Kaneki and Touka’s characters were born in a dream Ishida had about Touka’s voice calling out to Kaneki
Kaneki’s name was kind of born of a special circumstance…
It came in the midst of a dream. I somehow-or-other heard a voice calling the name “Kaneki,” and because that remained in my head even after waking up, I took a memo of the name and decided “OK, let’s use this.” Moreover, because there was the kind of feeling that the echo of that voice calling Kaneki was being a bit stupid, the image also extended from there [and] the character called Touka was booorn – that kind of feeling.
That’s why Kaneki and Touka are characters of a set.
I don’t know what I expected from this chapter, but it seems that I don’t check in for a few weeks and come back to like
Like, excuse me, the new Eldian WHAT? Did Floch literally just talk about a new Eldian empire while his comrades rejoiced around him?
What on earth is happening on Paradis that this is an acceptable statement to make?? The old SC crew seem to be the only ones not joining in the celebrations, so it seems that someone still has their heads screwed on straight, but like. This is what you get from Grisha’s journal? You read the thing, you read about how the Eldia restorationists were consumed by their passion for the cause to the point of sacrificing kids to it, you read about the world who believes the worst of you, and your thought is–great, what we need the most is to get that old empire back?
… Maybe there really is no hope for humanity. Maybe they deserve to perish, all of them, if these are the circles they’re walking in.
Except that’s exactly the way Zeke and Eren seem to be thinking, don’t they? I mean, not quite, but like. After everything that’s happened, these words of Zeke’s seemed to me to ring quite hollow:
I don’t for a moment believe that Zeke dreams of liberating Eldia, new empire or otherwise. Maybe I’m wrong! But I really find it hard to swallow that a man whose life got essentially derailed and ruined by the zeal of Eldian restorationists, a man who betrayed his own parents for it as a child, a man who, not too long ago, gave every appearance of gleefully murdering his fellow Eldians inside the walls gives two damns about Eldians or their future.
No, what I keep thinking back to is the last time we looked through Zeke’s POV and the thoughts he was having then.
And the goal he stated back then was:
And it could be that I’m completely wrong, but it seems to me that what Zeke mostly wants is for all of this to end. He attacks Eldia with abandon; he schemes against Marley; he doesn’t seem to care who burns, as long as someone does. Because they’ve all failed him, one way or another, and he has a year at most left to live, and not much left to live for. Setting the world on fire might seem like a fair price for everything humans have done to each other in Zeke’s experience.
He does, admittedly, seem to care for his brother, insofar as I believed the sincerity of his promise to ‘come back for’ and ‘rescue’ Eren. But I’m not convinced, at this point, that he cares for Eren as a person, as opposed to a mirror of his own convoluted path. Eren, after all, was also raised by Grisha; Eren, he assumes, was also told to fight for Eldia’s freedom, and Eren was given some of the same tools to do so. And Eren’s life, too, was derailed by this; and Eren, too, has come out on the other side battered and disillusioned and too old for how young he was.
After all, this is the last time we saw Eren before encountering his current self:
I know I keep getting hung up on these frames, but they’re so striking! The resignation is so antithetical to everything Eren stood for prior to this–but this is also the Eren who will later take up actual plans to ‘kill them all.’ Not because he wants to, or is fired up to. But because he sees no other way.
So mix that boy with Zeke’s brand of fatalistic nihilism, and you get a hella cocktail made with two parts of Jaeger determination and one part bad decisions. Shaken, stirred and aged a few years. Again, I may be totally, completely wrong! Maybe next chapter will reveal their plan for world peace that doesn’t involve, y’know, annihilating the world, and also explain why the Marley battle was an A+ humanitarian choice to make. Maybe.
It could also be that they’re playing each other, somehow. Maybe all of this is a long con on Eren’s part to bring Zeke to Paradis and use his royal blood without remorse. And maybe Zeke is just biding his time before… something. I’m sure Zeke can think of a lot of somethings. So, like, in the absence of proof, we can talk only of possibilities, and the very picture of the Jaeger brothers making plans side by side is surely one that should make blood run cold in the veins of anyone who knows them. Ruthlessness runs in the family, to say the least.
(What would Grisha do? Cry, probably, but with anger or joy I can’t decide. His boys are definitely changing the world, in one way or another.)
… This is less a meta post, really, and more of a stream of consciousness post powered by the soundtrack of ‘wtf, chapter 105.’ We’ll be back soon with our regularly scheduled programming. Or something.
when the name will be revealed, the one with the closest name suggested will win something 😀
I’ll go with Gilbert Gulliver 😛
I don’t know why but something tells me he’s actually Shiemi’s father. She looks so much like him and he seems “old” enough to have a daughter of 15. And also he’s got this western/japanese mix with his blonde hair and his kimono.
Another theory would be that he’s the current Shemihaza heir so he’s more like a distant relative of Shiemi…
Anyway, his name is probably related to “Moriyama”, it can be Shiemi’s mother’s last name though 😛
Just a reminder: If someone can find his name or find the closest one, I’ll follow you or suggest your blog as an account to follow !
