Right!? But the good thing is that Nishiki offered a possible treatment option: eat more RC cells (I’m guessing we can expect full-kakuja Kaneki in the near-future then, since Hajime was raving about the “miracle human” half-kakuja in the same chapter).
ALSO, I’m still side-eyeing why his eye is all effed up. I have a theory here [x] and here [x]. They’re kinda old and need updating, but you get the idea.
It also means that my theory about why the demi-humans have shortened lifespans might be right; that they’re truly closer to ghouls by nature and their bodies collapse without their RC cells being replenished.
Double also: it provides why the Sphinx Trading Co “ghoul goop” can keep bodies like the V agents (”advanced” Garden kids) and Okahira alive. They’re cannibalizing, and replenishing the RC cells their kagune needs to keep their bodies moving.
Triple also: that gross pate Urie ate with Matsuri? the reason why the Washuu’s meals checked out? … it wasn’t normal food, and it wasn’t human, but most likely ghouls meat. The Washuu’s are a bunch of cannibals, and if Miza and Tsukiyama are any example, we probably haven’t seen their (underdeveloped?) kagune bc of a mutation purposely and precariously bred into their bloodline to make them seem more human. That act can’t go on forever, though, because now we know that RC cells need to be replenished in order for them to survive.
Greedy.
It also might explain what makes demi-humans “failures”, how Arima and Rize could be full siblings, and what the deal with Furuta’s “cannibal” rant was. They’re marked by the fact that they don’t have kagune/kakugan, and therefore can’t benefit from cannibalizing… I mean, with the chemistry of their hodgepodge hybrid bloodline, any of the Garden kids–same parents or not– could come out closer to a ghoul or a human, and their role depends almost entirely on chance.
I`ve been thinking about Eto`s revolution again, and if my idea about Eto wanting to eradicate the CCG/V/Washuu or what ever she sees as the warped root, is right. If that faction is destroyed and smashed to pieces, I guess it will solve some problems. Ghoul kind would not be hunted down by this special force anymore, and I guess they could come out of hiding. They would walk among the humans.
But what then, what happens after that? The simple removal of the faction will not solve the food problem, that has been raised again and again in different disccucssion here. Maybe CCG/V/Washuu acted as an mental cage that made people only reconsider the militaristic option when dealing problems with ghouls, so as they are taken care of maybe the mindset towards ghouls will change? Aiding ghouls was a severe crime, so if that goes away maybe people`s mindset will change?
But I think this still raises some problems even if that were the case. Now at the moment ghoul kind has been shunned to live underground. I wonder if that has made them bitter towards humans? So when the CCG/V/Wahsuu is crushed, I wonder how they will treat or react to the humans above ground, who sheered when Furuta was giving a speech on top of a pile of ghoul corpses? Also there is potentially a an even older civilization in the depths of the 24th ward, possibly harboring even older and stronger hatred towards the CCG and the rest of the humankind.
So what I am getting at with this is that when you remove the powerful faction that was the CCG, yes you indeed solve the problem that you erase an organization that was very oppressive towards ghouls, making their life very hard, almost impossible. But, even thou how evil and how much of Washuu`s plaything the CCG is/was, I think it still acted as an safeguard of sorts to protect humans from ghoul attacks. If that safeguard is removed, and humanity is left to deal with a ghoul mass that possibly has very negative feelings towards it`s cousin, I am terrified of what it means. I think it might be the return of this age:
“I mean, that was back when almost every ghoul ate well enough to use their kagune…”
As a human, that sounds pretty terrifying to me. What if there are more ghouls like Rize, who don´t seem to care about balance? If the aftermath of the possibly downfall of the CCG is not dealt with correctly, I fear that it might the beginning of the tyranny of ghouls.
So, @kanekikenunot and I were talking a few days ago about the possible symbolism between the original OEK and the Minotaur of Crete, and I wanted to expand on their post about it.
