Tokyo Ghoul’s contentious second season ended three years ago, so it makes sense to brush up on the basics before seeing Tokyo Ghoul:re. Everything you need to know about the popular horror anime series is provided here.
The protagonist of Tokyo Ghoul is Ken Kaneki, a college student who loves reading and is fortunate enough to go on a date with a gorgeous woman. Sadly, the girl proves to be a monster who devours flesh, and at the end of their date, she harvests him for his flesh. Kaneki is a helpless teenager who is stuck in an alley with a lethal predator. He only survives when both of them are knocked out in an unusual construction accident. After the girl passes away, a mystery physician saves Kaneki’s life by transplanting her organs into him. For a while, the healing process goes as usual. Then, Kaneki notices that conventional food is starting to disgust him and that the smell of human flesh is strangely alluring.
The core plot of Tokyo Ghoul is a “normal guy gets turned into a monster in human skin,” however the beastie is something a little more distinctively vicious than the standard vampires or werewolves. The first season follows Kaneki as he struggles to accept his new identity, and it is largely typical of the genre.
Luckily, he’s not alone in this condition; it turns out that Ghouls have a complex social structure that is concealed beneath the surface of Tokyo life, and Kaneki is fortunate enough to immediately fall into one of their friendliest factions. A pacifist tribe of Ghouls known as “Anteiku” strive to avoid hurting people and instead live off the corpses they collect. Its members teach Kaneki the new abilities his body has and the skills necessary to live as a hunted minority in society. This section of the narrative can be broken down into several arcs, the most significant of which centers on Kaneki’s initial interaction with the CCG, a government organization entrusted with controlling (i.e., eradicating) the Ghoul threat.Kaneki makes an unusual friend in Amon, one of the organization’s members, while taking part in a furious spree of murder motivated by vengeance. Even though Amon and Kaneki are officially at odds, Kaneki’s act of kindness causes him to wonder if Ghouls are truly simply monsters after all. Given that Amon only gradually gains prominence in the narrative, it appears that Kaneki’s generosity will have lasting effects.
But when Jason, a particularly vicious Ghoul, captures and torments Kaneki, things get even worse. After this horrific incident, Kaneki loses his mind and turns to innate violence as a coping mechanism. Prior to this, he had been finding it difficult to reconcile his morality with his new cannibalistic existence. This is where the anime and manga diverge: in the anime, Kaneki replaces Jason at the Terrorist Ghoul group Aogiri Tree, but in the manga, he creates his own vigilante task force. In any case, his goal remains the same: to defend Anteiku by any means necessary, even if it includes resorting to violence.
But when Jason, a particularly vicious Ghoul, captures and torments Kaneki, things get even worse. After this horrific incident, Kaneki loses his mind and turns to innate violence as a coping mechanism. Prior to this, he had been finding it difficult to reconcile his morality with his new cannibalistic existence. This is where the anime and manga diverge: in the anime, Kaneki replaces Jason at the Terrorist Ghoul group Aogiri Tree, but in the manga, he creates his own vigilante task force. In any case, his goal remains the same: to defend Anteiku by any means necessary, even if it includes resorting to violence, on a note of ambiguity regarding our hero’s fate.
Thankfully, it appears that everything is well with him! Well, that depends on your definition of “fine”. I’m going to assume that Kaneki survived at yet another significant psychological cost because the Tokyo Ghoul:re poster features a CCG agent who resembles him in both his human and Ghoul hairstyles. Additionally, since Tokyo Ghoul √A made a few decisions that weren’t compatible with TG:re’s manga adaptation, we’ll have to see how much of this new season retcons stuff from that series.
Even though the plot of Tokyo Ghoul is fairly straightforward, there are a ton of characters that are always up to something, and enough of them will be returning in this new season that you’ll need a glossary. This is the rogue’s gallery arranged according to the factional allegiance of each character.