Title: Tokyo Ghoul:re Vol. 6
Author: Sui Ishida
Publisher: Viz Media
Language: English
Format: Paperback
Pages: 224
Genre: Fantasy, Battle
Publication Date: August 21, 2018
The Story
Tokyo Ghoul:re Volume six sees the conclusion of the Rose operation. On one front, The Quinx Squad is still battling Noro from Aogiri Tree while Kaneki is battling Shu, Eto, and Kanae by himself. The battle with Noro ends up in success as Urie and Shirazu pull a double team move and damage him to the point where he cannot regenerate anymore. After 20 total volumes in the series, Noro is dead!
The victory comes at a price as, during the attack, Shirazu took an extremely deep wound to the point where he regeneration powers cannot repair the damage fast enough. Shirazu, unfortunately, loses his life as a result. On the other side, during the battle with Eto, Kaneki loses an arm but lures Eto to the edge of the roof. While she has him in his grasp, Kaneki slices Eto in half but her torso falls over the edge. Given how powerful she is, Kaneki has no doubts that she survived, even in that state.
All that is left is to take out Shu and Kanae. Kaneki kills two birds with one stone by throwing Shu over the side of the roof. Kanae makes a jump for him and uses his kagune to propel Shu to safety. Kanae; however, plummets to his death, sacrificing himself for Shu. With the battle over, the manga takes a six month time skip that sees Kaneki (as Haise Sasaki, mind you), promoted from Senior Investigator to Assistant Special Investigator. Because of this promotion, Haise has resigned as the leader of the Quinx Squad and Urie is, once again, put in command of it.
From this point forward, the CCG’s focus us on Aogiri Tree and nothing else. The Hachikawa Squad is sent to Rushima Island where it is believed that the former war stronghold is serving as a base for Aogiri Tree. The recon mission goes south as Torso and Owl (former CCG investigator Takizawa) ambush them. Hachikawa loses his life in order to let the others escape. Meanwhile, using his knowledge from the battle with Eto, Haise launches an investigation to capture her, which succeeds. Eto actually planned on being captured as she is set to issue a statement to the world about her final book. During that press conference with Kaneki by her side keeping watch, she announces to the entire world that the author the world knew as Sen Takatsuki is actually a ghoul!
The story is ramping up nicely! Glad to see that Shu survived the entire ordeal. Makes you wonder what kind of role he’s going to play from here on out! Also, things seem to be moving forward with the next big battle being laid before us. The CCG vs Aogiri Tree seems like the ultimate final battle to me but with there being 10 volumes left in this series, I highly doubt we’re going to see this battle be the end of everything. Still, we saw some pretty big characters die during the entire Rose arc and things, once again, are getting shifted around at the CCG.
Even though we just got finished with one huge battle, I have a feeling we’ll be plunged straight into another starting next volume!
Characters
Haise has grown even colder in this volume. His Kaneki personality is seeping out more and more and it was very apparent when he returned from the battle on the roof to discovered Shirazu had died. When Urie scolded Haise for not showing up sooner, Haise shot a cold, steel arrow right through Urie’s heart by saying that it was his fault for Shirazu’s death because he was the one fighting beside him. While Haise was, technically, right… that was still something fairly cold to say to a grieving teammate. It’s also polar opposite of what Haise has been like throughout this entire series which shows that Kaneki is slowly coming back more and more.
We got to know Eto a little bit better in this volume. We got to explore how she became a writer as well as a couple of flashbacks to when she was born. Her capture being part of her plan was a pretty clever ploy. Right before she was captured, she delivered a speech to the entirety of Aogiri Tree where she addressed the rumors of her being the One-Eyed King… the fabled strongest ghoul that has been touched upon since the beginning of this series. Eto flat out denies that she is the One-Eyed King which still leaves the question of that ghoul’s identity unanswered.
Outside of these two characters, there hasn’t been much in the way of development. We were introduced to the new members of Quinx squad but they are barely even touched upon with the exception of Aura who was likened to Urie as far as coming from a wealthy family. Hopefully, we’ll get to know more about them in the future but with this cast being as massive as it is, I won’t lose any sleep if they remain background characters that are used sporadically.
Final Thoughts
Even though a battle ended and the second half of the volume was used to set up the next, the pacing didn’t feel like it slowed down at all. With Eto getting captured, that gave us a bit of interest to keep the pages turning. This is what this series needed because it was following a formula of dumping a whole bunch of information, having a battle, then going right back to more information dumping. Throwing in interesting plot points a bit more frequently helps with the pacing and helps keep things interesting and this volume did that perfectly. It would have sucked if we received an entire second half of them just sitting around detailing the mission, going over targets, and assigning squad members. While Ishida did that, he moved through it rather quickly, thankfully.
There were a couple of interesting tidbits I left out because I didn’t want to delve too deep into them, but Arima seems to be on the move when it comes to Kaneki as the CCG is starting to suspect some things about him. Also, Fueguchi’s execution date has been set which makes you wonder if Kaneki knows about it. This is another great example of sprinkling in some interesting events amongst the cooldown period after a battle. Even though these were quick scenes that spanned one or two pages, it made the world feel alive and that important things were happening all over the place that people should be paying attention to!
Now, if Ishida can fix the pacing of his fights, stop bouncing between scenes left and right, and clean up his art so his battles are a bit easier to follow, that would be lovely.
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This item was provided for review by Viz Media
