On Mutsuki.

tinyghoulproblem:

After this chapter, I’m doing my best to pull my thoughts and feelings into some semblance of order. It isn’t easy…there’s a lot to digest, a lot to unpack. 

But the one thing that struck me so hard when reading this chapter was that I am so, so glad that Ishida took the time to show us how good Mutsuki is. 

We see Mutsuki in the beginning, scared of the sight of blood. Mutsuki is so scared, so tender, barely able to function as an investigator. Still, he tries so hard, and Haise tries to help him. He’s given in the auction as a sacrificial lamb, and even though he’s about to die, he makes it through. Then he’s put in danger by Urie, and despite that, the first time his kagune emerges, it’s used to comfort another person, to tell them that they are cared for, wanted, important, useful. 

Then we see Mutsuki reaching out to Urie, we see him forming bonds with Juuzou and Juuzou’s squad, we see him getting stronger, more sure of himself. He’s a good investigator and a skilled fighter, he cares for his team. He’s a genuinely sweet, compassionate person. 

When he’s kidnapped by Torso, we fear for him. We’re horrified by the revelation of his physical, emotional, and sexual abuse. We’re terrified of what Torso has done to him, of what he will do. The possibilities are endless and horrifying, even as Mutsuki tries to find it within himself to understand his captor, torturer, and abuser. 

In this chapter, Mutsuki is sure that Torso is about to kill him. And we’re meant to feel the same fear. We’re made to wonder if Urie will be able to find them on time. We’re lost in time, not sure when these events are occurring, whether or not something terrible has happened. We go on this journey with Mutsuki, we are with him through these steps, through all the events that took a small boy terrified of the sight of blood to a competent investigator to the victim of a terrifying serial killer. He’s being bashed against the rocks, carried around like a sack of potatoes. He spies those scissors. This is the moment of truth. 

And that’s why, as Mutsuki awakens from the nightmare of Torso’s captivity to the nightmare of his own violence, we experience the horror alongside him. We’re pulled into the horror of Mutsuki’s revelation and it becomes the reader’s revelation as well. Because killing Torso…that would have been understandable. Expected, even. Mutsuki had to kill Torso or if he didn’t, someone else did. Torso had to die so that Mutsuki could live. That’s just How Things Work. But what we didn’t know, what some of us anticipated but weren’t sure of, was the full depth and breadth of Mutsuki’s dissociation. We didn’t know that he killed his family. Not just his father, who abused him. He killed his mother too…why? Because she watched and did nothing? Because she encouraged his father? Because Mutsuki’s fugue state didn’t allow for him to understand the difference between a threat and a fellow victim? And beyond that, he killed animals. He killed them quickly, but then he took some of their parts as trophies. 

As it turns out Mutsuki is a liar. But he isn’t lying to others, he’s lying to himself. his own psyche is too shattered to put those pieces together until this moment, this moment when his own coping mechanisms dissolve and reveal to full horror of what he’s done. Mutsuki is a murderer, and no one is as surprised, or as horrified by this revelation as Mutsuki himself. 

And this brings me to Kaneki. Kaneki, who came to his own terrifying revelation – that he was a ghoul – through the process of torture. What fascinates me here is how their paths diverge. Kaneki, for example, attacked Jason, but he didn’t kill him. He left Jason for dead, but he didn’t kill him. He walked away, though he went on to perpetuate massive ghoul slaughter. That moment when Kankei fought Jason, it was intense, triumphant. You were cheering for him. You want to see him beat Jason to a pulp. There was an element of horror in the way he forced Jason to count down from 1000, but again, it was heady with the thrill of vengeance. 

Our final revelation about Mutsuki in this chapter, though, was entirely different. We see that once he killed Torso, he mutilated the corpse in incredibly disturbing ways. He was neither conscious or cognizant of his actions when they were happening. He realized after the fact. There’s no feeling of victory in that, no thrill of vengeance. Only the terrible horror of the moment where the reality you’ve built your life upon crumbles, and reveals that you were, in fact, a monster the whole time. 

And there are so many details to this that I want to know. How did it happen, in the CCG, that they chose to tap Mutsuki for the Quinx project? Was he considered expendable due to his past? Was it an amusement? Was it purely pragmatic use of resources or something else? Was it Tokage that recommended him? What do we make of the fact that the CCG knew of Mutsuki’s past? That they knew of his propensity for violence and of his complete dissociation from those acts?

And what will become of him? Will he embrace the monster or the man? Will he find redemption? Will Urie find him and embrace him with the same compassion that Mutsuki showed him during the auction? Or will there be a terrible moment when the two boys, the two friends are forced to face one another in battle? How closely will Mutsuki’s journey parallel that of Kaneki? 

The fact is that Ishida has crafted this storyline with a masterful touch, and I am in awe of his skills as a storyteller. He dropped enough hints to tell us that this is not a random twist or the work of a moment. This story has been building with a slow burning intensity throughout the entirety of :RE. And yet the revelation of it was astounding.

I’m not here to pass a round of judgment on Mutsuki’s character, on the rightness or the wrongness of his actions, on his awareness or his culpability. What I will say is that this has granted a level of depth and interest to his character that leaves me breathless. I can not wait to learn more and I can not even say how in awe I am of Ishida’s ability as a writer and a storyteller. 

Bravo, once again, Ishida. Bravo.