I read the book Tokyo Ghoul [Days] on a paper copy. I chose this book while browsing through the manga section in Barnes and Nobles. It caught my eye so I grabbed it and read the short summary on the back. It turned out to seem very interesting so I decided to purchase it as my second book for my goodreads assignments. This book falls in the manga and horror fiction genre. The main characters are Ken Kaneki, Hideyoshi Nagachika, Touka Kirishima, Yoriko Kosaka, Shu Tsukiyama, Chei Hori, Ikuma Momochi, Hinami Fueguchi, and Kazuo Yoshida. Ken Kaneki used to be an ordinary boy who loved to read, and literature in general. After an incident he had survived, he received an organ transplant from a Ghoul, which then turned him into one. Hideyoshi Nagachika, also known as Hide, is one of Kaneki’s closet friends. He is a very curious boy with a sharp instinct. Touka Kirishima is a Ghoul girl who can be very quiet, but violent at times when she has to. Yoriko Kosaka is one of Touka’s classmates which she soon becomes good friends with. She cooks for Touka a lot and has a nice, but shy, personality. Shu Tsukiyama is a smart, but dangerous Ghoul. He has a strange obsession once it comes to eating. Chei Hori is Tsukiyama’s classmate, I would say his partner in crime sometimes. She is very short and has the looks of a 12 year old, yet she is very energetic and is described as a ‘hamster’ in the story. Ikuma Momochi is a Ghoul who moved from the countryside, to Tokyo so that he could have less interaction with Ghouls, and try to live a normal life. He is also very passionate in music, especially guitar. Hinami Fueguchi is an orphaned Ghoul who lives with Touka. She really likes to read books by Sen Takatsuki, just like Kaneki. Tokyo Ghoul [Days] takes place in many different places. These places include the cafe, Anteiku, Kamii University (most of the main characters school), Tsukiyama and Chei’s high school (does not say the name of it in the book), and the 20th Ward, where some characters hang around and live.
Tokyo Ghoul starts off with a boy named Ken Kaneki and his friend Hide, eating at a restaurant to celebrate Kaneki’s recovery. Kaneki had gotten into an incident that involved falling steel beams at a construction site. He had suffered life-threatening injuries and was very lucky to survive. He needed to get an organ transplant to survive, which he did, but it came from a Ghoul, which then turned Kaneki into a Ghoul. Being a Ghoul was a very tough struggle in life. You had to eat humans, because human food can make you very sick, you had to be careful not to get caught by any smart people or Ghoul investigators. As you can see, it was very much a struggle and something most Ghouls did not want for their own good. The CCG was a very special government that was created to kill Ghouls, and maintain all kinds of security about Ghouls. The Anteiku cafe was like a hangout spot for Ghouls. Kaneki worked there along with his manager Yoshimura, who is also the owner of the cafe, and Touka Kirishima. Hide often went to visit Kaneki at the cafe but Kaneki would tell him not to since there were many Ghouls, hungry for human flesh, who came and Hide is not a Ghoul. One day, while Hide was in school two people from the club ORC see Hide and start to question him about Kaneki, since they suspected he was a Ghoul. The ORC often went around to see if people have eaten. If they have seen them eat, they cross them off their Ghoul list. Hide then comes up with a plan to stuff Kaneki’s bag with snacks and secretly open the bag in front of the ORC so they see all the snacks fall out of his backpack. The plan worked and the ORC crossed Kaneki off their list, assuming he likes to eat in private. Another close call in Tokyo Ghoul [Days] was when Yoriko and Touka went to the zoo together. They were having a lot of fun and decided to set up a small picnic. The day before, Kaneki helped out Touka cook a dish for Yoriko as an apology after they stopped talking due to school drama. Yoriko was very impressed by her cooking and offered Touka a bite, but she refused since Ghouls are not supposed to eat human food. While enjoying their picnic, A few Ghoul Hunters show up to the zoo to make sure everyone is safe. They stood right behind Touka which made her very frightened. Thankfully, the Ghoul hunters found nothing wrong at the zoo, so they left. Tsukiyama was a pretty dangerous Ghoul to be around. When he was around classmates, he was very charming towards them which made him seem like your typical wealthy, teenage boy. Tsukiyama was out eating when Chei sneaked up on him and took a picture of him eating. He was shocked by the sudden surprise and decided to go after Chei, trying to eat her. She was very fast and a very good climber so she was able to out run him. Tsukiyama was very impressed and learned more about her. Turns out, they went to the same school and they were both around the same age. One evening, Tsukiyama came up with a plan and he needed Chei’s help. He wanted to sneak into the hospital and eat the really old man, since the nurse he was in love with, didn't like the man. Their plan was very successful and they managed to sneak in carefully, eat the man, and leave carefully. Although Tsukiyama had a nice dinner, one of the nurses reported the man's death as a Ghoul attack because she was a witness, but Chie and Tsukiyama never got caught. Next, Ikuma was introduced in the story. He was a musician who often liked to play in front of everyone at the train stations. He moved to Tokyo to stay away from Ghouls since he hated them so much. He would have to go out to the most popular suicide spot near the 20th Ward for food every night. He met up with a Ghoul while on the hill searching for food which frightened him because he wanted nothing to do with them. Once, on his way to Anteiku, he ran into Tsukiyama and he put up a fight. Ikuma lost a lot of blood but was able to be saved by Kaneki and Touka, at the cafe.
