Tokyo Ghoul is an excellent dark fantasy, horror anime series adapted from the manga of the same name by series mangaka; Sui Ishida. Tokyo Ghoul tells the story of Ken Kaneki, a young college student who is turned into a ghoul after having another ghoul’s organ transplanted into him in an effort to save his life. Throughout it’s 12 episode run, season one of Tokyo Ghoul deals with Kaneki’s life as a human, and his transition into the double life of a ghoul. Yes the headline reads “Season One”, as Tokyo Ghoul has just been confirmed to receive a second season airing this coming January, just hours after the season one finale has aired.

Tokyo Ghoul is an 2014 anime series adapted from the 2011 manga series of the same name created by Sui Ishida. It is produced by Studio Pierrot, and distributed and license by Funimation.

While I don’t read manga in particular, there’s often been times where I considered reading manga in order to pick up where the anime left off.  Tokyo Ghoul is actually the first series to have me fully commit to doing so, in fact I began reading from chapter one all the way up to 143 which took me about two or three months to get finished. With everything Kaneki has been through during his journey, you can’t help feel sorry for the guy, especially after reading the manga.

Kaneki in shock at his new transformation, with a vision of Rize in the background.

THE GOOD: As far as anime adaptions goes, Tokyo Ghoul is extremely close to the manga, though given the R rating the anime has received, it was able to have more freedom than most anime adaptions, which made getting key scenes just right in animation a bit of a breeze. Natsuki Hanae, who voices Kaneki did an outstanding job providing his voice when it came to scenes that called for emotion and viewers to care for and understand Kaneki. The animation for Tokyo ghoul was quite beautiful, more specifically the scenes that involved the ghouls unleashing their kagune. Those scenes really stood out due to the color and characteristics of each ghoul’s specific kagune.

Touka offered Human food.

Seeing the main ghoul cast interact with their Human allies helped give the sense that they were ore than monsters eating Human flesh for survival, and/or fun in Rize’s case. From Touka’s surprising relationship with Yorimo, to Nishio’s genuine love for Kimi, these relationships helped in avoiding a one-dimensional feeling from the full-blooded ghouls. The first season of the anime covers about 50-80 chapters of the manga, with the remaining 60 or so to season two. Tokyo Ghoul also did a fair job of pacing and character development.

Kaneki losing control of his ghoul half due to hunger.

THE BAD: If you’ve started from the manga and picked up on the anime during it’s release from July, then you’ll notice how unbearable some of the censorship is. For an horror anime with an hard R rating, Tokyo Ghoul’s censorship is pretty annoying, and it’s the little things that get censored, such as Tsukiyama eating and one person getting split in half. It would have been nice if season one had a 24 episode count, as it would have had more time to cover Amon and the CCG, whom both of which get a lengthy amount of coverage in the manga.

Amon and his colleges ready to raid Aogiri.

OVERALL THOUGHTS: Tokyo Ghoul is an excellently adapted anime series getting most of the manga right. The beautiful animation, character designs, and great pacing helps the anime feel bigger than 12 episodes of content. With good character development and fantastic voice acting Pierrot was able to help us feel for the characters. however, the censorship was quite annoying and the lack of time for Amon and CCG was a bit of a downer. With all that said season one of Tokyo Ghoul is an excellent adaption of the manga. Otaku Dome gives Tokyo Ghoul season one an 90 out 100.