…doesn’t it look like she didn’t lie, since Arima spoke of the same subject with the same fatality?
If you’re considering Itori to only be a stinky liar, then I’m not going to try and persuade you that the subject of hybrid babies in TG ch34 showed a blatant change in her attitude (as if we had addressed a personal issue), but anyway…
the example of Ukina having to eat human meat in order for Eto to be able to be born seems to perfectly illustrate her words, in my opinion?
I wouldn’t say that I trust most of the things that come from any Clowns because that would be very naive, especially since Itori did… conveniently hide stuff more than once, but at the same time…
…even the Clowns have a personal history and reasons for doing what they are doing and I chose to believe long ago that Sensei was able to give depth to all his characters, including Itori, despite her tendencies to manipulate others.
In other words, since Itori and Uta foreshadowed the events happening between Kaneki and Touka long ago…
…I think that what Itori briefly said about hybrid pregnancies with a ghoul mama will be addressed again, once we’re done with the current arc. I even proposed a theory on the subject, about what it might imply, if you’re interested. 🙂
I hope it answers your question, have a nice weekend Anon and don’t worry, I don’t think anyone fully trusts the Clowns. 😉
but then the embryo/fetus, or even the mama herself…
are transferred to incubators for the rest of the pregnancy, in order for the baby to get all the essential nutrients it needs and to be born.
This would explain why half-humans in the sunlit garden are more than few when Itori said that the chance of a (terminated) pregnancy was extremely slim. Another option would be to say that maybe Itori was just speaking of hybrids as in “OEG” and not “half human” in ch34, since a OEG is rarer than a half human (at least when the hybrid’s mama is human).
TL;DR I haven’t changed my mind 🙂 I think the discussion that took place with Itori and Kaneki, while Uta and Yomo were listening in ch34, is relevant to Touka’s pregnancy and will be mentioned again. 🙂
It’s totally okay if you disagree though, Anon! Have a nice weekend!
…doesn’t it look like she didn’t lie, since Arima spoke of the same subject with the same fatality?
If you’re considering Itori to only be a stinky liar, then I’m not going to try and persuade you that the subject of hybrid babies in TG ch34 showed a blatant change in her attitude (as if we had addressed a personal issue), but anyway…
the example of Ukina having to eat human meat in order for Eto to be able to be born seems to perfectly illustrate her words, in my opinion?
I wouldn’t say that I trust most of the things that come from any Clowns because that would be very naive, especially since Itori did… conveniently hide stuff more than once, but at the same time…
…even the Clowns have a personal history and reasons for doing what they are doing and I chose to believe long ago that Sensei was able to give depth to all his characters, including Itori, despite her tendencies to manipulate others.
In other words, since Itori and Uta foreshadowed the events happening between Kaneki and Touka long ago…
…I think that what Itori briefly said about hybrid pregnancies with a ghoul mama will be addressed again, once we’re done with the current arc. I even proposed a theory on the subject, about what it might imply, if you’re interested. 🙂
I hope it answers your question, have a nice weekend Anon and don’t worry, I don’t think anyone fully trusts the Clowns. 😉
excuse me, I know it’s nothing new, but I still love this.
Eto is definitely reemerging at some point, but I don’t think this is a sun arc yet. I definitely would put more weight in a connection between Hide and Itori, if Itori had not just given up and walked off bored after Tsukiyama interrupted her.
Though, I’m doubtful this is the final swing of the pendulum when it comes to her character. As I’ve said before though I agree with you anon, that Eto is likely going to become relevant again when Yoshimura’s body also becomes relevant.
Especially since Kanou no longer has any claim over it, considering that he dead. Both Rize and Yoshimura should be relevant at some point unless V takes control of both of them.
I find V’s remarks about Kuzen to be suspicious though, as well as the fact that we’ve never seen what’s in that journal, or even Ukina’s true face. Unlike Hikari who eventually we got to see her full face when Yomo came to terms with her loss.
Considering that Yomo and Yoshimura are such similiar characters with similiar flaws, it makes sense that a similiar revelation of coming to terms with the loss with either Eto or Yoshimura would also prompt a full reveal of Ukina’s face.
There’s also about 700 parallels to Ukina and Kuzen, and the circumstance of Eto’s birth, and the 24th ward that are being paralleled right now between Touka and Kaneki, and both of them seem to be kind of wandering into that parallel blindly without learning the lesson that Yoshimura should have.
