catastrophy-cat:

funtom-cafe:

midnight-in-town:

thedarkestcrow:

eviltwintheory:

thedarkestcrow:

Hi! Yes I actually thought about this for a moment while writing my answer for the last ask. So now I checked the scene again.

Also, Sebastian later remarks that it’s biologically impossible for Grell to have children:

The way Sebastian says it could also mean that since Grell is a shinigami (as a biological species) bearing children is impossible.

But I have to agree that Grell explicitly says that the reason for not being able to have a child is being “a guy” – not ‘being a shinigami’. So maybe that really means that female shinigami can bear children and male shinigami can procreate. It’s not a proof, though. If shinigami were able to have children Grell could, biologically speaking, procreate a child.

Grell could have also referred to a wish of a past time when Grell was still human. And now, being a shinigami, it’s even more impossible.

If it’s possible I think it might be forbidden for shinigami, though. But Undertaker apparently doesn’t care for rules so that wouldn’t stop him.

Actually, if it really is possible that would raise many new questions? Are children of shinigami normal humans? Who raises them? Maybe it’s only possible for the male shinigami to have a child with a female human?

I guess I’ll have to think about this again. Thanks for reminding me of that scene. 🙂

I hope no one minds me jumping in, but I’ve always thought that it’s not likely since that would be death creating a life. Plus, all the Shinigami are being punished, so it wouldn’t be fair for a child to be born into a punishment. The idea that one of the parents might be something other than Shinigami, however, is intriguing.

@eviltwintheory, thanks for your thoughts. That’s what I was thinking, too. Shinigami stand for death, so it would be quite ironic if death creates life. (Though we do have quite a lot of irony throughout the story).

However, Undertaker has proved to be one to play with life (or death). Creating his Bizarre Dolls could be interpreted as a way to cheat death. So having a child while being a shinigami could actually be like another one of Undertaker’s experiments and proof for him that it’s possible to create life – against everything a shinigami stands for. 

Still, I’m not ready to believe in the ‘Undertaker is Ciel’s grandfather’ theory yet. But it’s interesting to think of different possibilities.

@eviltwintheory and @thedarkestcrow

Sorry to butt in as well, but I just wanted to point out something if you don’t mind: I also think that in a Shinigami’s case, creating a life even though they’re technically dead and being punished, would very probably be forbidden, for obvious reasons as you guys pointed out, so it doesn’t seem likely for a woman Shinigami to be able to bring a child to “life”. 

However, even if it’s forbidden by rules, does it mean it’s really impossible biologically? 

I might be totally wrong here, this is the science student speaking lol, but considering that the Shinigamis apparently need to sleep, according to Will in the circus arc (and also to eat if you take into account UT and his bone-shaped cookies and Ronald on the Campania?) , their bodies might not be “dead” the way one would think.

Considering what we know in Kuro: to be dead = the cinematic record being stopped and the soul being taken away, resulting in a body becoming an unmoving corpse with a cerebral and cardiac death leading to decomposition.
We know the Shinigamis are not alive because they committed suicide and yet they can still move, think, talk (unlike the Bizarre Dolls) and they have needs like sleeping or eating, so there might be something peculiar when it comes to their soul or their cinematic record, which allows them to be moving and acting “alive” even though they died by committing suicide.

Ahem… sorry for all the boring details really, but all that to say that if they need to sleep and eat, and if we believe they can still have the hots for someone (Grell and Ronald for example), that means their hormone systems for all this are working, which also means that they could technically conceive when it comes to men (for women Shinigami, it might be more complicated and besides as you guys were saying, the higher ups would notice immediately).

So if a male Shinigami were to visit a human woman, I’d say the chance isn’t zero biogically speaking, even though I totally agree that this would be forbidden by rules and ethic of the Shinigami society.

Of course, there is a good possibility that I’m wrong, if only because Yana might not go the biology way and resolve it simply by choosing for Shinigamis to be unable to conceive (if just to reduce the possibility of fans understandably yelling about necrophilia) but it always appeared weird to me that Will absolutely needed to point out how Shinigamis have to sleep, unlike demons.

(Sorry for the probably boring details :/)

Also, is the “death can not concive life” idea really a something in Japan? Because the Death Parade author said once: yeah sure, arbiters can reproduce, totally.

IDK if he was joking or not, but it is something that that was said.

Till now, the only thing that says us no is “they are shinigami” which is not a strong evidence for saying they absolutly can’t. Because we can twist fantasy to our own wishes, Yana surely does.

I’ll say, looking at the evidende, both Grell’s and Willaim’s comment, that is way more likely that the shinigamis are biologically able to reproduce.

It could be they are just esterile, and if they’re being punished of course they shouldn’t procreate, depending on what you call a punishment (since… no sex is really a punishment? that only depends on how much weight you put to sex, since some people, cof, don’t like it or don’t want it), but just to say, saying they can’t it’s mostly fanon.

i beg to differ about death can’t create a life and remind you about Osiris myth.

And considering Yana’s knowledge about that myth, we can’t rule out death creating life completely.