✦Body-horror meets an identity crisis about what makes us human, and its opening 'Unravel' is one of anime's most recognizable songs.
Synopsis
A shy bookworm's first date ends with her trying to eat him, which is how he wakes up half ghoul in a Tokyo where flesh-eaters pass as citizens. He can't eat human food anymore, can't tell his best friend, and spends the season learning which half of him is the mask. The gore is furniture. The show is about the mirror.
His first date tries to eat him. He survives as half ghoul. Human food now tastes like ash. Ghouls run a coffee shop and pass as citizens. Hunters hunt them. He belongs to both sides and neither.
That opening theme got into my head before the show even started, and what's underneath is a genuinely painful story about losing yourself one meal at a time. The coffee shop of ghouls trying to live quietly is the best material, found family with hunters circling outside. I walked around humming a song about becoming a monster for a month and felt things every time.
Full disclosure, the adaptation goes off a cliff after season one, and readers will tell you exactly what got lost. That said, season one is worth your evening, a bleak, sincere identity crisis wearing a monster show's clothes. The premise deserves better than what the later seasons did to it. The first twelve episodes, though, are permanent.