Warning this review may contain spoilers.

First impressions,
So after watching the first season of the anime,
I got pretty hooked into Tokyo ghoul so I decided to check out the manga to see what happens next and what not and for the most part I wasn't disappointed,
But after reflecting on my experience with Tokyo ghoul I realized it had quite a few problems which needs to be talked about and addressed.

Story, 6/10

" if you where to write a story about me, Then it would certainly be a tragedy"
And that is definitely what this story is about.

The story of Tokyo ghoul is pretty much about these humanoid beings known as ghoul's who kill and feed on humans there basically glorified vampires, who are hunting down by the CCG ( which are basically ghoul hunters)
So you see it's one of those humans Vs insert treat to humanity here type of story's similar to eflen lead, ajin and parasite.
The story begins with are Main character ken kaneki who is collage student waiting at a coffee shop for a girl named rize who he has interest in and it seems like she is also interested in him,
so after getting the chance to go on a with date with rize, He soon finds himself into very deep shit when it's revealed that rize is a ghoul who has plans to make him tonights dinner, so after trying to escape he ends up in a building site where he ends up badly injured, but it seems like fate had another plans in Mind as a bunch of steel beams fall on rize almost by accident and kill her with kaneki on the verge of death,
He then wakes up in a hospital and finds out that in order to save his life the doctors transplanted some of rize organs into him.
Which has now transformed him into a human - ghoul hybrid,
With him now unable to eat human food and can only feed on human flesh,

Now with his life thrown into the pits of despair and so begins the tragedy,
(But in all honesty I think the real tragedy here is that he wasn't able to tap that sweet piece of ass)

But luckily he is found by a group of peaceful ghoul's known as Anteiku who decide to take kaneki in and teach him how to live life in his new half ghoul state.

So the first half of Tokyo ghoul is mainly focused on kaneki trying to find his footing in a world which is completely alien to him, so on his journey to trying to become useful
For his new ghoul ally's and find his place in the world now that he no longer human any more, We learn about the culture , politics , social aspects of the ghoul world,
Which was for the most part interesting to watch how ghouls operate in human society and how there society is very parallel to our world, it almost like its a shadow world that takes place with out us knowing about it.
It is also In this part of the story where we get into introduced to the Main concept of Tokyo ghoul which is the kind of gray morality conflict between humans and ghouls,
It basically trying to do this social political thing with ghouls, where there misunderstood and discriminated against and there not all evil monsters so on and so forth , with Kaneki trying to show to humans that ghouls aren't just all killing machines.

So around the halfway mark as kaneki is getting a good flow going what happens next,
He gets kidnapped and tortured by a ghoul organization known as aogiri tree and becomes ka-edgey as a result and has decided he is going go on his own for awhile in order to achieve his goals of protecting his friends and his place in the world,
It basically where he becomes an anti hero,
(in edge we trust I guess)

So the second half of Tokyo ghoul is focused on kaneki quest for answers,
Like who was rize, the disappearance of the Doctor who did his operation, and what is aogiri tree plans are.
So In this part it's mostly kaneki fighting people and being a badass about it while finding out vague information which won't be of any relevance intill Tokyo ghoul:re,
It basically telling you that there is some sort of conspiracy / mystery going on in the background,
it basically one of those you kind of know the answer but you some more information to be more accurate.

So after Getting over his anti hero phase he decided to return to Anteiku,
Which is where We get to the unexpected ending
Which came out of nowhere,
And it pretty much ended on then most pain In the ass cliff hanger and thank god there is a sequel manga because it leaves you with more questions than actual answers.

Now I am pretty sure a lot of you are going to ask me this question,
Biogundam why didn't you talk the mature themes of Tokyo ghoul and how it's a very mature and what not,
Well good question because I am going to talk about that right now,
I would like to state that Tokyo ghoul isn't a mature series or as mature has some people hype it up to be, and before you down vote me the hell let me explain,
a Mature series is all about subtlety and yes Tokyo ghoul dose have the theme's and concept's that could make it mature,
But when it comes to theme and concept exploration it is as about subtle as a brick to the face, because it mostly relies on over the top edge to try and get its point across,
Now you can argue that the violence makes it try hard but in all honesty I think it trying way to hard when it shouldn't have to.
I think what they could have done to fix this is add more slice of life moments or just add more chapters focused on that, because it really doesn't give you enough time to breath every time a death happened or something fucked up happens,
They could have done something similar like parasite where we had a lot of slice of life moments that fleshed out more of the concept and also when shit hit the fan it had more impact, because we had more cool down moments.

