This
phrase reminded me of the title of chapter 150, Ark, so I started
wondering if these 2 chapters should be read as complementary and if this new
chapter should be in a sense a subversion of the chapter Ark.
In
itself the title Ark can be a reference to two Biblical anecdots.
The
first one is the Noah’s Ark where Noah is ordered by God to build an ark where
a couple for every animal species is to be hosted, so that after the Flood the
world can still be repopulated once again. The reference to Noah’s Ark may be
because in chapter 150 we see the two species joining hands in order to survive
a situation (Dragon) which is presented as apocaliptic.
However,
this chapter’s title seems a reference to another Ark which is mentioned in the
Bible i.e. the Ark of the Covenant (a synonym for Alliance). This Ark was built because God ordered so
and it is a symbol of both the presence of the divine in the world and the
alliance between God himself and the Jews. This reference seems fitting as well
since in chapter 150 an alliance was made between the two races.
However,
it seems to me that Ishida kinda inverted the titles of this chapter and of chapter
150. As a matter of fact chapter 150 is where an Alliance is made and in this
chapter we are finally revealed what the Ark is and this revelation is a
subversion of the interpretation which was given previously. This is because
the Ark wasn’t something made to assure the survival of the humans, but it is
something made to specifically help half-humans, so the people who were
victimized by the previous system. What is more, the way these people are saved
through the Ark is not by becoming humans, but ghouls, so the race which was
considered by the Washuu themselves inferior and demonic.
The
Alliance itself can refer two different covenants. The one presented to us in
chapter 150 between humans and ghouls and the one between Furuta and V. What is
more, Dragon (the Ark) is the reason of both alliances since it is the reason
why humans and ghouls united, but it is also why V accepted to help Furuta as
this chapter made clear. In a sense Dragon is the Ark of the Covenant between
Furuta and V.
And the official arts by Sensei are just one of the reasons. Initially he had the possibility to be…
either OEG preceding Eto in the timeline. After his birthday art of this year and the recent chapters though, I’m now more tempted to say he’s the second OEG of the timeline, the one who almost annihilated the CCG and who was defeated at the time by the newly-created V organization.
Here’s the general recap post of all my theories on the subject, though some old points might be slightly outdated. I’d advise you to also read this theory by @donatoporpora because it has some good points and interesting observations!
I hope it answers your question, have a nice day Anon!
Hi Anon! And I know right? Uta = OEK or not aside, it looks like we don’t know everything yet if the last two chapters lead to a contradiction.
The kids said that the Nagaraj’s kakuja turned into stone…
…but Kimi last week also said that a kakuja would disappear even if the ghoul couldn’t be freed…
…and that it could take up to 200 years for this to happen.
The Nagaraj is from 100+ years ago, so if the previous OEK wasn’t freed and Kimi’s right, then his kakuja should still disappear in another 100 years. Yet the kids in ch150 also said that the kakuja turned into stone, which leaves me to be ???
Might be a case of lost in translation somewhere though, but I agree with you, right now it seems that the OEK never managed to escape from that huge kakuja, as I said last week already. 🙂 That’s why I offered other possibilities about who Uta might be here. 🙂
Ishida-sensei hasn’t told us everything yet anyway, so it’s better not to assume too much until he explains everything properly. :))
But Anon, who said that the conflict is solved? The current situation is called a temporary common front and, as @captainhunterman proposed here, there is still a possibility that the plan will not go 100% well.
The way I see it, this “alliance” is a test and no one is trusting the side opposite to theirs yet (obviously). So the two sides certainly won’t mix, but they might respect the fact that they’re linked by a common goal (=> stopping Dragoneki) and that’s how the status quo might hold… that is to say, as long as the operation goes favorably.
there are a lot of lies, half-truths and hidden feelings going on.
