouls that sells people for food/pets. The results are hilarious as they try to disguise themselves as cute young women.

So after successfully obtaining the eye of the rather risque and suspicious AF ghoul, Nutcracker, Toru and Juzu (the crazy powerful human from the past few seasons) are abducted and drugged then brought to the auction, a carnival themed event with extremely rich and powerful ghouls in attendance. After being revealed as a half-ghoul and sold for 200 million Yen, Toru begins to doubt his worth as he is unable to summon a Kagune. When Juzu is brought out, the trap is sprung and the Doves assault while Juzu does his thing and just wrecks face while chasing after their target, code named Big Madam. The true power of a number of these ghouls is revealed, with Nutcracker being insanely more powerful than initially assumed and a number of veteran CCG squads being wiped out, most notably but a strange individual called “Takizawa.” After a time, it’s revealed that this is in fact the former investigator Takizawa who was then turned into a half ghoul and turned insane.

 

Needless to say he changed considerably from before. A number of fights break out during the course of this battle and it’s revealed that Hinami had thrown her lot in with Aoigiri Tree and is then caught only to be saved by Sasaki after he battled Takizawa and bonded with his old self a bit to the tune of Unravel aka one of the best intro OP ever. After this fight of epic proportions we see a number of fighters rise and fall with the members of Quinx squad receiving promotions all around, with Toru both unlocking his Kagune and distinguishing himself, is promoted two ranks to 1st Class along with Urie. The next task for Quinx squad is to move on and hunt down members of Rose, who have been preying on individuals for the explicit reason of feeding their gradually more insane leader, Mirumo Tsukiyama the Gourmet.

We leave off with Tsukiyama trying his best to make Sasaki remember that he is Kaneki and Hinami doing the same from inside jail. Tsukiyama’s young ward and distant relative, Kanae von Rosewald then takes drastic steps to obtain Kaneki for Tsukiyama by hiring Aoigiri Tree to assault the Quinx squad, to their great distress (spoiler, the ghouls get curb stomped). We end with Toru being saved by a massive figure who turns out to be Kotaro Amon, former Special Investigator of the CCG. So I managed to gun through all these episodes in a week and I don’t know if it’s because this season is just damn good or if it’s just considerably better than season two but I’m looking forward to watching the continuation tomorrow and probably reading it after the season ends if not sooner. Let me know what you think and if you too are enjoying this new take on Tokyo Ghoul.