Tokyo Ghoul is flawed. It's inconsistent. HOWEVER, I still found a lot of enjoyment to be had, with a story that eventually touched me despite its big fall midway.

For the first several volumes, Tokyo Ghoul is great. It builds the characters well, explores Ghoul society (which is captivating), has strong emotional storytelling, great art (which does improve) and isn't a black and white story of morals. If the series kept up with this, it could of been great. Unfortunately, it lost it's self and then rediscovered it's self just as it was almost too far gone.

The series took a nose dive during the iconic transformation of the series: black haired Kaneki to white haired Kaneki, a teenager finding his footing to a deadly badass. The massive issue I had with this was it threw away ALL of Kaneki's development beforehand, which now I think about it, is probably the biggest problem with the series. Character development. Kaneki was developing well as a character. His opinions and the change of them made sense, his abilities of a Ghoul developing made sense, and a future badass Kaneki would also make sense if Sui Ishida followed what he set up. Instead, this was all threw away for an instantaneous transformation that in my opinion, was unneeded. BOOM, Kaneki's hair has now aged 70 years, is severely depressed and is now a kung-ghoul-fu master..................?

I speculating this was a result of Sui Ishida's editors wanting Kaneki to appeal to a wider range of readers as this is a shonen manga and characters which fight well and frequently appeal the most. Kaneki was a shy, bookworm before which might of not appealed to some readers.

The series continues to suffer after this. Up to volume 11, there is almost no meaningful character drama, interactions, or even plot development that reaches a conclusion in the series, despite that seeming to be the only thing progressing. I'm pretty sure that all the plot events and character relations that take place in this sequence will be RE-explored in Re (haaaaaaaaa, se-see what I did th-there....) and meet a conclusion or otherwise it was completely wasted as they were not concluded in this series. This is the sequence in the manga when I was beginning to seriously worry about the quality of the series. It was almost reaching bad levels. I mentioned earlier that the big flaw with this series is character development and I feel this portion of the series could of gone towards that. Some characters had relations set up in THE FINAL VOLUME when they should of been set up when they were first introduced. Some characters also had a lack of development and didn't even survive to the end of the series, so they cant be explored again. Unless they actually survived and will REturn in Re (haaaa... Maybe I'm not being a comedic genius and Re actually means returning....)

BUT, BUT, BUT, Tokyo Ghoul saved it's self from disaster in volume 11. Drama returned, meaningful character development and drama returned, the story get emotionally powerful again and thrilling. I was shocked and actually sighed at the events which happened in the final four volumes. The story and characters were still messy, one character acted a lot out of character, but I found a lot of enjoyment out of the final four.

I didn't talk about the art.... Well its great-its beautiful-it get's better through out the series. Some of the fights were difficult to understand at the beginning but they got a lot easier to understand throughout the series.

Overall: I give a 6/10 AND THATS NOT LOW!!!! PEOPLE THINK IT IS BUT ITS NOT!! 6/10 MEANS GOOD IN THIS REVIEW, 5 IS MEDIOCRE, 7 IS GREAT!!! F***K THE MYANIMELIST SCORES THIS IS WHAT MY SCORE MEANS!!!!!