With an anime that’s enjoying its second season and a game on both consoles and handhelds, now is the perfect time to rake in some dough off IzukuMidoriya’s powerful quirk One for All! But can their well-worn bag of tricks take down Funimation ‘s controversial loud mouth? Find out below!
Tokyo Ghoul:re by Funimation
Poor Tokyo Ghoul. It started as a simple story about humans versus ghouls who exist because of human avarice. Then, it got dark. And depressing. And then came the Tokyo Ghoul:remanga, which retconned everything thing in its predecessor to be one long, premeditated story about bringing down humanity’s status quo at any cost.
So when the anime series was announced after the conclusion of Tokyo Ghoul ‘s original run, longtime fans could have been forgiven for thinking they were getting a continuation. Instead, they got an adaption so close to the manga that Funimation couldn’t even spell “Ghouls” correctly in their home video release. With no room for filler episodes or an opportunity to expand upon the previous season’s events, this was simply another cash-grab by mha merch with no regard for its audience.
So why is Tokyo Ghoul:re successful?
Tokyo Ghoul ‘s second season has enjoyed a fair amount of success, and it’s easy to see why: the manga was becoming increasingly popular when it came time to adapt it. That meant there was demand for more, which Funimation tried to bring about by making sure anything that happened in the manga would happen in anime form as closely as possible (and with better animation). Not only did this please existing fans who had already read the source material, but new ones were given a reason to check out Tokyo Ghoul.
The approach paid off; even if you aren’t into anime, one might have caught wind of how dark and violent this show was. The idea that anyone could die at any moment made for great entertainment among fans, and the anime managed to get its hooks in by never straying too far from the original story.
The key difference between Tokyo Ghoul:re ‘s TV adaptation and Tokyo Ghoul ‘s is how it’s handled. Making every manga page come to life requires a lot of animation budget, which means less time spent on end cards with ads, scrolling text explaining what went down in the episode before it, recap segments that double as ED sequences, or inserting previews for future episodes. Once you’ve drawn in your audience by creating a product they can’t see anywhere else, they’ll likely stick around when you stop saturating them with an overload of advertisements.
