Tokyo Ghoul: Root A

Dubbed: Taking place shortly after the first miniseries, this sequel shows the now transformed Kaneki working for the Agori tree, which is an organization of ghouls that some would say are not very nice. It's up to his friends to try and figure out what his deal is. Idk to me it just felt like Kaneki was turning evil for no reason I guess until toward the end where they reveal what they reveal. I definitely enjoyed this miniseries, but not quite as top notch as the first series. Nonetheless still just as relentless, and plenty of cool characters arcs.

If I would not have read the manga, I would probably have rated it 2 stars. It's that bad. Mind you, the first season was a 9 for me.

Let's start with the flaws. Side stories that don't go anywhere. Characters without any purpose. Characters suddenly appearing in the middle of action scenes from nowhere. The main character (is he even main character anymore?) missing from lots of important parts of the story. And I could go on. Long story short, it's a very confusing show that makes little sense.

Does it have cool action scenes? Yeah but... I don't think you can be invested in them if you don't care about the characters.

In spite of all this, the show can be enjoyable if you read the manga first. As I already read the manga, I could fill up plotholes and understand the reasons for the existence of action scenes and some secondary characters. The anime diverges from the manga a lot but some scenes are picked directly from the manga without any thought if they fit here or not.

The last few episodes are especially interesting (if you read the manga, again I repeat myself)

I've not read the manga's but after watching the second season / follow up series and feeling like it was missing something critical it appears this chapter in the anime failed to do "Tokyo Ghoul" justice.

Ok maybe the rating doesn't match the title but there were good moments in my opinion, very enjoyable at times and at least it was a coherent overall story. But so many storylines went nowhere and had no explanation. Characters weren't developed at all when introduced which is a huge shame. A lot of the end was unexplained aswell. Overall very disappointing with some very good, enjoyable moments.

Tokyo Ghoul is a special series. It differs from season to season very much, so rating the entire series with a single rating feels wrong, and unfair to this season, season 2.

I'm not a manga reader, and I think that some animes with a manga that differs much from the anime often becomes an unfair situation in rating. If I understand correctly, this whole season is not in the manga, and therefore it became a situation when manga readers don't like this season just because they love how the manga was original made and if the anime then differs, (even if it's good, which in this case it is), they don't like it and poison their view of the whole series. Because I'll be honest, and anyone who hasn't read the manga will probably agree with this. This season is by far the best in the entire series. Those who say otherwise have either read the manga and therefore underrate this season, or that they simply like simpler, more childish series. Because if you are to compare seasons 1 and 2 in TG, it is like day and night, where night is all well and good. Season 1 is fairly light, where the characters feel simpler and easier to understand, and then it takes a turn in season 2 where everything gets dark, and there is a mysterious feeling throughout the series, where the characters, especially the main character, feel much more complex and more likeable.

Season one is in the manga, and season two is not. And still for season 2 to have almost the same rating as season one, with all the manga-readers hating it, is a good job. I've seen a lot of series, many animes too. And I can easily say, without the manga making any role in this, season 2 is objectivly much better than season 1, and 7,5 on this second season is way too low. I loved this season, and would say it is one of the better seasons in anime in the new-gens.

Just wanted to talk about this, because I've heard that the manga is super good in TG, and now that s1 was in the manga, and s2 wasn't, makes the rating very unfair, wrong. I would personally rate this season around 8,3 to 8,5 (compared to other animes, I think animes usually have a too high rating in general, because the audience is one-sided, but thats not importnant here).