**just a warning, the two stories don’t coincide perfectly because there’s a lot of holes due to possible deception and backstabbing between V and the Washuu, so take all of this with a grain of salt
As the story goes, King Minos was given an impressive bull to sacrifice to Poseidon, but decided to keep it for himself. When Poseidon found out, he forced Pasiphae, the wife of Minos, to fall madly in love with the bull. They consummated, and the Minotaur was born. Being an unnatural beast– half human and half bull– it grew to feast on human flesh.
Horrified, King Minos ordered the carpenter Daedelus to construct a massive labyrinth built beneath his palace at Knossos, and banished the Minotaur to it’s tunnels.
The Washuu Estate and the ruins of Knossos.
In the scope of Tokyo Ghoul, the story of the Minotaur offers a possible explanation of the One-Eyed King’s origin.
For one thing, the 24th ward is frequently described as a labyrinth. However, Nishiki revealed in ch128 that the OEK dug the 24th ward himself, making him King Minos, and Daedalus, and the Minotaur.
This lines up with my theory that the original One Eyed King is actually a relative of V and the Washuu– one that was most likely the result of a shameful affair between noble families; a human and ghoul. Their shared offspring was miraculously born (possibly during a time when food was scarce, when alternatives were necessary), and with it’s single kakugan, was itself proof of their adultery.
The poor half-ghoul child was most likely hidden away the same way Eto was.
And, like Eto, the future king most likely lashed out once it was old enough. A human parent could fear for their own life, or that their “monster” child would be targeted. A ghoul parent would would find that their half-ghoul offspring was eons stronger than themselves. Both sides would have to worry about their secret being revealed, and so eventually the Minotaur, who’s true lineage was that of nobility (a one-eyed “king”), needed to be quelled.
Now, King Minos in antiquity had been demanding young sacrifices from Athens as revenge for the death of his human son, which served convenient in keeping the Minotaur at bay. Eventually, the secret son of Athens, Theseus, offered to go along with the sacrifices and kill the monster.
So here’s where things get super tricky. I’ll break it down like this:
King Minos = the founder of V, human
Minotaur = one-eyed half-ghoul, result of V and Washuu
Theseus = head of the Washuu clan
Theseus eventually defeated the Minotaur by decapitating it, and left for Crete to become king.
That sounds like the end of things, but with Furuta’s statement about “sustenance for the throne” alongside the doppleganger motifs (two one-eyed owls, two rabbits), I believe that the Washuu and V wanted to create a new “Minotaur” in order to continuously gain support from the humans who believed that they were being protected from the One-Eyed King.
The Washuu were thrust into a position of political power among humans and ghouls alike– and they enjoyed it. So long as the masses didn’t discover that they were responsible for the initial creation of the first One-Eyed King, and so long as they played their cards right, they could continue to forever create enemies and acquire more wealth.
V and the Washuu may have come into power over a stupid secret: an affair which created a Minotaur.
V knew their secret, however, so they rung up a deal: they would share their power in secrecy, with knives at each other’s backs, and soon their efforts to create a new OEGhoul brought about the demi-human warriors like Arima, to be sicced on whatever “enemies” they could find until quinques were invented.
The original “Minotaur” may have survived “Theseus” (remember, if the Washuu are like Rize, they have some seriously powerful regeneration), or a new one-eyed ghoul may have been created or found.
Either way, the original OEK was most likely a Washuu by blood who was driven into the ground by it’s own family, then used as a stepping stool to their power. It’s anger towards the CCG is something still harbored to this day, which is something shared between itself and the likes of other natural OEG’s like Eto.
Before I start, I just want to say that this isn’t a theory I’m entirely sold on myself, but I figured I would put it out there, along with the possible evidence, just in case.
Until now, we have been led to believe that the 24th ward was a hell hole where ghouls skulked around in tunnels cannibalizing each other, evolving into monstrous insane kakujas. Just a wild orderless mess of tunnels and lairs that Eto was lucky to survive at all.
Much of what we have seen of it appears to be maintenance tunnels, drainage systems, and sewer lines. Even the rather spacious place Kaneki’s group has taken up in seems to be built within an abandoned subway project of human construction. Between these underground spaces, we are told, are a series of unmappably convoluted and treacherous tunnels, full of crazed ghouls and traps, such as kagune walls, which, Kanou informs us, must feed on something to be maintained.
