Title: Tokyo Ghoul:re Vol. 8
Author: Sui Ishida
Publisher: Viz Media
Language: English
Format: Paperback
Pages: 232
Genre: Fantasy, Battle
Publication Date: December 18, 2018
The Story
Tokyo Ghoul:re Volume eight continues the CCG vs Aogiri Tree battle on multiple fronts. Once again, Sui Ishida is jumping around from point to point which gets a bit annoying after a while. In the midst of it all, we end up getting some nice backstories on both Torso and Mutsuki. Outside of that, we also get the battle and conclusion to the much-anticipated Kaneki vs Arima fight which ended in a way that made sense but was also severely disappointing at the same time. I understand the reasoning behind the way the battle ended but I just wish it ended in a completely different manner. For someone like Arima to give a reason as he did, it just feels like a cop-out to me.
Things in Chochlea are going to hell in a handbasket real quick. Eto is on the verge of death thanks to Donato getting out of his cell and reuniting with them. I kind of laughed at the fact that his alias (in addition to being Priest) is Crown. That would make him the Crown Clown which is a reference to Allen Walker’s Innocence in D.Gray-man. Maybe it’s just pure speculation on my part?
Thanks to Arima’s little tell-all moment and Marude’s investigating, we learn that the heads of the CCG and the Washu family are, in fact, ghouls themselves. The official report is after killing the heads of the CCG, Marude took his own life, not being able to bear the fact that he worked for ghouls this entire time. It also makes you wonder what Furuya’s intentions are and what he means by wanting true peace. Things just took a very interesting turn with this revelation as the lines between human and ghoul and who is right and wrong just became so blurred, you can’t even tell there’s a line there anymore.
We also learned the identity of who the One-Eyed King is but I’ve spoiled enough about this volume already. I’ll let you all read that and discover it on your own.
While I was disappointed with some of the events that took place, there were enough interesting things in here to keep me turning the pages. The volume is lengthy but it’s mostly action so the pages kept turning at a quick pace. The battles were fun but I just wish that Ishida wouldn’t bounce between different battles all the time. Stick with one and move onto the next one!
Characters
Lots and lots of development in this book… a lot of which goes into spoiler territory so I’ll be brief with a lot of it.
First off, I’ll touch upon Torso since he explained his past rather well. His father kept him isolated in a random cabin in the woods. He told him never to go into the city for his own protection. One day, his father disappeared and he got hungry, so he ventured into the city where he met a girl named Minomi. The two of them became friends until he learned that she was getting beaten by her parents. Minomi showed up one day and stayed with him. That’s when Torso’s father came home and found her, killing her for food. He was in the process of chopping her up when Torso discovered her remains. He ended up killing his father over it and all that was left of Minori was her torso. The rest was history. While you do feel bad for him, it’s still a generic backstory. Guy meets girl.. they become friends.. said girl dies… guy goes off the deep end. Nothing really original here.
Mitsuki on the other hand was just a girl who killed her parents and a cat but didn’t really know why she did so. She had a bit of a memory problem but she was treated like an outcast because of it. Beyond that, there really isn’t much to Mitsuki’s backstory.
The spoiler territory begins with Arima, V, the CCG, and ghouls. All of that ties into each other but that’s about as far as I’ll go in explaining it. Needless to say, it was a major revelation to the story and exposes the CCG for what it really is. Plus, we end up getting the identity of the One-Eyed King out of it and it truly means.
On the humorous side of things, we learned a little bit about Naki in the fac that he is a blithering idiot. Even though he can’t remember what was said thirty minutes ago, he can remember the names of all of his comrades that died. The White Suits follow him because they know they are expendable but it gives them comfort in knowing that if they die, there will always be someone who remembers them.
Also, there was a nice little tidbit in there about Yoshimura that raises more questions than answers them. Nice to know that they’re still building upon him posthumously.
Final Thoughts
This was kind of a mixed bag volume for me. I enjoyed a lot of the big reveals but the ending to the Arima fight was severely disappointing. Also, the revelation about the One-Eyed King was interesting but I didn’t really expect something like that, either. Torso’s past was just generic and Mutsuki’s didn’t really do anything for me. The cons though do not outweigh the pros in this volume as there is plenty here to get excited about. It looks like was not done with the CCG vs Aogiri battles as they teased a fight with Tatara next and if the anime is adapting the mange as intended, we should be in for a very pleasant surprise in volume nine!
It’s funny that I mention the anime because I often stated that Tokyo Ghoul was a confusing series with the way Ishida jumps around with a massive cast of forgettable characters but the anime has done such a terrible job adapting the manga that I’m now looking back to the manga to fill in the gaps of everything they skipped or glossed over. In that sense, this series is such a mess that it’s baffling how it stayed so popular for so long. Then you read the great plot points as we had here in volume eight and all wonder fades away as you simply just know what makes Tokyo Ghoul so good.
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This item was provided for review by Viz Media
