May I share my thoughts about Urie’s line about cruelty? I don’t really know about whaling but isn’t what those activists are saying is actually very cruel? Like they read Eto’s book – which is about ghouls’ hopes and very personal and they react like: “You shouldn’t kill ghouls indiscriminately because they’re… interesting creatures, very intellegent”… Not like, “they have dreams and hopes, they’re people too, we can reach an understanding”… Honestly, I got very angry reading them.

harostar:

hysyartmaskstudio:

This is a totally different and really interesting reading of that line, and it really casts Urie in a totally different light.

I completely agree that things Ogura is saying, while they seem to be kind, are really quite dehumanizing (assuming the translation there is accurate in tone). They pissed me off as well. They make Ogura come off as a real creep.

He isn’t saying “Ghouls are people, too” or “Ghouls deserve human rights.”

So maybe the way we are meant to read what Urie is saying is that he thinks that the protesters sound more like they are talking about whales than ghouls – the things Ogura is saying here are things that you can definitely here at protests of violent whaling practices – people saying that whales are fascinating, intelligent creatures.

This reading makes the other part of what Urie is saying make a lot of sense, as you pointed out, Anon – because they are being just as cruel – by fetishizing and dehumanizing ghouls in their own way.

Part of me thinks this has to be the correct reading, because it fits so well, and it clears up a lot of the confusion with the metaphor.

But it seems a remarkably insightful and compassionate (towards ghouls) thing for Urie to say. While we’ve seen Urie starting to feel a little bit of empathy towards ghouls, saying that it felt “weird” talking to a ghoul whose termination had been decided, he still doesn’t seem like he’d really see the dehumanization of ghouls by Ogura like that as “cruelty.”

But once we clear up the talk about whales – that connection between Ogura’s dehumanizing language and the way people talk about whales during those protests really makes the whole line clearer – then maybe we don’t have to read the “cruelty” so much as part of the metaphor.

If you stop trying to figure out how it fits into the metaphor with whaling, maybe Urie could be referring to how supporting ghouls, who engage in acts of cruelty, is a kind of cruelty itself, and is also a cruelty against those who have lost loved ones to ghouls and to those who risk their lives fighting ghouls.

Thank you so much for this ask. It really clears things up for me.

This is a great bit of insight!

I agree, what fantastic insight that Anon shared.

Criticizing people for hypocrisy is absolutely something Urie would do, regardless of how he feels about Ghouls. It seems very much like him to see through the “good intentions” to the dehumanizing behavior. To look at these protesters and see through them, to recognize that even while shouting for Ghoul Rights……people like Ogura are simply fetishizing Ghouls as some exotic and fascinating animal.

I mean, look at his appearance in that panel. He seems like a standard Otaku, with his “Ghoul Lover” headband and everything. How many of those involved in those protests are like him as opposed to the numerous humans we see in the series that genuinely recognize the humanity of Ghouls? How many are simply leaping into a cause and a bandwagon, but don’t genuinely see Ghouls as equals and fellow people, the way that Kimi or Hide see them?