And yet, deep in the 24th ward, we find an entire city.
Cities require a degree of mutual cooperation and organization we have not at all come to expect from the 24th ward. One we haven’t even come to expect from most of the ghouls living on the surface. The ubiquitous mindset that might makes right, that the strong have the right to take whatever they want, whenever they want it, does not seem conducive to what Ayato sees before him.
Not to mention the fact that this city is so far down that it’s almost too deep to carry enough provisions to make it to the surface and back.
How exactly does this city exist?
How can an entire city of ghouls get enough food to live in even relative harmony so far down?
I think his super peace is all out war – the end of which will be something new – something outside the current order of things. I’m not sure how concerned he is with what that is. He might have a plan for it all the way to the end, or just a hope, or he might not care at all as long as he pulls down as much as he can in the process.
We know he’s already declared himself the Last Bureau Chief, and Ui has already said that the CCG is dying. The CCG is part of V’s control mechanism – what more there is of it, we don’t yet know.
All we know about V is that they want the Washuu gone, and that they are after some kind of peace. But they don’t seem to necessarily be after the same sort of peace that Furuta is.
I mean, I do remember a few crack theories about them maybe being sisters when the TG trump cards deck came out because they roughly had the same hair color, but that was the only hint and I’m not even sure people were serious. xD
At the same time, it’s not like we know a lot about the Clowns in general, Donato aside. We don’t even know if they might not have a link with V or the Garden, so starting from there, while it did come out as a surprise, it’s not like it doesn’t make sense, since everything is a mystery with the Clowns. I even checked the raw text on Netabare and Itori does call Roma “imoto” in Japanese, so it’s literally correct as far as I can understand.
Now that we know though, I’m even more curious about that fact because being Itori’s sister kind of explains why Roma’s a part of the Clowns’ gang in the first place, when she’s younger than the rest of them.
Also the fact that two Clowns are related kind of makes me want to scream and ask “who are the parents”, especially since I still don’t exclude the possibility of a few (all?) Clowns having a link with V/the Sunlit Garden. …So yes, what I am saying basically is that if somehow Itori and Roma were to be Washuu Tsuneyoshi’s daughters, I just wouldn’t be surprised. xD
Actually we always were made to believe that Rize was a special case because she managed to escape, but in truth that is rather because of her kakuhou’s special abilities. Furuta even said that he’s the one who helped Rize escape and he was just a kid…
…so maybe she’s not the only kid who escaped from the Sunlit Garden.
If not from the Sunlit Garden though, I wouldn’t be surprised if Roma and Itori had a link to the old ghoulification experiments that Kanou once mentioned (:Re ch93) and who knows, maybe by sister, Itori could mean “clones” -> please check this great post by @one-eyed-king-kaneki46. More on clones later probably.
Finally, the fact that Itori and Roma are “sisters” is also interesting because…
Roma is ranked SS and she is strong in her own way, so this really makes me wonder…
…what her “big sister” can do. 🙂
So yep, definitely an unexpected info but I like it all the same. 😀
“Culture absolutely cannot do without passions, vices, and acts of malice.” – Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human
No matter the answer to the question of peace, it is no less a horrifying structure than the wars it acts as the violent precursor to. Peace has, throughout history, mostly been exemplified by its duality; in the aftermath of conflict, it is equally punishment and recompense as it is an achievement and blessing. For it to exist as a monolithic force permitting the temporary absence of that conflict, one side had to be “victorious” while the other was “defeated.”
