I’m going to begin by quoting Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot: “Don’t let us forget that the causes of human actions are usually immeasurably more complex and varied than our subsequent explanations of them.”
Let’s also discuss the term “murderer” in the story. Every single character except Yoriko and Momochi Ikuma is a murderer. The point is not “Kaneki is worse!” but rather “Kaneki is no different.” When I say Kaneki is a murderer, it is not me condemning him, or saying that his actions are not understandable at times, or that I don’t relate to his struggles as the OEK, because I do understand where he’s coming from and I relate heavily to his struggles.
But yes, Kaneki is a murderer. So is everyone. And the reasons they are all murderers are immeasurably more complex than the simple fact that they took away a breathing, thinking, hoping person’s life. Those complex reasons are what give them hope for redemption.
Narratively, Kaneki has been a murderer since the Shironeki days, in which he expressly stated he was murdering and cannibalizing to gain strength. This happened after Yamori tortured him, which was not his fault. However, we are also shown two key facts: 1) Kaneki had violent tendencies repressed inside him all along, that he rightly chose not to act on earlier and as a privileged human did not need to, and 2) that Yamori, as a ghoul, was acting on his violent tendencies earlier, but became a sadistic torturer after his capture by Tokage. We are supposed to compare Kaneki and Yamori post-torture; they both crack knuckles, etc. I’m not saying Kaneki is as bad as Yamori because hell no, but what I am saying is that if we can’t excuse Yamori for become a sadistic evil man after torture, we also cannot excuse Kaneki for killing everyone at the ghoul restaurant for the purpose of strength.
I’ve also discussed the Mutsuki-post-Torso comparison ad nauseum, but suffice to say again, if we did not excuse Mutsuki, we cannot excuse Shironeki no matter how relatable he is, and he is.
As a CCG investigator, Haise won the Golden Osmanthus Medal, which is given for exterminating 100 ghouls a year. That being said, yes, he was brainwashed and amnesiac and that was taken advantage of–but then he stuck with the CCG as Reaperneki once he had his memories back: planning to help Hinami escape, but still killing in the meantime (Shiono, for example, was a human). If we are not supposed to excuse Arima for his murders of ghouls despite his longterm plan–and Arima did not excuse himself–we are not supposed to excuse Kaneki, either.
And the Oggai. I’ve discussed this ad nauseum too, but again: yes, Furuta, Kanou, and Kimi etc. were at fault primarily. Kaneki was manipulated. But. Furuta literally spent a chapter warning Kaneki:
We got Irimi warning Kaneki to not bear the burden alone:
We got Ayato warning him to commit:
And we got Kaneki himself thinking of some good ideas:
All of this is to say Ishida is clearly, clearly, clearly showing us Kaneki had a way out, a way to avoid Dragon. Furuta did not have to win. But he did.
I’m not sure how chapters 143-44 could make it any more obvious. Ishida is literally telling us blatantly that our choices lead us to what we become. Kaneki made his choices. That is why he faced what he did. Even once the ward was under attack he had ways to avoid this–bringing others back with him, etc.–but he didn’t.
I’m pretty sure Rize going to lay this out for him the next few chapters. The whole theme of TG is that there are not black and white lines, ghoul vs human, good and bad, monsters vs human. We can see ourselves in characters like Kaneki and Mutsuki, and the point isn’t supposed to be that we excuse them, but rather that we understand that they are not monsters but can do monstrous things, and guess what? Every single human being alive right now is capable of monstrous things too, but that does not make any of us monsters. Every character is capable of monstrous things, but they are not monsters. Kaneki is literally a monstrous form right now in Dragon, but we still relate to him, and that’s deliberate. It doesn’t make Dragon not narratively his fault or make him a bad condemnable person.
Yeah, I love this stuff! I’m going to have to read into it more later.
I think the shrine represent purgatory, and the water is dragging him down to face what he’s done as a trial before allowing him to live again.
I also get the feeling that he’s going to end up sacrificing his human eye in this dream among the torii gates (with “offering” carved into them) to come back…
Like Odin, who gave his right eye to Mimir (The Rememberer)’s Well for a drink of it’s wisdom.