I agree! I think a few characters are 100% genuine, like Hide, Akira, Amon, Saiko, as well as Touka, Nishiki, Tsukiyama and the other ghouls we know, because they’re going for Kaneki’s sake…
…but the rest of the CCG? They’re going because Juuzou apparently agreed to the common front:
And even if I love him a lot, I do have my doubts about what he really meant by “it will be easier that way”, since as you said, a 100 year old conflict can’t exactly be solved in 18 pages (not that Juuzou has any particular animosity towards ghouls, but surely a lot of investigators following him still do).
In my opinion, the human/ghoul conflict will truly be solved the day coexistence will be considered as possible, which is to say, the day ghouls at least find an alternative food source. Until then, it’s only a temporary common front (and a tensed one at that), because the CCG wants to avoid more human casualties while ghouls want their king back.
I hope it helps! Have a nice day Anon. 🙂
Hi Anon! Well, it’s for a simple reason really.
As I said above, I think a few investigators are genuine and really want to help Kaneki out of this situation, both to minimalize casualties and to save him, but that certainly isn’t the case of most of the CCG.
There is a reason why investigators trust in and follow Juuzou, who’s currently the most reliable investigator because he is the strongest and seen as Arima 2.0. Juuzou’s personal feelings aside though, what should be the natural conclusion to the current situation, from any random CCG investigator’s point of view?
“We’re going to stop that thing once and for all…
…to save the city.”
So does this mean that, still from a random investigator’s point of view, Kaneki gets to walk free after that, now that the CCG is aware of how extremely dangerous he can turn out to be?
That’s why I don’t trust the CCG overall. Ghouls are in to save their king: they will play fair to help saving Kaneki, whereas most of the CCG might think that they will cooperate with ghouls to find Kaneki, only to eliminate him just after to make sure he will never transform into such a thing again.
That’s also why I don’t think this chapter was ever supposed to imply that the conflict is solved => because the two sides might not want the same ending to the current situation and thus we may face an issue between humans and ghouls once again, with Kaneki in the middle of it all.
Of course, before anyone asks, I don’t think Kaneki will die. Rather, he will probably show how useful he can be, once the main big bad (V most likely) will rise up and humans and ghouls will have to fully accept the alliance, for real this time.
TL;DR I trust the investigators whom I know are genuine about saving Kaneki, but “temporary common front” means that the status quo between humans and ghouls will most likely hold until they findKaneki. Then, surely, they’ll disagree again.
I mean, that was my point exactly. The uneasy peace they came to, came about when any of the ghouls who would have complicated the situation were not even present for it.
Including Seidou Takizawa who really should have been an easy pick for Amon, if Amon really meant what he said where he thought Takizawa’s strength was being a ghoul investigator and that therefore he can live and work alongside him to be redeemed. This is literally Amon walking back into the CCG and being allowed to fight as a ghoul investigator once more as if nothing happened.
Conspicuously absent also is Hinami. Not only are the most violent ghouls excluded, but also the most victimized.
Juuzou didn’t just “do his job” with Hinami, he hacked her apart while taunting her. All the while he probably heard what Hinami said to Touka, that she was fighting like this to protect children. Hinami is literally the first victim of the CCG that cloud’s the CCG’s righteousness were introduced through, throughout the rabbit arc.
Yet we see Juuzou is just as merciless to her as he is everybody else, and even starts pulling faces like this.
Am I saying all of this to bash Juuzou though? No, it’s just an explanation for why Hinami is not there. She probably can’t face Juuzou the same way Touka can, because Hinami bore the brunt of Juuzou’s violence in that scene. When asked about it, she breaks down crying entirely, and her leg hasn’t even fully healed yet.
In other words Hinami is legitimately traumatized by the whole thing, and those aren’t feelings that she can sweep under the rug. Consider too, that Hinami’s instigating point of her taruma, is that she made Kaneki watch when her mother died. That she needed to rely on him and be saved by him in that moment. In her fight with Juuzou, Hinami had to experience that trauma fresh over again.
She had to watch Kaneki come save her again, and then because he saved her he transformed right in front of her eyes into something unrecognizable. Hinami whose primary character issue is that she feels weak, and that she hurts the people in her life because they constantly have to step in to protect her, gets to re-experience that feeling all over again.