The Oggai are expensive tools in Furuta’s zero-sum game, embodying loss and gain of personal and societal identities. The kanji is half of “death” reflected upon itself, alluding to the children who were stripped of humanity and went on to exceed the basic human condition, whose collective function is to rain death upon ghouls and humans alike. Compromise cannot stand when evil and good, black and white are polarized to the point of comedy. Furuta’s vision for peace flares with passionate indifference to the end of life, the end of the inferior masses to assemble invulnerable, chaotic instruments that can conquer and succeed in their place. Dying alone is a bore, too easy, too frightening an act, so he chooses life with a noose around his neck; the psychology of a deranged, depraved man lies in his need to frantically grab on to every bit of what little he can precisely because it has failed to hold meaning for him any longer. His focus veers toward what he should have been once he has lost good sense of what he should be, and he is crippled completely by his fear of moving anywhere at all after even that necessity has disgraced him and vanished. “Peace” and “ethics” thus become simple words to lob around for a taste at trivial triumph. Only by his own lack of meaning for such can he blindly demand them from others, stoke the flames of his fraudulent ambitions, be exalted as a profane god.
But a god that sins and shits no differently than their venal worshipers is no god, else they are all gods. These souls together convulse in agony, joined by the primal fear of death, of the death of their wants and needs. What sets the pretenders apart is their unvarnished audacity in exploiting that fear in those they deem weaker than themselves, until they collapse and become the exploited.
“I want to take this fucked up, piece of shit world, fuck it up even more, and give it a factory reset.” (TG:re, ch. 86)
Each god rises from the ashes of the one before, endowed with a hereditary love of destruction and no more than that. To say that they are frivolous hypocrites isn’t a totally exaggerated assumption. Like Furuta, Eto was embittered in her fundamental loneliness, filled with revulsion for the father that she could not freely call her own. Her vengeance against the world for allowing her birth was a revolution for egoistic peace, and with the conviction that her methods would help dissolve the twisted birdcage came a pitifully inflated complex that rivaled V’s. She regarded V with the most livid contempt for their “mistaken belief” yet emerged guilty of exactly that — she would wrest the fucked up world from their vile, corpse-befouled hands with her own vile, corpse-befouled hands, a rejection of their peace for hers.
Unrepentant reapers like Furuta, Eto, and V/the Washuu can be readily epitomized by a singular line from Ernest Becker’s The Denial of Death, that hatred and chaos are baneful effects of the pathetic struggle against the fragile self afraid of death in its ultimate form:
“If we
don’t have the omnipotence of gods, we at least can destroy like gods.”
Suppose that they or anyone else had their way. What follows once they have “reset” the world? Perhaps a rhythmic balance between life and death would be the prelude to this elusive peace if it could be contained, but life is death in progress, and the story is framed around characters who are thrust daily into the fetid maw of decay, killing and getting killed as they defend their right to life more than they can ever leisurely exercise it.
Juuzou voices his uncertainty and the scene exudes a palpable desolation as the paper plane is carried away in the wind to a destination unknown amidst the vastness before them. He admits he doesn’t know what peace really is, and then wonders if they’ll ever have it. How will one begin to realize or even appreciate that they have attained something worthwhile if they cannot recognize it? Further, if its meaning and existence are lost on its bearers, is there any point to its presence?
Peace is the paper plane — it can be thought of as a product of pernicious inertia, supplying its makers with a momentary calm until it must be let go. It’s both a loyal preservation and betrayal of a utopian ideal. A transition into the next essential war. Human beings inherently pursue the science of search, toiling tirelessly to invent, to claim their discoveries or distribute them for a profit. When the world is well it becomes lethargic; the monotony of that wellness sets in and weariness begins to stir anew.
The mood between Juuzou’s and Hakatori’s dialogues proffers the notion that peace is also a myth conjured by those fortunate enough to survive because they’re slavering for a conscious goal, a reason to justify the ceaseless bloodshed. If all humans were to be erased, then the ghouls’ natural source of sustenance disappears, leaving them to resort to permanent cannibalism. Without external energy being introduced into the food chain it is rendered obsolete, and they would regress as a species until they are extinct. Contrarily, a picture of the human world should all ghouls be erased would be a remarkably tedious echo of our own — political and social warfare, hate and ideological segregation would nevertheless continue to spin the wheel of violence that could never be buried.
