Tokyo Ghoul's Intro Is so Great

the closest I've ever come to actually talking about Tokyo Google is using it as a throw away gag at the start of my Watson and op4 Jojo way back at the start of my YouTube career and in all honesty I was content to leave it at that because from what I'd seen of the series it seemed like yet another hyper edgy celebration of senseless violence and I'd kind of had my fill of that and then some with a comma a kill but with the new season Tokyo ghoul re out I decided to finally give the series another shot and I'll admit I drastically underestimated it Tokyo ghoul is edgy as hell there's no getting around that but it works it's a series with a lot of heart and something meaningful to say although note that I say series and not show because even the first season of the anime doesn't do the manga justice and the second and third seasons are kind of sort of terrible like Studio Pierrot we've got a talk but not today today I'd like to focus on the one thing that the studio in arguably got right the opie unravel is a fantastic nuanced opening that makes great use of symbolism and some stunning shot composition to present the themes of the show in a very interesting manner it's nowhere near my top 10 but I can definitely see why it one read its best opening tournament back in 2015 so today let's dig into what makes this one of the most well regarded anime openings of all time and what hidden meaning we can find inside it this whole opening is laser focused on presenting us with kaneki's perspective of Tokyo ghouls world and the people human and ghoul alike who inhabit it so it's fitting that we start off seeing the world the same way kaneki does before his unfortunate accident in black and white ghouls bad humans good then as the backing music comes in the whole world comes alive with color we see Kenickie sitting in an ornate chair in the middle of an endless expanse of water and sky the way that the chair is framed is reminiscent of the less fancy chair that Kenickie finds himself strapped to in Jason's torture chamber toward the end of the season the sky and its reflection below represent the world of humans and the world of ghouls beneath its surface as the opie goes on reflections and duality become an increasingly important visual motif in this case the horizon across the middle of the frame and inverted reflections tell us that Kenickie exists in both worlds as do toca and Riza and even before the color comes in and he actually becomes aware of it we see that he's been sitting in both his whole life at a distance Kenickie looks gray and D saturated but pulling him closer we see that he has black hair and a white shirt with blue trim likewise toca and Ruiz a first appeared dull and gray against the vibrant beauty of the sky but moving near them reveals their own vibrant colors the closer you get to somebody this Opie is saying the clearer a picture you get of who they really are and even the most monstrous people you meet may have hidden depths to them the direction of the wind gives us a sense of positioning even in the empty void it's blowing right on Kenickie and left on visa and toca so we can infer that they're standing in front of him toca is looking off to the left ignoring him while Riza is staring directly at Kenickie she did say that she's had her eye on him for a while after all as her eyes open the lens shatters fracturing both the image of Ruiz a and the world behind her as the show makes very very clear even in the lyrics of this song the world of Tokyo ghoul is broken and Reza's attack opens kana keys eyes to that fact Ruiz a fades away as an image of a shattered Tokyo takes her place one by one reflections of the show's main characters flit by in the foreground with most of the ghouls appearing in both their human disguises and their true forms interestingly tokhes brother aya toe only appears as a human while Nishio only appears as a ghoul and motto and yoshimora are conspicuously absent after the characters flit by we see the cracks of the screen slowly disappear and the city distort itself back into a single cohesive image as the title fades into view this demonstrates the ultimate goal of Kenickie as a character to fix the broken world by making peace between ghouls and humans from here we jump to a shot of Kenickie walking next to a window in some sort of high-rise while he looks normal in the foreground in the background his reflection has the red gule it's possible that the black and white tile under his feet is met to foreshadow Jason's torture chamber further but the more interesting environmental detail here is the nighttime cityscape behind him as the opie moves forward we see other ghouls reflected in a similar manner with their reflections almost always being imposed against a bigger image of the outside world the transparency of these reflections well just as a quick aside the reflections are actually wrong in a lot of these shots you can see the reflected backgrounds through the bodies of characters who are supposed to be standing in front of them like the building behind Nitschke or the railing behind toka or the tile showing through Kentucky's leg this seems to just be an error with how the animators decided to handle transparent layers and to be fair you don't really notice while you're watching the actual Opie because it goes by so quickly but yeah that's not how reflections work regardless this effect creates the impression that these characters are almost like ghosts living in the human world without really being part of it having to constantly hide their true selves in order to fit in the reflections also hammer home the theme of duality there's more to these characters than meets the eye which is obvious when you look at say Nitschke and toca who reveal themselves to have hidden kindness very early on but it also applies to characters who appear to be absolute irredeemable monsters like Tsukiyama and mato and even to kentucky's best friend he day everyone has a side that they don't show the world while these shots use wildly different camera angles they keep the points of focus the characters in roughly the same position from shots a shot in order to allow your eye to naturally flow through the montage except for the investigators who are on the opposite side of the screen from the ghouls beyond the visual motif