So yeah, all of the characters who cannot really simply let bygones be bygones are not there. I think that’s on purpose, and not ‘because Ishida can’t write Hinami’s arc” or whatever as I’ve heard some people saying.
Furuta’s plan is idyllic, it runs on fairy tale logic, it’s literally based off of fairy tales he heard from somewhere.
It should fall apart at some point. Thematically, because while revenge is pointless, the complete opposite side simply trying to forget everything and move on is just as pointless too. There’s a value to remembering even a painful and tragic history, and that’s because in facing the past head on and understanding it we learn from it. However, when we forget, we miss out on our opportunity to learn.
I think this arc is if anything, meant to set up that both of the extremes are wrong. That both sides continually fighting one another in an endless cycle of revenge is wrong, but also that forgetting what each side has lost and trying to sweep it all under the rug or white wash it for the sake of the future is also wrong. Which is why this arc has literally been full of nothing but shallow alliances, and people trying to unite over rhetoric and figurehead rather than debating and working through ideas. Which is what a discussion really is. And what the ultimate end goal of Tokyo Ghoul seems to be, and have been for a long time.
I’m the guy of Roma, I just forgiven the part that she didn’t
had any memories of her parents. In an hypotethical case, if Roma knows
the OEK, maybe she just was produced by the Naaga Kagune like a Ghoul.
You don’t need to response this message, but please read it with the
other one.
I’m fine, thanks.
I’m not sure Roma knows the original OEK, but she knows Uta, who has most likely wielded the title of OEK at least once in history.
I agree with that post about Uta probably being the Nagaraja (as you can see he’s also associated with snakes, and Nagaraja means king of the snakes), I’d also say he’s a Washuu. I would also agree with @midnight-in-town regarding Noroi being the king that almost brought about the CCG’s destruction. There’s also this mysterious woman shown with him when Kuzen handed Eto over to him, though I doubt that was Roma.
Yet there are a few things that make me doubt some of the things above. The king mentioned by Nishiki looks a lot like Uta.
The depiction even emphasizes his left eye as his kakugan, which is most likely the same eye Uta’s actual kakugan is in.
Uta could’ve also been the second OEK, of course. Maybe he decided to try his hand at this another time. There’s also the possibility that it was Uta but not the original Uta.
As we learned in chapter 150, Dragon’s body will dissolve if the main body, Kaneki, is removed.
The same should apply for the Nagaraja.
Yet it still remains, after all those decades.
My guess is that the Uta we know is a kagune clone of the Uta that destroyed the 24th ward. And maybe our Uta also became a OEK, to be precise the one mentioned by Nishiki.
When asked how he got so strong, Uta replies with “I don’t know that.”, which would be understandable as a clone of the original OEK.
To get back to your question, anon, whether Roma knows the original OEK or not, I doubt it. It’s also impossible for her to have been created by the Nagaraja’s kagune, since she was 55 years old when she died. The Nagaraja incident most likely happened approximately a century ago.
Oooh I didn’t know about the 150 Days part!! (since we are at chapter 150 of :re) but I definitely think the idea behind the title ‘Ark’ was about species being brought together for survival
It could. A lot of what Donato says to Urie definitely applies to Amon as well, and he provoked Urie into framing out and left him there, so my presumption would be that this might provoke Amon into a frame out. @lunaamatista pointed out on twitter yesterday that Amon’s arm looks like it’s getting worse, which could be foreshadowing a frame out:
Plus his RC count is kind of off the charts.
Yes, I think it’s possible Donato will hurt someone in front of Amon. It’s possible that Amon’s consequence for abandoning Seidou is for Seidou to wind up hurt, but Akira’s a more likely option imo. I do not think Akira will die, but Amon’s already been shown to be provoked when Akira’s at risk (on Rushima) and also given his hero complex, if he’s not able to save someone he cares about because he frames out, well. That could be a lesson learned.
Thank you for the ask!
I, too, think Seidou, Kurona, or Akira could be likely candidates to make Amon realize his position is not that of a hero, but I think for the first two their roles are more likely to show Amon that not everyone needs to be saved by him. It has even been shown already: they could survive just fine without him and they were the ones to save him during the Clown siege.
