***THIS IS A REVIEW FOR THE WHOLE SERIES***

What I love the most about this series is the characters. I just think they all are so fleshed out and interesting; their backstories, their motives, their realtionships with eachother — you can’t help but feel for them in some way, either that emotion be hate or love or frustration. They are so well rounded and complex. Every character left some sort of impact on me. The characters that stood out especially to me were Kaneki (of course) and Juzo.

Kaneki’s story is so tragic and well developed. His constant inner battle between what it means to be a ghoul and what it means to be human, and his struggle to find the means to make both sides of him coexist. Kaneki embraces the ghoul in him to protect the people he cares about after having failed to save those around him whose deaths still haunts his conscience. He choses to cease being someone who knows pain and to abandon his morals in order to become stronger. But by constantly choosing other people’s lives above his own and playing the role of a martyr, he fails to save himself and he pushes away the people who love him. I think in the end he realizes that he doesn’t have to abandon his humanity to become strong. 

I also think Juzo’s character is so interesting. Raised as he was by a ghoul who awarded his acts of cruelty until his sense of morals was distorted, and abused him until he no longer recognized pain and understood emotions such as kindness and empathy. He’s entirely dehumanized by the investigators for his upbringing. Shinohara is the first to show him actual kindness, and who cares for him like a father cares for his son. When Shinohara is on the bringe of death, Juzo realizes that the feeling is very mutual. 

The art style is absolutely stunning. It’s so very dark and gory and just beautiful in a way that send shivers down your spine. Even though it has some very disturbing scenes, it think it’s balanced with humor and heartwarming interactions between the characters. I like how the character’s emotions were drawn, I could almost feel them coming off the page; it’s so detailed. I have to be honest and admit I struggled sometimes to follow the battle scenes, but that might just be because i’m new into Manga. 

I think it’s pretty brilliant how Sui Ishida manages to tie all the different narratives together. We have the characters from the CCG, the Augori and of course the ghouls from the 20th ward and their arcs just come together so neatly. There is no clear line between who’s the good guys and who’s the bad guys (well except maybe for the Augori who are really really horrible), but i’m mainly thinking about the CCG and the ghouls from the 20th ward. Both sides have done horrible things in order to survive and avenge what was taken from them. We have all these characters who are on opposite sides, and yet you can’t help but root for all of them because when it comes down to it, everyone is just doing what they have to in order to survive and they all want to live meaningful lives, and yet they can’t figure out how to coexist beyond seeing each other as enemies so every battle adds to this is endless cycle of violence.