With this show, Studio Pierrot proudly declares to the world that fighting scenes are not their forté and fills most major fights with smoke so nearly all art is obscured. The art is nothing spectacular (aside from one beautifully detailed keyboard) and the animation hits power-point level quality during some fight scenes. Once again, I really have to question the director's priorities - if you plan to adapt the epic, final showdown of the main story arc, why wouldn't you spend more time adapting the events of the main story?Īnimation-wise, Root A is fairly underwhelming. The major climax of the manga was impactful and well thought out but gets completely butchered in the anime thanks to a missing major fight as well as the larger issue of simply not adapting enough of the main story to really understand Kaneki's profound development as a character, which is what makes the final arc so epic. Pacing was an issue in the first season however, Root A takes poor pacing to a new level. You really begin to question Studio Pierrot's priorities, as the main story arc is so sidelined by side stories (how ironic) that when bouts of action occur, you simply have no idea what the conflict is about. If you've read the manga, you will very soon forget that this is supposed to be an original story, as 90% of each episode is cut from the manga. Unfortunately, the rest of these character development scenes are mostly direct adaptations from the manga. Suzaya Juuzou's character and his relationship to Shinohara is actually better done in the anime than the manga. That said, there are some legitimately good scenes of character development of the side characters. With everything feeling rushed and coming from left field, it's nearly impossible to get invested or enjoy the story. There is no coherent progression from one event to the next the end result is that the series as a whole feels like a haphazard, condensed jumbling of the manga. Major story arcs are melded together so that the overall picture is completely nonsensical. Root A attempts to condense something closer to 75-80 chapters and royally screws it up. The first season, while not perfect, was able to a manage a somewhat coherent story condensing around 60 chapters of manga. The story somewhat resembles season 1 Aldnoah Zero - intriguing major plot points outlined but no content to flesh out the story and add impact to the plot's important events.Ī large part of the problem is no doubt due to the shortness of the adaptation. Instead, Root A follows a rather slow-paced development of the supporting cast with intermittent unexplained violence. Simply nothing comes of this original direction despite the many glaringly obvious routes it could add to the series. For all intents and purposes, there are zero differences in plot progression between the anime and manga, besides the fact that the anime development of the characters is far inferior. I was excited for the prospect of a different take on perhaps the manga's weakest arc, but found myself disappointed by the lack of attention to the main character. Kaneki, who should've been the focal point of the so-called "original plot", is left thoroughly underdeveloped and recieves approximately half a minute of air-time per episode. I never got the feeling that there even was an original element to the story. From one episode to the next, content was centered around adaptations of the sidestory in the manga. Studio Pierrot proved itself completely inadequate to handling the franchise and we can only hope that the Tokyo Ghoul series gets the Brotherhood-esque 50-episode reboot with a much better studio.ĭespite a promising opening episode that immediately introduced a difference in story to the manga, Root A never seemed to be interested in actually developing an original story. for the anime to follow, Root A fell inconceivably short in almost all areas it could. For all the hype generated by Sui Ishida creating an original plot line It is a mess of unexplained plot points that insult the complexity of the source material it was adapted from. Root A, however, is trash from an anime-viewer-only perspective and worse than trash if you've read the manga. As a stand alone show, ignoring the quality of the manga, it was pretty good. The first season of Tokyo Ghoul, while certainly not reaching the heights as the manga, was an enjoyable exposition to the series that was able lead newcomers like me to binge read the entire 143 chapter manga in two days.
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