Just some thoughts on Souta and Furuta’s Trump Cards. With last chapter, the mystery of why Souta’s Trump Card was separate to the rest of the Clowns has been cleared up. We’d all guessed that Souta was working with V but I think it was still a little bit of a surprise (for me at least) that his loyalties to Pierrot was completely non-existent.
There’s the obvious clues that we’d all figured out were important:
Pierrot were depicted on the 8 of each suit
Souta/Furuta was an outsider in the Pierrot Trump Cards, being designated a 5
♥
(5 = V in Roman Numerals)
The background of both the 5
♥
card and Joker card also gave clues that his loyalties lay with V all along. Souta within the bird cage, Furuta’s with the birds- he is one of the birds in the ‘bird cage’ on the world that V and the CCG is keeping in check.
Despite this, he is clearly aware of this world order and actively helps maintain it.
But then there’s also something suspicious with Souta’s hands going on. The obvious one was his left hand making a V which combined with the bird cage showed his association with the V organisation. But the right hand is harder to make out but it’s too unnatural looking to be insignificant. I just have no idea in what way (if anyone has any ideas about this, please add on!)
One possibility is that it’s a C and with the G on his mask and some careful choices in shadowing, it creates “CCG” hinting that they were working together to maintain the ‘bird cage’ on the world.
C is also the Roman Numeral for 100, a number connected to the OEK from 100 years ago
the C and V together in Roman Numerals makes 105 which I have absolutely no idea what significance 105 would have but according to my friend Wikipedia, 105 is a triangular number
It could also be a U, meaning Souta is just trying to warn us of the dangers of UV rays and being sun smart. Slip, slop, slap kids.
Lastly, if Furuta was a part of V, and his 5
♥ cards represents that… does this mean the other 5′s are also a part of V? There’s one 5 in particular that is especially suspicious…. I’ll put it under the cut just in case you don’t want potential spoilers for that character
Okay, this is linked to ch66 (obvious spoilers), so please read it first if you haven’t yet. I’m so happy about this chapter because it finally solved the few issues (or so I hope) I had with some moments relating to the Clowns’ gang and Kaneki. I’ll explain:
Now that we know that Furuta/Souta (so a V spy it seems in the end though he still does things for Kanou) helped Kanou for the incident with Rize for “personal reasons”, bringing him Kaneki’s body who was initially only supposed to be the last test before the transplantation of the twins…
…that means that the Clowns’ gang isn’t actually involved as a whole with the very first step of Kaneki in his life as a OEG (of course Ishida could still be trolling) because Souta/Furuta isn’t a “real” Clown.
When it comes to the issues I had, now that Furuta/Souta admitted to being after the OEK this whole time when he became a Clown, it explains why…
…Itori sent Kaneki to the ghoul restaurant to know how to get in. I always wondered what the point was to send him to a place a Clown was currently investigating, but now that Furuta admitted to doing that to find info on the OEK, it is easy to think she had no idea that Souta was there hence why Kaneki was used.
That was my first issue but I dare say that it’s now solved with :Re ch66.
This chapter also gave a sense to this scene…
Because I seriously couldn’t understand why she’d even bait him with the answer if the Clowns’ gang had been all in this together, agreeing with Souta’s actions (seeing as I always took Itori and Uta not to have any reason to lie to Kaneki if all of this was for the sake of a joke).
And the main interesting thing in that scene is that it is already giving possible hints that the Clowns (or just Itori and Uta) knew Souta wasn’t really “one of them”, because Itori says she already has an idea of who the culprit could be, just like she also says when Kaneki visits her again…
…which means that the Sunlit Garden and the secret around Furuta, Rize and the other children might be something she knew about for quite some time (considering what she then tells Kaneki about the “hidden truth”, like Kanou, it really makes me think she’s another character who knows about V/the Washuus and the Garden).
Actually, I’m thinking that if Itori didn’t know about Souta being a double agent, she just knew the incident with Rize was related to V and that was enough to be worrying in the first place.
Then there is also what Nico told Souta about the OEK…
I think it is quite funny how Nico ended up telling Souta/Furuta who was actively looking for info on the OEK that they didn’t exist when they told Kaneki that the OEK was Eto who somehow seems to be the *only one* who knows who the OEK is in reality (since Furuta and so V and the CCG are at loss).
