yo i’m actually excited by kaneki and touka matching because in traditional chinese myth (like the oldest iteration) the phoenix (凤凰) is depicted in pairs, facing/mirroring each other – the fèng (凤) is the male bird, and huáng (凰) is the female bird. so what if there are two phoenixes?? both kaneki and touka??
also, traditionally the feathers of a chinese phoenix come in five colours, representing the five confucian virtues (i may be getting the colours wrong because i’m a Bad Chinese Person but here we go):
rén (仁) [black]: charity, humanity
[kuroneki????]
yì (義) [white]: justice, righteousness; can also be doing one’s best (in service of others), loyalty, consideration for others
[oek??]
zhī (知) [red]: knowledge; alternatively it could be zhì (智), wisdom.
[could this be the red of kagune? we are learning more and more about it + it gives the (former) human characters perspective/understanding]
[alternatively, the red of uta’s eyes?? man knows too fucking much]
xīn (心) [green]: lit. heart; faithfulness, true to oneself. could also be xìn (信), which is belief, or faith in someone else.
[since green is eto’s motif, could this be eto’s influence on both kaneki & popular ghoul ideology?? eto is the heart of aogiri and helps make kaneki the heart of goat]
lǐ (礼) [yellow]: lit. manners, correct behaviour. but it could represent a religious sacrifice; a ritual.
[you know who’s yellow and a sacrifice? lmao hide]
i’m probably reading too much into this because who knows how relevant chinese mythology is to tg, but yo it kind of fits. phoenixes are actually the oldest sign of chinese imperial power; the chinese emperor’s called huáng dì (皇帝), which is obviously a reference to phoenix (just look at the two characters lmao). the dragon did not come to embody chinese imperial power until the yuan dynasty, a dynasty that was created by invaders, the mongols.
also i’m hoping that the phoenix imagery is going to come to mean that kaneki (& also touka if the fèng huáng is really two parts) is nearing the end of his evolution as a leader. unlike the dragon, which is sometimes a malicious and unknowable force, the phoenix is always a sign of virtue, light, and righteousness. it is said that a phoenix will only manifest in a ruler without darkness or corruption (zhèng zhì qīng míng, 政治清明). exciting. maybe this is when goat will finally come into its own
addendum: dragons in chinese myth can fly, but they are primarily gods of the sea (usually when they ascend to the sky, they cause storms/typhoons, so still watery shit)
do you know who’s watery
also worth noting is the chinese trope character the xiǎo lóng nü (小龙女, ‘little dragon girl’) or lóng ér (龙儿, ‘dragon child’), who is known to be beautiful beyond usual comprehension/imagination, white as snow (REMEMBER THE WHITE HAIR GUYS), powerful so don’t underestimate her!! and cold and indifferent (MY ICE QUEEN <3).
she is a trained master in martial arts (looking at you shachi, father of the entire century), and reportedly will marry/give her power to anyone who manages to defeat her (ha good luck dying trying, folks). in one iteration of the story she ends up falling in love and marrying yáng guò (杨过), whose name literally means ‘mistake’ because his mother regretted having him with his father. he later gets the courtesy name gǎi zhī (改之, ‘to correct’). both he and xiǎo lóng nü in this story grow up as orphans, relying on one another to survive, and thus their relationship is seen as somewhat incestuous.
I loved everything about it, the way you can feel the nerves as he reaches out to hold Touka after she tells him where he was that it started with Kaneki being so nervous that he reached out to hold onto Touka.
I loved that he needed the reassurance that this wasn’t a dream, that this was real and he was gonna meet his best friend again.
Then I love how they nonchalantly greeted each other after not seeing each other for years and Kaneki thinking he killed him the whole time.
I love that Kaneki smirked at him and how he couldn’t even wait to get up to Hide like a normal person, how he jumped the building and ran to him, as Hide watched him in shock.
But, what I loved most of all is that this wasn’t a sad reunion, which I was really worried it was gonna be tbh. I love that they were just genuinely happy to be each other, and that Hide pointed out that Kaneki was super hyper about this and how Kaneki got embarrassed. I like that Hide poked fun about Kaneki’s neck being a beautiful fugly. Because this is what a good friendship is when your reunited you pick up where you left off and not dwell on what happened while you were away. You can feel the love that they have for each other in this exchange because the whole mood of the chapter it became light hearted.
I also love how Kaneki put together all the little pieces that Hide did behind the scenes when he was Haise and thanked Hide for it. I love how Hide gave the very real sassy response of then pay me for it. I love how natural this felt, and how instead of just going for the deep they goofed off.
This part though had to be my favorite when Kaneki addressed the elephant in the room “ show me your face.”. I love it because Hide tried to joke it off, whats with you and Touka wanting to see my face. I haven’t put my makeup on. Its his last ditch attempt to make Kaneki to stop, and protect him from what he did. But, Kaneki doesn’t go along with it and this time clarifies what he want “Show me what I did”. That has a lot of weight behind it, because it’s obvious Hide doesn’t have any hard feelings, but Kaneki does. He hurt his best friend and to move on he can’t just ignore it, he has to face it. You can tell how much this hurts Hide, his eyes widen cause he knows he can’t back away and his fingers are shaking as he takes it off his mask.
