So far I have only seen the censored version of Tokyo Ghoul, and honestly I'm baffled as to why a censored version even exists. There are many types of horror, and this show certainly fits the bill of gore in every way. The struggle it portrays between humans and ghouls is the classic story of humans resisting all the things that go bump in the night—yet with most of the perspective coming from the latter group—and while our protagonists attempt to resist their urges of murdering innocent people for a meal, there is no shortage of gruesome bloody death they come across. A show like Tokyo Ghoul exists to shock and disgust us, to motivate the character’s altruism through showing us exactly the kinds of horrors that they are repulsed by. And from the dirty shots of back alleys lined with blood to the animalistic poses of the ghouls, it delivers exactly that.
Walking the line between ghoul and human is our protagonist, Kaneki, a normal person who ends up as a mix of both due to an accidental transplant from a ghoul who unsuccessfully attempted to kill him. In the first few episodes he is forced to confront this new body, one that rejects all food besides human flesh, one that is immune to most forms of damage and pain, all of which firmly point to the fact that he is no longer eligible to have friends in the real world. To isolate him even further, the morality that his human half retains firmly rejects the notion of eating flesh, and so he walks on the boundary of starvation while avoiding ghouls who would try to feast on his tender half-human flesh. Soon he finds a fix: a café that is a haven for ghouls who have no desire to prey on living humans. Forced to separate from both the human world and the ghoul world, this is his only place of belonging.
But for the most part these themes of isolation and belonging do not play much of a part in motivating him nor the other characters, and seem to serve little purpose other than to put him squarely in the middle of the ongoing conflict between the police and various ghoul organizations. Indeed Tokyo Ghoul is a shounen fighter at heart (famously divergent from the more psychological manga, although I would consider them mostly similar, ultimately different, equally enjoyable works), and so many of these points only serve as a way to build the setting. Not that there is anything wrong with that, as a good shounen fight scene is hardly ever dull.
If there is a real motivating emotion, it would be fear and disgust, which the ghouls seem to brush off for the most part due to their ingrained survival instinct, whereas Kaneki acutely feels them while being forced into some of the more gruesome killings anime has to offer. Entrails fly, heads roll, centipedes crawl into places they should never be, and everything that moves—or has just stopped moving—becomes food in short order. This would be fairly cheap horror by itself, as it just gets a rise out of the weak stomachs the audience inherently possesses. It is Kaneki, who reacts in exactly the ways we would in his position, who makes the horror have a punch. A lot of work seemed to go into his facial expressions, and as he starts to succumb to his urges to partake in that very horror, his face rapidly changes between all sorts of carnal smiles and repulsed gapes. Insanity has always been a card that anime loves to play, but rarely do we get to watch the protagonist descend into madness from the earliest episodes on. Of course, it is by grounding this madness in both the human emotions we can emphasize with and the ghoul urges we cannot that it feels plausible, and by extension interesting.
Most of the actual plot points of the show, from the slew of obsessive antagonists to the friendly café environment, and even the plot twists and power creep, are par for the course. As I said before, fight scenes rarely go amiss, especially when there are supernatural powers involved. Tokyo Ghoul also manages to start many fights solely based on chance encounters between the protagonists and the various other factions, limiting the number of fights motivated by plot alone, or worse, contrived ideological crusades. Granted, those do still happen, and while they do not quite stick out like a sore thumb, they sure as hell hurt just as much to watch. Many standard fighter tropes are also present. Yesterday’s enemy is tomorrow’s ally, friendship wins out, and a mental snap can spell imminent demise for the antagonists.
The emotional depth never quite breaks surface level, but the cast was never really designed to do so in the first place. The two exceptions are Kaneki, who has to struggle with his dual identity as well as some memories of his home life, and the Fueguchi family, who consist of a doctor who is forced to make torture devices for a sadistic monster, a mother who desperately waits for his return, and a little girl who remains oblivious to the whole situation. They quickly become the focal point of some good plot development, as well as a glimmer of character development, and more importantly complicate the narrative between the ghoul protagonists and the law, represented by a pair of police officers tasked with taking down ghouls. Their story is more predictable and linear, but I felt a stronger mixture of both outright hatred and sympathy for the two of them, confronting superhuman human-eaters day in and day out and slowly growing to enjoy it. Either way, they play a key role in mixing up our emotions with regards to the atrocities committed by both sides of the war, which is good because the other ghoul factions exist to be completely hated with no redeeming qualities whatsoever. I suppose no shounen fighter can exist without at least one source of unmitigated evil, but it still comes across as forcing a morality onto the show, and forced does it feel.
But fans of those exact types of shounen fighters will enjoy Tokyo Ghoul, provided they have strong enough stomachs. Well, that or they could watch the censored version, but honestly the censored version takes away more than half the reason for the show. I would advise anyone considering picking up Tokyo Ghoul to wait for the uncensored releases so the true impact can be felt. Even with the black screen up in front of anything resembling blood or guts, there is a clear sense of danger and shock waiting to be unveiled, and once it is brought to light I predict that Tokyo Ghoul will stand head and shoulders above typical gory horror shows. Or at least I certainly hope so.