Director: Kentarô Hagiwara
Release date: 2017
Contains spoilers
So, I have previously looked at the first two seasons of the Toko Ghoul anime as a 'Vamp or Not?' Within that I looked at the close relationship between vampires and ghouls in comparative mythology and early vampire literature, I examined the specific tropes in the series and concluded that Tokyo Ghoul should, likely, be classed as vampire or, at the very least, of genre interest and a vehicle that uses vampire tropes. I don’t intend to go back over that ground.
I understand that this is the first live action film based on Tokyo Ghoul and is quite substantial in length, if not broad in the storyline it picks up. Essentially it follows Ken Kaneki (Masataka Kubota) as he becomes accidentally turned into a half-ghoul, his adjustment and then the story of the ghouls Hinami (Hiyori Sakurada) and her mother Ryōko (Shoko Aida).
So, we are in a world where there is another class of hominid, ghouls, that ostensibly look like their prey – humans. Though it is not said I think we can take them as a separate species or a mutation. As well as phenomenal strength and speed, they also manifest glowing eyes when they drop their human façade and can display a kagune, a predatory organ that can take many forms, often tentacles or wing-like. The ghouls can only eat human flesh – all human foodstuffs are tasteless or worse and cause vomiting. Only coffee is, for some reason, the exception to the rule and can be imbibed.
Kaneki is a college student (and an orphan) who, as the film starts is in a café with his best friend Hide (Kai Ogasawara). Hide is almost his opposite, outgoing and carefree whereas Kaneli is shy and bookish. Kaneki also has a crush on a girl that comes into the place, Rize (Yū Aoi). That day, albeit with a lot of awkwardness, he breaks the ice and they arrange a date. On the date she does not eat – she intimates that she is a binge-eater and should not. They go for a quiet walk and she hugs him… but the hug turns into a bite – Rize is a ghoul.
She plays with her food, piercing him with her tentacle like kagune, and would have finished him off and devoured him (she is, actually, a binge eater of human flesh) when a set of girders suspended above fall and crush her. Interestingly, in the anime we had a character who liked to eat his prey live but that was not common. In this Rize makes a comment about flesh losing flavour after the victim dies, following the comment up by licking blood from Kaneki’s face. We go on to discover that Kaneki is taken to hospital and the doctors, without sanction, transplanted Rize’s kidney into Kaneki to save his life. What they didn’t realise was that they were essentially changing him into a ghoul (or half-ghoul).
I say half-ghoul because, as the torment of being unable to eat builds and his ghoul senses take over only one of his eyes changes (and change permanently, making him hide it under an eyepatch, with the excuse that he has a sty). Eventually he meets Yoshimura (Kunio Murai), a ghoul coffee shop owner who tries to help ghouls in need. The coffee shop supplies flesh from suicides and he give Kaneki a job. There he starts to forge a friendship of sorts with Tōka Kirishima (Fumika Shimizu).
Two of the customers are Ryōko and Hinami. Ryōko’s husband has been killed by the Doves, agents of the CCG – the Ghoul Countermeasures Bureau. Two of their top agents Kureo Mado (Yo Oizumi) and his junior partner Kōtarō Amon (Nobuyuki Suzuki) are hunting them. To give the agents an edge they harvest the kagune from dead ghouls and fashion them into weapons called quinque. Of course Kaneki gets drawn into the situation.
So, despite the length, if I had a complaint about this it was that the characters (with the exception of Kaneki) are poorly drawn. If we take Tōka for instance, she is a waitress and a bit of a firebrand ghoul fighter but… the nuances to character drawn in the anime are not there. She is visited by a human friend who has cooked for her (and has to eat the food so as to not upset her) but the scene is not explained or explored, her desire to learn, to go to college, to be able to eat the food to please her friend is pretty much not explored. The Doves are little more than eccentric looking carboard cut-outs, down to lack of narrative and not the actors.
That said the film was entertaining. The primary character was interesting enough, with his predicament drawn large and his uncomfortable relationship with his new lifestyle intact. I missed the gourmet storyline but understand that will be the subject of a second live-action film. Not as involved or as fulfilling as the anime but not a bad effort all told. 6 out of 10.
