There’s a lot of philosophy tied up in Ken’s fevered visions, as he recalls his late mother ( Takahashi Rieko). I’m still not quite sure how literally we’re supposed to take Rize’s presence, but it’s certainly clear that she and Ken were indeed fused in some meaningful way (and quite intentionally, though to what end is still murky), and she makes a very useful symbol of the ghoul side of Ken, trying to assert itself. But the main point here is what’s going on inside Ken’s head while Jason is continually lopping off his extremities, forcing him to count backwards from 1000 by sevens in order to keep from breaking mentally.
He’s a darn good one – a truly evil and genuinely scary SOB. When push comes to shove, Yakumo is here for this purpose – he’s a device, a catalyst to start the reaction that will give birth to the new Ken. As torture scenes go, I thought it was quite harrowing, and both Hanae Natsuki and Nishi Rintarou deliver outstanding performances. But allowing for personal tastes, this isn’t the sort of material I enjoy very much.
As gruesome as all this is it is here for a point – the viewer has to be shown how Ken got from the guy he was to the white-haired being we see in the OP. As I mentioned last week I tend to feel that the normal charges against these sort of episodes – namely that they’re mostly about titillation – don’t apply as strongly here. On the other, this was pretty much full-on torture porn here – those who love such things will no doubt complain about the black bars (like with all kinds of porn, this is used as incentive to sell discs), but it was plenty grisly enough for my tastes. On the positive side, I like this approach way better than attempting the impossible task of trying to tie up all those loose ends in one episode, which would inevitably have left all of them unsatisfactorily closed out.
It was as grim and interior as it’s possible for an episode to be – it effectively took place mostly in Ken’s mind, over the course of what was probably not more than an hour. Apart, that is, from the flights of hallucination (or were they?) in the mind of Kaneki Ken. I was quite surprised by the way it wrapped up, frankly – after the antepenultimate episode introduced a half-dozen potential plot arcs and the penultimate was an exhausting “Blackwater”-styled action epic, the finale never left one room. Thing is, if anyone was looking to the season finale for a clue (never mind an announcement, a la Sidonia) it wasn’t any help. But all I could to is guess, the same as anyone else. There’s an anime event scheduled for next month, and such occasions are sometimes used for sequel announcements. The anime seems on-track for decent sales, though not outstanding. There’s certainly valid reason to think a second season of the anime is possible: the anime has been a huge boon to the manga’s sales, so the publisher has strong incentive to see it continue. I most certainly have no idea what’s going to happen either with the manga or anime, though I’d be shocked if the manga doesn’t continue (probably under a slightly changed title). Guesswork is rampant – hard facts are in short supply. But he’d also titled Chapter 72 “Halfway”, so there’s overwhelming speculation that this is a long-planned stunt – an ending for the first “part” of the manga, with a sequel due to follow. Not only was the anime ending in a blaze of hyper-pacing with rumors of a possible continuation (at this stage based on no hard evidence) flying, but mangaka Ishida Sui unexpectedly announced that the manga was ending at Chapter 143, with almost no notice. It’s been a crazy week in the world of Tokyo Ghoul. So rather than edit the post itself I’ll leave it as is, because I think it’s more interesting that way – just remember, this was all written before any announcement came down…)Īs endings to manga adaptations go, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anything quite like that one. I suppose it could be bogus and it seems very odd that you wouldn’t announce that at the end of the episode but wait a measly 18 hours, but this is the official Chinese site – and apparently the mangaka had hinted at this earlier on Twitter. (So a funny thing happened on the way to posting this… Once everything was done and formatted, news came through that the official Chinese website for the Tokyo Ghoul manga announced a second season for January.