All of those are perfectly good reasons for Eto to return to the manga at some point. In fact she’s almost conspicuously absent by now, even though we’ve finally gotten into the old one eyed king and the 24th ward which are both Eto related, and ideas tied heavily to her character.
Hi Anon 🙂 omg though, please relax, I’m not going to kill you and it’s not stupid at all to share. In fact, myself I have something like 60+ versions of the OEK!Uta theory and my thoughts are a mess because there are so many possibilities, so it’s totally okay to write your own take on it, whether I agree or not. xDD
As I explained before though (refer to the links I just gave you), the current problem with the Uta = Nagaraj theory (first OEG) is that Kimi and the 24th ward kids both implied that the huge kakuja down in the 24th ward meant the first OEG was still trapped inside it! So…
…if they’re right, that means this guy is still inside the kakuja down in the 24th ward and, in that case, he can’t be the Uta we know. 😉 Besides Uta doesn’t have a mole on his chin.
Of course, it’s possible for Kimi and the kids to be mistaken, that’s why we need to see what’ll happen to Kaneki’s kakuja when he’s freed before we can decide if the Uta = Nagaraj theory is still possible or not. :)) That’s also why I’m considering the idea that he could be the second OEG of the timeline for now, but as with everything, I could be totally wrong.
About Itori now, until ch151 I too considered her a possible OEG because it’s true we only ever saw one kakugan…
because of her strange mask…
and because of her possible connection to the 24th ward, as you also pointed out. So I didn’t really give up on this possibility, it’s just that Uta is more likely to be a OEG than her considering all the hints we got so far.
That’s why if One Eyed Washuu (Nagaraj) =/= Uta because Kimi and the kids are right, I’d rather vouch for Uta rather than for her to be the second OEG of the timeline. 🙂 In other words it goes like this:
Kimi & the kids are right and One Eyed Washuu (Nagaraj) =/= Uta
then Uta might be the second OEG of the timeline, or maybe a clone or maybe someone who’s directly blood-related to the Nagaraj…
Kimi & the kids are wrong and One Eyed Washuu (Nagaraj) = Uta
then the second OEG of the timeline might be Itori, Noro or someone else we don’t suspect yet.
It’s just impossible to know for sure right now. Though, I have to admit that, narratively speaking, for now it feels strange to think that a single organization would hide two strong and famous OEGs from the beginning, but maybe that’s just me.
I hope I helped a little! Please don’t belittle yourself, especially when no one has any real clue about what’s going with Uta, since Sensei is probably confusing us on purpose. xD
Hi Anon! Yeah I really think Uta, Yomo and Itori are all really friends who care about each other…
it’s just that Uta and Itori have what seems to be a similar agenda while Yomo’s philosophy was different.
Doesn’t mean that they can’t be friends, on the contrary, and even if so far Sensei expanded more on the history between Uta and Yomo, it doesn’t mean we don’t know what they think about Itori:
(omake TG vol 12 => drunk Yomo)
I know both Itori and Uta are characters who are hard to grasp fully, Itori probably even more than Uta since we’ve seen her less. Nonetheless, I expect answers before the end (namely about what kind of past or link Uta and Itori seem to share), but I think the latest time we saw them when they saved Yomo (well, Uta saved him but then Itori carried him) is all the proof you need to say these 3 really are friends.
I hope it answers your question, have a nice day Anon!
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
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?
Please note that what follows is 100% theoretical but still, I wonder if this cannot be generally explained by why ghouls find human meat tasty while cannibalizing tastes disgusting to them, despite both meat providing RC cells and it being necessary for ghouls’ survival.
Ghouls = high rates of RC cells + a kakuhou to regulate them vs Humans = low rates of RC cells so no need for a kakuhou and regulation.
Right now,
I don’t know if it’s because the quantity of Rc cells is way higher in ghouls than in humans, or the fact that a ghoul’s RC cells are regulated by a kakuhou when humans’ aren’t, but anyway the gist of it is that, to ghouls, ghoul meat is “eww” when human meat is “yummy”.
This means that, on the one hand cannibalizing to survive (since ghoul meat provides RC cells) is possible but it tastes absolutely awful. And on the other, the alternative to cannibalism is eating humans (human meat also providing RC cells) but that alternative tastes absolutely delicious.