Kaneki is torn up over the humans he’s killed recently, but interestingly, back in Ch 76 of the original series, he seemed ready to kill these CCG soldiers before Noro did it for him. After this initial outburst of violence, Shironeki wasn’t quite as ruthless – he killed and ate ghouls, yes, but post-time-skip Shironeki really didn’t seem to take the same kind of sadistic pleasure in it as he did with half-killing Ayato. See how depressed he looks in the image when his activities are revealed:
Indeed, as he slowly began to realise his actions were little else than self-destructive, he fell more and more back into his old restrictions, until the circle was complete when he became Haise. And then we have Reaper, and the parallel outburst of violence and ruthless decisions when he hurled Shuu off the rooftop expecting Karren to sacrifice herself for him. But then, just like before, his old rules began wrapping themselves around him again, and he refused to kill his enemies on the Goat campaign. Until, once again, a similar outburst of violence, the most graphic and all-consuming yet.
Kaneki’s rules are his humanity. His breaking of those rules, his Ghoulhood.
The function of the Ghoul in this series is to act as the Jungian shadow for both the human characters and the human readers. They are the sins of everyday life brought into explicit vision. The premise that the series revolves around is that “to live we must steal from others” – nothing demonstrates that fact more than a race of people who must devour other people to survive.
Yoshimura’s speech comes fittingly from a chapter titled “Original Sin”, the sin in question being this irremovable part of human nature.
So when Kaneki becomes a Half-Ghoul, it’s the beginning of his connection with his shadow self – those parts of his mind and soul that terrify him. It’s only through this forced collision with his Shadow that he uncovers many of the base secrets of his psychology, like his mother’s abuse. Ishida is definitely familiar with Jung’s concept of the Shadow, as he has been name-dropped in the manga itself.
Jung’s argument was that the qualities we hate in others are the same qualities that we fear in ourselves – we project them onto other people, but it’s really ourselves that terrify and repulse us. Just take a look at the CCG’s hatred of Ghouls for snatching away people’s lives for survival. Look at the Ghouls’ hatred of the CCG for doing exactly the same. Look at how Takizawa transformed into what he feared, and Amon into what he hated. Look at how the man who aimed to be a Hero of Justice was complicit in the destruction of Tokyo, or how the woman who fought to live up to her father’s legacy now abandons it entirely. In the words of @hamliet, in Tokyo Ghoul you become what you fear – and this, I believe, is how we develop.
The failings of shadow projection are expressed nowhere so well as in the also aptly named Chapter 25 of the original series, Enlightenment, where Amon lecturing Kaneki on the injustice of Ghouls is juxtaposed with Touka lecturing Mado on the injustice of Doves. Every character in that chapter is looking through events, literally, through one eye – Kaneki and Amon’s eyepatches and Touka and Mado’s hair obscure their total vision of the world.
The path to the enlightenment comes not from running from or despising but embracing the Shadow. This is something we’re beginning to see with the CCG-Ghoul alliance, the Ghouls throwing off their monstrous masks to reveal that there is no real difference between them.
Kaneki’s struggle between the maintenance of his principles and the casting of them aside, his struggle between what he identifies as his humanity and his Ghoulishness, is the struggle between his Shadow and his Ego (his conscious self). Because the Shadow is so utterly terrifying to behold, whenever it bursts out due to enormous pressure Kaneki will gradually begin to re-impose his old principles to make it once again comfortable for him to behold.
This is why the introductions of Shironeki and Reaper are so much more violent and without boundaries than they are post-time-skip. Post-time-skip they’re still considerably more Ghoulish than before, but they are gradually returning to another more Humane state of being; Shironeki became Haise, and Reaper became the King. Kaneki returning to his human ways in Haise is reflected by him being a member of the CCG, that Human organisation that seeks to exterminate its own Shadow. Haise and the Kaneki in his mind embody the very archetype of the Shadow: he’s frightened of it and refuses to look at it, only to find when he does it is in reality the incarnation of his vulnerabilities, until slowly his Ego loses control and the Shadow takes over, its very blackness running down his face.
The King meanwhile is on a mission to unite Humans and Ghouls, but this proves difficult to do when he has yet to reconcile those parts of himself.
The caption almost sounds like self-mockery. Kaneki is attempting to solve the problems between Humans and Ghouls in the macrocosm without having solved them within the microcosm – within himself. He can’t make the right decisions while still being blinded to half the problem; he can’t deduce the world through one eye. As such, his motives do not line up with his actions, and his campaign shatters.
