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Tokyo Ghoul is without a doubt one of the best series out there. The way it gives us the character development, story telling, world building and all just feels really really nice. It has been months since I watched the anime adaptation of Tokyo Ghoul and at that time, I was an anime-only. I jumped in the show without knowing what to expect, and I liked it. Then I watched the two other seasons and that was pretty much it, until I decided to read the manga to see how faithful the anime is to the source material, and MY GOD, I couldn't believe how BAD Tokyo Ghoul Root A is in terms of adapting the story and giving the audience what they need.

So first things first, this anime adaptation doesn't do the manga justice, at all. When we begin to watch the premiere of Root A, we jump right back where the first season left us, the aftermath of Kaneki's torture and the end of the battle between the CCG and Aogiri's Tree, alongside the ghouls from Anteiku. When Kaneki reunites with Tohka, he fights Ayato and... he apparently exchange some blows with him and that's it? No. This is wrong, wrong and wrong. In the manga, Kaneki proceeds to break literally HALF of Ayato's bones while even naming the bone he is breaking, like what? I didn't understand why this moment was taken off after I finished reading the first part of Tokyo Ghoul, and it just feels like Studio Clown didn't really care at that point. Then, after everything is done, Kaneki announces that he's going to join Aogiri's Tree, the same group that Jason was apart and Jason tortured him, so shouldn't he join the side with people that didn't want him to get abused? When I watched it at first, I thought that it was a little bit weird, but I didn't care that much, until I eventually read the manga and hear me out, it gets even crazier.

In the manga of Tokyo Ghoul, Kaneki says that he won't go back to Anteiku nor Aogiri but instead, he will create his own organization/camp to find what the hell happened to Rize, that girl that almost ate him alive in the beginning. What's even more funny is that he actually recruited some of his friends to help him in his cause, except for Tohka because he wanted her to stay at Anteiku with everyone else. At this point, Root A is a terrible adaptation and I don't think that it was a good idea to make Kaneki edgy as f*ck by making him join the people that captured him and rejecting all of his friends. From now on, everything was anime original and made no sense at all. It's just weird to see Kaneki as a bad guy when he was that cheerful person before getting tortured. Now, I know that his whole personality and ideology changed, but that's not a reason to become a bad guy because you want to protect your friends. Where is the logic in this type of mind set? His manga counterpart makes more sense because he isn't a bad guy nor a good guy, he's just the guy that does what he wants and what he wants is to find Rize. Now, I won't be explaining everything that Kaneki of Aogiri made in the manga since he only helped some ghouls evade and attacked Cochlea where he awakened his Kakuja, but just know that in the manga, the thing at Cochlea never happened and instead, it happened at Kanou's Lab. So, without further ado, I'm going to talk about the most frustrating parts of Root A, which is Hide's bad-written death and Kaneki vs Arima.

In the anime after Kaneki fought Amon Koutarou, one of my favorite characters by the way, he arrives at Anteiku where his bestie is waiting and tells him that he already knew he was a ghoul but that doesn't change their relationship. Then, I don't remember the events of the anime correctly, Hide dies. Yes, you heard me, he dies. His death was so anticlimactic and I don't understand why the writers killed him off in a totally not sad situation. Ok, I will admit that the acoustic version of unravel made it seem a little bit "sad" but that's it. Now if we compare this to the manga, it's a way way different story. In the manga, the wound that Amon gives to Kaneki isn't healing and he's literally about to die, when his best friend Hide appears and tells him: "Heyo bro, just eat me and go fight Arima real quick", which is why his face looks that way it did in :re. The thing is that Root A really screwed all of the anime-only's since when they watched :re, they didn't understand what was going on with everyone since they thought it would explain the aftermath of the events of Root A, but no. Everything just felt wacky and the anime should have included the fight between Arima and Kaneki so the anime watchers would understand why Kaneki has amnesia in :re.

Overall, Tokyo Ghoul Root A failed to deliver us a sequel for the first season and because of that, I decided to change my rating of it from 7 to 5.