The Spring Anime season has been one with high anticipation for me. Three shows from three series that I love have sequels this season and the first one up is Tokyo Ghoul:re! Did the series miss any beats since it last aired back in 2015?
Let’s Go!
First Impressions
Haise Sasaki, who was already unveiled to be some sort of alter ego of Ken Kaneki, is the mentor of the Quinx Squad. The Quinx is a special unit of Doves at the Commission for Counter Ghoul (CCG) that have undergone “treatments” to turn them into half human/half ghouls. They fight with both Kagune and Quinque weapons at their disposal. Urie, Shirazu, and Mutsuki are the three members we are introduced to. So far, Urie desires to get promoted and leave the Quinx squad and is a bit of an arrogant prick, Shirazu is too cocky and flashy for his own good while Mutsuki is a bit on the quiet side and shy.
Their first case is to hunt down the Torso ghoul, but the Orochi ghoul intervenes when they finally discover and corner Torso. The three of them are nearly wiped out when Haise shows up and channels his inner Kaneki, bringing out his Kagune. This is where the first episode ends.
Wow… that’s all I have to say. Not wow in a good way (but I will say that I felt the episode was pretty good), but more so wow… they really rushed this episode. They adapted almost the entirety of volume one of the manga. Granted, the manga had a lot of slow parts to it with a lot of information being tossed around and yes, that could make for a very boring first episode so I can understand why the decision was made to speed things along. Despite the rush job, my only complaint is that they gave you very little time to absorb who the new characters were.
It’s bad enough that the manga has a billion characters in it that you can’t keep straight half of the time (not to mention Sui Ishida’s artwork isn’t exactly super flattering when it comes to consistency and character distinction), but to a new viewer who isn’t a manga reader and is already familiar with these characters, you had about the length of a blink of an eye to read their names and memorize who they were. Either you had to rewind and pause to memorize who they were or rely on name dropping during character interaction to remind yourself of who was who.
Outside of those little drawbacks, I thought the first episode came off really well! It established a new era with Kaneki… sorry, I mean Haise working for the CCG, new characters, and some new challenges! We got some nice reminders that Aogiri Tree still exists as well so we know that they will be playing a role in upcoming episodes.
OP and ED Thoughts
Second anime season in a row where we got an opening theme on the first episode. Is this a new trend? Anyway, the theme is “Asphyxia” by Co shu Nie. I didn’t know stomping on cattails and recording their screams constituted as music. Absolutely awful theme and I don’t understand how people could happy with this. This does not fit the mood of the show and yes, while it is, technically, better than the opening to Tokyo Ghoul √A, it’s not better by much. I think “Unravel” spoiled us because hot damn was I wishing we had that opening back instead of this heap of flaming garbage.
“HALF” by Jooubachi is the ending theme and… eh… it’s an ending theme. It’s a little campy, but it gets the job done. Still not a song I’m going to go out of my way and listen to a full version of.
Worth Watching?
YES – If you’re a fan of Tokyo Ghoul, this will be an instant watch. If you’re a fan of dark and bloody battles between human and ghouls, you may want to start with the first season and work your way up to :re. While the first episode doesn’t exactly require you to know the previous story, you will probably end up SEVERELY lost in later episodes if you don’t go back and watch (or read) all of the material that came before it. Either way, this is a great series that shouldn’t be skipped so hop to it! Go watch it.
