I think we’ll be finding out for sure any chapter now but I’m still inclined to believe Hide is human, as I think it’s important thematically for Hide to represent Kaneki’s human connection just as Touka was his guide into the ghoul world (ok I really just like that idea so Ishida can pry it out my cold dead hands).
The Witch’s Servant theory has been around in fandom far before then, but 2 years ago I talked about it in this post [x] and my ideas for his character haven’t changed at all. Since then canon has only strengthened that idea with the reveal that Eto and Arima were in cahoots.
Basically, if you haven’t heard the theory before it’s based on the play that Kaneki and Hide were in as children:
Kaneki plays the lead role as the Prince wearing a cloak with the symbol of Aogiri on it. This has come to be true foreshadowing as the title of King was later passed onto the Prince (Kaneki) by the previous founder/King of Aogiri Tree (Eto and Arima)
Hide was the Witch’s servant in the play
Even though we can’t be sure if they were from Ishida directly or Studio Pierrot, there were some unused anime drafts where Hide and Kaneki recite lines from the play [x]. Overall the additional info mentions:
The Witch’s servant (Hide) was a friend to the Prince (Kaneki)
Hide was tricked by the Witch to betray Kaneki
Hide asks for Kaneki’s forgiveness
Kaneki makes Hide promise to never betray him again, to leave the Witch’s side and become his ally/fight by his side
So based on that here’s my take on things.
Eto obviously takes the place of the Witch, as shown in the calendar
Eto had been searching for someone to take on the role of One Eyed King from Arima. Kaneki piqued her interest when she met him again at the book signing and he was able to understand her line of thinking through her novels
When Hide showed up at the book signing just after and asked for the same name to be signed in the book, it signaled to Eto that they were connected
she mentioned ‘Osamu Dazai’ who was quoted earlier by Kaneki with a highly relevant line for what’s been happening in recent events
Eto recruited Hide to her side by promising him she had a way to save Kaneki. Hide was in on the plan with Eto, and sent Kaneki to V14 where Arima awaited as a test to see if he was a valid candidate for OEK.
That would count as the Witch tricking the servant into betraying the Prince, as Kaneki wasn’t merely saved as Hide wished, but molded and manipulated for years.
After that it’s a bit harder to theory craft. I personally believe that Hide has only ever had Kaneki’s best interests at heart and genuinely wants to save him. But I also wouldn’t be surprised if Hide knew about Eto and Arima’s wishes for Kaneki to become the next OEK. I find it real suspicious that Hide has been in hiding as Scarecrow this whole time but let Kaneki believe for months that he murdered his best friend. So I can’t help but wonder if there’s more to it since there was nothing personal to gain from that. Hide was on the run from the Washuu, and Kaneki was also being hunted by V, so that’s no reason to stay away.
I can’t wait to see Hide’s backstory and reunion with Kaneki to find out >:)
To explain simply, while thinking about Touka’s pregnancy this afternoon, I realized something I hadn’t noticed before:
See, the reason Touka’s body has the risk to mistakenly recognize the baby as nutrients and absorb it is because, as a ghoul, she feeds on RC cells and…
humans have a low rate of RC cells
=> human meat is edible! (and tasty :D)
ghouls have a high rate of RC cells
=> ghoul meat is edible! (but disgusting, ew :/)
which means that human, ghoul and hybrid babies (like Touka’s) have RC cells too!
..But then in that case (which is what I realized today), how comes that only a hybrid baby has the risk to be mistaken as nutrients by its ghoul mama when a ghoul baby also has RC cells? In other words, why is Touka’s body possibly going to recognize her baby’s RC cells as food when her own RC cells in Hikari’s womb weren’t?
Hi Anon and well, logically that’s what you’d think with what I said above, isn’t it? 🙂 However, since I’m pretty sure that Sensei won’t kill that baby, if somehow I’m correct (big big if there), then there must be a catch somewhere.
I do have a theory to answer you, the problem is that…
Itori possibly losing her own hybrid babies in the past is not 100% helping me.
See, initially with what I explained above, I was considering the following: Touka aside, the common point toall the previous hybrid pregnancies in the story is that the mothers always were humans. Eto’s ghoul parent was Yoshimura…
and for the sunlit garden, the father of every child in there (be it “half human” like Arima, or ghoul like Rize) is from the pure Washuu bloodline who are, as we learnt recently, kakuja ghouls from birth.
