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Mar 14, 2015
Tokyo Ghoul was easily one of the most hyped titles in 2014.
That's an undeniable fact. The manga got lots of attention before and all the fans were happy to see their new favourite thing animated. But oh boy were they disappointed when it started airing.
The animation in general was, for 2014 standards, below average for the most part. Certain visual effects, such as the Kagunes were well-done The character figures were a mix of good and bad, with the good ones leaving memorable expressions on the viewer and the bad ones being stereotypical character designs everybody will have forgotten about in a week. The backgrounds,
...
however, were all largely well-done and one could see the effort being put into them, a quality which is still present in the lower-budget sequel that is Route A. But well, this is where the good parts end. The general animation looked horrible for the most part to the point where one could see the weird looking limbs during fight scenes.
The soundtrack wasn't too memorable but it fit the atmosphere of the show. The Opening was not too happy yet a bit too happy in general to completely capture the feeling of the show.
The voice acting wasn't too outstanding either. Most characters weren't too memorable and there wasn't too much effort put into it for the biggest part. It was average voice acting, perhaps a bit less considering the modern anime standard.
Let's now move on the important parts:
the story and the characters.
If one were to get vulgar, one could simply say "they sucked ass" but since I want to give a reason as for why that is so, let me elaborate on it:
The premise was basically ghouls living in Japan among humans.
It is above average for originality and differing from the modern "haha, everything is moeblob or medieval fantasy action" standard. Bonus points for that. Unfortunately, that's where the pros end and the cons begin. It was wasted. For the biggest part nobody ever seems to do anything against them, save for one special unit and warning signs telling kids not to leave their houses once the sun has sunk, and the ghouls themselves have close to no kind of order. The humans acting completely normal despite knowing there are dangerous beasts out there is somewhat questionable as well. And saying "they are an urban legend" is no excuse because there obviously is an anti-ghoul squad.
The pacing of it was goddamn awful and was faster than a Ferrari. One could tell that the directors simply wanted to get the boring parts over with and show some scenes that "kick ass".
It had no kind of complexity to it and was mainly just X moving to place 1 because event Y required him to do so. It was plot-driven and the characters were reacting instead of acting.
The story itself ended with a cliffhanger after having shown Kaneki getting super insta speed character development over the course of 10 minutes and going from a crybaby to a "badass" that wouldn't bat an eye even if he lost his legs.
Which leads us to the next section, the characters.
These are mainly made up out of semi archetypes like the crybaby protagonist, the strong female, the cute loli and the mysterious old leader. But cliches are cliches, right? Yeah, no.
Touka is a generic tsundere girl for the most part and has largely any kind of conflict until the Tsukiyama arc is over. This was a good backdrop yet provided no kind of development for her as a character since it was simply forgotten 10 minutes later.
Kaneki is a crybaby who has lived a hard childhood which gave him the mindset "it's better to be hurt than to hurt" which for a large part excuses his actions. His development as a character was fairly interesting to see yet whenever he seemed to finally do something on his own, he turned into the baby he was at episode 1. In the final episodes he seemed to receive some sort of development which, unfortunately, happened way too quick to feel like proper development. It was like he was turned into another character.
And now for some good excused scorings:
Art section : 4/10
General art: 4/10
Character figures: 4/10
Animation: 4/10
Backgrounds: 6/10
Visual effects: 6/10
Sound section: 5/10
Voice acting: 5/10
Music themes: 4/10 for not entirely fitting the atmosphere
Sound effects: 6/10
Story section: 4/10
Premise 4/10
Pacing 2/10
Complexity: 3/10
Conclusion: Not available/10. Therefore it can't be taken into account
Character section: 4/10
Personality: 4/10
Backdrop: 4/10
Development: 4/10 since only one character develops which also happens way too fast to be semi-realistic.
Final score: 4.3/10
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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Feb 28, 2015
1. The premise.
Humans were almost exterminated by titans, now living behind a wall, wall suddenly gets destroyed, mother of MC is kill. So far, so good. Now while this does look like an interesting premise for a proper war drama at first it suffers from the fact that there are titans. Which makes the whole thing quite fantasy like. That aside, the premise, which could have been used to give the characters, y'know, more depth or something by making it longer than two fucking episodes, set up an interesting start for the series.
