coromoor:

Hi 😀 I’m guessing this was brought on by this post [x] I reblogged where it was mentioned about the Aogiri tree symbol being associated with both the One-Eyed King and Kaneki in his school play?

If you piece together all the scenes from the play you can get a very basic and shallow idea of the plot [x] [x]:

• Kaneki plays the lead role
• The Witch and Kaneki have a confrontation
• Hide, the Witch’s Servant, shows up
• He comes between the Witch and Kaneki, appearing to be on the Witch’s side

That’s all there is in canon about the play, but in the drafts Ishida wrote for the second season of the anime (that were never used) it’s elaborated on further (which was kindly translated here [x] by @makyun!!). Because the anime was meant to be an original ending I don’t think it’s technically canon in the manga universe, but it might give us some hints about what Ishida is thinking. From the anime drafts we’re told that:

• Kaneki plays a Prince. Considering he’s a Prince associated with Aogiri’s symbol, can we speculate that this means he is the future King? 
• The Witch’s servant (Hide) was a friend to the Prince (Kaneki)
• Hide was tricked by the Witch to betray Kaneki
• Hide asks for Kaneki’s forgiveness
• Kaneki makes Hide promise to never betray him again, to leave the Witch’s side and become his ally/fight by his side
• There’s a touching forgiveness scene

Really all you can take from this is a lot of speculation and I’ll be the first to admit that, at this point, Hide is so mysterious you can make compelling arguments for both ‘Hide is a good guy’ and ‘Hide is with the bad guys’. There are so many Hide theories out there it’s not even funny- he’s a Washuu, he’s a Clown, he’s working for V, he’s working with Eto, he’s just Kaneki’s helpful best friend. You can find an awesome in-depth compilation of some of these theories by @sans-san​ here [x].

From the anime drafts it makes it seem as though Hide betrayed Kaneki. I’ll never rule a theory out completely (especially after the bombshell that Eto isn’t the OEK!) but I’m not 100% sold on this idea. Hide spent so much of the manga waiting, searching and looking out for Kaneki all at his own risk which goes against the idea of treachery. At this stage, I think if there was any ‘betrayal’, it was because Hide was tricked into thinking it was best for Kaneki, that there was no other way out. Like the Witch’s Servant in the play.

Perhaps the ‘betrayal’ was Hide sending Kaneki out to fight Arima?

As discussed in the Hide theory compilation post I linked, there is the idea that Hide made a deal with the CCG to save Kaneki and that’s why he told him to fight one last time- that he thought it was the only way to save him. His dialogue certainly supports this:

But then who is the Witch in this case? Is it the Washuu family (Hide is a Washuu theory)? Is it the CCG? Is it Arima? Is it the V organisation (after the reveal that Arima could possibly have ties to V)? Who knows.

Here’s some more theories/analyses on the play I could find:

• Hide as the Witch’s Servant being a reference to the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S Lewis who also wrote the Screwtape Letters mentioned in TG (the Lion is the King and also a figure of Jesus Christ in the book, and there’s even another book in the Chronicles of Narnia series called the Magician’s Nephew)
• An analysis of Hide and Kaneki’s dialogue in the anime drafts
• Hide will be the one to take down the Clown group (including a mention about the star on one of his eyes being similar to the clown group masks) 

This is getting much longer than I intended but I’ll just leave you all with a little food for thought.

If Kaneki has been likened to the symbol of Jesus Christ [x] then who plays the role of his traitorous bestie Judas, whose actions set into motion Jesus’s death and resurrection? >:)