Tokyo Ghoul Re – S3E12 – Beautiful Dream: Daybreak

Previously on Tokyo Ghoul, “writE: The Absent One”

Fan service ain’t gonna cut it.

Well, that happened. It’s finally over. 12 episodes have never felt so slow and yet rushed at the same time. It’s almost as if a drunk speed freak powering through lean read the script and they used what he spat back out. :re has been uneven, confusing, and sometimes just sad. Why break that trend in the end?

You’ve got to put in the weapons code to go SS3 against Final Noro.

I hope they remember you.

Hands down, the best plot thread going has been the rise of Beavis-mouthed Shirazu, maturing as a man and a leader. As it has been well documented, this season can’t stay of out its own way and Shirazu’s time finally came up. Faced with Final Noro, who got cut in half and became 10 times his size and power (because ScienceTM), Shirazu goes Super Saiyan 3 with his kagune that fires bigger missiles before he gets so hype he throws his warhead kagune at him too, setting up a killing blow by Urie. In the melee, :re‘s one positive contribution is ripped away from us like about half his midsection.

I’m not going to bash them for killing him off, the death scene was surprisingly heartbreaking in a sea of shit I won’t remember in a week. You feel for him when he babbles about his sister, and even more so when we’re faced with his death through his ears with everything fading away. It’s a big move for a season that feels largely inconsequencential no matter how many midlevel players have been taken off the board. In the end, he was the one character that felt earned, growing from a simple meathead to a fully three dimensional character ,with depth and substance, whose biggest contribution going forward is humanizing Urie who finally learned to value a life and humanity over promotions, disappointing Matsuri Washu who turns out to be a Batman level badass. :re giveth one damn thing and it taketh that one damn thing away.

On a side note, who knew that Noro was somewhere on the handsome scale between Roman Reigns and Jason Momoa.

And oh yeah, besides also being able to speak perfectly, he apparently was the guy Yoshimura gave baby Eto to, but why would we dwell on important plot points or anything like that. Let’s just prattle on with the silly shit.

Silly Shit

Let’s just cut to the chase. When you first read the synopsis for this season, there was never any doubt Kaneki was coming back. It was common sense that Sasaki would at least be taking a back seat when all was said and done, and yet, astonishingly, somehow this show acts like it is some huge revelation. I’m still not sure if I’m irritated or saddened by it. It feels like there was more planned that the creators just forgot to get to. Remember when Don Porpora told Sasaki about a mysterious ghoul that could tell him who he was? Whatever happened with that? Did any of it even matter? Was there a point to Don Porpora even being here? He did a grand total of exactly nothing and wouldn’t be missed if he was edited out. Just like most of this season, it’s just wasted time.

It would’ve been nice if they had spent some of that time building up the fight between him and The One Eyed Owl, Eto, who now can appear mecha style from the Owl’s mouth. In a struggle to make sense of the random crap they’ve had her doing this season, she moves from lethal Cheshire cat to obsessed psychotic because everything this show touches turns to shit.   Continuing with that theme, full black haired Reborn Kaneki is somehow magically more powerful than the previously untouchable One Eyed Owl, who he dispatches like she’s just a rung above the “villain of the week” level losers with one arm.

Gotta wrap this up under budget…

Sasaki hadn’t touched his full potential all season and that somehow made Kaneki massively more powerful? Watanabe tries to stylize the ending but you can only spray so much perfume on shit. Did anyone care Kanae is really a Karren? Right. In the end, Kaneki decides to play the part, regardless of the new hair color with a blunt and cold personality in tow, letting The Gourmet and Eto escape through the slimmest of margins. None of this was all that great, but then they had to push it.   

Well Fuck You Too.

Reminiscent of last season’s finale, post credits Arima and Kaneki face off again in the underground garden. Sounds sweet but here’s the problem:  why should I care? We didn’t even get to see any of the first time they fought. We did see them stare at each other, watch a close up of Kaneki’s hair in the wind, and then we were dropped into this nightmare years later. Watanabe can’t even be bothered to let us in on what caused the amnesia in the first place, or if this garden is even a real place or just another compartment in Kaneki’s mind. We’re just supposed to marvel at how cool this fight should be even though we’ll probably never get to see any of it. Tokyo Ghoul expects us to fill in the gaps without giving us enough to work with to make the effort.

Oh, this was interesting and actually mattered? We’ll give it 30 seconds after the credits.

By and large, it just feels like they threw a bunch of threads in the air and hoped something would stick. We’ve barely been given any answers when it comes to Arima, let alone seeing him in action. We’re simply told he’s a badass. We’re teased with Amon being alive, and even possibly alluded to by Don P., yet it had nothing to do with anything and Lord knows when he’ll pop up again should this series get another shot. We have no idea what ever happened to Yoshimura, how Gourmet’s dad escaped, any new information on the doc who made Kaneki, what the deal with his armored centipede mode was, who or if there was a mole in CCG, who that super powered ghoul Kaneki fought in Cochlea was(and why he fought him), what was the deal with they scarecrow, and way too many more unanswered important questions on top of the fact Touka and Yomo spent the season doing squat.

We’ve blown past it being mystique and are deep into horrible writing territory. It’s sad how far this show has fallen. I remember recommending it to anyone that would listen and genuinely being excited for anything new I found on it. Now, I’m just glad it’s over. This season was their attempt at righting the ship but what wasn’t even in trouble is now wildly off course. :re was painful to watch and it boggles my mind that this show aired after the bar set by the previous seasons. If that’s the best you’ve got, kill it. Kill it or bring the old crew back. I’ve beat up on this season enough that I don’t have to rehash they why’s, but this experiment is a whole assed fail and throwing that bullshit at the end was one last middle finger in a season of fuck yous.  

Go ahead and toss this season in those Blue Exorcist’s flames too.