Tokyo Ghoul:re - Episodes 6 - 9 (Review)

By: EyeSpyeAlex

Missed my last review? Check it out here!

Warning! Major spoilers ahead!

This week’s latest episode of Tokyo Ghoul: re brings us the deaths of some notoriously nasty ghouls. With Saiko’s help and surprisingly powerful latent ghoul abilities, she and Ginshi are able to defeat the Nutcracker. While that is happening, Urie and Mutsuki continue to battle Big Madam. The stress of the battle and of Urie’s expectations for himself drives him nearly insane and causes him to lash out and injure Mutsuki. The injury is just enough trauma to trigger Mutsuki’s own kagune, which he then uses to comfort Urie. It’s an incredibly touching moment between the two, and seems to cause Urie to reflect on how much he needs his teammates.As Urie and Mutsuki recover, Juzo and his team pick up the slack and prepare to take down Big Madam. Juzo squares off against Big Madam, who makes an impassioned plea for Juzo to spare her life. As Juzo remembers the time Big Madam spent raising him, he finds himself unable to kill her. Luckily, the rest of his team has no connection to Big Madam, and swiftly kill her. In order to protect Juzo from Big Madam’s death, Hanbee Abara covers Juzo’s ears.On the other side of the auction house, Sasaki is fighting a two front war. One against Takizawa, and the other against himself. As Takizawa pummels him, Sasaki suffers hallucinations of Ken Kaneki, and struggles with letting that side of him out. His screams are amplified by the sound system, and both Saiko and Hinami hear and rush to his aid. Hinami arrives first and fights Takizawa to protect Sasaki, who has no recollection of who she is. When Sasaki is confronted with a younger manifestation of Ken Kaneki, he decides to give into that side of himself and fight Takizawa once more.The two strike each other with their kagunes, resulting in grievous injuries for the both of them. As Arima and the other CCG agents arrive on the scene, Takizawa flees leaving Hinami behind. Before the CCG can exterminate her, Sasaki begs Arima to take her into custody.Though the raid resulted in a lot of tragedy, some good manages to come out of the situation in the form of promotions. Shirazu and Saiko are both promoted to Second Class Investigators, while Uruie and Mutsuki are promoted to First Class Investigators. Sasaki also receives a promotion to Senior Investigator, Mado is promoted to Associate Special Investigator, and Juzo is promoted to Special Investigator. In honor of the promotions, Sasaki and the Quinx Squad throw a party to celebrate. Sasaki gives everyone gifts for their hard work, and receives a package from an unknown sender in the mail. Inside is remnants from his time as Ken Kaneki:his ghoul mask and his favorite books.Sasaki is unable to dwell on the gift for long as he and the Quinx Squad are needed on another important mission. This time they will be teaming up with the S1 Squad for the Rose case, an investigation into the ghoul Rosewald family. They find out they’ll be working with Special Investigator Ihei, a younger recruit who is more formidable than she looks. The captured ghoul proves useful to assisting Kijima in sending a message to the Rose family. It’s hard to see your comrade’s severed tongue as anything other than a threat to your organization.In order to prep for their mission, Sasaki decides the Quinx squad needs to do some undercover work. They head to Uta’s shop and request a mask be made for each of them. Sasaki’s plan is for the squad to go undercover into the ghoul world to. It seems despite opposition from his superiors, he plans on moving forward with the risky plan.Meanwhile, Shu Tsukiyama aka The Gourmet is rapidly losing his grip on reality. His associate Kanae does his best to quell Shu’s grief over the loss of Ken Kaneki, but there is little he can do. He realizes that he needs to reel in Shu before the Rosewald family disposes of him and remembers that Chie Hori gave him some photographs to use in an emergency. Sensing that this is an emergency, he gives Shu the first photograph.What follows is Shu’s renewed obsession with Kaneki. He does his best to get close to him, but is always interrupted by the other Quinx squad members. Growing increasingly more frustrated, Shu and Kanae recruit the Aogiri tree to take a hit out on the Quinx squad members. The ghouls severely underestimate the power of the Quinx squad (minus Saiko), and are soundly beaten before fleeing. While in hiding, Saiko is cornered by a particularly terrifying ghoul who attempts to strangle her. The ghoul nearly succeeds but is stopped by a much larger ghoul who takes him out.

The Review

I am really impressed with these latest episodes. The pacing felt right and it felt like each battle was given an appropriate amount of screen time. I really enjoyed how we got to see all the members of the Quinx Squad assist each other in battle in their own unique way. It was also great to see Hinami and more of Tsukiyama again, as they are two of my favorite characters from the original series.The only real downside was Sasaki’s struggle with his Ken Kaneki side. He seems to be interacting with that side of himself without losing control, so it’s hard to tell if he actually has control over that side. I’m also struggling to understand how he can know he used to be known as someone else without that triggering all of his memories to return. Hopefully this issue is addressed soon.New episodes of Tokyo Ghoul: re air Tuesdays on Funimation.