A mask for day, a mask for night.
What They Say:
Yoshimura teaches Kaneki more about how to blend in with mankind, and takes in a mother and daughter needing protection. Two ghoul investigators, Mado and Amon, are assigned to the 20th Ward. In response, Touka takes Kaneki out to have a mask made for him.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
World building is part of what makes a show interesting to me. And it’s really the little stuff that makes all the difference in the world. This episode has a lot of those small details in it.
Kaneki has taken up a part time job at Anteiku, the coffee shop run by Yoshimura (the “Old Man”) and where Toka works. Yoshimura spends a great deal of time teaching Kaneki the ins and outs of how they blend into human society; little things like how to appear like you’re really eating (you swallow human food whole, pretend you’re chewing, and then toss it up later so it doesn’t wreck your delicate for-human-flesh-only ghoul insides). Kaneki also goes on a “food pickup” with Yomo, an associate of Yoshimura. Some ghouls can’t hunt, it seems (though reasons for that are not gone into, but it’s implied that it’s because they are young and/or not violent) and Anteiku provides food services to these ghouls. Do they kill people? No – there are a few places that are popular spots for suicides, and it’s those bodies that Anteiku collect and divide up to supply food to ghouls.
Toka also takes Kaneki to Uta, a trendy punk man who lives in a very rough part of town, and specializes in making masks. Yoshimura wants Kaneki to get a mask for his safety, and we learn just why through small intercuts throughout the episode.
The CCG, the organization tasked with the singular objective of eliminating all ghouls from the city of Tokyo, took an interest in Rize’s binge eating and wanton displays of violence. It also turns out that those pliers, from episode #01? They belonged to what is referred to as a ‘Jason’, which as far as I’m able to tell means a ghoul doctor (more on that in a minute). It’s also made out of something called ‘quinque steel’ which might imply a type of metal able to piece ghoul flesh (as you might remember, when Kaneki tried to stab himself with an ordinary kitchen knife, the blade shattered and did no damage to him). This leads two top investigators for the CCG – Mado and Amon (referred to by ghouls as ‘doves’), to be assigned to the 20th ward. Previous to Rize’s rampage and binge eating, the 20th ward was considered relatively safe for ghouls, being very quiet with very little activity to attract attention. Rize changed all that, and we see Amon and Mado go on a tear through the district, brutalizing ghouls to try and find the source of the pliers – where they came from or who they belong to. They also carry oversized metal briefcases, and while the contents are never disclosed, they handle them with considerable speed and efficiency, and neutralize several ghouls with a simple flourish of the case.
The ‘Jason’ that they’re looking for, if I had to speculate at this point, would be Dr. Fueguchi; though he’s on screen briefly, we can ascertain by the end of the episode that he’s a doctor that specializes in ghoul medicine, with a wife (Ryoko) and young daughter (Hinami). He’s a specialist of some kind as well, as Yamori, a mysterious individual in a white suit barges into Fueguchi’s small makeshift doctors office, and mentions that he needs more of a “thing” that the doctor previous made him. We’re not really given much insight into what this could be, but it’s clearly important to Yamori, and not something that can be easily picked up. Yamori is a ghoul that gets around quite a bit as well, as the episode ends with a man in a red suit, very ominously, walking into Anteiku, and commenting on what a great “smell” the coffee shop has…
Is this Yamori? Is it one of his henchmen? Who knows. But this episode raised the stakes considerably in just a few short minutes, and it’s clear that there’s much more going on in the 20th ward, and the city of Tokyo, then Kaneki is even close to realizing…
In Summary:
If reading over the review section made your head spin a bit, don’t worry – it made mine spin too. And in a very good way. I paused this episode probably half a dozen times in order to make sure to take notes on the new characters and jargon introduced in the show. And don’t take this as a bad thing – I like shows that give you information without having to stop and tell it to you. There’s a small part where they reiterate what ‘dove’ means a few times, but overall, the characters talk like nobody is watching on the other side of the 4th wall; Kaneki serves as our protagonist, whom we learn about the world through, but the characters feel very natural – some are larger than life, but they act very natural.
The show does one thing I dislike though, and it’s happened twice now; it might be for censorship reasons (which is fine) or a creative choice (which I don’t think is the correct one) – to illustrate:
At one point in episode 1, near the end, Toka tosses Kaneki a piece of a person for him to eat. What we as the audience see is basically black space – there’s barely any shape or detail to what’s tossed to him, and a few moments later he pushes it off of his lap. In this episode, Kaneki walks in on Hanami eating dinner, and it’s the first time it’s made very clear that Hanami at least (and possibly her mother) are ghouls. When Kaneki looks at what Hanami is eating, – again, black space. No shapes. Just a few streaks of blood, and then Kaneki falls down, and runs out of the room.
Why is this kind of a sticking point for me? I don’t need needless gore and viscera to make a show scary or good; I actually think that a lot can be done with very little. My problem with this approach in Tokyo Ghoul is it feels like they’re pulling back from what the first two episodes were, in terms of presentation of the violence and the gore. When Rize was fighting at the beginning of episode #01, and when Kaneki goes berserk in #02, the show has this real tense feeling of not pulling its punches. And of all the things to leave to our imaginations, it’s basically the ghouls meals. It may be a style choice, and if that’s the case, we really need to see more examples of it in the show for it to really stick that *this* is the thing they never show to the audience.
That’s really my only sticking point though. The show so far is dark, gritty, and interesting. Those things together make an interesting formula that I hope continues to grow as the season rolls on.
Grade: B+
Streamed By: FUNImation
Review Equipment:
Intel Alienware laptop, Windows 7, 25” HP2509m screen at 1920×1080 resolution
I think the black spaces, as you mentioned, are for censorship reasons. I find them very distracting, though. As I am new to anime, is this common practice? To black out certain things? Who makes the decision to edit the anime in this way? Obviously, the original creators of the show never meant for it to be viewed this way. And finally, will there eventually be an unedited version released on Blu ray or dvd?