I’m partial to SeiAki, I’ve always loved the “arguing like an old married couple” trope. I love how Seidou’s envy of her is mixed in with his attraction and, as 115 suggested, romantic feelings for her. The way they’re constantly torn between fighting alongside each other and fighting against each other is really something to watch; which reached its ultimate culmination on Rushima, where he almost killed her only to later choose to risk his life to save her. And Akira’s hidden care for him is also very moving when she lets it show.
But I find it works just as well as an unrequited love – or rather, an unrequited romantic interest, because Akira said herself that she loves both Takizawa and Amon. This is a very angsty ship so the unrequited suits it well. I just hope to see them fight unreservedly on the same side in the future, not fighting amongst themselves or directly against each other. But all that said, I still approve of Akiramon, especially because of all the Touken parallels.
@dreamofcentipedes I hope you don’t mind, but OMG I absolutely agree with you and I just wanted to add, because I see too many people “forgetting” about this ever since ch121, that Akira never indeed to this day made any difference between her feelings for Amon and Takizawa, so it’s not like either ship currently prevails over one another.
Akira may have left with Amon in ch121, but Takizawa had already left first in ch118 and, again, Akira’s feelings never did anything but put the guys on the same level:
Of course, she apparently kissed Amon in ch121 and so she might indeed end up with him, but both Akira and Amon are currently stuck in their character development, which is something that only Seidou can help them with and which means the Seiakiramon dynamic isn’t set in stone at all.
As for Seidou, as you explained in your other post, he needs to confront them again because he’s totally running away from them out of a wrong assumption of still “not deserving to be by their side”, which is yet another argument as to why the whole dynamic is in for more significant developments.
I wouldn’t say that polyamory is more likely as an ending for this dynamic when ch121 did seem to give an advantage (so to speak) to Akiramon, but my point is that Akira’s character has always been Defined by keeping a lot bottled up inside (see Gori’s words in ch143 before she finally starts crying), which means that she’s bound to address her feelings for the two men again (either to finally discriminate between them or to end with both).
Again, I hope you don’t mind my two cents :3 Great post!
In the original Japanese text, Takizawa still has not rectified his manner of addressing Kaneki this chapter (羊 instead of 黒山羊 or 山羊) and for good reason. Their exchange was more rewarding than the prospect of being presented one between Amon and Kaneki; as opposed to Amon, who in Kaneki’s mind was the sole person to give him what he wanted to hear, Takizawa was the sole person to betray that and give him what he needed to hear. His final act of service to Kaneki was to appropriately dish him the reality check as the unique outsider, cynical and eyes unclouded as a result of being estranged from the rest of Kaneki’s major connections.
That Kaneki is recognized as the One-Eyed King speaks nothing for the lack of his emotional wherewithal to properly serve as such. For someone who had never had true family or friends, with the exception of Hide, Anteiku’s existence had fulfilled his wish for a place to belong. Like Amon, Kaneki continues to flail recklessly about more so than he fights with a clear head and a plan, out of fear of losing those he grew to love – not as they are, but as his ideal made real. Kaneki is a victim of severe attachment issues that make him unwittingly selfish in spite of his best intentions, and the inability to fully confront this kills him inside more than he can salvage what is out there in front of him.
What is left then is a hollow vessel in his image that breathes, moves, thinks in the way that others do, the way that others want for him to.
The execution of Kaneki’s clone is fittingly juxtaposed with the theme of Kaneki’s and Takizawa’s conversation. He has “died” on the surface, but it’s an eerie allusion to the sort of thing his fragile state of mind longed to do to himself deep down.
He traps himself in the infinitude between life and death, in part, to simply honor Hide’s wish for him to live on as much as he knew Hide couldn’t. All else is derivative of that.
He crowned himself as the new King because there was no viable alternative, but it’s more apt to say that
Eto successfully shepherded her lamb onto Arima’s throne. If he had refused, any hope of protecting his surrogate family would have gone to hell along with the other ghouls and their futures.
To lead, he had to be led.
To save a few, he would have to save them all.
In a show of deliberate irony, this is reflected in the motivations of his adherents. These followers, some more devout than others, rally behind a person they are mostly unfamiliar with because he is their refuge incarnate. Anteiku, as Kaneki’s closest and most trustworthy allies, support him no matter the cost. To follow him is to follow Yoshimura. The same applies to the Zero Squad, to follow Kaneki is to follow Arima. The remnants of Aogiri, to follow Eto. The White Suits, to follow Yamori.