running across them these shots mostly just serve to show us the series important characters but a few cool details do stand out firstly Nitschke is the only ghoul who we actually see being framed against the human world instead of it being shown in a reflection revealing his true nature to Keamy means that he doesn't have as much to hide as the other ghouls do and the secret hidden side of his life is much smaller than that of the others now day is shown moving over to the investigators side of the screen which reflects some of his career choices later in the series and also he's the only character who we see moving downward in this entire Opie which in terms of cinematic language usually signifies a character falling from grace or descending into hellish circumstances which is appropriate given that things do not go super well for he day as this story progresses especially later in the manga and that's not the only later development foreshadowed in this Opie before we get to that though I want to quickly point out that as motto is marching forward he hides his left hand the one with his wedding ring inside his pocket further burying the symbol of the tragedy that drives him to kill ghouls lastly we get a look at Amon leaning against a window as a car drives by and just a heads up this part is a bit speculative and involves a spoiler for Tokyo ghoul Reese so if you want to avoid that skip to this timestamp you've been warned he's the only character in this entire montage whose eyes aren't clearly visible in his reflection but when the light from the car catches his face if you squint you can see his right eye in the reflection and it doesn't exactly look white now does it it's easy to miss but this for shadows that Amon will eventually be turned into an artificial one-eyed ghoul like Kenickie who's black and red eye is on his right side rather than his left you really have to admire the thought that went into framing this shot in order to hide that detail in plain sight from Amon we cut Therese a standing in front of the Tokyo skyline after a beat her reflection unleashes its kagune shattering the window behind her once more this symbolically breaks down the barrier between the human and ghoul worlds for Kenickie but it also shows him how broken the world truly is in a flash the visuals become more abstract and wheezes kagune transforms into a collage of dancing clipart it's hard to make out all of the shapes spreading from her back but we can see several red spider lilies in there the same flowers that show up when she appears to kaneki in the torture chamber spider lilies are often used in Japanese funerals and have a heavy association with death and the after life specifically held they're said to guide the dead toward reincarnation which matches their use in the story as they signify how rise a becomes a part of Kenickie both in body and eventually mind after her death we see this death happen symbolically as blood red spreads across Riza his white dress and she closes her eyes mirroring how she opens them at the start of the opie her positioned to the right of the screen compared to toca on the left further parallels that opening shot next we see tokhes kagune emerge from her shoulder like butterfly ways the way that the images that make up this collage are stretched out it's difficult to actually discern what any of them are but this seems to be a mix of manmade and natural shapes which would reflect tokhes deeper involvement in the human world when we zoom in on her face toca turns to the camera and to kaneki by proxy for the first time signifying her eventual acceptance of him as a ghoul and a friend from here we cut to human kaneki falling through the water bewildered and terrified as the camera turns we see that he's falling upward toward the expanse of sky from the beginning of the Opie as well as his gula fide reflection on the surface of the water and we can tell that it's a reflection because his eye is on the wrong side as kaneki passes through the surface his two disparate sides collide and merged together and out of this fusion emerges his final form the white haired black jacketed ghoul that he transforms into as a result of Jason's torture session this version of him contrasts starkly with the black haired white-shirted Kenickie from the start of the okie and not just in his colour scheme where that Kenickie was in a sad passive seated position this one stands confidently showing no clear emotion Kenickie has made a conscious decision about who he wants to be instead of waffling between ghoul and human and his ordeals have clearly forged him into a much stronger person than he was when we first met him as the music dies down the camera spends a few silent seconds pulling back further from Kenickie while the sky behind him becomes increasingly d saturated and less vibrant kaneki's worldview is becoming starker and less naive than it was when he first entered the world of ghouls but it never becomes as simple and colorless as it was at beginning and as the camera finishes pulling back the Opie ends unravel sums up Kentucky's transformation over the course of this season beautifully and succinctly while giving plenty of clever hints about the characters around him and even foreshadowing some plot turns from very late in the manga the consistent visual motif of reflections and broken glass makes it feel much more cohesive than your average jumbled anime Opie but smart shot composition and editing still allows for it to present us with varied and striking imagery and of course the theme song itself unravel with its haunting whisper singing beautiful instrumentation and somber tone is absolutely phenomenal as well and feels very distinct from your average j-rock or j-pop opener with a few glaring animation errors it's not quite perfect but it stands apart for how visually imaginative and information dense it is combining a stellar song with brilliant visual direction unravel really is the complete Opie package and it's no wonder that so many people hold it in such high regard now if only Studio Pierrot could make the actual anime that good but that's a topic for another day and if you want to see me talk about it make sure that you hit subscribe to catch every mother's basement video as it goes live for now I'm Jeff Zhu professional signing out from my mother's basement