Tanaka likely has known Undertaker the longest out of all the Kuro. characters since he worked for Claudia (whose name was on Undertaker’s mourning chain, indicating familiarity).
The scene below means a lot (though it’s not very surprising), but honestly it just creeps me out.
Note how close Undertaker is to RC. It’s not even close at this point– he’s touching the kid.
If you were a butler, would you let just anyone approach or touch your master, especially when that master is practically your grandchild?
Just so you know, Tanaka and RC were standing on the same step at the beginning of this chapter (where they’ve been during OC’s flashbacks).
But while everyone was talking, he disappeared…
While I don’t know where he went, or if this is just an artsy angle and Tanaka either moved back or is purposely absent for aesthetic reasons, Undertaker’s proximity says a lot.
Tanaka let Undertaker approach Real!Ciel.
Tanaka is letting Undertaker say his spiel.
It is now very, very likely that Tanaka knows Undertaker.
Unfortunately, we only got to see one Tanaka-reaction shot in this chapter, as seen below.
This is after RC stated that he wouldn’t let anyone try to punish OC for his lie.
Tanaka is very composed and not disturbed by RC’s speech, indicating that this protective behavior may be normal (based off OC’s flashbacks, I think we can agree).
If you squint hard enough, you can see a degree of sadness, but honestly I read that expression more as calm acceptance rather than sadness at RC’s words.
Aside from this image, we don’t see how Tanaka reacts to Undertaker except for his inactivity– no one’s stopping the man.
The look on Tanaka’s face and his lack of surprise at RC showing up also implies that he knows a great deal about the twin switch, and apparently about RC (due to his allowance of Undertaker’s actions/ proximity).
Questions
Tanaka’s actions and Undertaker’s presence lead to more questions in this deepening plot:
Was Tanaka working with Undertaker?
When did Tanaka become privy to RC’s existence? Did he allow Undertaker to begin his work, or was he only notified after RC was brought back or in the stages of “rehabilitation?” For all we know, Tanaka was just made aware of Undertaker’s presence in this chapter or when RC arrived. Based on his composure toward RC and his lack of interference with Undertaker, I doubt this is the case (i.e. he’s known for a while).
Why does Tanaka allow Undertaker’s current actions?
Tanaka’s lack of interference indicates that he already knew of Undertaker’s involvement. Though Undertaker was an Evil Nobleman, that does not give him the intimacy to meddle in Phantomhive matters, especially ones related to life and death.
Possible answer: The Undertaker-Claudia theory, in which Undertaker and Claudia were friends or lovers (though iirc, the age differences would have left Claudia as a child or relatively young when Undertaker was alive– feel free to correct me if I’m wrong). This long intimacy with the Phantomhives may have reassured Tanaka.
A related theory is that Undertaker is Vincent’s father, whether that be through the guise of Cedric K. Ros or through an extramarital tryst. Reminder that Undertaker would have already been a shinigami at this point, so the question rests with whether or not shinigami can have children. If Undertaker was Vincent’s father, whether as Cedric or himself, and Tanaka knew, he may feel obliged to assist the man in his endeavors.
Love
Could Tanaka only know Undertaker as an Evil Nobleman? Is he moved by promises of reanimation and returning what was once lost? Personally, I’m not so sure if Tanaka would be lured by such ideals. The Halloween chapter (120, iirc) showed that while he greatly misses those he’s lost, he wants their souls to be comforted. Does he think that reanimation is a comforting solution?
What does Tanaka know about Undertaker?
At the very least, Tanaka knows Undertaker from the latter’s role as an Evil Nobleman. However, these two have likely known each other for decades. Tanaka’s composure indicates trust in the man, plus he was not shown reacting to Undertaker’s arrival or explanation. Further than being acquainted with Undertaker, Tanaka likely knows about his reanimation attempts and equally likely about his shinigami status.
Tanaka and Undertaker both share Japanese aspects as well. Since Toboso-sensei enjoys using stereotypes, this could indicate that Tanaka is familiar with the notion of shinigami or believes in such.
Again, all of these questions stem from the idea that Tanaka and Undertaker are more than acquaintances due to the Phantomhive connection and age.
Perhaps next chapter will show Tanaka reacting in shock, that his lack of action this chapter was merely artistic focus, but based off these scraps of context and Tanaka’s composure thus far, I highly doubt it.
Bonus: The Fire
Remember this online mistranslation, in which RC should have said something about OC taking advantage of the fire? What fire do you think RC was referring to?