The ghoul criminals know little beyond that they owe their freedom to him, so they pledge themselves to his cause since it ultimately benefits them.
The focus rests on their faith in “the strongest ghoul” who appeared before them bearing a promise, but the truth is that he’s still just a boy, despairing and clinging to his lies for comfort, without a name, without a sense of self.
“You’re no different than I am, empty inside.”
On the other hand, Takizawa decides to separate himself from the herd of sheep of his own volition as though he has a mind of his own—
—yet is on a hair-trigger to completely surrender himself to the oblivion churning beneath him all the same, anchored only by the desires of the people who risked themselves for him that supersede his personal desire to disappear.
While Takizawa yearns for the warmth of being with whom he loves, like his counterpart, he is simultaneously terrified by the thought of it to a debilitating degree, having long deluded himself into the belief that he is undeserving. His ideal is too perfect to ever be real, so he retreats into the shadows in an attempt to vindicate his fragmented existence.
It thus comes as no surprise that the rosary is an object of oppression rather than the redemption it is meant to represent. To him, it’s just a piece of rope shackling him to the world he rejects. Another painful reminder, wrapped around his wrist directly above his cursed pulse, that his reason was never truly his own, not unlike how Kaneki feels about his status as King.
This is why it was a symbolic requisite for Kaneki to be the one to deny Takizawa his resignation, for Takizawa to be the one to see through Kaneki’s pretense. Under the layer of mutual understanding lies an incomprehensible depth, an ocean of nothingness that could sweep them away the very moment they regain themselves. So they go on as the ghosts they are, empty and bound to the corporeal plane against their will, until they may finally shed their burdens.
Mutsuki’s definitely rolling his eyes there. The most likely explanation is that he knew it wasn’t Kaneki. From what we know of Mutsuki post-rueshima he’s become conscious for the most part of what would otherwise be his fugue state persona’s actions. Which means most likely he remembers these events in detail after the fact, even though he recovers to a more stable kind of mood. During that time, Mutsuki already bore witness to this:
It’s important to remember that Mutsuki like Suzuya is a character that tends to overhear information and keep it to themselves. In Suzuya’s case it’s because they don’t care that much. Mutsuki knows several details right now though.
Number one that there was a mole in the CCG connected to the clowns. This is a fact he shared with Suzuya but noone else. Number two as shown above he also knows that Uta who he has faced twice now is capable of shifting his face.
Number three Mutsuki intentionally remembers Re: as a place that Haise frequented with the Qs, but never visited when Urie was around and neglects to tell the rest of them about that.
Combining all of those facts right now, Mutsuki likely sees through Furuta’s charade on some level. However he plans to keep this fact to himself, most likely because it will allow him to pursue killing Haise Sasaki on his own.
As for where Mutsuki’s character arc is going next, I don’t think Mutsuki’s downward spiral will break until he kills Sasaki. It’s an oedipal arc, both Mutsuki’s father and mother figures are wrapped up on Haise Sasaki, who is protective like a father but also called “Maman” by Saiko and nurturing like a mother. However, it’s important to remember that Haise Saaski is not a real person. He’s a dream of Kaneki Ken.
Therefore it’s entirely possible that Mutsuki can kill Haise Sasaki in a metaphorical sense rather than a literal one. The important part is Mutsuki needs to overcome his fixation on Haise. He’s using obsession as a point to latch onto and retain some sort of stability right now. However, all that does in the long run is prevent him from facing his own flaws, and past wrongdoings and growing from them. Rather, Mutsuki is still trying to escape from guilt and blame by radically dissociating. Except now Mutsuki is severing himself from his own agency, by the fantasy that if Haise Sasaki were around, he would prevent his more violent fits.
It’s an Oedipal arc though, and Oedipal arcs are only resolved by the characters facing the truth so in the end that’s what Mutsuki most needs to do to grow.
Oh, definitely. It’s very obvious even in this chapter alone that Kaneki is disconnected from the perspective of most ghouls. That is why when all the ghouls are depressed because they are losing the media battle, Kaneki is naively thinking this is an opportunity for them.
Nishiki even uses Tsukiyama as an example to foil Kaneki, saying that Tsukiyama in his privilege and not having to live downtrodden for most of his life probably did not even realize that there was no way that the ghoul’s could win a media battle. What’s more important is that not only can they not persuade humans even though their goal is to unite ghouls and humans together, but they also are going to lack the ability to recruit from ghouls from this point forward.