Although Juuzou cannot explain the logic to his doubt, he does know that he prefers the status quo since there is little room for stability in either case. This is cemented by Hakatori’s (Tatara’s) statement that the innate curiosity for courses uncharted precipitates devastation. It is also a thinly veiled way of hinting at the perversion of peace as demonstrated by the Oggai, a unified symbol of peace in pieces, bloodhounds with an extraordinary capacity for sniffing out their prey and tearing them to shreds. Could their peace be the honest one if they have to flatten that of their allies and their enemies indiscriminately to reach it?
It isn’t, and it isn’t real. In their universe and this one, it’s the willful fabrication of those who have accepted that the world has unfailingly been ravaged and reinforced by war and peace in tandem, that while discovery inextricably leads to war, they are doomed to honor the duty of upholding that cycle as surely as they are wired to seek evolution. The remaining participants in the great stage play that is the riven world, like Naki and Ui, illustrate the insidious nature of the anxiety of death, why it so often extends to the people they love that they could implore life of the very gods that snatched it away.
In a series alight with the colors of tragedy, the sacrifice of life does well to encapsulate the illusory charm and unmitigated fear of a lasting peace. In this the ghouls and humans are one and the same. There are no gods or demons or monsters, just people steeped in varying shades of torment. They will strive and endure, strive to endure, but never be able to break the final barrier that would enable them to cast away the human essence. The sentimentality in fighting for what is false is their only truth, an incurable sickness shared among the living in search of an escape from the ennui that surreptitiously nourishes and devours them all.
Having being the first naturally born OEG. When you look at Rize it’s the same: she was depicted as having a very special Kagune even if she was born as a part of the sunlit garden initially before she ran away. And here’s the thing, the other ghouls with a special kagune are the Clowns, as we could see with Donato and Uta, but also Nico to some extent, and since it seems that the Clowns will be explained at the same time as V, I’m pretty sure there is a link there. So yeah, I’m wondering (2)
About an eventual pattern between V, who they recruit, why they wanted Rize back so bad, even the Washuus (who’s kagune we never saw, which could be for a specific reason), the Clowns’ even stranger abilities and I think maybe you found a part of the answer with your idea about Eto and Yoshimura. Sorry if that doesn’t make a lot of sense though but thanks for the great post! Have a nice day 🙂
Hi!
Yeah, that’s along the lines of what I was thinking, too. Yoshimura said the reason he was approached by V was just because he was very strong, but it’s not like he’s the only frightening kakuja out there, so I think it must be something else on top of that.
The Clowns and V are definitely working together through Furuta now, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s always been this way. Furuta said that the CCG has a history of dressing up organizations just to have an enemy to fight, and the Clowns were included on that list. It’s always been suspicious, for me, that “even Arima” had a “hard time” with their extermination. I get the feeling that certain members like Donato were given immunity, especially because he was so willingly a source of information while he was in Cochlea.
Oddly, I wonder if regenerative abilities like Yoshimura and Rize are put to use later on the members of V. Arima says the demi-humans die early, but Hirako stated that the crones were like “advanced” Garden members. They remind me a lot of Kanou’s Q’s and have the same automatic movements of Noro, so it almost feels like there’s been some kind of zomboid puppetry going on :O
Thank you for your answer, I’m glad that it made some sense. 🙂
Just on the matter of the Clowns’ annihilation and Donato’s jail time, I agree with you: the whole thing is fishy, because if V/the CCG had really tried to eradicate the Clowns’ gang (especially with Arima involved), then I don’t see why the remaining Clowns would have wanted anything to do with V in :Re (even if they are odd characters, so we can never be sure).
At the same time though, other investigators (like Hirako and Houji) were involved so if the whole thing was a set up, it was orchestrated quite well, especially since Donato’s own timeline is strange in regards to being a part of the Clowns’ gang (since he went to jail a few years before the Clowns’ annihilation took place and he’s presented as a boss, even if he never was called as such).
Anyway, between Itori being so knowledgeable on hybrid babies and Uta referring to himself as an outcast, it’s probably a safe bet to consider that the Clowns probably had a relation to V since the very beginning, maybe because of the weird kagune abilities that they showed in the last arc (I do wonder about Donato since he’s Russian and all though… unless there is a V equivalent in Russia, like there is an equivalent of the CCG in Germany).