Originally I thought it was the Phantomhive Manor Fire, but after this chapter, perhaps RC was referring to the cult fire?
OC saw Tanaka after he had Sebastian burn down the cult building– perhaps he told Tanaka about setting the building ablaze and about RC’s fate?
We know that Tanaka knew about the switch, but we don’t know what exactly OC told him about his brother’s fate.
Either fire being referenced makes sense, as evidence would have been lost in both cases.
Time to wait another month to find out what’s up.
I hope you don’t mind me butting in, OP! You make some really good points (although I don’t agree that Undertaker could still have been alive at the same time as Cloudia, that’s a separate issue;;), and there’s something I’d like to add!
First, regarding their shared link with Japan, I think it’s always good to note when Tanaka’s past is on the table that Japan was forcibly opened to trade (and following that its citizens were finally allowed to travel abroad without being automatically branded as pirates) in 1854. This is three years after Vincent was born, and the same year as one of Undertaker’s lockets. If Tanaka had left Japan before that point, he would have been considered a criminal by his homeland.
Therefore, if Cloudia and by extension Undertaker had anything to do with the political situation going on then, it’s even possible Undertaker was one of the first Western people Tanaka ever met. By all means, he has far more reason to side with Undertaker than Sebastian, especially if he knows that Sebastian is here to eat OC.
I personally feel like Tanaka has a general policy of non-interference, considering how he’s played along with OC’s charade, didn’t want Sebastian to do anything drastic during the green Witch arc, and right now doesn’t seem keen on interfering either.
The big thing you reminded me of though, was that there was a gag scene in the anime where Tanaka was found casually drinking tea with Ash, who as we know turned out to be the big bad. (speaking of non-interference, season one also showed him having agreed not to tell Ciel anything under Vincent’s orders, so as not to inspire Ciel to take revenge and live in hatred) (lol). Supposing Tanaka has known about this for a long time, and known about both sides for a long time… tea with the enemy, indeed. I don’t know how you feel about the anime, but considering it was supervised by Takeshi Kuma and has foreshadowed other major things with throwaway gags (like Grelle’s exaggerated suicidal tendencies), I’m personally inclined to say this lines up
Does Undertaker refer to taking the ring from Real Ciel in Vol 2?
In the Ripper arc when Undertaker demonstrates where organs were harvested from the victims, he uses Our Ciel as a prop to show where the girls’ abdomens were mutilated.
I wonder if he did that on purpose knowing that Our Ciel would have a good reason to be uncomfortable with the idea of a kid like him being gutted like that.
If the Ciel who showed up at the manor is a “Real” Ciel, one of the unanswered mysteries of the series is how his body could have been preserved when the cultists’ building burned down.
It’s possible Undertaker was hiding there to collect the body. If he was, he would know how Our Ciel and Sebastian collected the ring.
(Volume 2 pg 59)
Even “steal the little precious” sounds like he’s alluding to the ring.
Either that or she’s referring to UT’s confession that he was the one who retrieved RC’s body (and thus must also be the the person who revived him) since imo that was the biggest revelation in this chapter.
I mean, there were a lot of foreshadowing that UT must be somehow involved in RC’s resurrection (ch108, ch109, ch120, tokuten illustration, etc), so maybe Yana was like “I dropped lots of hints so I assume some people already saw this plot twist coming, but yeah anyway, here it is! Finally, he (UT) admitted that he was the one who’s responsible for RC’s return!”. But honestly, idk ¯_(ツ)_/¯
I’ll just wait until tomorrow and then check other Japanese fans’ reviews of this chapter. Maybe they’ll come up with a more plausible interpretation of Yana’s latest tweet than mine^^;
So now that we know that Undertaker really is the one who brought R!Ciel back from the dead and has confirmed his (probably unhealthy) attachment to the Phantomhives, whatever reasoning that might be, it made me think of a real-life phenomenon that I heard about a few years ago. I have to wonder if Yana is also aware of it and drawing a bit of inspiration from it.
Basically, it officially started around the 1940′s but could have been happening earlier, but some doll makers called ‘reborners’ began to cater specifically to parents who had lost children due to tragedy and still do today. They replicate newborns and infants with very carefully crafted material to make them look as life-like as possible. Some people collect them as hobbies, but some people also have them commissioned for upwards of thousands of dollars as a sort of mememto mori of their own child. These can assist with coping with death, but some people also take things a bit too far and there have been cases of parents emotionally bonding so deeply with the doll that they continue to treat it as if it were their real child. Psychologists have actually begun to study it and caution against buying a ‘reborn doll’ in certain situations. It’s a very tragic and heart-breaking phenomenon.