Remember why Kaneki needed to perpetrate the lie that he was the one who killed Arima. Eto and Arima’s entire revolution was based on the fact that the ghoul who killed Arima, the worst killer of ghouls in history would finally be able to inspire hope in other ghouls to join him that they could rise up.
Kaneki doesn’t even realize that because he doesn’t care. As Takizawa said, him and Kaneki are the same. They’re not trying to become hope for anybody, they’re just trying to tether themselves down to something to find a reason to live. Kaneki is talking about himself here as much as he’s talking about Takizawa.
I’ve seen a lot of posts talking about this from the perspective of Kaneki’s depression and that’s valid, but I think also important is how much damage Kaneki is causing by half assing his fight at this moment. If you’re going to compare Kaneki to Takizawa, remember Takizawa is referred to in this way in the calendar. Specifically as someone who has nothing, and who dances on strings like a marionette.
Even moreso than that, I still think this is the set of panels that best summarizes the current conflict in the manga.
That’s what Kaneki is doing right now. He’s not giving his all to a conflict that literally is going to decide the centuries long oppression of an entire species that frequently lives it’s life only to die in the streets with Tokyo. There’s several instances of him doing this to.
1) Instead of trying to uplift Naki and tell him ghouls are just as worthy as living, he tells Naki that he’ll give his death a purpose and to die for his cause.
2) He’s given the chance for a personal confrontation where he can kill Furuta and have it be done with, and he doesn’t, because he sees it as more convenient for Furuta to still be alive. Even though Furuta does this in the short term.
3) His first genuine thought was that he should talk to the Washuu. The long oppressors of ghouls, who have been doing this for a century mostly to enrich themselves, Kaneki saw them as something other than something to be destroyed.
4) Kaneki’s first mission for Goat, an organization for the uplifting of ghouls is to kill other ghouls to save CCG investigators, and also to risk the four strongest members they have in order to save one CCG investigator. These aren’t even moderate investigators who might be convinced to turn to the side of ghouls, Akira was one of the strongest anti ghoul proponents, and the investigators that Kaneki saves calls him disgusting. Rather than saving ghouls who are desperately in need of it, Kaneki has conducted his entire operation so far revolving around the CCG. The reason why is pretty obvious, they’re the only he acknowledges as human. Which is ultimately what Kaneki cares the most about.
Kaneki’s always put his own personal fulfillment over the entire world. That’ primarily what his arc is about, finding himself and his own feeling. There’s no doubt in my mind that’s why Kaneki idealizes his relationship with Amon, a guy he fought three whole times, because he wants so desperately to be acknowledged as a human being. This is however exactly what Ayato calls Kaneki on. You’ve literally made it so every single person here is dependent on you in some way and you really think this is the time for your personal whimsy. If you’re going to become the one eyed king to give yourself a purpose fighting for the sake of others, you could actually try fighting for their sake. Is the gist of his speech.
Right now, the reason Kaneki and Furuta are so wrapped up in each other, the reason for the black and white king’s motife is because the two of them are treating this like a chess match between the two of them. Furuta is the representative of what the absolute worst of Kaneki’s mindset of continually trying to find a purpose for himself in others can lead to. Somebody who has become so distant from this situation he literally treats everybody like they exist for his own fulfillment. Somebody who very blatantly and callously uses his own lack of reasoning to live in order to hurt others.
Furuta and Kaneki as dueling kings are currently two children playing a game for all of Tokyo. However, the ones who suffer in the longrun are not Kaneki and Furuta themselves, but the ghouls they’re using for their bout. I hope at least Kaneki comes to realize that.
He’s made the decision to become the king, so his next step should be learning to genuinely care about ghouls. Because that central issue that he has, wanting so desperately to be acknowledged as a human he’d do almost anything for it. That’s literally the same issue that all the ghouls that he’s fighting for have as well.
A king is somebody who looks through both eyes. That’s kind of the point.
It’s exactly as he said. Takizawa, being empty inside, needs something to hold onto. Amon’s cross is a tangible thing that represents Takizawa’s love for both Amon and Akira, and with it comes Amon’s last words to him: “I believe in you”. Without the cross, without the reminder that he has connections in this world, Takizawa will eventually lose himself. The cross gives him purpose and a reason to come back.
