Ken Kaneki

金木研

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Appearances: 1anime
Voice Actors: 1actor
Languages: 1dub

Ken Kaneki starts out as a quiet, bookish university student who loves reading and keeps mostly to himself. His life changes forever after a date goes horribly wrong and he receives an emergency organ transplant from a ghoul, a creature that must eat human flesh to survive. The surgery leaves him half-ghoul himself, caught between two worlds that both want him dead.

At first, Kaneki struggles just to survive, unable to eat normal food and terrified of his own new hunger. He finds shelter at a cafe called Anteiku, run by a ghoul named Yoshimura, where Touka Kirishima reluctantly becomes his guide to ghoul life and teaches him to hunt and defend himself. He also grows close to a young ghoul named Hinami Fueguchi, whom he teaches to read, and the two form a bond like siblings.

After being captured and tortured by a sadistic ghoul, Kaneki changes permanently, becoming far colder and willing to use violence he once refused. He eventually loses his memories for a time and works inside the ghoul-hunting CCG under a new name, before recovering who he is and claiming the title One-Eyed King, a leader meant to protect ghouls. Kaneki's long path from a frightened victim to a battle-hardened leader, and his eventual marriage to Touka, forms the emotional core of the whole series.

On screen

Appears in

Tokyo Ghoul

Main Role2014TV12 episodes7.60

DramaActionSupernaturalPsychological

Tokyo Ghoul is a dark fantasy and horror anime based on the manga by Sui Ishida. The manga ran in Shueisha's Weekly Young Jump, a magazine for adult readers, from 2011 to 2014. It was one of the best-selling manga in Japan in 2014. The studio Pierrot made this first anime season, and Shuhei Morita directed it. Its 12 episodes aired on Tokyo MX from July 4 to September 19, 2014. The opening song, Unravel by TK from Ling tosite Sigure, became one of the most famous anime songs of its time. The show takes place in a version of modern Tokyo with a hidden danger. Living among the people are ghouls. They look exactly like normal humans, but they can only survive by eating human flesh. Regular food tastes awful to them and cannot keep them alive. Ghouls hide their true nature, and many live quiet lives in the city. A government group called the CCG, short for Commission of Counter Ghoul, hunts them. Its investigators carry special weapons and treat ghouls as monsters to be wiped out. Ken Kaneki is a shy 18-year-old university student who loves books. He becomes interested in Rize Kamishiro, a pretty young woman who shares his taste in novels. Their date ends in disaster when Rize turns out to be a ghoul who wants to eat him. Kaneki barely survives. While he is in the hospital, doctors place some of her organs into his body to save his life. When he wakes up, he is no longer fully human. He is now a half-ghoul, and he feels a terrible hunger for the very thing he finds most horrible. With nowhere else to go, Kaneki is taken in by the people who run Anteiku, a small coffee shop. The staff are ghouls who try to live peacefully and help others like them. Here he meets Touka Kirishima, a sharp, moody girl who works at the shop and has her own tough past. Kaneki must learn the rules of ghoul society while hiding his change from his best human friend, Hideyoshi Nagachika, who is often called Hide. Caught between two worlds, he belongs fully to neither. The story asks hard questions. Are the ghouls evil, or are they just trying to survive like anyone else? Are the human hunters heroes, or do they also do cruel things? Kaneki's struggle to keep his kindness and his sense of self in a violent world is the heart of the show. The series is bloody and sometimes very disturbing, with scenes of body horror, so it is not for young viewers. Its mood is sad, tense, and moody, with much of the story told in the rain and in the dark corners of the city. It was followed by a second season, Tokyo Ghoul Root A, in 2015.

Cast