Talk:Episode 20/@comment-10733658-20150226125409/@comment-24494906-20150226141515

@Haro: I think I should explain my suspicion why Ishida wanted the anime to follow this route, and hence why I don't believe that the Anteiku raid will start immediately. Rather, I fear they might have to squeeze the Anteiku raid into 2 episodes. I hope the staff can avoid that, though.

The manga's story loosely follows the Fool's journey - it's not that obvious at the beginning (maybe Ishida only decided to follow the Fool's journey after a few volumes), but it becomes more and more apparent towards the end. Volume 7 is clearly based on The Chariot (Kaneki counting down from 1000 by 7s). Volume 12 is inspired by the Hanged Man card, and the Anteiku arc is Death and Temperance. (And hence, the manga had to end.)

However, following the Fool's journey meant that Ishida couldn't expand on some aspects that he'd have liked to, since the Fool's journey dictated the pacing.

That's where the anime comes in. The anime route breaks away from the structure defined by the Fool's journey. That allows Ishida to expand on one aspect he couldn't spent much time on in the manga. In some sense, there are two Kanekis in the second half of the manga, the Kaneki before Touka beat him up (Shinoreki I) and the Kaneki afterwards (Shironeki II). But because of the pacing dictated by the Fool's journey, Ishida couldn't focus on Shironeki II: Shironeki II had to die two volumes after he came into existence. So what Ishida wanted the anime to do is to shift the focus more from Shironeki I to Shironeki II. Hence, Ishida decided the anime would have three arcs: The first arc, the Cochlea arc, allows the anime to get faster to the point that Touka beats up Kaneki. The second arc, the new Kanou lab arc, expands on Shironeki II. The third arc, the Anteiku raid arc, then lets the anime's time line converge with the manga's.

If you view Tokyo Ghoul as one big project, then this makes some sense. But imho 12 episodes are too little to do this in a great way. The staff did some questionable decisions in the handling of eps 2-4, but even if they had done it in a perfect way, most manga fans would really hate the anime, because it doesn't focus on their Kaneki (i.e., Shironeki I).

There is a Kanou lab raid in Ishida's draft, he spent a lot of pages on it. I really doubt that they'll skip it, because it's imho the main reason for this alternate route. But I sincerely hope they can get to the point that Kaneki, Tsukiyama, Banjou + lackeys and the Aogiri companions are about to enter the lab at the end of this episode, because I fear this will become quite unreasonable otherwise. Moreover, Aogiri still has to capture Madam A.