Kaneki knows this. For him, the cross was nothing but a trinket to return to Amon. He doesn’t need it. His title as King, while he may not be enjoying it the way a person enjoys a Sunday drive through the country, gives him direction and a purpose. In a way, it’s his own cross to bear.
Hey Anon! Ah, I reblogged a lot of good posts about Kaneki’s words in the new chapter but, to make things simple, I’d say that if Touka asked for a talk…
besides the fact that she didn’t like being left behind in the previous arc, there is a high chance that she said that because she feels that things aren’t like they used to be.
Basically, it’s all about what she said to Amon:
Initially, :Re didn’t have to be Kaneki’s new home because Touka didn’t even want him back into the ghoul world…
but after the events of Cochlea, things simply unfolded that way and Kaneki found himself joining :Re and living there, but Touka’s words to Tsukiyama still apply because Kaneki being back into the ghoul world isn’t helping him with solving all his issues.
So Touka might have a slight idea of how Kaneki feels because she does understand him well, but to say that she grasps how completely empty he feels…
Well, I’m not sure she would be 100% aware of how much he needs help.
If she is aware of it though, it must be very hard for her and that might be why she left him some space, even though she asked for a talk in ch104: after all Kaneki is depressed, he wanted to die a few volumes ago, and while he might have found a reason to stay alive (thanks to Hide and Arima giving him a purpose -> to fix the world), that doesn’t mean he found a reason to live and a reason to want to live into this new world he’s trying to build.
TL;DR I think we will know what Touka is aware of the moment they will actually talk, but considering that she’s one of the few characters who really understand Kaneki, I wouldn’t be surprised if she herself feared that talk and didn’t really know how to start it, seeing as Kaneki just isn’t doing okay.
Aaaah, I was very sad when Seidou left, even if the promise of an Akiramon talk in the next chapter made me really happy. Also I’m very glad to see Maris Stella again, I missed her :3
However when it comes to Seiakiramon, for now, it’s definitely on hold 🙂 with probably a major akiramon breakthrough in chapters to come, since this little arc seems to focus on Akira’s character development, amongst other things. Anyway, I’m still sad, because…
…Even though we know he has all these feelings about both Akira and Amon, he considers that bringing Amon home to Akira was what he had to do and so now he’s leaving.
It’s Seidou we’re talking about, so no matter how tsundere he can get, we know he leaves because he feels he doesn’t belong with Amon and Akira because of all the crimes he committed. That’s still the redemption path for his character development, so it’s not that surprising as a plot twist even if I would have loved to have him stay.
Well, at least we can be sure that he’ll be back…
So that’s already something, and hopefully he’ll really face Amon and Akira properly next time. :3
Let’s focus on the Akiramon talk next Anon-chan! It seems very promising and I can’t wait :3
I… I don’t know, Anon? They’re free to do what they want, but honestly I’m not sure Sensei might emphasize on this aspect of their relationship, though I guess we can’t really be sure of that either…
That’d be pretty disturbing but an interesting twist to their dynamic considering the whole “how about we start killing together” proposal at the end of the last arc though. Also some people commented that Aura was looking more and more like Torso and…
seeing Aura’s reaction in the new chapter to the children killing “Sasaki”, I was really grossed out by that guy.
Anyway, I want the Qs to talk, and I want Saiko and Urie to talk about Mutsuki in particular if possible, so I guess we’ll see if later we’ll somehow be privy to details about Aura’s and Mutsuki’s current relationship. 🙂
Thanks for passing by and have a nice weekend Anon!
Touka to Kaneki in ch104: Look, can we please talk when you get back????
Kaneki: Err, don’t wanna because the prospect scares me but sure?
Also Kaneki in ch118: man, I’m so dead inside and to the rest of the world that I’ll keep on pretending not to remember I have to have a talk with Touka-chan.
Touka:…………
*meanwhile*
Amon to Touka in ch117: I’m so scared when I think about talking to Akira. It’s been 4 years, so much has changed, I’m a one eyed ghoul now and she used to hate ghouls. Also, I’m unstable and I was raised by a crazy russian priest who forced me to kill other human children for him to eat because he was a ghoul. I even almost hurt Seidou and Yasuhisa because the CCG experimented on me recently. What should I do? I’m such a sinner, I can’t go see her, she’ll never forgive me, oh dear God please help me…
Touka: I definitely think you should go tho’. And don’t forget to bring a gift, it’ll make things easier.
That’s still the redemption path for his character development, so it’s not that surprising as a plot twist even if I would have loved to have him stay. 
midnight-in-town 