=> hence ghouls choosing to eat humans instead of their own kind because it tastes way better ==> species survival by avoiding cannibalism
Back to Touka’s pregnancy, I thought that maybe her body could recognize the “human part” of her hybrid baby and label it as “food” as a result, so I tried to look at this from a biological point of view, but how it happens remains a huge ’?’ for now.
The only thing I can be reasonably sure of is that this implies there are cells in Touka’s body that can pass through the placenta and recognize her hybrid baby and its RC cells as “food”, when a 100% ghoul baby is sure not to absorbed.
in other words, a ghoul mother will never eat her ghoul baby because its RC cells won’t be seen as “food” by the ghoul mother’s body.
==> species survival by reproduction is possible
My current main idea (please take with a grain of salt) is to conjecture that, considering that the probability of giving birth to a “half human” hybrid (no kakuhou) is way higher than giving birth to a OEG (kakuhou
👍)…
…the ghoul mama’s cells that detect the presence of RC cells on the other side of the placenta will see the hybrid baby and its RC cells as “food” only ifthey don’t detect the presence of a kakuhou in the embryo or (most likely) fetus.
Again considering that RC cells in human bodies aren’t regulated because the rates are too low (=> no kakuhou needed), while ghoul bodies need a kakuhou for storage and regulation because of higher RC cells rates, what if ghouls’ RC cells have a specific marker relating to a kakuhou regulation/storage, which would imply that human RC cells and ghoul RC cells aren’t exactly similar?
In other words, if human RC cells and ghoul RC cells can be differentiated…
because ghoul RC cells have on their surface a specific marker due to kakuhou storage or regulation
while human RC cells are unmarked because no kakuhou and no regulation
…then maybe that explains…
why ghoul meat will taste awful when human meat won’t
why hybrid babies that don’t develop a kakuhou (“half humans”) will get absorbed (unmarked RC cells = “food”), while a ghoul baby or a OEG will be born from a ghoul mama (RC cells with a kakuhou marker = “not food”).
And in both cases it allows a survival of the ghoul species, by allowing reproduction (ghoul babies’ RC cells
aren’t seen as food thanks to a kakuhou marker on the baby’s RC cells) and favoring eating another species over cannibalizing (because humans’ unmarked RC cells lead to human meat tasting better).
in case it’s not clear, it’s the example of blood transfusion with the universal O type donor: someone who’s O-type has red cells that don’t have neither antigen A or B on their membrane.
So
imagine your blood type is A (your red cells have the A antigen + your plasma has B antibodies) & you’re transfused with B-type red cells => immune reaction between the B antigen from the transfusion and your B antibodies => ://///// Now imagine you’re transfused with O-type red cells => no immune reaction because the O-type red cells have no B antigen on their membranes => 👍
👍
Back to humans and ghouls: if ghouls eat human meat, there is no kakuhou marker on the human RC cells => “human meat is yummy :D” However if they cannibalize => ghoul meat = ghoul RC cells + specific kakuhou marker that informs their tongue/brain that they just ate someone from the same species => “ewwww, ghoul meat tastes disgusting :///”
TL;DR
the theory is that if Touka’s hybrid baby develops a kakuhou (i.e is not a "half human” like Arima but rather a OEG like Eto), its RC cells that will be detected by Touka’s body will show a specific marker (of kakuhou storage/regulation) that will protect the baby from being labelled as “food”.
As I was saying above though, since ghouls are fictional I can’t be sure but I’d say that the one month old embryo stage is probably not when hybrid or ghoul babies develop their kakuhou. It’s probably later, closer to when the fetus stage starts, or even after that.
In other words, Touka’s baby is currently not at risk of being absorbed by her body, at least I don’t think so. What’s more frightening however is…
Touka not providing her baby with enough RC cells to survive. Apparently she’s been eating human food ever since discovering that she was pregnant (food shortage in the 24th ward not helping) which, as @coromoor once explained here, is a problem because it poisons her too (slowing her down against Mutsuki in the last chapter, for example).
As always keep in mind it’s completely theoretical (I mean, maybe Ishida didn’t think this one through and I’m reading way too much into this xD) and please don’t hesitate to tell me if something is off with my explanation! 🙂
midnight-in-town 