However, now we have Touka who is the ghoul parent of her hybrid baby, which makes her case pretty unique so far in the story (Itori aside). Touka who, as a ghoul, is supposed to be eating a lot of RC cells both for her sake and her baby’s, but who also has higher RC cells rates than a human mama, as well as a kakuhou to regulate these high rates.
In other words, her own RC cells needs (and body rates) are different from a human mama carrying a hybrid. That’s why her case is interesting, because the maternal environment that she provides to her hybrid baby is different from what Arima’s mom provided to fetus!Arima, or what Ukina provided to fetus!Eto.
=> so my theory is that the maternal environment during the pregnancy plays a part into the development of the kakuhou for hybrid fetuses.
In the first place, kakuhou development is correlated to high RC cells rates, which is the difference between humans and ghouls as @mawjaw explained here; that’s also why ghouls can develop multiple kakuhou in order to regulate their high RC cells rates, when one kakuhou on its own is overwhelmed.
Anyway, so far in the story, we got numerous examples that a hybrid baby carried by a human mama has more chances to be born as a half human (no kakuhou) than a OEG (kakuhou), and it’s interesting because the human mama herself has low RC cells rates and thus no kakuhou in the first place.
So in Touka’s case, the fact she’s a ghoul means that she needs to eat a lot of RC cells, that she has higher RC cells body rates and a kakuhou, which may just favorize the kakuhou development for her hybrid baby.
In other words, a maternal environment
exposing the hybrid baby
to more RC cells because the mama is a ghoul (or in Ukina’s case, because she ate a loooot of human meat) might just positively influence the development of the baby’s kakuhou (in order for baby to regulate all the RC cells reaching it).
And if Touka’s baby develops a kakuhou, then my theory above that it will protect the baby from being seen as food by Touka’s body works too. 😀
In conclusion, about hybrid pregnancies:
mama = human = no kakuhou
maternal environment = low RC cells rates
=> “half human” baby (no kakuhou) more probable than OEG baby (kakuhou), because no need for baby to regulate RC cells while in the womb => Arima.
unless mama eats a lot of human meat and increases the RC cells rates in the maternal environment => that’d be Ukina & Eto.
mama = ghoul = kakuhou
maternal environment = high RC cells rates
OEG baby (kakuhou) more probable than “half human” baby (no kakuhou) because there is a possible need for baby to regulate RC cells while in the womb
OEG baby’s kakuhou will then provide protection against being seen as food by the ghoul mama’s body
That’s the theory. However, as I was saying, Itori might be failing me here, because TG ch34 seems to imply that she might have lost her own hybrid baby/babies, meaning that it’s probably quite complicated for hybrid pregnancies to succeed at all. So I don’t know
¯_(ツ)_/¯
maybe hybrid pregnancies will fail more often than regular pregnancies in general (which would mean that Itori is right when she says that the chance of successful pregnancy in itself is extremely slim)
but when they’re successful, the baby’s nature as a half human or OEG is strongly correlated to its mama’s nature, because kakuhou development is also
mediated
by maternal environment.
I really think Sensei won’t kill off that baby, so there must be a way for Touka to make her pregnancy viable and I’m just rambling around with all my ideas. :3
Still I hope it made sense, thanks for reading Anon and have a nice weekend. 🙂
Anon-chan, for everyone’s sake I’ll make this extremely simple. :)) If Touka’s baby can be born then, according to the theory above, it means that:
it will most likely be a OEG
it will most likely be heatlhy/okay and Touka & Kaneki will be happy parents!
Here are the two possibilities for Touka’s baby in my opinion, considering what I said above (please keep in mind it’s just a theory and I could be totally wrong):
In terms of probability though, I guess it depends on if you’re taking Itori’s words seriously or not. She said that chances for a successful hybrid pregnancy are slim and frankly, I don’t think she’s lying.
Besides, in a human mama’s case, both half human and OEG babies can be born, it’s just that she’s more likely to have a half human baby than a OEG. Whereas in Touka’s case, in this theory it seems the only way for her baby to survive in her womb is if it’s a OEG, which is what Itori probably meant when she said that chances of success were slim.
