So…after reading the chapter, I haven’t come away with so many emotions in while. And I just need to address that I love Toboso-sensei so much for this Lizzie centered chapter because it really showcased how complex she is.
Lizzie coming to terms with her feelings and realizing she may not have real love for RCiel was something I was not expecting. I think she’s grown from that childhood obsession to burgeoning adulthood. She can begin to separate truth and lies. And though she’s “shattered,” as it was put, I think sometimes people need that harsh realization before they can mend themselves and grow from it.
Believing she’s a terrible person for hoping RCiel would come back addressed that question that OCiel had in the beginning: Would people be disappointed it’s me? Apparently yes. But at least Lizzie owns up to it and doesn’t want to feel that way. She wants to grow so much and be a better person.
In parallel, her growth reminded me how Madam Red never realized her feelings for Vincent were a childhood obsession – not real love. Madam also wished Vincent had come back instead of Ciel. She never got over that part of her life and became part of what led to her downfall. But Lizzie’s capacity to understand what’s in front of her could save her and encourage that keen sense of her mother.
(Also, Edward addressing God about putting Lizzie through this gave me flashbacks to the manga’s beginning.)
All in all. I teared up at the end.
Predictions: Lizzie’s a badass and will be more so in later chapters. I hope she realizes she has feelings for OCiel and helps him – whether its romantic, or friendship. (I’m hoping familial friendship. I don’t want Lizzie going through more pain).
Additional thoughts on Kuroshitsuji chapter 144
As the character who has been most explicit in showing romantic affection, it must equally be the most shameful to her, that ironically she showed this very affection to the wrong person.
The main
theme to Lizzie as a person is her doubt regarding the truthfulness of her
love.
The parallel drawn between Lizzie and Madam Red was something that was particularly interesting to me, because where this current arc regarding Lizzie is headed towards shows the good
potential to a complex story about human relationships that most teenager-centred stories fail to. (How many are about star-crossed lovers, or initial dislike until suddenly hit by a hormone-lightning? Ugh…)
As stated by Yana-sensei herself in her old blog, as Vincent is a post-mortem character, she draws him differently depending on in whose memories he is being retold.
Speaking of papa, Ciel’s papa has made a brief appearance in the latest volume [Volume 9], and I have been trying my best to draw him differently depending on from whose memory he is being recollected. (Whether I succeeded or not I don’t know)
Madam → The kind-hearted man she wants to forget Ciel
→
The kind-hearted father Baron Kelvin
→
An evil man with deceptive gentle looks Tanaka
→
The Evil Nobleman Earl Phantomhive
So going back to Madam Red, we do indeed see in chapter 10, how she did not really remember Vincent for who he was, but rather who she wanted him to be in relation to herself.
Please notice how Vincent was never in full, clear view, or even in the centre of her memories. This tells us that the centre of Madam’s focus was her sister’s position as Vincent’s bride she had hoped to be.
In the end, even though she did not know who, Madam still blamed someone or something for her ill fate and is overcome with jealousy. The only person she did not blame, was herself.
This draws a very clear juxtaposition with Lizzie, who has primarily been blaming herself. Lizzie even loathed herself for so much as having thoughts of blaming Our!Ciel for the situation. That she is successfully deceived by Our!Ciel just meant that she failed the ‘true-love test’.
In chapter 144, Lizzie is still too overcome with self-loath to consider the situation from outside her own perspective (and given that she is 15, it is not so weird!). But once she has sorted out her own feelings, she might start to consider Our!Ciel’s side of the story.
Perhaps a stretch, but the final page of chapter 144 is already pretty good a lead-up towards Lizzie comparing herself to Our!Ciel and therewith perhaps consider his perspective too, after all.
The relation between Lizzie and Our!Ciel might end up being them sharing something ‘fake’; but sharing a secret is quite intimate and does not have to be a bad ingredient for a close bond.
In contrast to Madam Red, Lizzie has a much fuller grasp of who Our!Ciel is (despite ironically not having known who he was).
So, all in all, though it might be twisted, I really am looking forward to a
very twisted, distorted relationship (romantic or otherwise) that Lizzie and Our!Ciell will
have to rebuild.