The imdb page is here.
On DVD @ Amazon US
On DVD @ Amazon UK
I understand that this is the first live action film based on Tokyo Ghoul and is quite substantial in length, if not broad in the storyline it picks up. Essentially it follows Ken Kaneki (Masataka Kubota) as he becomes accidentally turned into a half-ghoul, his adjustment and then the story of the ghouls Hinami (Hiyori Sakurada) and her mother Ryōko (Shoko Aida).
 |
| glowing eyes |
So, we are in a world where there is another class of hominid, ghouls, that ostensibly look like their prey – humans. Though it is not said I think we can take them as a separate species or a mutation. As well as phenomenal strength and speed, they also manifest glowing eyes when they drop their human façade and can display a kagune, a predatory organ that can take many forms, often tentacles or wing-like. The ghouls can only eat human flesh – all human foodstuffs are tasteless or worse and cause vomiting. Only coffee is, for some reason, the exception to the rule and can be imbibed.
 |
| bite |
Kaneki is a college student (and an orphan) who, as the film starts is in a café with his best friend Hide (Kai Ogasawara). Hide is almost his opposite, outgoing and carefree whereas Kaneli is shy and bookish. Kaneki also has a crush on a girl that comes into the place, Rize (Yū Aoi). That day, albeit with a lot of awkwardness, he breaks the ice and they arrange a date. On the date she does not eat – she intimates that she is a binge-eater and should not. They go for a quiet walk and she hugs him… but the hug turns into a bite – Rize is a ghoul.
 |
| playing with food |
She plays with her food, piercing him with her tentacle like kagune, and would have finished him off and devoured him (she is, actually, a binge eater of human flesh) when a set of girders suspended above fall and crush her. Interestingly, in the anime we had a character who liked to eat his prey live but that was not common. In this Rize makes a comment about flesh losing flavour after the victim dies, following the comment up by licking blood from Kaneki’s face. We go on to discover that Kaneki is taken to hospital and the doctors, without sanction, transplanted Rize’s kidney into Kaneki to save his life. What they didn’t realise was that they were essentially changing him into a ghoul (or half-ghoul).
 |
| one eye changes |
I say half-ghoul because, as the torment of being unable to eat builds and his ghoul senses take over only one of his eyes changes (and change permanently, making him hide it under an eyepatch, with the excuse that he has a sty). Eventually he meets Yoshimura (Kunio Murai), a ghoul coffee shop owner who tries to help ghouls in need. The coffee shop supplies flesh from suicides and he give Kaneki a job. There he starts to forge a friendship of sorts with Tōka Kirishima (Fumika Shimizu).
Two of the customers are Ryōko and Hinami. Ryōko’s husband has been killed by the Doves, agents of the CCG – the Ghoul Countermeasures Bureau. Two of their top agents Kureo Mado (Yo Oizumi) and his junior partner Kōtarō Amon (Nobuyuki Suzuki) are hunting them. To give the agents an edge they harvest the kagune from dead ghouls and fashion them into weapons called quinque. Of course Kaneki gets drawn into the situation.
 |
| Masataka Kubota as Kaneki |
So, despite the length, if I had a complaint about this it was that the characters (with the exception of Kaneki) are poorly drawn. If we take Tōka for instance, she is a waitress and a bit of a firebrand ghoul fighter but… the nuances to character drawn in the anime are not there. She is visited by a human friend who has cooked for her (and has to eat the food so as to not upset her) but the scene is not explained or explored, her desire to learn, to go to college, to be able to eat the food to please her friend is pretty much not explored. The Doves are little more than eccentric looking carboard cut-outs, down to lack of narrative and not the actors.
 |
| masked |
That said the film was entertaining. The primary character was interesting enough, with his predicament drawn large and his uncomfortable relationship with his new lifestyle intact. I missed the gourmet storyline but understand that will be the subject of a second live-action film. Not as involved or as fulfilling as the anime but not a bad effort all told. 6 out of 10.
The imdb page is here.
On DVD @ Amazon US
On DVD @ Amazon UK
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