Also, excellent point about the “advanced Garden members” like Kaiko, I hadn’t realized that they were a bit similar to Noro but I see what you mean. So maybe V does use special kagune abilities from certain ghouls to keep demi humans from the sunlit garden from dying early.
I’m not so surprised that Arima possibly lied about that to Kaneki though. I mean, he did also say that V/the Washuus “wanted to become more humans” but so far, we rather got hints of the opposite. Maybe he didn’t want to discourage Kaneki because being the OEK is a difficult task (and Eto didn’t mention anything either)…
Thanks again for your reply and sorry for rambling away!
Okay so, I actually got a few questions on the subject and I didn’t see anyone making a post about it (please tell me if someone actually did), so I might as well write one quickly. Apologies in advance for those I might slightly spoil about Berserk.
Death flag. I think that’s one of the words I saw the most everywhere that I looked today and frankly, even though I’m generally not bothering so much with death flags, I kind of have to admit that I got worried after reading this chapter because, well, it’s TG. And Ishida-sensei. So we’re used to crazy and violent things happening, especially right after something sweet occured.
But what’s the link with Berserk?
Well, first of all, Sensei made several references to Berserk before, mainly through Amon’s character (please see the following posts: [x] [x]), that were explicit enough to think that he might be a fan of the series.
Second thing, for those who are not familiar with it, Berserk is the story of Guts, a mercenary, who was once sacrificed by his close “friend” so that the latter could be reborn as a very powerful demon entity. Obviously that kind of broke their friendship, especially since the other dude didn’t just try to sacrifice Guts, but also cursed and heavily abused Casca, Guts’ lover, leaving her with a big trauma towards men as well as a regression into insanity.
So anyway (please read Berserk), when it comes to the link between that and :Re ch125, it turns out that a little before Guts and Casca went through absolute hell, they had the opportunity to share a very sweet and intimate moment, exactly like it happened between Touka and Kaneki for this week’s chapter…
…A moment that resulted of Guts and Casca honestly talking for the first time in a while and finally admitting to their feelings for each other, so again, a little like it happened between Kaneki and Touka ever since ch122. EDIT: @lilylunac also saw the similarities between the two scenes! 🙂
Now obviously TG =/= Berserk, Kaneki =/= Guts, Ishida =/= Miura, but the two sensei still have this shared enjoyment that is to constantly inflict pain to their main character as they make them go through many hardships and, as I was saying above, the fact that so many TG readers are now bracing themselves for something terrible to happen, because ch125 was really sweet and positive in comparison to a lot of shit that Kaneki (and Touka) went through, makes me think that we learnt our lesson long ago.
So yes, as it happens, daily happiness never really lasts for long in TG, especially not when Kaneki still has a lot of personal issues to sort out and a lot of self-reflection to do (and especially not when the current main villain is aiming to fly the TG plane into an ocean of blood), but guess what, it’s exactly the same for Berserk, happiness never lasts long for Guts either.
So, it is very probable thatshit will go down soon in TG, if just because we could have an arc paralleling the Anteiku raid arc next, as many fans already explained and as Juuzou also implied…
…which would make the new relationship between Kaneki & Touka (and the sweet chapter of this weekend) the last positive moment to behold (both for us fans and for Kaneki) before Kaneki, Touka and the rest of Kaneki’s side might be separated and hurt/injured by Furuta’s side.
To be honest, I have no idea where TG will start again next week, but here’s what I understand from the recent developments:
Furuta has a good part of the CCG still ready to obey his command
Furuta is loved by most of the public opinion in TG (those fanclubs :/)
The Clowns might fight for Furuta’s side again (unsure)
A parallel to the Anteiku raid arc would mean a lot of blood and possible deaths
Furuta wants to watch the world burn and for Kaneki to die
Meanwhile Kaneki…
has issues to solve and for now doesn’t make for a good leading figure as the OEK
has less manpower than Furuta and way less deadly weapons (as far as we know)
is supposedly dead for a good part of the world, which means he can’t really gain new allies amongst ghouls
might be joined by the Clowns at some point (unsure)
might have CCG deserters (Juuzou, Urie and co) joining him (unsure again)
also Mutsuki is a bit insane and has a real grudge against Touka, which means they’ll face off again, definitely
TL;DR Kaneki doesn’t have the odds in his favor, for now at least, especially since he doesn’t really appear to have a good plan, which is why an arc similar to the Anteiku raid one definitely sounds like bad news and a lot of pain.
