tgreuniverse:

delusional-lune:

lilacflamesss:

the thing about ayahina is that their relationship is much less complicated that touken. they’re really sweet to each other, they’re protective of each other and basically, they’re happy when the other person is happy. at least, that’s how i see it since we don’t see much of their relationship. 

but touken is so much more complicated and deeper than that and they are both facing issues that ayato and hinami aren’t. kaneki thinks that he’s protecting touka by always leaving her behind. he means well, but frankly speaking, touka doesn’t need to be protected at all. and touka hits kaneki because she believes that it’ll knock him into his senses and stop his self-destructive behavior because, yes, violence is what touka has known for a significant part of her life. and you’re right that ayato’s similar in that sense but why would he even hit hinami? hinami has done nothing to hurt or piss him off. if you wanna use something as a comparison, then you should be talking about the aogiri arc. ayato beat touka up back then much worse than any beating kaneki has even gotten from touka.

i don’t know enough about abuse to make a definitive statement on touken’s relationship. but going by anti-touka arguments i usually see, if we consider kaneki’s past as the reason why touka’s abusive towards him, when kaneki continues to push her away and worsen her abandonment issues, isn’t it abusive to touka as well? like i said, i don’t know enough about this issue. but personally, the way i see it is that touken has a lot of issues but they have the potential to improve and with the upcoming touken talk, i’m sure they are going to improve. 

anon, you simply can’t compare ayahina to touken because in the end, they’re different. ayato and touka maybe be similar and all but they’re two different characters with very different issues as well. and ayahina might be a cute relationship and all but at the same time, it isn’t the best out there. if cochlea arc has told me anything about ayato, it’s that he can get extremely reckless (to an unnecessary degree tbh) when it comes to hinami. and to a certain extent, i feel hinami’s the same way as well. 

long story short: 

this is tokyo ghoul there is no pure and healthy relationship

I’ve seen sooooo many posts about wether Touka is abusive to Kaneki or not and i feel like pointing something out:

There
is so much sexism in Japan. The kind of sexism that makes people think
that women have to be delicate little flowers and men have to be tough
as shit.

How many times have you heard the phrase “come on!
you’re a man, aren’t you?“ used as a way to make men feel bad for being
scared or having emotions in some anime?

Of course they
don’t think a woman beating the shit out of a man is abusive. They often
see her as “tough” and “strong” and usually “just wants the best for
them” but doesn’t seem to be able to express their concern any other
way, so to them it’s not abusive. To us, it is.

On the other hand, they do
think a woman being hit by a man is abusive. so, if Ayato were to ever
treat Hinami the way Touka treats Kaneki, everybody would go insane.

It’s
a different culture, and even if that doesn’t make it right, I don’t
think Ishida means any harm by portraying Touka that way. Arguing about
wether or not she’s abusive to Kaneki is useless unless you consider
where it’s coming from.

I’ve been waiting to see this post because this is my come-from, too. At first I was confused by why (the majority of) the Japanese fandom’s reaction was sooo different from (the majority of) the western fandom. I won’t try to make excuses for or condone Touka’s action – but both OP and the above respondent are right, there’s much more context and nuance to this than people have acknowledged. tl;dr at bottom

1. The sexism mentioned above. This isn’t an excuse, but the real context. It’s unhealthy, but anyone who’s been involved in Japanese media has at least seen it before.

2. Both of the characters’ ways of coping – let’s start by looking at their conversation prior to the incident.

The name thing is actually a pretty big deal for the Japanese. Here, Touka’s testing the waters by asking Kaneki what she should call him, trying to get him to acknowledge their relationship (because that is to a great extent what names can represent in Japanese culture). He answers in such a nonchalant way that it actually hurts her because he’s not taking the hint. He’s shutting down. This isn’t a good reason for her to punch his lights out, and yes, that is unhealthy. It parallel’s her attacking him on the bridge, when he did a similar thing by lying to her face. In both scenes, she couldn’t reach into his true thoughts, and he couldn’t open up. She reacted through violence, and he reacted through passiveness. Yes, it’s unhealthy, and yes, it just hurts them both more. But this does come from both of their backgrounds, and it is the device Ishida is using to portray their divisions and build anticipation for their relationship’s development.

3. Finally, it did hurt Kaneki emotionally:

This arc, as far as character development goes, seems to be about Kaneki not opening up (reminds me of his shironeki days). We haven’t had much internal narration from him since Arima’s death, and that makes me uncomfortable. We know Kaneki enough to know how he probably feels right now, but that’s not enough. He’s acting pretty authoritative, but that’s definitely against his nature, and we don’t explicitly know how insecure he is about it. We just know he must be, especially because I see people often identifying his weaknesses in his new role. Tokyo Ghoul has forever emphasized the extremes of mental
state through Kaneki. First, the obvious Kuroneki vs. Shironeki, and 
in TG:re we see the paralleled contrast between Sasaki Haise and Kaneki’s role as One Eyed
King. If we think about it, Sasaki enjoyed a relaxed mental state that was turned on it’s head (through the black reaper transition), just as Kuroneki experienced an innocent mental state that was turned on its head (through Yamori’s torture). What this means is that Kaneki’s mental state now is most likely the stark opposite as what it was during his time as Haise. Take this for what you interpret it as, but it definitely indicates that Kaneki’s still got a lot of growth to do, and so far, Touka has been the catalyst for the healthier side of his growth.

My larger point in these three areas is that the punch is to portray how Kaneki and Touka’s relationship is still in the same state that as it was on the bridge >3 years ago, and build the emotions between the two. The upcoming conversation between them is extremely anticipated and I wouldn’t be surprised if Ishida even interfered with it a bit to build Kaneki’s emotions towards Touka even further.

I hope I provided at least a slightly better understanding of the way Ishida intended the punch. This is the way that the majority of his intended fanbase, from what I’ve experienced with interaction in the JP fandom, views the incident. I actually agree with a few of the criticisms people have brought up because they open my eyes to much deeper, and probably more realistic, ways that the punch could have affected Kaneki. Something so violent like that is indeed extremely triggering to someone who exhibits such obvious signs of PTSD – and more – as Kaneki does. But, where I draw the line is at the hate towards the characters and the criticisms such as: Why doesn’t Kaneki stick up for himself? Why hasn’t Touka figured it out yet and stopped being so violent towards him? Look – these questions are the point of their relationship. I don’t think either character – really, any character in Tokyo Ghoul – deserves hate for the way they are portrayed, because they’re portrayed that way to prove a deep and valuable point.

tl;dr: General sexism, the two characters’ natures, and character development all contribute to the context this scene should be taken. It is Ishida’s intent to portray this unhealthy part of their relationship, and resolve it in the future. Japanese–western cultural divisions seem to play a part in the wedge of understanding towards this scene.