I found the ending of Tokyo Ghoul [Days] very interesting. Kaneki and Touka went to the library almost everyday with Hinami after Kaneki introduced her to it for the first time. There was this little boy named Yuuki that came up to Hinami the first day she went to the library. Hinami spent most of her time at home and didn't really know how to read so the boy said something rude to her. Touka was very overprotective and got really angry at the boy when he said that towards her. The boy got frightened and ran away. The next day he apologized by giving Hinami a nice bookmark for her books. Kaneki and Touka thought it was a bad idea that they have met the boy because kids like to say anything that comes to mind, and they are Ghouls, so they hoped he go wouldn't go around telling everyone about them. One day, at the library, Yoriko had gone up to Touka and it seemed like she found out something about Touka, that made her embarrassed. Touka was very confused at what she was trying to apologize about so she went after Yoriko. Kaneki soon went after Touka, who went after Yoriko, leaving Hinami all alone. Hinami then tries to find them and gets taken away by this group of teens. After Touka and Kaneki went back to the library, they immediately started to look for Hinami. They couldn't find her and Touka started to panic. Luckily, Yuuki noticed the boys taking Hinami but was too scared to react. He then had Touka and Kaneki go in the same direction as the teens to see if they could find her, and they did. The boys refused to give back Hinami so Kaneki decided to distract them by putting up a fight, so Touka could get Hinami. While fighting, Kaneki decided to bite the inside of his cheeks and let the blood run through. He did it so when one of the boys went for a punch in his stomach, he spit out all the blood, which frightened the boys into them running off. Kaneki was able to save Hinami. The story was then put into Kazuo’s point of view. Kazuo worked at a fitness center and a woman he saw multiple times outside the center looked a bit worried. A man then came up to her and yelled at her in a threatening voice saying “Have a million yen! You owe me big time!”. Kazuo then went up to the women and asked what was wrong. She told him that she had problems with a loan shark and she owed him 500,000 yen because of her sick mother in the hospital. Kazuo felt very bad after seeing the woman constantly being threatened by the loan shark. He then decided to give her the 500,000 yen so she could get out of the loan and be safe. She thanks him, and then leaves. After he told his co-workers what he did they looked at him funny and told him that there was never a woman with a sick mom that owed a loan shark 500,000 yen. They told him he probably got robbed which made him very angry. He was a Ghoul, but his co-workers did not know that. They then decided to go a fun little fitness class just to calm Kazou down. Kazou was very angry and worked out very aggressively, covering his red eyes hoping not to be seen by his co-workers.
I mostly recommend this book to older kids, I would say about 12+. I think this because the topics it talks about can be very gruesome at times. They can include deaths, humans getting certain body parts ripped off, lots of gore, and so much more. It also contains some foul language that isn't appropriate for younger kids. I recommend this book to my best friend Leah. She's a big fan of the Tokyo Ghoul anime and I think she would really like it. I think you should read it too! The book is filled with so much information and every chapter is a different character's point of view.
I think I did a pretty good job on reading Tokyo Ghoul [Days]. It was my second book of the semester so I was much better at writing and doing my status updates. Even though we only get a certain limit to write for our status updates I got much better at not writing too much on them. During the Second semester I feel like in order to be better I can update during the times I'm supposed to and not have any missing updates. Tokyo Ghoul [Days] was a very long book and it's not really my type of book because of the amount of pages. I feel like I improved my reading skills so much more after getting comfortable with reading a little quicker then how I used to.