Just A Great, Violent Time – Tokyo Ghoul:re Season Review

While Tokyo Ghoul √A was a mediocre at best season compared to season 1, Tokyo Ghoul:re has done a fantastic job of building upon a rather different take on our main character Kaneki Ken/Haise Sasaki and Quinx Squad. The last three episodes were great and honestly had cranked up everything more than I could have hoped. To be perfectly honest, the last two episodes went rather Game of Thrones-ey and this seemed like a bit of overkill for some characters, but it managed to tug at my heart strings for a couple of the characters especially. Seriously though, I recommend you go back and watch this (go to Hulu!) if you are a fan and just see the chaos that is essentially a straight battle.

Episode 10 kicks off with some real truth as the bourgeois Kanae being horribly tortured by the bandaged Ito and basically beaten around like a rented mule. Moving along the plot after the fight in episode 9, we have Quinx Squad approved to go “undercover” as ghouls to find out if Rose and Aogiri Tree are associated. While the squad found nothing serious, Haise found that majority ghouls that saw him and his mask were terrified of the Eye-Patch Ghoul. Additionally, Urie was still a dickbag and Shirazu is still too nice which was a good bit of character reinforcement without beating it over our heads as viewers. The episode wraps with the discovery of the association of Rose as the affluent Tsukiyama Family, of which Shu Tsukiyama (The Gourmet) is the heir. At the sacrifice of the entire family, they surrender to enable Shu to escape. Fleeing to his family’s main office building, he finds a small army of ghouls that work for his family opting to fight and further sacrifice themselves to save Shu. The Doves being actual investigators not just in name but in practice, are hot on his heels.

Again very much so like Game of Thrones, the second to last episode of the season is where things start going down. We have a number of minor to off characters fighting among each other with a good amount of fatalities on each side. This raid gets real crazy and just escalates very quickly. The above super evil looking fat Investigator, Shiki Kijima, reveals his Quinque which you can see is a bit over the top, but it’s just par for the course as we see people fight against a number of other, very powerful ghouls. The battle scenes are great and a great balance is struck with you cheering as some battles are won and being full of sorrow as others are lost. Regardless of who is laid low, the fighting from this raid is a great episode and I was all to eager to watch the next episode and see how things go down, especially with the arrival of the Owl.

With the arrival of the above, we have Kaneki on the roof top fighting Shu, and you can see and hear the pain in his heart conveyed so very perfectly as he realizes the ghoul in front of him is not his beloved Kaneki, but Mr. Sasaki. While this fight starts up we also have Quinx Squad combating the very overpowered and regenerating Noro. With a number of the other investigators being dispatched quickly, Quinx Squad struggles to successfully fight him off. Urie finally spurs Shirazu to be able to utilize his Quinque and it quickly explodes Noro. Unfortunately this is not enough and he begins to rampage, killing more and more of the investigators and leaving QS in a dangerous position. Shirazu rushes forward and overcharges his Kagune to set Noro ablaze, with Urie rushing forward to deal the final blow. The sad realization after the battle is that Shirazu suffered a very mortal wound and even though he was surrounded by friends as he died, he was unable to see or hear them and died (from his point of view) alone and scared. This is made all the sadder as we see Urie has actually cracked and is very emotional towards his dying squad leader, to the point he snaps at the Senior Investigator in charge opposed to being the self-serving career minded jerk he’s been.

As Shu is beaten back on the roof, Haise loses his arm to the now powered up Kanae, who arrives to rescue Shu. It is later revealed that the Owl is in fact Ito, who is also quite hot and crazy. As he is carried over to be thrown from the skyscraper by Kanae, he comes to a realization. He is not a “split personality” but in fact a mere dream from which Kaneki will awaken, dispelling his existence completely. With the awakening, we find The Eye-Patch Ghoul hasn’t lost his stride and proceeds to insta-decapitate Kanae, who then regenerates from this quickly. In a bout of crazy beauty, Ito rushes at Kaneki who almost effortlessly dispatches her and slices her in half, with her upper half falling from the skyscraper. Kaneki, pretending to be Sasaki, is found by S2 as he devours her Kagune to “refresh” himself and briefs them on the status. He then moves to dispatch Shu by throwing him from the building, and Kanae rushes to save him and it is revealed that he knew Kanae was in fact a woman named Karen who was in love with him. Throwing him to the trees to survive, she dies with no regrets, even going so far as to wonder if it is ok for her to die this happy.

With this, we wrap and begin to find all the little conspiracies that seem to be underlying the show. Between some of the investigators seeming to be manipulative bastards, to the obtaining of Shirazu’s body by Jason’s group, to the appearance of Anteiku to retrieve Shu and revealing his father as safe and alive I was left fanboying and screaming for the next season. Even Kaneki being a cold bastard towards the grieving Urie hurt but hurt in a good way. This season renewed my love for this series and honestly I think it’s better than even the first. I’ve been told that the next season is supposed to contain all of the rest of the series and I can only hope it will be just as good as this one if not better.