I’m sorry it sounds so hella complicated, but I hope this sums things
Because he has to be into so much already to reach the point where he didn’t even care about messing around with death and life. But there’s still this feeling, that maybe there’s more behind what he’s doing. So I thought that bringing them back is surely a big point for Undertaker, but maybe bringing them back to live isn’t all? Do you think that behind that, it’s possible that Undertaker might work on something bigger?What are you especially thinking could be Undertakers main goal? (2)
Hello Anon! ^^ I’m not quite sure which post you mean exactly because the only one I found from that date which has something to do with Undertaker is this one but that’s not my post, it’s @midnight-in-town‘s post, I just reblogged it. ;^^ Anyway, the topic fits so I assume you’re referring to that post. @midnight-in-town, you’re welcome, of course, to add your thoughts, as well. 🙂
I assume the prospect of bringing loved ones back to life is really one of UT’s main motivations. It’s probably what made him start with such experiments in the first place. And I guess this is already quite a big goal. One he hasn’t reached yet because obviously his results are still missing something which makes them fully alive and themselves again.
We know that Undertaker must have lost many people during his life and since he more or less seems immortal (at least he’s not aging) he’s bound to lose every human friend he has eventually. So with his Bizarre Dolls he may have wanted to break out of this cycle.
It seems like Undertaker is kinda living in the past. He’s mourning people who are long dead. So he clearly hasn’t processed his losses yet which could be a sign that he’s still holding on to a slight chance that he might bring them back to life. And I mean, why else would he experiment with bringing back people from the dead? He surely doesn’t want them as weapons and boredom probably wasn’t the reason, either. So the reason most likely was to bring one or more specific persons back to life.
And we also have these scenes where UT seems quite sad about not being able to bring Vincent back to life:
So I think Undertaker started with his experiments because he wanted to bring loved ones back to life. And at that time this may have been the only reason. Just because it’s a somewhat obvious reason it doesn’t mean that it has to be wrong. There were other things that were quite obvious which became canon (e.g. 2CT). 😉
That being said, I could imagine that UT has added some more goals to his list since then and maybe his priorities have even changed now. Because he clearly seems to have plans for our Ciel, too. Since he’s close to the Phantomhives and failed to protect Claudia and Vincent, he may now feel some responsibility for Ciel and maybe he’s trying to save him from the contract with Sebastian. At least he seems quite interested in that topic and while he doesn’t seem like he wants to harm Ciel he’s certainly not fond of Sebastian and just tolerates him because he’s protecting Ciel (for now).
I don’t know how the Bizarre Dolls would help in reaching that goal but it now indeed seems like Undertaker isn’t just living in the past anymore, mourning and trying to revive people he lost, but rather seeing that Ciel needs his help now and trying to find a way out for him. Maybe UT even realized that bringing back the dead won’t ever work perfectly so he now shifted his focus to things where he might still have a chance of preventing the worst.
While UT’s first intention was surely to bring back loved ones I think he now may be focusing on other things, like rescuing Ciel from Sebastian. Also, the current arc may have changed his priorities, as well. Because if – what I think – UT isn’t the sect’s mastermind there’s someone else succeeding in bringing back dead people but using them to harm our Ciel. And since it’s the real Ciel who was brought back to life it makes the situation very complicated. And I don’t think UT would just watch and do nothing while someone’s using his methods resulting in the twins destroying each other.
So yeah, at the moment UT seems to have more goals than ‘just’ bringing back loved ones. It even seems to me that this first, formerly most important, goal has been pushed aside for the time being in order to solve more urgent problems right now. However, this requires that UT has already made some sort of character development in order to overcome his desperation and mourning of the past to focus on the present.
@thedarkestcrow thanks for tagging! Your explanation was 100% accurate from my point of view ^3^ I just want to add a small thing if that’s alright.
I think people often get the opposite idea with UT’s character than what Yana actually showed us in ch105. It’s not “yeah now he’s mad but he used to care and have feelings”, rather he still has all these feelings but it’s desperation that overwhelmed him, amplified everything and led him down the wrong road.
UT once said that he got curious about the aftercredits on the cinematic records before even deserting and I have no reason to think he lied…
but I agree with @thedarkestcrow that the reason he started his BD project was because of his goal to bring back to “life” several people he cared about a lot, from the moment he couldn’t bear with losing them anymore.
We just don’t know what triggered it all (Claudia’s death, Vincent’s death maybe?), but you see it’s his desperation over losing people he cared about that transformed a curiosity he once had as a Shinigami (”what if there was a sequel after those endings?”) into a crazy project to bring them back (leading to him becoming a mass murderer).
