Title: Tokyo Ghoul:re Vol. 4
Author: Sui Ishida
Publisher: Viz Media
Language: English
Format: Paperback
Pages: 224
Genre: Fantasy, Battle
Publication Date: April 17, 2018
The Story
Tokyo Ghoul:re Volume four starts out one month after the Auction Operation. It’s Christmas time and Haise is throwing a party at his house. Even the CCG God himself, Arima, shows up for the party! I kind of laughed at the part where Haise got Juuzo a motorcycle model kit. A nice little tongue-in-cheek moment there!
After a bunch of members getting promotions making ranks and named even more confusing, we learn of the CCG’s next mission involving Rank 1 investigators and up. They are investigating the Rosewald family over a series of abductions. They feel that they are becoming too dangerous and must be dealt with. A lot of this volume deals with gathering information on the Rosewald family. Special Investigator Kijima (also known as The Slicer) makes an appearance and ends up staging a trap where they kidnap one of the Rosewald family members. Kijima gets their attention by cutting off his victim’s tongue and broadcasting the footage on the CCG’s own website.
The other focus of the volume goes to our old friend Shu Tsukiyami, also known as The Gourmet. He has been going through some SERIOUS withdrawal ever since Arima “killed” Kaneki at the end of the original series. He has withered down to just skin and bones and has become very irritable. Kanae looks to fix this by telling him that Ken Kaneki is alive and well under his Haise Sasaki identity. This works as Shu’s health returns. Shu even ventures out and meets Haise face to… well… foot since he crawled his way towards him. Haise didn’t recognize him, but this lit a fire under Shu. He’s making his mission to bring Kaneki’s memories back to him!
It was a bit of a slow start to the volume, but things picked up towards the end with a nice little skirmish involving the return of Torso! Things are getting heated up once again and we’ll be on the verge of another all-out battle soon enough. Also interesting to see The Gourmet back and healthy. The very last page saw him paying a visit to the :re coffee shop which is pretty interesting as well. Haise going to Uta to order masks was also a pretty auspicious moment since we have a ghoul as an investigator going undercover… as a ghoul.
Either way, I like how this is building up and even though the cast of characters is still pretty large, it was more contained and made reading the story not as confusing!
Characters
Obviously, the biggest focus here was on the regeneration and reemergence of Shu Tsukiyama, everyone’s favorite handkerchief inhaling pervert! Just telling him about Ken Kaneki being alive and watching his rapid regeneration is kind of amazing, yet creepy all at the same time. We all knew Shu was obsessed with Kaneki from the original series, but to see him like this is absolutely disturbing. To think that he lives and exists for Kaneki is Chris Hansen levels of perversion. Still, it’s good to see his character back and the fact that he wants to restore Kaneki’s memories is going to make his return pretty impactful if he wasn’t already.
Outside of this, nothing really stood out to me, character-wise. There was a nice little interaction between Haise and Fueguchi where she told Haise about how Kaneki would bring her books and that even though they are no longer the same person, their way of thinking was still the same. Haise still denies the fact that he is Kaneki, but he’s hearing more and more voices in side of his head from Kaneki that say otherwise. This could lead to some serious implications for his position as a ghoul investigator should these voices persist!
Also… Kijima is a legit freak. I just had to throw that in there.
Final Thoughts
This was kind of a slower, more methodically-paced volume of Tokyo Ghoul:re, but still worth it as our next story arc not only had its seeds planted but also was put into action. Nice to see Shu back in the mix and it’ll be interesting to see Kaneki as a ghoul again under a different mask. The Rosewald mission is starting to get heated as Kijima’s actions kind of poked a hornet’s nest.
Everything is heading towards another huge battle. Let’s just hope it’s not as confusing as the Auction Operation. Sui Ishida doesn’t fail to impress once again! Also, as of the time of this writing, we’re just about three weeks out from the Tokyo Ghoul:re anime adaptation! I know they deviated from the manga for Root A, let’s hope they stick to it this time around because I would love to see this animated to help clarify some of the things that have happened thus far!
Follow me on Twitter @TheAnimePulse
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This item was provided for review by Viz Media
