Tokyo Ghoul Watch Order
Tokyo Ghoul, √A, then both seasons of :re: 48 episodes with dates, where the Jack and Pinto OVAs fit, and what to read because √A departs from the manga that :re follows.
Watch Tokyo Ghoul, then Tokyo Ghoul √A, then Tokyo Ghoul:re and its second season, with the Jack and Pinto OVAs as optional extras after √A. That is release order, and there is no better one. The catch is that √A departs from the manga and :re follows the manga, so an anime-only viewer arrives at :re with a gap. The useful part of this page is how to fill it.
Everything, in order
| Order | Entry | Length | Aired or released in Japan |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Tokyo Ghoul | 12 episodes | July to September 2014 |
| 2 | Tokyo Ghoul √A (Root A) | 12 episodes | January to March 2015 |
| Optional | Tokyo Ghoul: Jack (OVA) | One OVA | September 30, 2015 (retail; limited theatrical run September 5 to 18) |
| Optional | Tokyo Ghoul: Pinto (OVA) | One OVA | December 25, 2015 |
| 3 | Tokyo Ghoul:re | 12 episodes | April to June 2018 |
| 4 | Tokyo Ghoul:re (second season) | 12 episodes | October to December 2018 |
The counts and dates come from Anime News Network's encyclopedia entries for Tokyo Ghoul, √A, :re and :re's second season, each listing 12 episodes. That is 48 television episodes in all. √A is the second season under its own title, which ANN also records as "Tokyo Ghoul Root A"; there is no separate "season 2" to look for.
Why √A is the awkward one
When the second season's January 2015 premiere was announced, ANN reported that Sui Ishida, the manga's creator, was "now also credited with the original story concept for the second season," and its TV spot billed it as "A different Tokyo Ghoul made by original creator Sui Ishida and director Shuhei Morita."
What reached the screen is harder to describe. Reviewing the 10th anniversary box set for ANN in February 2025, Jairus Taylor wrote that the staff had asked Ishida "to pen an original script for them to work off of," that "a later interview by Sui Ishida indicated that his version of the draft wasn't used," and that the result was "something more akin to a condensed version of the existing back half of the first manga, with a few tweaks and anime original scenes." So √A is neither a faithful adaptation nor a wholly original story. It covers the manga's events in compressed form and changes some of them.
That matters because of what comes next. Taylor's review says √A "had deviated from the manga just enough that there was no way of cleanly reconciling the differences," and that the :re anime "decided to stick with the manga's continuity, meaning that any anime-only viewers coming into it would gradually find themselves lost." ANN's 2018 guide to the series made the same point as :re began airing: √A "made a few choices that were incompatible with TG:re's manga version," and material involving one character "was just totally cut."
Our recommendation for the gap
Watch √A anyway. It is the anime's bridge between the first season and :re, and Taylor, for all his complaints about it, still calls it "plenty watchable." Then, before :re, read the back half of the original manga, the part √A condensed. The original Tokyo Ghoul manga ran in Weekly Young Jump from 2011 to 2014 and collects into 14 volumes, so this is a contained amount of reading, not a second series. If you will not read anything, start :re knowing that it follows a version of events you partly have not seen, and that the confusion Taylor describes is the adaptation's, not yours.
Taylor's own verdict on the :re anime is blunt: "I honestly can't think of a single reason not to just read the manga instead." That is one critic's view, but it is a view about :re specifically. His review is kinder to the first season, which he says he still holds "in high regard overall."
Where the OVAs go
Both are backstory and neither is required. Jack adapts Ishida's prequel spinoff manga and follows how the investigator Kishō Arima and Taishi Fura first met. Pinto adapts the third story in the Tokyo Ghoul: Hibi novel, about how Shuu Tsukiyama and Chie Hori met.
We place them after √A. Taylor objected that the anniversary set puts them on a disc at the end of season 1, "as the first season ends well before either character is properly introduced in the anime." Watching them after √A and before :re avoids that, and costs nothing, since both were released in 2015, after √A had finished.
The live-action films are a separate route
Two live-action films have been made, and they are their own adaptation of the manga rather than part of the anime's order. Tokyo Ghoul premiered at Anime Expo in Los Angeles on July 3, 2017, and opened in Japan on July 29, 2017; ANN reported in June 2019 that the sequel, Tokyo Ghoul S, would open in Japan on July 19, 2019, with Masataka Kubota again playing Ken Kaneki. Watch them or skip them; nothing in the anime depends on them.
After the finale
The anime and the manga reach the same ending, but the anime only gets there by setting √A aside. The Tokyo Ghoul ending explainer covers how that ending resolves and what √A's changes cost the adaptation, with full spoilers. For another anime that left its manga's path and what that did to the viewing order, see the Fullmetal Alchemist watch order.