I’ve got quite a lot to say about this chapter, some things I ranted about yesterday already, but for now let me just say that this cliffhanger is something I’ve been waiting for a long time, but I hope we get explanations about the current arc before UT starts spilling the beans about why he’s so attached to this family (though most of us already have a few ideas in mind).
I also want to say that this won’t end well, again with no surprise. I’m positive that UT is extremely interested in saving Ciel from Seb…
(he’s probably the one who told Bravat to say that)
…and there is a big chance he thinks that, because the twins were so close, real!Ciel being back might help with separating
his brother
from Seb.
However, the most crucial point is that UT is also doing all of this for himself (”I simply could not bear to lose another Phantomhive”), which is clearly biasing him about how clinging onto your dead loved ones isn’t a good method of coping and won’t be one for our!Ciel either.
Honestly, it’s probably going to be the arc UT fails/fucks up for the first time in the story: he’s so focused on the idea that he can’t bear to lose more of the Phantomhive family that it’s blinding him to why bringing back the twin wasn’t a good idea. It shows through:
Lizzie being depressed for several months
Ciel feeling horrible right now
real!Ciel most likely not being 100% okay in the head
the attack against Soma and Agni (I mean, true, UT probaly doesn’t care about them, but it heavily factors into awful how Ciel must feel right now).
I’m just saying, wanting to save our!Ciel from Seb is one thing, but it should have included not attacking our!Ciel’s very few friends. Maybe that means UT doesn’t have a lot of control over the twin (who probably attacked Soma and Agni out of jealousy?), which is the same as having already fucked up anyway.
Finally, yet another argument about UT being biased, but if the RCMT is true, then it means UT ignored the possibility that real!Ciel was partially responsible for Vincent’s death (if he saw his cinematic record?) and brought him back anyway and that is… messed up.
TL;DR if the current arc is all about UT not moving on, then it’s going to slap him back in the face and frankly? He’d deserve it, and I say that as a big fan of his.
Hey so I received a few questions and I realized maybe I had not been clear on something.
When I say that UT deserves that this whole arc gets thrown back to his face, I mean it as ‘he’s lying to himself if he’s trying to justify any of this and I hope he’ll realize/admit it because otherwise the wakeup call will be tough/he’ll keep on making the same mistakes until he ceases to exist”.
I’m not going to deny it, it’s easy to feel for UT: we more or less all have a good idea as to why he’s so bent on “not losing another Phantomhive” + he’s a cool and handsome character, so it’s natural to want to pat him on the shoulder and say “there there, plz don’t cry”.
However, there is a difference between excusing his actions so far by pointing out he’s feeling lonely and miserable vs acknowledging his grief all the while saying that his way is definitely wrong. And the same goes for him in the story.
Maybe it will make more sense if I use another example: so take Frances or Tanaka. Whatever happened to Claudia, whether she was killed to or not (we might find out soon apparently), the fact something horrible happened to Vincent and his family would have been enough to justify Tanaka and/or Frances going on a vendetta.
Now it’s obviously super hard to be sure where Frances is concerned because she doesn’t exist in the plot, but still, does these two having reasons to wish for revenge automatically mean they ought to go after it? Nope, obviously not and you can be sure that if it were the case, it would be narratively depicted to be a wrong decision (the way it is with Ciel’s revenge, through Seb waiting to eat his soul mainly, once he’ll be done).
So it’s the same for UT and that’s what I meant to convey: UT’s way is wrong, there is 0 doubt about it (and if you need a proof, look at Agni’s murder, Lizzie constantly crying or even how much Ciel is shaking in the new chapter), but even then, it’s about whether the character acknowledges that his choices have bad consequences or not.
If UT’s way to go about the current arc is going to be summed up as “I can do what I want because I have reasons to act this way, thus you can’t stop me”, then this leads to why I’m hoping this arc will turn out to be a giant slap to his scarred face (=> he’ll be forced to realize he fucked up).
On the other hand, if UT shows that he’s already aware that the current arc is fucked up on many aspects but that he doesn’t care because he just wants to feel better (or if he admits that bringing back the twin is entirely selfish and for his own sake), well, at least that shows he’s aware of his actions, even if they’re wrong.
It’s subtle, I know, but I find that UT lying to himself vs showing awareness creates a lot of differences for him as a character and for what we might expect of the rest of the arc. That’s it, sorry for rambling!
In this chapter we saw Donato literally dying laughing, so in a sense he had the last laugh which is nothing more than the clowns’ motto. However, maybe his death is meant to start a deconstruction of this ideology, since even if Donato could laugh until the end there is no doubt that his last laugh was bitter because it came after the realization that after all Amon did see him as a father. Ironically this was what Donato himself kept affirming every time he met Amon and what the latest one kept refusing, but by the end Amon is the one openly admitting that he loves Donato while Donato is trying to keep on his clown mask insisting that he is a villain and a ghoul and basically reinforcing a role he himself chose.
