Just another upsetting thing about the anime adaptation.
Summary:
- Tokyo Ghoul is famous for having a terrible anime adaptation.
- Unlike the most common opinion, issues started back in Season 1.
- The anime was nowhere as unhinged as the manga.
Tokyo Ghoul is notorious for being one of the worst anime adaptations that ever existed. Season 1 wasn’t a complete disaster, if we’re being honest, but Season 2 absolutely ruined the series for so many fans that they shudder every time they even hear about it.
It Went South Pretty Quickly
There were a lot of issues with Season 2, and unlike a popular opinion, they weren’t all connected with the deviation from the manga. The direction and execution were also poor, and the animation became significantly worse.
The story is the most upsetting thing, though. Half of the events that we saw in Season 2 didn’t make any sense, and it was challenging to comprehend what was even happening for a big part of the season. It was absolutely unenjoyable and straight-out dumb.
The Manga Is Much Darker
But the thing that the entire adaptation suffered from the most was the censorship. Tokyo Ghoul is a seinen manga, which means it’s targeted at the audience of young adults and adults. To cut it short, Tokyo Ghoul was never for kids and teenagers.
There are some pretty unhinged things in the series. Blood, gore, torture, psychological manipulation, severed limbs, cannibalism, etc. As you may see, the list is pretty extensive. Tokyo Ghoul is perfect at making its readers disgusted and absolutely terrified.
But the anime adaptation can’t terrify even a middle-schooler. They certainly aren’t recommended to watch the series, but we can imagine a brave and not overly sensitive 12-year-old watching Tokyo Ghoul and feeling completely unimpressed by anything it has to offer.
And this was one of the biggest mistakes of the adaptation. Tokyo Ghoul is this brutal and explicit for a reason. It is aimed at an older audience, it explores mature themes and it’s about man-eating monsters after all, so it’s not a cartoon for little kids.
Kaneki is a character that suffered from this the most. The anime Kaneki and the manga Kaneki are two different people. In the anime, he was just a whiny kid who couldn’t stop complaining and crying, while the manga Kaneki can be considered one of the greatest protagonists of all time.
It has been like that since Season 1, even though that season wasn’t that bad, as we’ve said. When Jason was torturing Kaneki in Episode 12, he brought him a pair of lovers to make Kaneki choose which one of them had to die. Jason was trying to break Kaneki mentally at that moment.
The scene was twisted indeed, but the manga took it to another level. In the original source, there was a mother and a child instead. And to make things worse, Kaneki personally knew them.
It’s just a single example, but the adaptation of Tokyo Ghoul is packed with similar ones. It’s like the anime was trying to be less shocking on purpose, and it ruined the experience for a lot of viewers.