2. Story
Everything that followed was utter crap. 2 episodes in and a timeskip
...
happens. Great, because we all love timeskips so much. They give you the chance to completely change the personality of any character at any given time because "timeskip".
A good timeskip would be something like: "I hate you -> I hate you but I partly understand you thus I refuse to do something with my hate"
A bad timeskip is something like this: "I hate you -> I still hate you lol"
SnK is a good example of a bad timeskip. The characters didn't gain any kind of depth through it and basically remained as one-dimensional as they were.
Now back to the main issue, the actual story.
The pacing was extremely fast at first but then it slowed down so much that it felt even slower than your average slow paced show.
Now what does slow pacing in an action centered show mean? Right, IT GOES NOWHERE. They spent roughly 8 episodes for one arc and used 5 minutes to recap everything. Not only that but nothing in the story, which is supposed to be about a war drama or something, which COULD happen to our dear MC-kun gives you a feeling of danger because ever since episode 5 everybody knows he can transform into a titan and is basically invincible.
3. The CAST
Let's save the best for the last.
Most characters were forgettable.
Not just forgettable but uber-forgettable. Because they didn't have any personality or only a screentime of 10 minutes. Now when 5 people die in a titan attack and someone screams "GUNTHER DIED" you wonder which one of these samefaces was Gunther. Same goes for this one girl who wanted Levi's D. Petra, was it? She had a screentime of 10 minutes, she cared about Levi and died an episode or a few minutes later while thinking about Levi. How sad, right? This, my dear friends, is forced drama.
But what would an anime be without a main character or a group of main characters?
They were UNDERWHELMING.
Eren was supposed to be given character development throughout the series but it never happened. He was just ... there. "GOTTA KILL THE TITANS" is how you could describe him. Or in a single word; anger.
Mikasa is the beauty which is looking out for Eren and is willing to kill anyone who'd harm him without a second thought. Because he saved her life once. Understandable but doesn't give you the right to make "Protectiveness" her defining character trait.
Armin is the brain of the group and goes from incompetent to somewhat competent. Arguably the only good character in the whole fucking show and even he is not all that good.
4. Animation and sound.
Top-notch.
Conclusion:
Entry-level anime for those who search for something cool like titan killing kids flying through the city.
It's Spiderman just with wires instead of spiderwebs. And air-battles.
And edgyness.
Final verdict:
5.5/10, a bit better than average but still not as good as people make it out to be.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Feb 13, 2015
Before I start, let's take a look at the current score(s) of this show and what it achieved here on MAL:
Over 75% of the viewers gave it a score of 8 or higher and it's currently ranked #186 in total.
But are such scores actually the proper scores for this show? Let's break it down:
Story and its flaws mixed with a bit of rationality:
While it did indeed have its moments, it failed horribly on quite some levels (for example, the motorbike scene was 10/10 material but that was, unfortunate as it is, probably the best scene this show has to offer).
The premise:
Two boys who are
...
about as old as teenage boys commit terror acts in Tokyo.
While this sounds interesting in theory, it was executed so poorly that it was cringeworthy at times.
It wasn't even proper terrorism. It was simply two teenage boys trying to catch attention by blowing things up. They didn't ask for anything. They didn't do anything.
They had the technology to hack into the computers of the police yet in the end didn't do anything with that. The show tries to come off as mature and mystical with smart protagonists yet they blow up everything just because "they want attention". Which kind of does make sense in the long-run seeing how they are orphans but the way they approached this was simply stupid. They had a nuke, blowing it up over the ocean would have been enough.
It was way too predictable to be a mystery.
It also had, as previously mentioned, no consistent theme.
TL;DR
Too immature and irrational at times to be taken seriously. Had its moments but lacked in overall performance.
Characters:
They completely lacked any sort of appeal a character should have.
They weren't given enough depth to be taken serious either.
Lisa was basically a plot device to screw the protagonists over and make life harder for them. She had no kind of impact on the story apart from being the "damsel in distress which has to be saved by the proud knight in bright armor (twelve)."