Kaneki has no great passion to see that world because he still doesn’t want to co-exist with his Shadow. It’s why Kaneki didn’t panic at killing Ghouls in the same way he is doing now with humans – Ghouls are the projections of his Shadow, so it’s fine to kill them; but humans are projections of his Ego, and if he kills them, that’s not an action of his Ego – it’s an action of his Shadow. To kill humans is to destabilise his control of his own mind. How could this have been more accurately represented than by losing consciousness completely and becoming the monster he feared in Dragon?
The journey towards the acceptance of the Shadow, the final goal Jung called individuation, when every aspect of yourself is known to you and works in harmony, is a gradual process. To preserve his own sanity Kaneki naturally backslides after one Shadow revelation, only to be propelled forwards, further than before, by the next. Eventually, the full acceptance of the Shadow will come. Kaneki is not the same as he was at the start of the manga, he is a great deal further; he understands Ghouls, sympathises with them, empathises with them, falls in love with them, has children with them. Because even while being frightened of the Shadow, we are fascinated by it. It is the unloved part of ourself desperate to receive the same care as the rest, and deep down Kaneki wants to love it as much as he’s frightened of it.
This we can see through Touka (and one of the brilliant parts about this romance is that the same Shadow-Acceptance narrative works from her perspective as well). Touka, who he was at first frightened by, then kept at a distance to spare him from the truth which she twice delivered to him anyway on the bridge and in Cochlea, was what had been missing from his life all along; was the person that he loved most of all. Touka has brought his heart closer to the the Ghouls and closer to his Shadow:
And their hybrid child will be the ultimate expression of acceptance of the Shadow in a world that was torn apart by its fear of it. The series has always prized love over hatred because love is the acceptance of the shadow, and hatred the rejection of it. The former is the only antidote to the latter.
So Kaneki, who has been edging all the time closer and closer to accepting the complete truth of his Shadow, finds himself on an island with no way out until he does. The torii gates give it an air of spirituality as Kaneki reaches his final enlightenment. And who better to demonstrate his Shadow than Rize, who brought him into contact with it in the first place? And who Kaneki for so long projected his own Shadow onto?
The prophet has told her parable, and now it is time for her to explain it. Until now, Kaneki has been struggling between man and beast. It’s time for him to realise that they are the same. When he accepts his Shadow, he will accept Ghouls, and he will accept himself.
His human eye bleeds while his ghoul eye sees. Through suffering, he will have found the courage to look at the world through a red eye.
Ok but the next kuro chapter better be Lau entering the house without knocking and killing the mood like “Yo guys whats up long time no se-wait…what the fuck”.
In any case, truly glorious moment, I sure loved it and I’m glad that we will see the beginning of the contract from Ciel’s point of view next month. :))
Thanks for sharing your thoughts and have a nice day Anon!
Hi and I’ll take your word for it Anon, because I haven’t watched nor read either series 😉 but from the way you describe it, it does seem accurate!
I agree on the cool part though, definitely, but then again, it’s not particularly new that Seb had a few cool sides, despite being a horrifying demon eating souls. xD
Thanks for passing by and have a nice day Anon. :))
I noticed that Armin’s appearance prediction has two options, one with short hair another one with long hair in ponytail. Mine place the bet on long hair Armin. Can’t wait to see him and the gang again.
I haven’t been active in this fandom for very long so this might have been discussed to death already and so I’m sorry, but something just clicked for me:
Marley’s the only one who knows how to make pure titans–specifically, Marley’s military. I don’t think that was ever stated outright, but it’s been implied by everything, and I don’t remember anything contradicting it. At the very least, it is heavily implied by the fact that no other country has actually used titans as a weapon. That’s purely Marley’s domain.
Udo has said that conditions for Eldians outside of Marley are much worse; it’s also said by several people that Marley keeps Eldians around, in the ghetto, so that they have a stock of potential titans around to unleash if needed. But this makes sense: if other countries don’t know how to turn regular Eldians into pure titans, they can’t utilize them, and they have no reason to keep such a hated people around.
Then the hatred the other countries have for Eldians makes sense on a whole other, sickening level: they don’t know how Eldians become titans. These people don’t even know how it works, they don’t know that the Eldian they just bumped into in the street isn’t capable of suddenly becoming a mindless killing machine simply out of spite. And that Eldian doesn’t know it either: they might wish they could be that powerful, that they could spit in the grinding oppression and hatred they live with; or they might wish they just knew where the monster was in themselves so that they could cut it out and finally be accepted; but they can’t.
JFC every time I think of this fucked-up world I find a new reason to be horrified.
midnight-in-town 