But yeah I agree it’s not his “only” goal, because saving Ciel from first the Queen and then Seb is important to him too, and that’s for now indirectly related to why he started the BD project. :)) Thanks again for tagging. ❤
To explain simply, while thinking about Touka’s pregnancy this afternoon, I realized something I hadn’t noticed before:
See, the reason Touka’s body has the risk to mistakenly recognize the baby as nutrients and absorb it is because, as a ghoul, she feeds on RC cells and…
humans have a low rate of RC cells
=> human meat is edible! (and tasty :D)
ghouls have a high rate of RC cells
=> ghoul meat is edible! (but disgusting, ew :/)
which means that human, ghoul and hybrid babies (like Touka’s) have RC cells too!
..But then in that case (which is what I realized today), how comes that only a hybrid baby has the risk to be mistaken as nutrients by its ghoul mama when a ghoul baby also has RC cells? In other words, why is Touka’s body possibly going to recognize her baby’s RC cells as food when her own RC cells in Hikari’s womb weren’t?
Maybe that RC-cell marker you’ve been thinking of is this particular enzyme Ogura was talking about way back in chapter 2?
@donatoporpora no I don’t think so 🙂 an enzyme doesn’t exactly work as a marker. Basically, what Ogura is talking about in ch2 is digestive enzymes being different for ghouls and humans which explains why we can’t eat the same thing:
As humans, our digestive enzymes are able to take the food we eat and separate the glucids/lipids/proteins found in it to send all of this to the rest of the body that will use these nutrients for energy and cell survival.
an example: we can’t eat and digest grass like cows do because we don’t have the digestive enzyme for a specific type of glucids that grass is made of, when cows do.
For ghouls, I’m assuming that their digestive enzymes only work based on “is there RC cells or not” in what arrives in the digestive system.
If there isn’t (Touka eating human food for example), then whatever was eaten isn’t digested and will slow the ghoul down a lot (that’s Touka when she was eating Yoriko’s food and faced Tsukiyama, or even in the last chapter against Mutsuki).
Another example would be the telomeres:
Ghouls have an enzyme called “telomerase” that is in activated form in their cells and that increases the telomeres’ length, which is how ghouls don’t age super fast despite regenerating a lot, unlike Kaneki who, as a human, has the enzyme but in deactivated form, which is why he aged faster than normal.
A cell marker is different: it’s something that can be found on a cell’s membrane and can be recognized, interpreted by the cell’s environment or simply to direct the cell to where it is supposed to go.
For example, let’s say you have the flu => some of your cells are infected by the virus and as a result, a marker of viral invasion pops up on your infected cells’ membrane. So when an agent of your immune system passes by, it recognizes that marker as “not being from your body” and this triggers different reactions in order to destroy the virus (foreign invader) from your cells.
So back to my lil theory:
because humans don’t have a kakuhou, we’ll assume RC cells are unmarked which leaves them just chilling in the bloodstream and not having any interest for humans.
no kakuhou regulation = human RC cells are unmarked = just chilling in the bloodstream
whereas ghoul RC cells are too numerous so the kakuhou has to regulate them by storing them, sometimes releasing them in the form of a kagune, sending them down specific pathways…
ghoul RC cells have the “K+” marker on their surface = they aren’t chilling in the bloodstream because that “K+” marker indicates they have to be taken care of by the kakuhou.
And for the example of Touka and her baby
her baby is a “half human” = no kakuhou development (somewhere around the start of the fetus stage?) = the baby’s RC cells are unmarked
when Touka’s body detects that her baby’s RC cells are unmarked, the baby will get absorbed
her baby is a OEG = kakuhou development (somewhere around the start of the fetus stage?) = RC cells shows the K+ marker on their surface
when Touka’s body detects the K+ marker on the baby’s RC cells, it will be left alone.
I hope it’s clearer that way? Sorry for rambling :33
i just imagined you sitting down looking at that picture like “tell me your secrets” XD
I think you couldn’t be closer to the truth than with that sentence and actually, I think it also means that you caught on the fact that I definitely wasted hours looking at it. Every day.
Less cool now, isn’t it? xDD
Aah, I just can’t help it. I’ve been in Kuro for what… 6 years now or something close to that? But I was sold on the Claudia mystery ever since that scene…
and back then I was already dead convinced that she was Ciel’s grandma despite not
having the confirmation of ch85 yet + never having noticed at the time that Vincent’s predecessor was a woman (even though it was shown in ch15).
I have so many posts on my blog about her (even though we saw her shadow twice and a strange locket with her name on it hardly more), I have probably reblogged or commented almost every post that can be found in her tag and I’m probably annoying people because I can’t shut up on the subject (like right now), but I can’t help it.