Five was a one-dimensional character who was simply kind of a psychopath. Her actions, "I want to kill you all" - "Oh wait, I don't" - "Nevermind, I will try to kill you" - "Nevermind, I love you" didn't have any sense of consistency.
Also, incompetent police and there's only one officer who can save the day.
GENERIC AND BORING. Because you do know that only he can solve the riddles, you know that there won't be anyone if he suddenly were to quit his job who could stop the "terrorists".
Probably the weakest aspect of the whole show.
Sound was fantastic and fit the show in a perfect way. The fact that, however, the art was so realistic whilst actually showing a cartoon world (not as in "animated" but as in "nobody can die in this show either way unless we planned it". Example: They created an EMP while claiming they never wanted to hurt anyone and only wanted to be remembered due to having been on their own for their whole lives. Yet they did not even consider what could possibly happen to those who use electronic devices to sustain themselves (e.g. heart rythm-helper and/or similar things.)). Otherwise it looked good and helped give off the atmosphere rather well for most of the part.
TL;DR
Overall Zankyou no Terror is a solid 5-6/10 which suffered from flaws which could have been avoided if given enough time. It's quite a shame to see potential with budget being wasted once more.
Coming back to the first sentence: It does NOT deserve this high ranking MAL is giving it if you take it with a grain of salt instead of believing everything the industry tells you.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Jun 1, 2014
This is the first time I actually write a review, so please forgive me if I write it in a bad way. Also, this is purely based on my opinion.
Despite reading the manga, I dropped this (for now, maybe I'll continue once it's finished airing) because so many things were wrong with this it wasn't funny anymore.
Story:
Pretty much not existing at all. The characters lose sight of their goals and every 10th / 20th episode (This includes the "old" Fairy Tail as well) they suddenly remember it. "Oh, right, we were looking for our dragon parents who vanished."
The "story" is made out of single arcs
...
which almost always don't have some kind of connection at all. One of the most serious problems Fairy Tail has, is seriousness. Of course, comedy is nice and all but sometimes the comedy is misplaced. "Oh, we're trapped here and might die because we can't get any food - How about the girls strip and wear bikinis / sexy underwear so that the men will release us." I know Fairy Tail is infamous for its fanservice, and I am a fan of it as well, but Mashima should know when he should add fanservice and when not.
Battles:
The most important part of a Shonen anime and I almost always enjoy them.
But not here. I am a tolerant watcher that can tolerate minor logic errors or slight friendship power-ups since nearly every Shonen has something like that. But Fairy Fail is overdoing it. Let me take one of the fights from this series as an example:
Rufus:
"I can use ancient magic, no one can beat me, I have all the magic in this LIBRARY and can even use ANCIENT / LOST magic nobody else can use. OH, I can also dissolve the magic of my opponent so that he can't use his magic anymore. I am SOOO gonna win this fight."
Gray:
"I was being pwned by but thanks to my nakamas I can now counter the magic that screwed me up 2 seconds ago."
This is just not okay. In the end it all comes down to opinions here but this fight was the pinnacle of stupidity.
Characters:
The characters are almost always stereotypical (Shounen) characters that can mostly be summed up with one or two words. They also don't get any major character development (If we exclude Gray and Erza, that is. (Then again, we only learned about their pasts. I doubt this can be called "character development", Mashima just seems to like these characters so he decided to give them some depth.)) which is very important in a Shonen anime. After 170 episodes Natsu is still the same idiot as in episode 1 that likes to show off. Nothing changed at all.
Sound:
Outstanding / Awesome / Superb.
Easily the best part of the whole anime. The medieval soundtrack fits perfectly and is one of the best out there.
Art / Animation style:
Many people complain about it but just as many people like it. The new animation style resembles the manga and is pretty damn good in my opinion. The character designs are now much better.
Enjoyment:
I wouldn't have dropped the series if I enjoyed it, right?
Despite having enjoyed the first season, I can't bear to watch this one. I don't know what happened but it pains me to watch it.
Conclusion:
It's probably a good Shonen anime if you didn't watch many animes yet, good thing for newcomers. If you just like me prefer animes with some depth this isn't a series for you.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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