To be honest, I don’t know if Sensei really decided to include explicit lovemaking between Kaneki and Touka before shit might really go down as a parallel to Berserk and Guts/Casca, or if he found that the idea of a young love being tried by all sorts of madness was simply interesting, but… there is one more possible parallel that made me think of Gutsca, as I read the new :Re chapter.
See, it’s a spoiler (sorry :/) but Guts and Casca actually conceived a child during that one moment of bliss that they shared, a child that unfortunately got cursed to have a really sad fate, and it just so happens that the cover of :Re ch122…
… triggered many theories about Touka possibly becoming pregnant, with the pregnancy unfortunately not going and ending very well (please read these posts [x] [x]).
Personally, I don’t really have much of an opinion about a possible pregnancy, if just because I don’t know if Kaneki can even reproduce in the first place (that is a very debated question within the fandom), but I have to admit that the pregnancy idea crossed my mind during ch125 more than it did with ch122 because…
the full chapter did remind me of a bittersweet parallel to what happened with Guts/Casca and their baby
So in conclusion, I can’t be certain that Sensei was influenced by Berserk when he decided to write ch125, but I suppose that it could be a possibility considering that he added references to Berserk before. I guess it might depend on what happened next in :Re and on if Touka actually becomes pregnant or not. Also please note that this is a possible parallel of situation, not a parallel of dynamics or of characters.
I hope this post was informative for the few people who were interested by the subject. Feel free to ask if anything is unclear!
Reblogging because I thought a little more about Touka possibly being pregnant and I realized that Touka and Kaneki having a child (even if that sounds too sweet for TG + we don’t even know if Kaneki can reproduce) would make for a real schism with every situation about hybrid children that we got to see throughout TG, so maybe it’s a path that Sensei could decide to follow.
I mean, as the OEK, Kaneki is supposed to fight for coexistence between ghouls and humans, and if there are characters who were a real proof of how unfair and twisted the current world is, it’s the “hybrids”, and by that I don’t just mean Kanou’s One Eyed Ghouls.
I’ll give examples below, but basically it’s a concept that was introduced by Itori at the beginning of TG…
and that Arima expanded on when he told Kaneki about V and the Sunlit Garden:
So we do know that hybrids are rare but possible. However, so far, how were those “hybrids” treated by the world?
I know, ghoul children in general don’t happen to have a very safe life (and look at Kaneki’s childhood, even though he was a human kid) but still, when it comes to Arima, Hairu, Furuta and the other kids from the Sunlit Garden -> in their case, they were all bred together to become ghoul killers without ever being left any choice…
And Furuta even refers to himself and the others as “unfit goods” while laughing, but his reaction when Eto mocked him for not even being acknowledged by his father was pretty telling of his real feelings on the matter…
As for Eto, she didn’t have a better fate since her mother was killed, her father gave her away to the 24th ward to Noro, because he wanted her to be safe from V. However we all know that the 24th ward isn’t a really utopic place to live at and anyway, Eto never had the chance to be with her two parents because of V, which triggered negative feelings towards both of them and herself…
(which is precisely why Yoshimura once asked Kaneki to save Eto by the way, because Eto refused to acknowledge that she ever was loved by anyone which fueled her desire to destroy this world, and that probably includes Tatara’s love as well [x] [x]).
So any child of this story who was born as a hybrid had it tough, no exception so far on the matter (and there might be one or two more hybrids related to the Clowns’ gang that we don’t know yet about, as Uta referred to himself as an outcast + Itori’s expression when she talked about hybrid babies was strange).
