Ghoul Investigator Training Academy

Every ghoul investigator normally begins at one of these academies, the institutions charged with grooming the next generation of agents. Tokyo alone hosts at least seven separate campuses, referred to collectively as the Academy. As a rule, only a graduate may go on to serve as an investigator, entering the field at the rank of Rank 2. A rare few skip the standard path and instead start out one step lower, at Rank 3.

The core program runs across two years and packs in a wide range of subjects meant to ready a graduate for full duty. Much of what happens inside is kept confidential and off-limits to anyone who has not attended, but the coursework is known to span the Ghoul Countermeasures Law, ghoul biology, the methods of investigation, the handling of quinques, and grueling physical conditioning geared toward real combat. Serving investigators sometimes drop in as guest lecturers, speaking to cadets about their fieldwork and gear and laying out the case for joining the agency after graduation. Gifted students can also pursue a special honors track that lets them finish in a single year.

Bolted onto each campus is an Academy Junior School, a facility for children and teenagers whose pupils are called Academy juniors or cadets. These serve as boarding schools for youngsters in the agency's care, especially those who lost parents to ghouls, yet they also admit children from ordinary families and keep tuition low. Beyond regular lessons, juniors can pick up martial arts and other training as extracurriculars to point them toward investigator work. On finishing, a junior is free to head down any career road like any high school graduate, though the school strongly nudges them toward enrolling in the Academy proper.

Among the recorded instructors are Kasuka Mado, along with Yukinori Shinohara, Goumasa Tokage, and Uchino, the latter three tied to the Second Academy. The alumni roster is long and studded with major figures: Koutarou Amon and Akira Mado both left as valedictorians, while Seidou Takizawa graduated as salutatorian. Junior graduates who went on to prominence include Juuzou Suzuya, Ginshi Shirazu, Tooru Mutsuki, Saiko Yonebayashi, Kuki Urie, Take Hirako, Hanbee Abara, and Takeomi Kuroiwa, the last of whom cleared the honors track. As Haise once observed, each campus carries its own flavor, the first drawing brilliant minds and the fifth and sixth turning out more sociable students, while Tokage remarks that the second tends to gather kids with rough pasts, some carrying criminal records.