After a long three year wait Tokyo Ghoul’s junior season has finally begun airing. Coming off of the controversial spin-off “what if” second season Root A, season three takes place during the namesake of it’s source material; Tokyo Ghoul:re. While season three will have a tough time explaining the ignored events of the original manga’s second half, the first four episodes does a surprisingly damn good job covering the first handful of :re chapters despite it’s incredibly fast pace.

Tokyo Ghoul:re is a 2018 seinen anime series, it is produced by Studio Pierrot and licensed by Funimation. It is currently available for streaming on Crunchyroll and Funimation Now.

Editor’s Note: In an effort to avoid spoilers this review will be mostly production & direction based.

Half ghoul investigator Haise Sasaki with his kagune.

After years of waiting the third season of Tokyo Ghoul has begun airing. This time tackling the sequel manga, Tokyo Ghoul:re has an unfortunate issue of confusion for those who didn’t read the manga as most of the second half of the original manga was barely covered, heavily edited to fit the new storyline, or completely ignored. At the very least the anime adaptation of the sequel does well to animate key scenes (within reason) despite some pacing problems.

Even with solid coverage of it’s source, Tokyo Ghoul:re does fail to get some important character details, such as Haise’s quirk which lets readers know when he’s lying.

THE GOOD: Given the fact that they’re mostly covering ‘:re’ canonically the odds of a fourth season is looking very likely, so that’s an early positive. The animation is fantastically done with it often matching the frequent watercolor character designs that mangaka Sui Ishida draw. The soundtrack is just as good as the previous seasons from the OST to the opening and catchy closing. With everything that could go wrong with the pacing, as a manga reader I can say that they do get it I’d say maybe 60-75% correct throughout these episodes.

Despite some issues, most of the character directions are pretty spot on from the manga.

THE BAD: If you haven’t heard the news then prepare to get angry if you’re a manga reader. This season is supposed to cover up to the Rose Investigation arc which ends at around chapter 56 I believe. With only twelve episodes under its belt it’s going to be increasingly difficult to get everything in line with the manga. Certain character tropes weren’t as over the top as they should be or just ignored. A prime example is Haise’s habit of touching his chin with his hand whenever he lies. When the anime covers this scene it completely ignored that detail. This wasn’t even a time consumption issue, it was just blatantly ignored.

A fair adaptation that will hopefully get better over time.

OVERALL THOUGHTS: It really does suck that Studio Pierrot opted to do a spinoff second season rather than a full blown cover of the second half of the manga as the anime onlys are going to be extremely confused, I actually just recently got in a conversation with an anime only friend who was pretty confused about ‘:re’. Outside of the confusion and pacing, :re also has other issues that are currently holding it back from perfection like season one was. I hope Pierrot will at least do a movie or a series of OVAs to get the canonical story of the first manga out for anime only fans that’d be a big help in clearing things up. As for what it is, Tokyo Ghoul:re just needs more dedication to really find its grove and it feels like it’s getting there, but the pacing problem is definitely a scare. Otaku Dome gives the first four episodes of Tokyo Ghoul:re a combined score of 70 out of 100.