Tokyo Ghoul: Days by Sui Ishida
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Ghouls live among us, the same as normal people in every way—except their craving for human flesh.
Ken Kaneki is an ordinary college student until a violent encounter turns him into the first half-human half-ghoul hybrid. Trapped between two worlds, he must survive Ghoul turf wars, learn more about Ghoul society and master his new powers.
Many conflicts and incidents arise involving the clientele of the café Anteiku, where Ghouls gather. Yoshimura, the café’s owner, is harboring suspicions about a certain someone. What sort of darkness will that person bring between those who hunt and those who are hunted? This book chronicles six all-new stories from the Tokyo Ghoul universe.
Warnings: violence, descriptions of cannibalism
This light novel is an anthology of short stories set in the Tokyo Ghoul universe and fills in somewhere in the original manga series, and around the time after Touka kills Mado. Four of the stories are told from a perspective other than Kaneki, which is refreshing (no offense to him). Stories are told from Hide’s, Touka’s, Shuu’s, Ikuma’s POV and they all tie in to roughly the same time, but with very different stories.
In Hide’s story, we get his growing curiosity with the possibility of ghouls. When he comes across a group in his university who investigate ghouls and think Kaneki is one, he joins up with them to see what they know, and to prove to them that Kaneki is human. Eventually, he comes across another ghoul, and you can see the shock of that incident through him. Touka’s story has a familiar theme if you are already acquainted with the manga/anime – her friendship with a human classmate that is difficult for her to maintain. In this story, we see her exasperation with herself for not being able to understand the human world. Meanwhile, Shuu’s story is about the human girl Hori who doesn’t seem like the regular humans to him, and how their ‘friendship’ came about, while also making us question who are the real monsters in the world. (Shuu definitely is one, don’t worry – the story doesn’t try to humanize him or anything). But my favorite story was about Ikuma – a ghoul who was brought up by humans, and who has the same kind of morality that Kaneki has. He is also linked to the first story by Hide in timeline.
I truly enjoyed reading these small snippets into other character’s heads, their thoughts and their motivations. Kaneki is an unbiased narrator but he is not an omniscient one, and this story set delves into these other characters very well and stays true to the source material. But I do think that the translation of this book did not render well in English – the language of the book comes across as stiff and unnatural in some aspects, and some conversations seem inorganic. I mean, a lot of meat (ha ha) of the conversation couldn’t be changed in a translation, but we have also to consider that Japanese can sometimes come across as formal (even when it between friends) when translated directly to English.
Overall, though, this is a book every Tokyo Ghoul fan will love. And even if you aren’t familiar with the TG universe, it really isn’t that hard to make the connections. It does leave out details of the CCG and something relating to the ghouls backstories, but even alone, the stories feel complete enough to be entertaining.
Received an advance reader copy in exchange for a fair review from Viz Media, via Edelweiss.
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