Please! Give me this any time, please. Enough with star-crossed lovers, tsundere-relationships or obsessive abuse euphemistically called romantic jealousy!
(The images of the tattoos I use as reference are from here, posted by nimawalker, so go check those out!)
Yes, tattoos! This time I want to talk about the tattoos that Uta has on his fingers, and are quite small:
As I see it (please feel free to correct me if I’m wrong), there are two parts to this tattoo. The first being the face in the middle.
It looks an awful lot like a Jester to me, as it has the characteristic hat with bells on his head and all.
The other part is the thing behind him, with an open mouth, that looks scary. I’ll talk more about that later.
First, the Jester. The obvious connection to Uta here is his group, the clowns, since ‘clown’ is pretty much a synonym to ‘Jester’. However, his tattoo specifically shows a Jester, so I’ll talk about the Jester specifically. For those of you who don’t know, Jesters were a thing in the Middle ages in Europe (they already existed in earlier times, but the Jesters used in pop culture today are usually from the Middle ages). They were people at court, who’s job consisted of acting silly and making the people in the castle laugh. Though this may seem like an insignificant job, it’s also true that Jester were actually pretty powerful. They had the power of knowledge. A lot of Jesters had a close bond with their employer, the head of court. In that way, they got to know a lot of things and sometimes, they were even asked to give advice on war strategies. They knew a lot more than you would first expect if you looked at their job description.
I think this really applies to Uta, since he values information a lot, too. I won’t go too far into this, I’ve talked about this before in the other posts I made about Uta, but he knows a lot about his enemy, whoever his enemy may turn out to be (Aogiri, Anteiku, CCG, Clowns?).
Of course the association with fun isn’t that hard to find in the Jester. He makes people laugh for a living, so there’s that. With Uta, it’s not exactly the same, but it’s alike, even though it’s not as evident as with the Jester. Yes, what Uta does rarely makes others laugh, but he himself seems to find it very amusing. Like when he scared Kaneki (chapter 11):
I agree that he doesn’t really look amused in the image above, but why scare someone if it isn’t for your own amusement? This kind of also relates to the fact that he doesn’t really take any fights seriously, as seen when Anteiku invaded Aogiri and when Uta was fighting Hirako in the auction raid arc.
There were lots of ways for a Jester to make the court laugh, but they usually involved tricks. Again, Uta fits the part. Let’s take this little scene from chapter 112 as an example:
Uta had a problem: he wanted to kill the investigators, but the weapons would’ve made a loud noise. What did he do? He used a trick to distract the investigators, so he could sneak up behind them.
Or of course during the auction raid arc, where Uta put on the Arima mask (chapter 22):
He wanted to trick Hirako into thinking for a split second that he was Arima, probably so that Hirako would hesitate. Or of course, it was a trick to see if he hated Arima or not.
Now on to the second part, the beast in the background. What is it? It’s really difficult to tell exactly what it’s supposed to represent. So let’s think of the things we can say about it, without exactly knowing what it is. It’s big. If we use the small Jester head for reference, we notice that the head of the monster is A LOT bigger. It’s also clear that whatever this thing is, it’s not kind. The way it spreads it’s mouth as if to swallow the Jester, makes me think that this beast doesn’t have any good intentions. It’s evil. Just a side note for this, the first thing I thought of when I saw the beast, was that it was Leviathan (based on nothing at all), a biblical sea monster, that some people have taken to symbolize pure evil (while others think it just symbolizes the creative power of God).
(Just a picture of Leviathan, to illustrate) Anyway, moving on. The last fact we know that it’s seen behind the Jester.
Now, the real question, what does this all mean? If we can assume that this monster represents evil, I think this means that something evil is looming of the Jester, and the Jester represents Uta. So, that means that either Uta’s is being influenced by something evil, or something bad will happen to him. Although I can’t think of something evil that could influence him, it’s not out of the question, as his motives for doing, well, anything, haven’t been revealed. Honestly, I really hope nothing bad happens to him, but this is Tokyo Ghoul, and in Tokyo Ghoul, bad things happen.
This is it, for now! I hope you enjoyed it! If you have anything to add or correct, feel free to do so!
midnight-in-town 