I like how they don’t really comment on it, Kaneki just calls him out for protecting him from the bad he needs to see. I love this reunion because they both needed to be back in each others life. Hide physically avoided Kaneki because he didn’t want him to see what he did. Kaneki mentally avoided thinking about him cause he couldn’t bear the thought of what he did. They were able to face what they have avoided, and were able to stay positive minus a few tears. I love it because it skipped the melodrama and went straight to reigniting their friendship and it was beautiful
I think Furuta managed to craft a pretty interesting trick with the kagune monsters. For years the tactic that was used by the CCG was the slaughter of ghouls. They were killed and then turned to weapons, but it seems that a ghoul populace of some sort should always remain, since the Washuu needed an a reason to validate their position, need and reason in society.
However, what Furuta has done is that he seems to have turned this basic tactic upside down. The more you kill and use violent means (at least by normal people who are affected by the poison), the more ghouls are produced into the world.
It`s the amount of humans that will actually decline. It`s like this makes the earlier method of dealing with the ghouls seems like a complete laughing stock. Maybe this is a problem that is not solved by killing? Of course if Kaneki is not affected by the poison as it seems, and since these creatures pose a threat, then maybe this matter needs to be dealt with old fashioned ways. Still, I feel like Furuta is mocking the old militant approaches the CCG and Washuu took against ghouls.
Also, while I think Furuta was just kidding and playing around, I find it interesting that he seems to treat these monsters like people on some level. The people in the hospital treating people who are turning into ghouls, seemed to avert their eyes when the person turned into a ghoul. I might be overthinking this, but I just find it amusing and interesting that Furuta is interviewing a monster like it was the average joe from the street, while some folks seem to stop treating people as persons and normal, as soon as they are turned into ghouls.
A bit like how Urie was ready to kill that person in the last chapter because she was a ghoul, but stopped when it was realized that her origin was human.
Of course it`s possible that my interpretation of that scene is totally incorrect, and the nurse is not averting her eyes, and in reality that angle is really just from behind her. Someone is reaching for her, from her behind, and that is probably the biting incident that Kimi described.
Hello Anon and this is a good observation, but while I can’t be sure, I’m not really worried. 🙂
This is what I was explaining here and here: normally ROS is a human’s disease because they don’t have a kakuhou to regulate the oversecretion of Rc cells.
Knowing that, it does appear to be strange that Saiko got affected and Urie almost was too (since as Qs, they do have a kakuhou), so I don’t dismiss the idea that even ghouls might be endangered. However for now it makes more sense to think that the Qs were at risk simply because they’re still humans despite having an artificial kakuhou.
Besides, the whole plan seems to be about turning humans into ghouls…
so it would be logical for ghouls to still be okay, because their kakuhou is natural and thus their regulation abilities probably are more efficient than those of the Qs.
About Touka herself now, frankly I doubt that ch160 was enough to get her poisoned if that’s even possible since she’s a natural ghoul, first of all because she didn’t trigger any explosion (unlike Saiko and Urie did) and secondly, because even Urie who got more in contact than she did with those things will be okay according to Kimi.
I do agree with you though that these…
got a big focus in ch160 and so might be about more than exhaustion, especially since we know she’s been generally weakened lately due to eating human food for her baby, but still, her kakuhou should in theory be enough to deal with elevated Rc cells amount.
If anything, I was thinking this might be something that will turn out to be relevant for her baby instead as you also proposed, maybe, if just because it’s still a huge “?” on every aspect and will surely need to get addressed at some point.
This is 100% theoretical, but I proposed before that the only way for Hybrid Baby not to die in Touka’s womb…
would be if it were to develop a kakuhou and thus to be born as a natural OEG, following this concept:
We know Hybrid Baby at least has the gene for it thanks to Touka, so what’s left to trigger its kakuhou’s development (according to my long reasoning I explained in that link above) would be for the maternal environment to present a high Rc cells rates, so that Hybrid Baby will need to regulate those Rc cells and thus will develop a kakuhou in order to do so.
It’s like a mechanism of “up regulation” as long as you have the gene for it and I’m hoping that’s where Ishida is leading with this arc and future biological explanations, since we’ve seen with the recent chapters that some humans can develop a kakuhou if needed (that lady from the CCG in the previous chapter) but some others couldn’t (all those patients we saw with ROS disease).
So maybe Sensei intends to expand his explanation of kakuhou development in these humans-becoming-new-ghouls and make it relevant for Touka’s pregnancy, which would explain the focus on those veins on her hands as she was digging for Kaneki in ch160. Maybe. xD
TL;DR BECAUSE ACCHAN NEVER STOPS RAMBLING, three possibilities:
Touka will be 200% okay and the current crisis is irrelevant to her character because she has a kakuhou and thus is doing fine
in that case, those veins from ch160 were just to show how exhausted and desperate she was getting while trying to rescue Kaneki.
Touka might get affected because this crisis somehow also affects ghouls or because she’s weakened by all the human food she’s been eating lately
in that case, I’m sure both her and her baby will be alright eventually even if everyone will be scared for her sake in the meantime.
Touka will be 200% okay but the current crisis will turn out to be 200% relevant to her pregnancy
in that case, those veins could indeed have been about her getting in contact with what triggers oversecretion of RC cells in humans,
but this will only matter for her baby and most likely trigger its kakuhou development in order to regulate all these RC cells, thus making sure that it will safely be born as a natural OEG.
I hope it helps and that it’s understandable! Have a nice day Anon. 🙂
midnight-in-town 