Tokyo Ghoul:re" – A Dance Between Humanity and Monstrosity

The thumbnail is designed by me, the rest images is a screenshot by me from the movies

Here's my review on Tokyo Ghoul:re. Some people call it the worst anime but here's what I've got to say.

I watched Tokyo Ghoul because I was looking for answers, answers to questions the original Tokyo Ghoul left burning in my chest. Questions like: What becomes of someone when they’ve been broken so many times that they forget who they are? Can a person truly be reborn if their past still claws at their skin? This anime wasn’t just a sequel to me—it was a confrontation with my own thoughts about identity, pain, and the silent wars we fight inside our minds.

From the first episode, I felt an unsettling familiarity. Watching Haise Sasaki, a man with a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes, a voice soft enough to calm others but not himself, I saw the shadow of Ken Kaneki, the broken boy from the original series. And it hit me: this wasn’t just about ghouls and humans anymore. This was about living with the ghost of your former self.

There is one scene of course early on when Sasaki is training the Quinx Squad. They laugh together, they eat, they regard him as their reliable guide. But when he is alone, when it is quiet, you can see--how his hands shake, how his eyes stare, as though he is seeking something, somewhere no other man can see. This is when I knew… this was not going to be a comfortable ride.

It came back to me of how people can put on masks to such an extent that you end up forgetting that there is a mask in the first place. The way they could conceal years of hurts behind laughter that can sound so genuine as to deceive you.

As Tokyo Ghoul:re unfolds, you see the shell Sasaki built fall apart. Memories come back, bloody, painful, raw. Kaneki whom we knew tries to crawl up to the surface. However, it is more than a switch, it is a clash between the man he has become to be able to live and the man he was when everything went wrong.

This internal conflict… it is the spirit of this anime. The fight scenes--blood-soaked battles with ghouls and CCG operations, and the accompanying spray of crimson--are exciting, sure. The real fight is however in the mind. The fear of remembering who you were, because it means feeling everything you have so hard tried to bury, is painfully human in Sasaki.

There was one scene that just would not let my head go, the scene where Kaneki at last begins to emerge, and the hair, oh the hair, begins to change back to that famous white. It is a visual insight that the past does not fade away; it waits. This was like seeing a loved one come back to life but knowing that he or she has changed and there is nothing you can do about it.

Another? The Arima fight. The quiet, calculated strength of Arima against the conflicted rage of Kaneki—it wasn’t just combat, it was a conversation in the language of violence. And when the truth about Arima comes out… my chest tightened in ways I didn’t expect.

At a glance, Tokyo Ghoul:re is a story of ghouls and humans struggling to dominate. And when you scratch the surface, it is about survival, trauma, and what it costs to become something you were never intended to be.

It poses the difficult questions:

Is it worth living a peaceful life that is based on a lie?

Are you able to change or are you in denial?

And when you have a world that treats you like a monster, is it really worth proving you are not one, or is it better to accept the monster they already decided you are?

These were not anime questions to me. They were intimate. It was as though the Sasaki fighting to keep Kaneki in the ground was me in a situation where I have tried to act okay so that people would not be inconvenienced.

I enjoyed that Tokyo Ghoul:re had the guts to take its time. It wasn’t one endless rush of action it allowed you time to breathe, to sit with the characters and to comprehend why they chose to make the decisions they took. The Quinx Squad had a new vibe, introducing us to ghouls and humans are not the only ones with blurry lines, there are gray areas even amongst humans.

The background music… eerie and lovely. Songs seem to be loaded with everything that could not be said in this story. And visually? It is stunning even in the blackest scenes. The color red of the kagune on the dull city sceneries is poetry in motion.

But if I’m being honest, it also broke me. Seeing Sasaki desperately cling to his “new” self, knowing that the truth was creeping closer every day—it’s like watching someone try to hold water in their hands. Eventually, it slips through.

By the time Kaneki fully returns, it’s not the triumphant comeback I thought I wanted. It’s bittersweet, because you realize Haise Sasaki was never fake—he was just another part of Kaneki, a softer part that deserved to live too. Losing him felt like losing a friend.

Tokyo Ghoul:re did not provide me with clean answers. It did not tie everything in a bow. It instead provided me with something much more tangible, the realization that identity is a sloppy business that survival alters individuals and that the monsters we are most afraid of are sometimes the ones within us.

I started Tokyo Ghoul:re with the hope of knowing more about what happened to Kaneki. I emerged out of it searching answers to my own. Perhaps that is the beauty of this anime, it is the reflection of the ugly bits of you that you wish you would stop looking at, and yet the anime forces you to look.

If you’ve ever struggled with who you are, if you’ve ever worn a mask so long it started to feel like your real face, this anime will hit you harder than you expect. And when it does, don’t look away. Because sometimes the only way to heal… is to remember.

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