Book Review “Tokyo Ghoul Volume 1” by Sui Ishida-Part 1
“Tokyo Ghoul” by Sui Ishida is a dark fantasy manga and anime series. For my review of this series I will be focusing on the main story line which will include “Tokyo Ghoul” and its sequel “Tokyo Ghoul:re”. If you guys would like me to cover any of the spinoffs, let me know in the comments down below. I am reviewing the English translated version of the manga and the English dubbed version of the anime. Like with all of my manga series reviews, I’m going to be looking at one volume at a time as well as that volume’s corresponding episodes from the anime. Spoilers incoming so please go ahead and read “Tokyo Ghoul Volume 1” if you haven’t already.
There is a lot that I want to cover in this volume, so I will be splitting my review of the first volume into multiple parts. Part one will be covering the first chapter of the manga and the first half of the first episode of the anime.
Right out of the gate, we get a page solely dedicated to world building and setting the tone for the series. This scene does a couple of things. First, the narration presents us with a fact of this fictional world. The fact being that ghouls eat humans. Second, the wording of the narration and the scene itself portray the ghouls as being the villains of the story. The scene shows a human begging for their life while the ghoul that has them cornered is shown with a sadistic grin on their face. The ghoul does not resemble a human at all and is referred to as a “monster” by the narration.
This first scene sets up the entire series, and especially the first volume, perfectly. We are seeing the ghouls from the humans’ perspective. To humans, the ghouls are seen as no more than monsters. Not only do they eat humans, they enjoy act of hunting and killing them. They are pure evil without a shred of humanity. Throughout this volume, we are practically beat over the head with this way of thinking, but is this actually the truth? Of course not. This is simply discrimination. I would love to do a deep dive just talking about how this series handles the topic of discrimination and how discrimination is the true villain of this story, but I’ll save that for a future review covering the entire series.
The anime, meanwhile, starts us off with a very different scene. Instead of an inhuman looking creature cornering a human in an alleyway, we see a very human looking, naked woman in a large room, gorging herself on a pile of human corpses. The woman’s feast is interrupted by a man wearing a mask, who is a ghoul as well, saying that he’s been instructed to “take her alive” by someone “from above”. It’s unclear who wants her and why at this point, nor do we get any more information because he then proceeds to attempt to attack her. She is able to get away easily, stealing his weapon, pliers of some kind, in the process. She seems to do this for no other reason than to piss him off since she is seen tossing them aside once she’s out of his view. This scene is less so commentary on how humans view ghouls, like what we get from the manga, and more so a look at Rize’s behavior specifically and the drama that she is caught up in.
The next scene in the manga starts off with some kind of news broadcast or talk show discussing a recent ghoul attack. More likely than not, this is referring to the attack from the previous scene. Ghouls, again, are presented as beings that exist in this world. They aren’t some unknown or new species that came out of nowhere, yet their existence is still questioned by humans within this world, with our protagonist, Ken Kaneki, being one of them. This shows that ghouls, in general, are not trying to present themselves as a threat and are, instead, trying to keep themselves under the radar.
This scene is filled with so much foreshadowing, you really have to question if Hide isn’t just intuitive, but downright psychic. At this point in the story, Kaneki is a human who has never (as far as he believes) encountered a ghoul. While Hide is joking around and teasing Kaneki, he ends up predicting Kaneki getting attacked as well as him becoming a ghoul. First, he made a comment that Kaneki would be “eaten up” because he’s weak and his taste in books. The last part was meant to seem like just a jab at Kaneki’s interests since Hide isn’t a big fan of reading, himself, but the fact that his taste in books just so happens to be part of the reason he becomes interested in, and plays a big part in him getting a date with, Rize is quite a big coincidence. Next, Hide makes a joking remark about Kaneki being a ghoul and even draws Kaneki as a representation of what a ghoul actually looks like. This, to me, seems to be a little more than coincidence.
You could even say that Hide telling Kaneki to give up on Rize was more of a warning to stay away from her. He says it’s because she’s out of his league, but the look on his face tells a different story. He looks worried, like he can tell that there’s something not quite right about her. This could be played off as him being uncomfortable because he doesn’t want his friend to get his hopes up, but there are two scenes that further prove my theory. Right before Kaneki points out Rize as being the girl that he’s interested in, Hide assumes that Touka is the one. He acts completely differently with Touka. He doesn’t act nervous or uncomfortable at all and it doesn’t seem like it has anything to do with him finding her less attractive. When Kaneki tells him it’s not her, he immediately tries to go after her himself, saying that he “couldn’t help himself” and that “she was just too cute”. After Kaneki and Rize plan on going on a date, Hide does not seem happy about this. If Hide had just thought that Kaneki wouldn’t be successful in getting with Rize, then he would’ve been shocked, but here, he’s deadpan. The reason why I call this out is because Hide is an over-the-top kind of character. He tends to be very loud and overly expressive unless he’s worried about something, so it makes no sense for him to take a “whatever” attitude towards this news.
