Tokyo Ghoul 2×12 Review: Ken

Tokyo Ghoul Root A has finally come to an end. After months of watching this series, my time with this anime is finally over. The conclusion of this anime series ends with much sadness, angst, and tragedy. Although the majority of the series consisted of disappointments, the final episode gives the show some redemption. Warning: episode spoilers below.

This episode starts out with a heartfelt reunion between Kaneki and Hide, but this happy scene doesn’t last very long. It’s soon revealed that Hide has suffered a fatal wound and is dying. This reunion scene turns into a sad goodbye for the two best friends. There is an iconic image that has been used to promote the second season of Tokyo Ghoul. The image is of Kaneki carrying the body of a person who is covered with a white sheet. Some people have guessed that Kaneki was carrying his past self or Touka. However, it’s finally revealed that Kaneki was actually carrying Hide’s dead body. After this heartbreaking scene, the rest of the episode consisted of showing the tragic result of the big fight between the ghouls and the CCG.

If you have been keeping up with my reviews of this series, you should be well aware of my dislike of the second season of Tokyo Ghoul. I mentioned how I found it messy and lacking direction. In addition to those major flaws, I also thought that the overall quality of the series decreased incredibly since the first season. The animation and art seemed sloppy and the music used in the series seemed unfitting. There were many times where I caught myself cringing while watching the episodes.

I’m glad that the series is finally over, but there are still so many flaws that were never fixed in the show. This episode leaves a lot of questions unanswered. We still don’t know what was the point of Kaneki joining Aogiri, what happened to half of the characters, and what was the point of half of the characters even being in this season.

I’ve mentioned plenty of times before how I thought that the only redeeming quality of the second season was the ending credits (which featured a great song by the band Amazarashi and original artwork by the mangaka Ishida Sui). I still stand by that. However, I thought that the conclusion of Tokyo Ghoul Root A was, for the most part, a decent way of tying together an otherwise disastrous season. Even after my constant string of complaints, I have to admit that this episode was somewhat sad and left me, along with the rest of the fandom, dealing with many feelings.

I’m both happy and sad that this series finally ended. Even though Tokyo Ghoul Root A left much to be desired, I still feel a bit sad that one of my favorite manga/anime series has come to an end. I’m not sure what the future will hold for the anime. As I stated in my previous article, there are some rumors going around of there possibly being a third season (and the end of this episode definitely set up a potential third season). Honestly, I’d prefer that this series ends here, unless the project gets passed onto a different production company. Studio Pierrot has already done too much damage to Tokyo Ghoul. As for me, I’m going to continue reading the manga’s sequel and wait to see what happens with that. Tokyo Ghoul :re is currently being serialized in Japan and the scans are available online.

Author: Pearl

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