While it was clear from the first season of Tokyo Ghoul that Studio Pierrot’s adaptation would be more focused on raw emotion and atmosphere than plot or characters, this is getting a bit ridiculous. Tokyo Ghoul √A is a confusing mess, meandering from start to finish with no clear direction or clear progress in mind. Even if it is still somewhat technically proficient at eliciting emotions of terror and moral conflict, it’s harder to make these emotions work when we have no more characters to really attach them to. It seems to be a show trapped in limbo, building up from our original introduction to the world and forces at play to a larger future crescendo that will resolve everything. But with world-building on one side and the central conflict on the other, what is √A ultimately left with?
Our central figure Kaneki, who due to his status as both an ordinary human student and a sinister flesh-eating Ghoul served as the lynchpin of moral quandary from the first installment, has gone the way of Achilles from the Illiad, truant and brooding until his inevitable intervention at the eleventh hour. As he shifts to being entirely Ghoul in his leanings, all human elements left in him gone besides a vague desire to protect his friends vis a vis becoming a terrorist, the focus shifts so hard to the police and the evils of his Ghoul organization Aogiri that the moral debate is all but settled, making the final conflict between his benign Ghoul friends and the sadistic forces of justice all the more stilted and confusing. It is a massive bait-and-switch where all our sympathy for Ghouls was taken away by the show’s choice of focus, only for the last few minutes to ask us once again to cry for the poor victimized monsters. And Kaneki’s return to help is beyond predictable; it is counterproductive. The uselessness of the self-sacrifice his friends perform against the police aside, to waste their attempts to keep him and others safe is a blatant affront to their memory, performed even while their bodies are still warm.
In his virtual absence, things begin to focus on a few other players in the universe. Most of the police force is largely unchanged, save for the deeper characterization of the madman Juuzou. His single-minded quest for wanton death and destruction, while never curbed, is given some depth with the story of his life among ghouls, but I still feel him a poor replacement for last season’s sadist Kureo, who erred more on the side of calculation than mindless violence while also having much more of a social conscience and drive to do good. Juuzou seems more at home with the list of stock traumatized kids that litter anime in general, his madness explained away with fairly simple-minded emotional distress. There is also a weird romantic tension between Kureo’s daughter Akira and his former partner Amon, which seems to do little but detract from Akira’s image as a capable investigator as well as Amon’s image as straight-edged. The character flaws that come out of both parties as a result of their interactions is…well, uncharacteristic of either of them.
On the other end of the spectrum is the evil side of Ghoul society, the terrorist force Aogiri, as they go about their nefarious purposes of getting new members and making life unfortunate for the police. Once again there is little if any development from most of the parties, and in particular a number of new characters pop up with either no explanation or no real purpose. Early on Aogiri boosts one of their allies, the childlike Naki, as he is being transported between prison facilities, and yet all we see of him for the rest of the show is some comedic antics and a couple of fight scenes. He is neither the most capable in Aogiri nor does he serve any particular function; the only use for him seems to be in his breakout, where we as the audience have to fully accept that Kaneki is working for the forces of evil for now. During a larger breakout we meet the ultra-powerful Kamishiro Matasaka, and in one fight scene he convincingly trounces Kaneki. This is the first and last time we see him in the show, as well as the first and last time he is mentioned. Clearly this is setting things up for the future, but if √A serves no purpose other than to bridge the original Tokyo Ghoul and the possible third season, then we are better served reading a synopsis. And with these characters I’m not convinced that isn’t the better option.
The redeeming quality for √A, as with Tokyo Ghoul, is the general atmosphere it sets. There are glimmers of the futility of the struggle between man and Ghoul, as towards the end the kindly old Ghoul in the coffee shop has a few brief moments of friendship with the police officer who will soon come to kill him, and from their slow methodical speech over a well-brewed cup of coffee in the dead of night we know that both of them are well aware of what is to happen. During the fight scenes—by themselves they have little to offer to the anime fight scene canon—there is a pervasive use of piano music that is uncontrolled and atonal, but also not relegated to the backdrop. Each note sounds with intention and presence, with classical elements evoking a familiarity and long-reaching history, all of which elevate the emotions of the scene in a memorable fashion, feeling less manipulative than fitting. There are also a few brief scenes of Kaneki being taken over by his insanity and trauma from the torture he suffered at the end of the first season, and his use of specific referential lines such as counting backwards are convincing enough: he suffers deeply from his past, and not in an unexplained or simplistic fashion.
What these characteristics do is mask the show in a blanket of temporary emotion, be it nostalgia, terror, or moral insecurity, but with the lack of any substance to attach these emotions to the moment quickly fades. The show ultimately boils down to a police force walking around aimlessly like a drunkard, a sinister organization that keeps hedging its bets and playing for the long term, and glimpsing the small band of moral Ghouls that attest to the good and evil in both sides only occasionally until they are offered as a final sacrifice to the show in the name of dramatic tension and regret. Shoddy attempts at depth go no deeper than edgy backstory and impassioned philosophical speeches indistinguishable from the next show over. Due to the strong technical aspects I did find myself ultimately enjoying quite a few of the individual scenes, but the end result leaves nothing but a bland taste in my mouth.