I’m gonna be all structuralist at you all for a sec. There’s a lot of confusion and hot blood in the fandom over the way some of the characters acted and reacted in the latest chapter. You all know what I’m talking about, either because you’ve seen other people mention them or because you felt something was off with them as well. I’m not going to argue whether these actions are right or wrong in any moral or ethical sense or try to justify them. I’m going to try to explain what I think is going on here, structurally.
This characterization is a product of a weird narrative structure choice Ishida is making right now. Ishida has, for some reason, decided to rewind the narrative as much as possible – even to the point of straining some credibility, to before the Anteiku raid. Remember, right before the Anteiku raid, Kaneki learned Yoshimura’s story and the beginnings of the truth about V and Eto. After this, Yoshimura asked him to come back to Anteiku, and he agreed. But he never got the chance to do this because the raid happened. His wish to return was cut off by the machinations of the very organization he had just learned about.
Now, having learned a lot more about the secrets of the world, Kaneki is seemingly being given the chance he was deprived of all those years ago. The chance to return to Anteiku that was interrupted by the raid and his life as Haise. He even says that this is like Anteiku. The people are the same. The coffee tastes the same. The chapter even goes so far as to give him an eyepatch to complete the look.
This is a structural choice Ishida is making – it is how he is arranging the structure of the narrative. A strange sort of rewind to before a Bad End. And it has been having weird consequences, as all narrative choices do.
I’ve already written what I think about Koma and Irimi’s survival [x], and the new explanation for how they survived does nothing to change my opinion on that. In fact, the lack of involvement of any other character that would at least allow their survival to advance someone else’s plot (Hide, Hirako) highlights exactly the sort of thing this rewind is doing.
But this reset is also effecting characterization. This chapter is supposed to, in a sense, feel like it takes place three years ago before any of this mess with him being Sasaki Haise even happened. If Kaneki managed to go back to Anteiku like he wanted to. (After all, the Washuu are dead, so why not?)
And that means that Touka is acting like Touka from three years ago. Touka before the raid and years of development and maturity. Touka from the bridge encounter. It means that Shuu is not the Shuu that Karren saved from the roof top in anything but technicality. He is the Shuu from the 6th ward, utterly infatuated with Kaneki above all else.
Where Koma and Irimi have been for three years doesn’t matter to this chapter because this is a reset. All that matters is that Anteiku is as it was.
Even none of what happened in Cochlea seems to have effected the characterization. Yomo is still Yomo-san to Touka. Because they are back to how they were. (Also, none of that family is at all hesitant around the mention of the previous OEK.)
I don’t have the answer as to why Ishida is doing this, all I can say is that this is what is happening, and the strange characterizations in the chapter are largely explained by it.
But this is the moon arc. More than just a calm before the storm, the Moon arc is about illusions. The Fool, blinded by realizations and a sense of serenity and confidence of the Star, is beset by illusion and delusion, before being plunged head first into the darkest depth of his subconscious. You can’t turn back time. You can’t revive the dead. You can’t undo past mistakes. So perhaps all this is merely an illusion of happiness, and illusion of return. We’ll have to see.
The novel plays a key role in Ken Kaneki asking Rize Kamishiro on a date, after noticing that they were both reading it. This fateful event leads to the Steel Beam Incident, and Kaneki’s transformation into an one-eyed ghoul.
Ohh nice, I never made that connection but yes, in both cases there’s the theme of ‘eternity’. Claudia’s locket has the infinity symbol made out of her hair which stands for eternity:
And on the cover of chapter 114 it seemed as if Ciel was referred to as ‘child of eternity’.
I wonder if this connection was intentional. And I’m not quite sure what to make of this cover. ‘The people of the celestial sphere’ are probably the cult members and the ‘chosen child of eternity’ seems to be Ciel. We know that Ciel’s blood is quite rare so the cult is searching for someone like him. So in a sense they would like to offer his blood to whatever the cult is doing with it afterwards. And maybe that’s what it means. But I don’t know why Ciel would be a ‘child of eternity’.
I think the eternity symbol on Claudia’s locket could be a sign of eternal love, for example, if Undertaker and Claudia had a romantic relationship which is a popular theory. So I’m not sure if there’s a connection to Ciel here. (Unless, Undertaker is really Vincent’s father. Then maybe one could say that Ciel in a way is the result (after Vincent) of the eternal love between Claudia and UT and therefore a ‘child of eternity’. But I’m not so sure about that.)
And about the idea of UT being responsible for Claudia’s death, I must say at first I didn’t think that’s what happened. But after giving it some thought, it’s actually not a bad idea. UT could have still loved her but maybe she helped him with some experiments and there was an accident. That would be even more tragic if he loved her but she died because of him. Maybe even all the people on his lockets died like that and he keeps the lockets to remind himself ‘to hold each and every soul dear’ – a lesson he learnt only after killing these people. And now he only experiments with the dead whose souls are already gone. It’s a crack theory for now but it’s something to keep in mind.
Still, it’s probably more likely that the Phantomhives have some connection to eternity. The German shinigami implied that there’s something that makes the Phantomhives’ lineage special. So maybe this is all connected somehow. Maybe that would fit with ideas like the Worthy Ciel Theory or that there’s some shinigami blood within the family.
Thanks for sharing your ideas. That was really interesting to think about. 🙂
So if what Othello is saying in Chapter 119 is correct, demons can provide future technology to humans who are in contract with them.
Is this Yana’s way of explaining away the anachronisms from the entire series? Ciel’s radio, television, and video games were all gifts from Sebastian, then? Interesting. I was wondering if that would ever be addressed.
And the Queen and John Brown walk around sporting sunglasses, so does that mean he’s a demon providing her with 20th century gadgets?
Oh, yeah, and about that tank the Germans have…..
Or, maybe this is all a sleight of hand, and the technology at the Sphere Music Hall is there not because of a demon, but because Undertaker pulled a Prometheus and gave some curious, blood-happy humans a little lesson about the four blood types.
(Or maybe UT has been a demon all along and isn’t a shinigami….)
Nice idea, maybe that would explain the advanced technology we see sometimes. But I think demons are not the only ones with such a knowledge. It seems like Othello knows quite a bit about that, too, and so do probably other shinigami. We’ve seen them using tools that seem quite modern for this time era (some death scythes, Rudgar’s shoes and watch,…).
I guess shinigami are usually not the ones to give such information to humans, that’s rather something a demon would do. But it’s not impossible that in this case it was a shinigami. And maybe in other instances, too (looking at John Brown…). ^^
midnight-in-town 