The way I see this, Nico could have fed Souta with false info about the person V is so afraid of by telling him that “sucha person didn’t exist” while they made sure to make Eto (probably the only one knowing about the OEK) the target of Kaneki’s goal at that time by telling him that the OEK was Eto (maybe they thought that upon meeting with Eto, these two would talk like they are currently doing in :Re?).
In any case, Nico telling two opposite things to two different people (no matter what they thought was the truth) makes me think they were being careful about Souta and might have had a hint or two about his true affiliation, like Itori (and Uta) did.
So if the Clowns’ gang possibly knew that Souta was probably a double agent for V or another organization, what does that mean about their link to Kaneki? Actually even if they only suspected him (or just V), that still means they’re not involved with the incident with Rize.
Because of ch140 (and Kaneki seeing Souta/Furuta above the scene of the accident) and then ch143, we readers all took the Clowns to be a group of twisted assholes who wanted to make Kaneki miserable but, after ch66, it might not be exactly the case.
When Itori reveals she possibly knows who the culprit is, she asks Kaneki for what he’d do and being the sweet boy he was at that time, obviously he’d just want to know “for himself”, but the truth behind what happened to him is linked to V, the CCG, the Washuu family aaaand the Sunlit Garden, so just knowing about the truth was already very dangerous for him.
Of course, the Clowns aren’t really “nice” people either, we’ve had proof of that too, but when it comes to Kaneki and the ghoul restaurant + Aogiri, well, maybe these events can be interpreted differently from how we once saw them:
Itori sent him to the ghoul restaurant for info because she knew Tsukiyama talked to Kaneki, but nothing tells us she had any way to know what was happening inside that place (since that’s why she needed those info initially).
Besides, let’s consider she knew things were going to turn complicated, maybe this was a test to see if Kaneki would be able to defend himself in case he came to be more involved with V by seeking the truth behind the incident with Rize (because that was sure to endanger his life, look at what happened to Shachi).
As for Aogiri: Yamori and co. were told to find Rize or the person smelling like her, which is what Nico did, but as they said after the Aogiri arc…
If Nico didn’t know about who Rize was and her link to V, maybe that’s why they didn’t interfere when Kaneki was taken away and tortured by Yamori (they probably understood the full picture upon knowing too late that Kaneki was a OEG or that Rize was from V when Itori told them after the Aogiri arc).
So again, I’m not saying the Clowns are good people at all but just that they might not be the twisted enemies Ishida made us first believe, since Souta/Furuta being on his own side changes a lot of things when it comes to the Clowns’ gang.
After all there is what Furuta told Eto in this chapter…
The Clowns were the scapegoat of V and the higher ups of the CCG 10 years ago (the Clowns’ annihilation), so I’m pretty sure they know exactly how dangerous V can be, and so they would have no reason to be enemies with Kaneki who also suffered from the bigger scheme taking place between the Washuus, V and Kanou who was fighting his own war.
Besides, as shown in ch143, the Clowns all seem to be pretty fond of Kaneki (except Souta but now we know why), so “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” might be the true nature of the link between the Clowns and Kaneki.
This is all speculation as always, but with the friendship between Yomo (who’s obviously on Kaneki’s side) Itori and Uta, and the few advice these two gave to our MC…
(when Nico said the OEK was Eto)
…Uta and Itori (if not maybe Nico) aren’t probably looking towards Kaneki’s destruction. After all, Uta did discuss with Yomo that maybe the Clowns had a plan about Kaneki and this could totally be relating to them fighting against V together for all we know.
Even with all the answers we got in the recent chapters, the Clowns’ gang remains quite the mystery on every point unfortunately, so for now I’ll just stay on the possibility that they might become Kaneki’s “allies” in a future not so far away. Maybe (using him is still the most logical idea though).
In any case I’m just amazed at Ishida-sensei making readers believe they were twisted assholes just because of one guy (Souta/Furuta). He is my hero (Ishida, not Furuta lol).
Feel free to leave your thoughts! Thanks for reading.
midnight-in-town 