Tokyo Ghoul Episode 1

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This early scene immediately establishes the dark tone of the show with the heavy use of shadows and silhouetted characters. I also liked the used both warm and cold colors to add to the grimness. Red obviously symbolizes violence while purple has that cold hearted intensity to it.


During Kaneki’s surgery he had a really vivid vision resembling a near death experience. The long shot above provides an imagery of his transition to being not quite human and not quite a ghoul. Kaneki is swimming towards the light that represents the humanity he is seemingly trying to grab hold on to. The darkness below is the ghoul in him pulling him down and as a result he is in limbo as represented by the red.


This high angle crane shot demonstrates Kaneki’s feeling of isolation and separation from other humans. The blue hue is a color that emphasizes his state of depression. This could also be interpreted as him being a predator amongst the herd. 



The clip above is Kaneki slowly realizing that he has the characteristics of a ghoul. The constant slow push of the camera builds up the sense of panic growing within him. As his panic reaches its peak the camera goes into an extreme close-up of his eyes to show his expression of fear. The close-ups of his mouth and food reinforce the importance of how taste would define his humanity.

Comments

  1. AnonymousJuly 8, 2014 at 4:14 PM

    Just wanna say that I appreciate what you're doing for these anime shows, because frankly some of them have some damn good cinematography.

    ReplyDelete

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