So while we're on this topic let me also address some other problems,

For one there seems to be quite a few gaping holes in logic,
For example when kaneki was in the hospital after his accident ,
Why wasn't there any police or some sort of health and safety organization that has questioned kaneki or having a investigation into what happened,
Because you would think that a event like that would have been invested,
It was big enough event to end up on the news.
Another example gaps in logic I would also like to talk about the holes in the ghoul hunters logic or CCG as they are called,
If ghoul anatomy and physiology are so different from humans then why is it that no one can tell the difference, you would think that they would come up with more precise and simple ways to find out if someone a ghoul or not,
and those are just a few examples of the gaps of logic you will find here.

Another problem I had was that the pacing was Very slow and it made things drag out a bit longer an they actually had to.

Now I know that I have been mostly negative though this review,
Well it time for me to talk about what I think Tokyo ghoul dose quite well,

It has a very good sense of atmosphere, you can feel tension you can feel the emotions of the characters while there going through there events,

It also contains a lot of world building, that mostly involved the ghoul world and how things work and what not.
Another thing I would like to add is that it's narrative has good foreshadowing all the events that happen don't always feel random because Tokyo ghoul dose have this sense of grand scale planing,
but the problem which I was talking about before is that it forgets the small details it try's to establish.

Characters, 6/10

The main character of Tokyo ghoul kaneki ken was interesting for the most part,
At first glance I definitely thought he was a bitch though,
He was pretty much like your typical shounen protagonist,
He has no back bone doesn't know what the hell he is doing,

But then I had to take into account that In the first half that there was some decent development there so I give his character credit for that and also the fact we get a lot of internal monologue with him so we what exactly is going on in his mind,

But Instead of a gradual transformation to not being a Bitch and being more alpha,
He gets tortured and suddenly transform into this total badass
Which was cool to watch,
But in all honesty it kind of came out of nowhere,
I mean development stops right there and the only thing we actually see is how psychology damaged he is,
Which was good fleshing for his character and also some foreshadowing to things that we won't be told intill later or the sequel

The side characters,
Most of them where very uninteresting and pretty one note for the most,
Now the main side characters for the most more interesting,
They all had an descent personality for most part,
The good parts about them are,
You could pretty much call ether two or three dimensional characters,
Quite a few of them have good reason for doing what there doing,
They some off them also get some fleshing out,
We get know some back story about them and also get some decent inner monologue,
there also a lot of turmoil.
Now the negative are,
That by the first 20 chapters we already have 20 + introduced to us
And the it's feels very disjointed at times when the story try to make them all relavent and I know it's the manga way of trying to make this inter connectable Universe
Which is pretty good on paper,
But for the most part A Good majority of these characters don't actually have much of impact or importance to the plot intill much later on and some of them won't have any intill the sequel.
Another problem with the big cast of characters is for most I forgot who half these people are, I actually have to go to the wiki to see who half these people are,
And it doesn't help that quite a lot of them don't have enough characterization in order to help differentiate them.

I really like the character interactions and some of them where pretty interesting to see.

Art, 6/10

The artwork at the start looks very cartoony but it starts getting better after the ch 30,

At times the artwork can be choppy at times Especially in fights scenes
Because some times you can't tell what the fuck is going on half the time and speaking of fight scenes the gore is pretty well done,
But my one complaint is that it seems like at times they tone down the blood a bit because there are parts where you would think there would be a lot of blood and by lots.
The back grounds are very basic.

It has a vary edgey and depressed looking style to it.

The character design where quite nice,
Because there is pretty decent variety there In Character Designs and also you can also tell most of the characters a part which is always a plus,

But I don't really like how some of them are so cartoony especially some of the antagonists
Like there this one character who has bug eyes and looks like a walking corpse.

Enjoyment, 7/10

I really enjoyed this series and it was a pretty interesting ride over all,
I was never bored while reading this and I was always on the edge on the my seat,
Wondering what you happen next and honestly I found the things it talked about very interesting and also how ghouls try fit in human society which was pretty cool and even though it's concept has been done before,
I think it did an alright job with it.

Overall, 6/10

So if you looking for a story that covers basic ideas of ethnics and morals and is full of edge and all that good shit then Tokyo ghoul is what your looking for.

But if you looking for something mature or something that doesn't use edge to get its point across then probably look some where else and if you like the concept of Tokyo ghoul them probably go watch/ read parasite.