But then, or I should rather say now, we have Kaneki and Touka, whose future is obviously very uncertain but for whom pregnancy theories have been going strong ever since ch122 (please see above in the original post for links). Most of these theories conclude that the pregnancy would actually not go or end well, which is a fair point to have in mind since TG can go rough, but considering that…
Kaneki is the OEK, a leading figure that’s supposed to help change this world and make it about coexistence between the two species
He is also one of the strongest ghouls of all Japan now
He is aware of how unfair/twisted this world is and what terrible lives Eto, Arima and other kids from the Sunlit Garden had because of it
As a human kid, he also had an abusive childhood, leaving him desperately longing for love ever since then
One could also mention Touka’s abandonment issues because of what happened to her parents (amongst other things)
… if Touka’s theoretical pregancy were to somehow terminate (I know that it’s a pretty big if), their baby could be the first “hybrid” to have a happier life than any other hybrid children before, which could positively vouch for coexistence to the world’s eye (since the baby would likely be human by Kaneki and ghoul by Touka), on top of Kaneki finally getting the family he always wished for.
Obviously, we’re completely in the realm of possibilities with this post, especially since happiness never lasts very long in TG, so expecting such a sweet and positive development might be too much, but I still felt like pointing it out since, in my opinion, it can still fit whole-heartedly within TG’s story.
I’d like to conclude by pointing out that Kaneki and Touka have been associated before with Touka’s parents but also with Yoshimura and Ukina…
…which would make their theoretical child possibly paralleling Eto; Eto whom Yoshimura asked Kaneki to save (again through bringing coexistence).
So I’m honestly really on the fence here: I didn’t particularly think a pregnancy was likely before this week, but then again, I didn’t expect Ishida to include a full chapter dedicated to Kaneki and Touka finding each other through intimacy so… at this point, I suppose anything is possible and it’s not a development that I would dislike anyway. 🙂
Sorry for the long post, but feel free to leave your thoughts or to ask if anything is unclear!
I bet all those dead “ghouls” aren’t even all ghouls. I mean Furuta’s style there is bound to be a good bit of collateral damage. And it would be just like Furuta to be sure there are some humans among the pile of dead just so he could be internally laughing at the crowd…
Wouldn’t that be the kicker, huh? Furuta seems to be gleefully dragging out the ugliness in everyone, laughing and revealing the vilest and cruelest aspects of people.
As I said before, previously he’s been connected to events where the public lashed out at the CCG for treatment of ghouls. His former partner, Kijima, horrified people by posting a torture video on the internet. A video that basically shows EXACTLY WHAT THE CCG DOES TO GHOULS, only before it was hidden neatly behind closed doors.
Then there was Takatsuki’s final novel, and the protests and rallies it sparked. People suddenly got interested in ghouls as more than faceless monsters, and were questioning things. He laughed in Eto’s face about her revolution and its pointlessness.
He used the Clowns to cause panic and destroy morale within the CCG, creating the opportunity to rise to unquestioned leadership.
And now he’s doing these grand public displays, a callback to early eras of history. These kinds of displays used to be common, but over the last century humans have become more “civil” and rejected such displays. And the Japanese, in particular, have spent decades fiercely denying or avoiding the issues of their own brutality. This display reminds me of some of the historical photos of Imperial Soldiers, and the War Crimes they committed across Asia during the second World War.
Heads displayed as trophies.
Bodies displayed on pikes.
Piles of corpses proudly displayed.
In a way, Furuta is gleefully rubbing their faces in their own fickleness and potential for cruelty. Showing that while the Countermeasure Laws have a clause instructing that Investigators not cause unnecessary pain or violence, it’s all for show. All so that people can pat themselves on the back, and pretend that they are better than Ghouls and better than other humans.
But here, with these grotesque displays and tempting “The Hope of the CCG” to his side, he is revealing just how easily humans can throw aside their morals.
Maybe he didn’t want to discourage Kaneki because being the OEK is a difficult task (and Eto didn’t mention anything either)…
midnight-in-town 