But it also fits as a good parallel for Undertaker, I think, who is quite literally turning his dead loved ones into ‘dolls’ because he’s unable to cope with their loss. These are just my ‘shower thoughts’ of the day.
Oh yes, I didn’t mean to say they weren’t! I know someone who’s a doll hobbyist and has a few they got second hand. But yeah, it’s also been going on for quite a while.
A very odd thought occurred to me last night just before I fell asleep. It had mostly to do with Undertaker saying he didn’t want to lose another Phantomhive.
I was thinking about how technically, both boys are lost. Real!Ciel lost his soul, and our!Ciel is bound in a demonic contract. While I suppose Undertaker could be planning to kill Sebastian to real our!Ciel, that doesn’t help real!Ciel. He still doesn’t have a soul, and Undertaker has made it very clear that a body cannot accept a soul that not its own. That’s when, just before I fell asleep, a peculiar question came to my mind.
What if the way to save both the boys is to make them one?
It’s odd, but hear me out on this. First, the twins have been described as both mirror images and two halves of a whole. Personality wise, they have differing traits which could compliment each other.
When Undertaker first appears on the scene, what’s the very first thing we see?
Of course, this is an anatomical figure that would have been used in fields such as medicine at the time, but look past its purpose. It also shows a bisected man – a man that looks like part one thing (his insides) and part another.
Imagine if there was a way that Undertaker things he could do this. Our!Ciel posses a soul. His brother possess a body without a demon seal. If somehow you could put those two together – maybe in a Dr. Frankenstein sort of way. It could possibly be a way to save both.
It sounds twisted, but Undertaker has done some twisted things in pursuit of his research – such as causing all those deaths on Campania with his bizarre dolls. He’s very focused on his end game here, and his goal has always been to save at least one of the boys…maybe both.
Thoughts?
This is an interesting theory. It reminds me of the first anime season but there have been other parallels before so maybe it’s the same with this.
Maybe that’s even the whole point in UT’s resurrection attempts (which probably have started after real Ciel had died and our Ciel had made the contract). What if Undertaker is aware that it’s not really possible to bring back the dead? And when he said that he couldn’t lose another Phantomhive maybe he wasn’t referring to real Ciel but to our Ciel.
UT may realize that real Ciel can’t ever be truly come back to life, without a soul and all. He may already count him among those he has lost. But if there’s still a chance to save our Ciel from Sebastian maybe that’s how he’s trying to do it.
I’ve got quite a lot to say about this chapter, some things I ranted about yesterday already, but for now let me just say that this cliffhanger is something I’ve been waiting for a long time, but I hope we get explanations about the current arc before UT starts spilling the beans about why he’s so attached to this family (though most of us already have a few ideas in mind).
I also want to say that this won’t end well, again with no surprise. I’m positive that UT is extremely interested in saving Ciel from Seb…
(he’s probably the one who told Bravat to say that)
…and there is a big chance he thinks that, because the twins were so close, real!Ciel being back might help with separating
his brother
from Seb.
However, the most crucial point is that UT is also doing all of this for himself (”I simply could not bear to lose another Phantomhive”), which is clearly biasing him about how clinging onto your dead loved ones isn’t a good method of coping and won’t be one for our!Ciel either.
Honestly, it’s probably going to be the arc UT fails/fucks up for the first time in the story: he’s so focused on the idea that he can’t bear to lose more of the Phantomhive family that it’s blinding him to why bringing back the twin wasn’t a good idea. It shows through:
Lizzie being depressed for several months
Ciel feeling horrible right now
real!Ciel most likely not being 100% okay in the head
the attack against Soma and Agni (I mean, true, UT probaly doesn’t care about them, but it heavily factors into awful how Ciel must feel right now).
I’m just saying, wanting to save our!Ciel from Seb is one thing, but it should have included not attacking our!Ciel’s very few friends. Maybe that means UT doesn’t have a lot of control over the twin (who probably attacked Soma and Agni out of jealousy?), which is the same as having already fucked up anyway.
Finally, yet another argument about UT being biased, but if the RCMT is true, then it means UT ignored the possibility that real!Ciel was partially responsible for Vincent’s death (if he saw his cinematic record?) and brought him back anyway and that is… messed up.
TL;DR if the current arc is all about UT not moving on, then it’s going to slap him back in the face and frankly? He’d deserve it, and I say that as a big fan of his.