This is interesting because if it’s true that characters like Kaneki and Amon are often too absorbed by the role of “hero” they themselves chose, it’s possible their antagonists are too caught up in their roles of villains as well. Donato used to challenge Amon’s vision about ghouls by calling him his son and challenged Urie’s vision of the CCG. Still, in this chapter we discovered Donato’s own vision was severely distorted and that he accepted his role as ghoul and gave up the chance to be something else.
Now, it’s possible we will have a similar situation with Furuta as well. Furuta is a very meta character and more than anyone else has shown to be genre savy and has challenged the black and white vision of the characters and played with their flaws. The characters kept losing to him because they failed to overcome their flaws and to change. However, Furuta himself sees the world in narrative terms and this chapter emphasized it once again. He sees himself as a villain and sees every situation he is in as a scene on a stage. However, if Kaneki is not the hero, then Furuta has no reason to be the villain. In short, it’s probable that the one who will win btw Kaneki and Furuta won’t necessarily be the one who is more genre savy, but the one who will leave this narrative way to interact with the world behind.
Kaneki won’t probably be able to win in a battle of strength with Furuta, after all Furuta himself commented so in this chapter when he called Kaneki out because he was trying to face him by fighting and later on he said that he was pretty strong after all.
So, in order to win Kaneki will probably have to overcome Furuta’s logic and to force him outside his mask and the role he himself chose. Only in this way we will see Furuta’s true face and only in this way the dichotomy between “hero” and “villain” Furuta has been satirizing will be truly broken. What’s ironic is that it is possible that Furuta himself ended up a slave of that same vision he wanted to criticize exactly like the fact he ended up becoming like his hated father and transforming Rize into a slave. Furuta needs to realize this and at least in the end to let go of his clown mask which is nothing more than a coping mechanism. If he won’t do it then I can see him dying laughing like Donato, but his laugh will be incredibly sad and bitter.
Who knows, maybe the word “grin” written close to his mole (which is a symbol of a tragic life) is a foreshadowing of this last sad laugh. Hopefully not, though.
aka hamliet’s ramblings about what the point of all the romance is in the manga
*before my inbox explodes, the title is facetious, please don’t send me hate*
I like ships. A lot. Usually I view them as fun for a series but only a few, if any, are like, central to the plot/themes. But in TG the romance is actually extremely relevant to the series’ themes, and despite the common assumption that TG isn’t a romance manga, it… kind of is in a lot of respects, because TG is about life, and what makes life worth it is connection, and all kinds of connections–family, friendship, and romance. (I might do other metas on the family and friendships in TG and how they convey certain themes too, just as powerfully as the romances, but this meta is specifically about romantic dynamics.)
TG honestly has a lot of romance (like the whole story started with a date) and is basically Ishida’s “shoujo with corpses.” Each canon/likely to be canon ship is at its core driven by loneliness answered with empathy, and each ship allegorizes the story’s main themes and the importance of solving the ghoul/human conflict the same way: through an alliance based in empathy and self-reflection.
I’ve got quite a lot to say about this chapter, some things I ranted about yesterday already, but for now let me just say that this cliffhanger is something I’ve been waiting for a long time, but I hope we get explanations about the current arc before UT starts spilling the beans about why he’s so attached to this family (though most of us already have a few ideas in mind).
I also want to say that this won’t end well, again with no surprise. I’m positive that UT is extremely interested in saving Ciel from Seb…
(he’s probably the one who told Bravat to say that)
…and there is a big chance he thinks that, because the twins were so close, real!Ciel being back might help with separating
his brother
from Seb.
However, the most crucial point is that UT is also doing all of this for himself (”I simply could not bear to lose another Phantomhive”), which is clearly biasing him about how clinging onto your dead loved ones isn’t a good method of coping and won’t be one for our!Ciel either.
Honestly, it’s probably going to be the arc UT fails/fucks up for the first time in the story: he’s so focused on the idea that he can’t bear to lose more of the Phantomhive family that it’s blinding him to why bringing back the twin wasn’t a good idea. It shows through:
Lizzie being depressed for several months
Ciel feeling horrible right now
real!Ciel most likely not being 100% okay in the head
the attack against Soma and Agni (I mean, true, UT probaly doesn’t care about them, but it heavily factors into awful how Ciel must feel right now).
I’m just saying, wanting to save our!Ciel from Seb is one thing, but it should have included not attacking our!Ciel’s very few friends. Maybe that means UT doesn’t have a lot of control over the twin (who probably attacked Soma and Agni out of jealousy?), which is the same as having already fucked up anyway.
Finally, yet another argument about UT being biased, but if the RCMT is true, then it means UT ignored the possibility that real!Ciel was partially responsible for Vincent’s death (if he saw his cinematic record?) and brought him back anyway and that is… messed up.
TL;DR if the current arc is all about UT not moving on, then it’s going to slap him back in the face and frankly? He’d deserve it, and I say that as a big fan of his.
I can’t believe Sebby is so dumb that he forgot all about the Campania and Weston arcs.
midnight-in-town 