I was excited for the prospect of a different take on perhaps the manga's weakest arc, but found myself disappointed by the lack of attention to the main character. Kaneki, who should've been the focal point of the so-called "original plot", is left thoroughly underdeveloped and recieves approximately half a minute of air-time per episode. I never got the feeling that there even was an original element to the story. From one episode to the next, content was centered around adaptations of the sidestory in the manga.
Studio Pierrot proved itself completely inadequate to handling the franchise and we can only hope that the Tokyo Ghoul series gets the Brotherhood-esque 50-episode reboot with a much better studio.ĭespite a promising opening episode that immediately introduced a difference in story to the manga, Root A never seemed to be interested in actually developing an original story. For all the hype generated by Sui Ishida creating an original plot lineįor the anime to follow, Root A fell inconceivably short in almost all areas it could. It is a mess of unexplained plot points that insult the complexity of the source material it was adapted from. Root A, however, is trash from an anime-viewer-only perspective and worse than trash if you've read the manga. As a stand alone show, ignoring the quality of the manga, it was pretty good. The first season of Tokyo Ghoul, while certainly not reaching the heights as the manga, was an enjoyable exposition to the series that was able lead newcomers like me to binge read the entire 143 chapter manga in two days.