Aside from Hide being possibly psychic, we get a lot of other sources of foreshadowing early on. When Kaneki is questioning the existence of ghouls and them blending in, our attention is turned to other people in the coffee shop specifically, with some being more focused on than others. We learn later that both Touka and Mr. Yoshimura are ghouls and that Anteiku itself provides assistance to ghouls who are struggling and has some sway when it comes to deciding how the feeding grounds are divided up. Then we have the book that ends up getting Kaneki in this mess in the first place, “Egg of the Black Goat”. The description that we are given by Kaneki lines up perfectly with what he is about to go through. In this, Rize represents the black goat who will “give birth” to a new ghoul who will be forced to struggle with the same urges as her. This is further foreshadowed when the two comment that they are the same blood type which allows Kaneki to receive her kidneys later on and is what ends up turning him.
Sadly, all of this brilliant foreshadowing was cut from the anime as well as Hide’s psychic abilities.
Another change to this scene is that the book “Egg of the Black Goat” was not a reason for Kaneki being attracted to Rize. In the anime, he is surprised to see her reading it. This is meant to show us that this is how she lures her victims. She pretends to be interested in whatever her target is interested in. In the manga, it’s clear that she is actually a fan of the novel and its author, but in the anime, she is simply pretending to be a fan to get close to Kaneki.
In the manga, the sudden shift in tone during Rize’s confession as Kaneki is walking her home, makes the horror of the following scene even more effective. Unless you went in completely blind, not even reading the back of the book, you knew that Rize was going to try to eat Kaneki at some point, which should’ve made this “twist” less effective. The execution of this scene compensates for this. The way that this scene plays out makes us drop our guard just enough for her actual attack to pack the punch that it needed to. As she starts her confession, we, the audience, are readying ourselves for her to attack. Her throwing herself at Kaneki ramps up the tension even more before we get thrown a curve ball. Once Rize is seen looking back up at Kaneki, we get a panel straight out of a shoujo manga. Rize is blushing and the background is all sparkles, throwing the growing tension of the scene off just enough for her chomp to really hit.
Rize is the personification of how humans view ghouls as a whole. She doesn’t just look like a normal human being, which allows her to blend in with humans, she is also quite attractive, making it easier for her to find and manipulate her victims. Once she gets her victims alone, she toys with them, prolonging their suffering as much as she can. She enjoys their screams and watching them try to run. She’s obviously not afraid of getting caught. While the location that she lures her victims to may have less traffic than other places, it is still a public place. This, in itself, is risky, but, understandably, hard to avoid and is a way better option than taking them to where she lives. The location itself isn’t what I’m referring to, but the fact that she isn’t just allowing, but encouraging her victims to cause a commotion. This isn’t about eating to survive for her. This is murder for the sake of entertainment.
Even though it’s obvious in the anime that she was trying to lure Kaneki to a secluded area to attack him by requesting that he walk her home, it looked like she was about to let him go. I’m sure her plan was to kill him as soon as his back was turned, which would’ve been a much smarter decision since he wouldn’t have been able to make a commotion because he wouldn’t have seen it coming, but he was the one to stop her to ask to see her again. This is incredibly different than the Rize we know from the manga. The anime puts more emphasis on her love of eating, while the manga focuses instead on her love of killing.
The chapter ends with Kaneki waking up from surgery with one of his eyes looking like a ghoul’s. The decision to have only one of his eyes change is a great representation of his duality. He has been turned into a ghoul, but that doesn’t change the fact that he was human and his unchanging eye is a reminder of that. This can be seen as a good or a bad thing, depending on the situation he finds himself in at any given time. I will be discussing this more in depth throughout the series, looking at how this affects him, as well as how this can be thought of as symbolic representation of different types of real-life people and situations.
This is an amazing series that really gets you to think and look at things from different perspectives. I highly recommend you check out the manga and the anime. Both are fun to look at because while they are telling essentially the same story of Kaneki and his journey, they tell it in very different ways, giving us even more to chew on. I’m excited to delve deeper into this series and I hope you guys are too.
I hope you all enjoyed part one of my review of “Tokyo Ghoul Volume 1”. I will be coming back to this series in the near future, but in the meantime, I hope you guys will enjoy my review of “Hitorijime Boyfriend” by Memeco Arii that’ll be coming out next time. Also, you can check out my original short stories, poems, and art under the projects tab if you’re interested in seeing what I can do. Follow me on Facebook so that you can stay informed for when I post new content. Let me know what you thought about this review or if you have any recommendations for a future book review by commenting below.
Ba-bye for now and I hope to see all of you guys again next time!