Season 1 was fine . Season 2 was bs . Season 1 unfortunately had the shadow of the manga looming over it , but as a standalone work , the most one could complain about was the unnecessary censorships of scenes that weren ' t even that gory , and the pacing and details and stuff . But it gets the story across relatively well , makes you sympathise enough with Kaneki so that you stay invested for 12 episodes for the big finale showdown with Jason . Root A was a disaster . It was supposed to be an ' alternate route ' where Kaneki joins Aogiri instead of forming his own merry little band in the manga . That alone was already enough to make people mad . Then they worsened it by literally taking the same scenes from the manga and shoehorning them in . So we now have technically a different plot but with the same scenes . ? So messy . Then add in that Root A had pretty lacklustre animation just look at that fight between Amon and Kaneki , all that smoke felt so cheap , and a ton of what felt like filler . Sure , it tried to flesh out the characters more . But those episodes just felt like it was randomly slipped in instead of being involved in the original plot . And of course Kaneki suddenly loses his mc role , he literally can just go entire episode with just lines of him shrieking and groaning for a minute . People want to see badass white haired Kaneki wreck it , but nope . Don ' t even remind me of Touka running for 3 episodes straight doing absolutely nothing productive other than strengthening her legs and vocal chords by talking about needing to find Kaneki . Why even give her the screentime ? I guess the last straw for most people was the last 5 minutes where Kaneki just literally walks around with Hide ' s body . It ' s beautiful , symbolic , etc , but to a lot of people it was dipshit and a waste of time . So , most of the hate really just comes from season 2 , because it was so poorly done and unfortunately had the honour of having to be compared to the original material , which really just highlights how bad it was . Amyway , a 3 rd season is hinted at . Maybe it can save the show from the blunder that was root A . Who knows . I just hope Touka does more than running in the new season now . And uh , the manga . It ' s good , but it ' s popular , so therefore by internet logic it must be hated on massively because its popular . Lots of sense , it ' s how the world works today . Jokes aside , the manga itself is pretty good . Has a lot of symbolism that adds a lot more depth to the already complicated story . I read the manga after watching the two seasons , so I do know what it ' s like for anime only viewers . Tldr for anime only viewers , s 1 is a great introduction to the world of TG , but skip s 2 because it ' s really that bad .