There’s yet another character I think could trigger something for Amon, though, and that’s the same character who motivated him the first time we saw his drive to do what he thought right:
That’s Hajime’s first appearance, and last time we saw him, Amon hadn’t exactly succeeded in protecting him either. Whether Amon found a dead or severely injured Hajime, I think the situation could also make him realize he has been failing to protect people all along.
But as both anon and Hamliet said, Akira is another candidate, and I’ve been afraid of that nearly since :re started. The reason is precisely that Donato has teased Amon about his relationship with Akira once:
And then inquired about Akira again in :re:
Call me paranoid, but in a series with so much foreshadowing, it strikes me as relevant that Donato would bring her up in both of his first appearances.
There’s another thematic reason, and that is that Amon’s current issue is his need to step down from the hero role and see himself as a human (in the sense of humanity, not species). He is constantly talking about things he has to do, rather than what he wants to do. But when it comes to Akira, he seems to be completely impulsive, as shown in Rushima where even Takizawa calls him out on that. There is also this scene:
Touka talks about wanting to see her, and then maybe even having to.
To which Amon replies with things they both have had to do because of The World™:
Touka probably realizes here that Amon acts based on the circumstances he believes bind him to act (spoiler: they don’t, he has choices), so she makes an appeal to emotion and asks him if he wants to see her. That’s when she finally gets an answer out of him and convinces him to go.
So when it comes to Akira, Amon is usually capable of seeing past his perception of righteousness and act for himself, which makes her especially susceptible to becoming a device to make Amon have an emotional explosion like Kaneki did. It’s why I was especially concerned when they did kiss in :re chapter 121, because the closer the relationship, the higher the stakes.
There’s also the fact that, this time, he did not have to bring her into the conflict – if he wanted to keep her safe, she could have stayed out. Of course, Akira has her own will so it was not up to Amon entirely, but this time he could have probably had at least a word on not having her on the line of danger. This time, it’s his own choices that could harm her, which could bring about a much needed realization that choices themselves exist.
This is a great addition; thanks Luna! I wouldn’t be surprised to see some kind of combination tbh.
Every single component in our bodies is like that origami paper Kimi was holding… everything from our DNA to the tissues making up our organs.
On average, every human chromosome is 5 cm (2 inch long). Each human cell contains 46 chromosomes and so 46 x 5 cm = 230 cm (46 x 2 inch = 92 inches). The size of an average human cell is 20 μm (0.00078 inch)….basically the DNA content in one cell is 11500000 times bigger than the cell itself. So how does a DNA that is this big fits inside a tiny cell? It coils (folds) around histones (proteins).
It’s like wrapping a long ass rope around a scaffold to save space.
The DNA coiling example is an extreme case of what Kimi was trying to explain with the origami paper. Spread out, an origami paper occupies more space than its folded state does (in this example its folded into a crane)… just like DNA forms long filaments when its spread out that occupy more space than the coiled filaments.
Kimi then says that the unfolded paper is 2.5 times the size of the folded paper.
This makes sense because if the crane occupies only 40% of the space the unfolded paper occupies, then if you do the math, the ratio would be 2.5. Let’s assume the space of the crane is 40 (arbitrary unit) and the space of the unfolded paper is 100 (arbitrary unit), then the 100 = y x 40 100/40 = y and y = 2.5.
After giving this simple example, Kimi proceeds to explain that the kagune is much more complex than the paper crane and is actually folded in more complex way… so you can even compare it to protein folding (not discussed here) or the example I gave about DNA earlier.
Just like DNA does not coil around histones in only one way, but in several ways, Kaneki’s kagune form, taking in hundreds of kakuhou, is going to encompass plenty of coiled/folded forms within it.
As such, the current form of the Dragon is actually folded. If it unfolds, taken into consideration how many kakuhous it has, it can spread further.
The only way to stop this is to remove the source that would allow these folded kagunes to unfold.. aka Kaneki.
midnight-in-town 