The day we get to Claudia, I don’t know what will happen to me or my blog, but it’s probably going to be very intense. xD
Thanks for passing by Anon, I’m glad if you think this kind of observations is cool somehow! Have a nice weekend ^3^
Haha, well, I liked the idea of a thing between them but I didn’t ship them “seriously” until it was confirmed that she was really Ciel’s grandma in ch85. :))
However, even then, considering that the biggest reveal we had about UT’s character came with ch105
(since after the anime, everyone guessed he was probably a Shinigami in the manga too), because we learnt that Shinigamis used to be humans and that…
UT actually was hiding too many feelings inside, I did a 360° turn on my previous take with both his character and that ship.
It became much more tormented, passionate and desperate in my head (whether Claudia reciprocated his feelings or not, I mean), an interpretation I like better anyway and that fits the tone of the manga and UT’s character more too.
So you could say I reached another level in shipping these two after ch105 came out. :))
I hope it answers your question, have a nice day Anon. :))
i just imagined you sitting down looking at that picture like “tell me your secrets” XD
I think you couldn’t be closer to the truth than with that sentence and actually, I think it also means that you caught on the fact that I definitely wasted hours looking at it. Every day.
Less cool now, isn’t it? xDD
Aah, I just can’t help it. I’ve been in Kuro for what… 6 years now or something close to that? But I was sold on the Claudia mystery ever since that scene…
and back then I was already dead convinced that she was Ciel’s grandma despite not
having the confirmation of ch85 yet + never having noticed at the time that Vincent’s predecessor was a woman (even though it was shown in ch15).
I have so many posts on my blog about her (even though we saw her shadow twice and a strange locket with her name on it hardly more), I have probably reblogged or commented almost every post that can be found in her tag and I’m probably annoying people because I can’t shut up on the subject (like right now), but I can’t help it.
To explain simply, while thinking about Touka’s pregnancy this afternoon, I realized something I hadn’t noticed before:
See, the reason Touka’s body has the risk to mistakenly recognize the baby as nutrients and absorb it is because, as a ghoul, she feeds on RC cells and…
humans have a low rate of RC cells
=> human meat is edible! (and tasty :D)
ghouls have a high rate of RC cells
=> ghoul meat is edible! (but disgusting, ew :/)
which means that human, ghoul and hybrid babies (like Touka’s) have RC cells too!
..But then in that case (which is what I realized today), how comes that only a hybrid baby has the risk to be mistaken as nutrients by its ghoul mama when a ghoul baby also has RC cells? In other words, why is Touka’s body possibly going to recognize her baby’s RC cells as food when her own RC cells in Hikari’s womb weren’t?
Hi and sure Anon, I didn’t particularly address that in the post above, but I’ll try and use simple words. 🙂
So: Touka (ghoul) + Kaneki (human, even if he got grafted with a ghoul’s kakuhou) => ch125 => hybrid (ghoul + human) baby. The problem is that there aren’t a lot of natural hybrids that are born in the TG universe, so Touka has no idea what she has to do to make sure that her baby will be born healthy and that’s why she told Kaneki that she didn’t know if the baby would be okay, in ch131.
So far, Touka decided to follow Ukina’s example: Ukina, a human, partially ate “like a ghoul” during her whole pregnancy to make sure that fetus!Eto would get enough RC cells and wouldn’t starve to death. So Touka chose to partially eat “like a human” upon discovering she was pregnant, hoping that it would be enough for her own hybrid baby’s survival.
However, as @coromoor explained here, human food (cake, hamburger…) cannot provide RC cells to Touka’s baby. Only human meat or ghoul meat can and that’s not what Touka was shown eating for now (food shortage in the 24th ward sure wasn’t helping :/) which is currently dangerous both for the baby (if it doesn’t get RC cells, it will starve and die) & for her (it is like poison).
The other problem surrounding Touka’s pregnancy is what Itori once said to Kaneki (which is what my post above was trying to give an explanation to), but Touka probably has no idea about that for now.
TL;DR
Hybrid pregnancies in general are rare but it seems hybrid pregnancies with a ghoul mama are more complicated than ones with a human mama, which is why Touka is a bit worried and told Kaneki that the pregnancy might not go well.
I hope it’s understandable? Have a nice weekend Anon. 🙂
…like mother, like daughter having long hair (reaching their lower back, if not below her hips for Frances, when it’s down) and wearing it in ponytail style! 😀
I retraced the back of Claudia’s ponytail under read more if anyone doesn’t see it (I initially thought she had her hair down)
I like the ponytail hair style in Kuro and heyyy look…
midnight-in-town 