Hey so I received a few questions and I realized maybe I had not been clear on something.
When I say that UT deserves that this whole arc gets thrown back to his face, I mean it as ‘he’s lying to himself if he’s trying to justify any of this and I hope he’ll realize/admit it because otherwise the wakeup call will be tough/he’ll keep on making the same mistakes until he ceases to exist”.
I’m not going to deny it, it’s easy to feel for UT: we more or less all have a good idea as to why he’s so bent on “not losing another Phantomhive” + he’s a cool and handsome character, so it’s natural to want to pat him on the shoulder and say “there there, plz don’t cry”.
However, there is a difference between excusing his actions so far by pointing out he’s feeling lonely and miserable vs acknowledging his grief all the while saying that his way is definitely wrong. And the same goes for him in the story.
Maybe it will make more sense if I use another example: so take Frances or Tanaka. Whatever happened to Claudia, whether she was killed to or not (we might find out soon apparently), the fact something horrible happened to Vincent and his family would have been enough to justify Tanaka and/or Frances going on a vendetta.
Now it’s obviously super hard to be sure where Frances is concerned because she doesn’t exist in the plot, but still, does these two having reasons to wish for revenge automatically mean they ought to go after it? Nope, obviously not and you can be sure that if it were the case, it would be narratively depicted to be a wrong decision (the way it is with Ciel’s revenge, through Seb waiting to eat his soul mainly, once he’ll be done).
So it’s the same for UT and that’s what I meant to convey: UT’s way is wrong, there is 0 doubt about it (and if you need a proof, look at Agni’s murder, Lizzie constantly crying or even how much Ciel is shaking in the new chapter), but even then, it’s about whether the character acknowledges that his choices have bad consequences or not.
If UT’s way to go about the current arc is going to be summed up as “I can do what I want because I have reasons to act this way, thus you can’t stop me”, then this leads to why I’m hoping this arc will turn out to be a giant slap to his scarred face (=> he’ll be forced to realize he fucked up).
On the other hand, if UT shows that he’s already aware that the current arc is fucked up on many aspects but that he doesn’t care because he just wants to feel better (or if he admits that bringing back the twin is entirely selfish and for his own sake), well, at least that shows he’s aware of his actions, even if they’re wrong.
It’s subtle, I know, but I find that UT lying to himself vs showing awareness creates a lot of differences for him as a character and for what we might expect of the rest of the arc. That’s it, sorry for rambling!
I’ve got quite a lot to say about this chapter, some things I ranted about yesterday already, but for now let me just say that this cliffhanger is something I’ve been waiting for a long time, but I hope we get explanations about the current arc before UT starts spilling the beans about why he’s so attached to this family (though most of us already have a few ideas in mind).
I also want to say that this won’t end well, again with no surprise. I’m positive that UT is extremely interested in saving Ciel from Seb…
(he’s probably the one who told Bravat to say that)
…and there is a big chance he thinks that, because the twins were so close, real!Ciel being back might help with separating
his brother
from Seb.
However, the most crucial point is that UT is also doing all of this for himself (”I simply could not bear to lose another Phantomhive”), which is clearly biasing him about how clinging onto your dead loved ones isn’t a good method of coping and won’t be one for our!Ciel either.
Honestly, it’s probably going to be the arc UT fails/fucks up for the first time in the story: he’s so focused on the idea that he can’t bear to lose more of the Phantomhive family that it’s blinding him to why bringing back the twin wasn’t a good idea. It shows through:
Lizzie being depressed for several months
Ciel feeling horrible right now
real!Ciel most likely not being 100% okay in the head
the attack against Soma and Agni (I mean, true, UT probaly doesn’t care about them, but it heavily factors into awful how Ciel must feel right now).
I’m just saying, wanting to save our!Ciel from Seb is one thing, but it should have included not attacking our!Ciel’s very few friends. Maybe that means UT doesn’t have a lot of control over the twin (who probably attacked Soma and Agni out of jealousy?), which is the same as having already fucked up anyway.
Finally, yet another argument about UT being biased, but if the RCMT is true, then it means UT ignored the possibility that real!Ciel was partially responsible for Vincent’s death (if he saw his cinematic record?) and brought him back anyway and that is… messed up.
TL;DR if the current arc is all about UT not moving on, then it’s going to slap him back in the face and frankly? He’d deserve it, and I say that as a big fan of his.
I can’t believe Sebby is so dumb that he forgot all about the Campania and Weston arcs.
midnight-in-town 