Tokyo Ghoul is no stranger to the world of live-action, but Hollywood has yet to sink its teeth into the story. Now, an indie studio is giving their take on how Ken Kaneki could be done in real life, and it gets as gory as you’d have hoped.
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Earlier today, a popular Youtube channel known as RE:ANIME gave their take on Tokyo Ghoul. The nearly 15-minute short film adapts one of the series’ most infamous encounters, and fans admit seeing Jason in the flesh is more than disturbing.
Starring Supernatural‘s Osric Chau as Kaneki, this Tokyo Ghoul short begins with character in a rather dangerous situation. The half-Ghoul has been taken captive by Jason, a renowned Ghoul from a warring ward in Tokyo. With a massive body count on hand, Jason decides to torture Kaneki for fun before eating him as like he planned all along, and this short doesn’t go easy on the gore.
While the film starts with a flashback of Kaneki as a kid with his mother, Tokyo Ghoul moves into PG-13 territory real quick before landing what must be a R rating. An adult Kaneki is seen being haunted by Rize (Chantal Thuy) as he is mercilessly tortured by Jason (Masa Yamaguchi) for fun. The masked villain is goes easy at first by whacking Kaneki with a wrench, but he levels up his torture by sawing off fingers, doing a partial vivisection, and even inserting insects into Kaneki’s ears. As you can guess, this obscene take on torture has got some fans feeling queasy, but it works perfectly with the level of gore used in the original anime.
By the film’s end, fans get a look at Kaneki’s big turn as he embraces his Ghoul gifts. The boy brings out his iconic white hair and deadly kagune to teach Jason a lesson he’ll never forget, and fans are showering the live-action venture with praise on social media.
Sadly, there is no reason to believe Hollywood is looking to adapt Tokyo Ghoul, but RE:ANIME has shown what an uncensored take on the story could look like. Abroad, Warner Bros. Japan is hard at work on a live-action sequel to its first Tokyo Ghoul adaptation, proving the transition can be done to some success. Now, fans are crossing their fingers a stateside studio will do the title justice some day, and this short provides a solid template for how to tackle such an ambitious project.
So, what do you make of this fan-made short…? Let me know in the comments or hit me up on Twitter @MeganPetersCB to talk all things comics and anime!
Originally created by Sui Ishida for Shueisha’s Weekly Young Jump in 2011, Tokyo Ghoul is set in a world full of Ghouls, beings who eat humans and have been living among them in secret. A student named Ken Kaneki has a chance encounter with one of these ghouls, and a resulting accident leaves him implanted with the organs from the ghoul who attacked him. In order to live a somewhat normal life, Kaneki needs to eat human flesh to survive. Thus he’s brought into the underground, action filled world of the ghouls as the series ponders who the “real” monster is.
