If anyone doesn’t know the backround of what exactly the purpose of the Takizawa, Tatara, Houji Shenanigians was pre-chapter 89, or what I think the sad nature of how their fight turned out to be means, and how terribly sad I feel about Seidou and any positive outcome for it here I go…
Tatara’s Retribution Through Seidou
To make a long story short Takizawa’s old boss Houji was at one point transfered to China to help take care of a ghoul group called “Chi She Lian”. This group was headed by Tatara’s older brother Yan, and also contained Tatara and friend Fei. Houji’s group defeated Chi She Lian and having killed Yan and Fei Houji became the owner of quinques made from both of them.
These where the Quinque Houji gave Takizawa “Douhi” (Fei) and Houji’s dual quinque “Iltsu” (Yan). (I’m probably forgeting another but whatever).
So, Originally Tatara was seemingly supposed to catch Amon during the Anteiku raid due to Eto’s interest in him as a test subject, But Tatara seemed to see an opportunity in rounding up CCG investigators for Eto’s project, and made sure to capture Houji’s underling.
The revenge message was simple, “You steal my loved ones and comrades and use them against me? (Fei and Yan), I’ll take a person you care about and use them as a weapon against your kind” (Takizawa Houji’s underling). This act of revenge turned out we know now to be his undoing. The revenge for what the CCG has been doing for decades quinques.
The Worthless Fight
The fight between Houji and Tatara was short and accomplished nothing. Tatara grandstanded copying his brother kakuja and Houji waxing poetic about fire and hatred. It barely went anywhere and accomplished nothing, all do to one unforeseen person of collateral damage, and I think that was the point.
I think that’s the point. In the world of Tokyo Ghoul revenge has no purpose. Houji and Tatara represent one piece of the cycle of Ghoul/Human hatred. You stab me I stab you. The cycle continues. Having the revenge play out either way would not have any necessary forward movement to this story’s plot that haven’t happened in other arcs (such as the Mado/Every ghoul plot in TG whether Hinami want it or not their action led to the vengeance to continue to Akira). However because it failed on both side it illustrates another point.
1. The Cycle goes nowhere and only destroys people in it those around it. Takizawa originally had nothing to do with the fight between Tatara and Houji. He was just some kid who went into the CCG because his mother was afraid of ghouls and society gave him the idea he could help others and become a hero by doing so. He originally had next to nothing even to do with the people directly in the cycle of revenge, his downfall was literally only being the underling of the wrong person, and doing the right thing by listening to Akira when she rightfully thought Amon was in danger.
2. The Tatara/Houji Revenge shows the nature of what can go wrong with revenge. Tatara was blinded to everything but his revenge and probably didn’t even think about Takizawa as a person let alone how Takizawa’s feelings and emotions could effect everything and it destroyed him. Not to sound like Houji but the revenge spread like an Arsonist’s fire spreading and bringing the building down on everyone involved.
Everyone involved in the revenge plot was left in pain or dead and completely unsatisfied, illustrating how the revenge cycle accomplishes nothing but but spreading pain. The Point of the fight and Tatara and Houji’s deaths being pointless is that the revenge is pointless! All Houji’s men but Akira died, Takizawa’s madness made him act out a perversion of his original goal.
Tatara’s Flashback is also important because it make reference to the only solution to to the cycle of Ghoul/Human revenge. Did Arima find what he was looking for? Will the cycle ever be broken by the new OEK? Because that will be the only way people like Tatara will ever find peace.
What good could come out of this?
I can only think of one thing, Akira.
Recently Ishida released a posted a drawing of Akira releasing a handful of clover on his Twitter feed. Clover has always been a reference to Hinami. Hinami and Akira both hold places opposite one another in the cycle of revenge.
Perhaps Akira seeing how much revenge can, and learning the possible humanity of ghouls through Sasaki will let go of a need to avenge her father, perhaps through still caring about Takizawa to some extent, she’ll accept that her father’s evil deeds as such despite her love for him.
I’m not gonna lie was hoping Ishida would have done more with Tatara and Houji’s characters with all the mystery surrounding them, (maybe we will learn more?) But I also like what Ishida did, he made the revenge feel as empty and needlessly destructive for the reader as it was for those involved… That was meant as a compliment
Another thing I love about Eto is how she channels both a modern aesthetic and natural/archaic imagery.
Because we have her appearing as this nude, child-like woman in her most villainous encounters. The only thing covering her is usually a robe and bandages – both pieces of garb that link back to pre-modern civilization.
And in this role, we see her speak about God while eating an apple – Genesis imagery. You can’t get much older than the beginning of man. We also see her on a shrine when she has a flashback to when she encounters Arima for the first time, making it appear as though the shrine represented her. It even looks like the shrine is in the same beaten shape that she is in.
But then we see her as Takatsuki Sen writing her postmodern horror novels set in contemporary society with two computer screens and a laptop. She has water bottles and logo merchandise surrounding her. She almost always wears her hair up in messy buns, a pretty contemporary trend.
And her organization Aogiri in itself meshes these two themes together. Aogiri functions upon the legend of the One-Eyed King that goes back over 100 years, and they wear those archaic robes in almost every situation. However, Aogiri functions like a contemporary terrorist organization, and fits a lot of trends in terms of 21st century civil conflict.
Bileygr the King especially reflects that overlap, because it’s an epic – a kind of narrative I associate with Homer, Dante, and Milton. The name itself references Norse mythology. But she announces it through television news media and uses contemporary society’s technology as the method to convey this work.
And I think that’s partially why I think Eto’s such an interesting villain: she has the same earthshaking and surreal feeling that old horrific, Gothic villains bring you while remaining relevant and effective within the contemporary society.
If Juuzou is fully human (I believe that he is….after all, Bujin is and we know that a very small percentage of humans are basically OP’d), then I would say that Juuzou has more ability relative to his species than Arima does. However, Arima accomplished quite a few things that Juuzou has not. Aside from rank and sheer ability to climb ranks, Arima also defeated a ghouls without any form of quinque (with an umbrella, no less). Also, Arima defeated ghouls with more ease than Juuzou. Juuzou is an incredible agent, and I would be terrified of him if I were a ghoul. However, he isn’t as efficient as Arima. It could be a matter of style…Arima moved in straight lines, while Juuzou moves in curves, but whether due to pure physical strength or experience, I would say Arima had objectively more ability.
I guess it depends on whether or not you give Juuzou extra points for doing so much more with so much less. He doesn’t (presumably) have the benefit of ghoul genes, nor does he have the “benefit” (at least, benefit in terms of fighting ability) of being literally raised to be a soldier. He also lacks the muscle-building and height-increasing benefits of testosterone. In other words, he’s less educated, less physically substantial, and less experienced, and yet still he’s managed to reach the highest possible rank, has won multiple awards, and has trained a squad which has won awards.
So perhaps relative to both his species and his circumstances, Juuzou has done better than, or at least equal to, Arima. However, objectively, Arima (at the time of his death) was still the stronger agent.
No, I don’t think it’s underpopulated at all. Im also pretty sure that the handful of Special Class investigators we’ve seen is all the Special Class investigators there are.
We’ve been told that even becoming a First Class would take an investigator 10 years at the very minimum, and that’s considered to be a very speedy, swift promotion that requires not insignificant talent to achieve. And most people don’t move past that even if they do achieve it.
Many investigators start at Rank 2 after graduating the Academy, get promoted to Rank 1 and stay there for the rest of their careers. Nothing to be ashamed of, there’s a lot of people in any army, not everyone’s a colonel. And CCG is at its heart a military force.
You have to also remember that – yeah, due to constraints of narrative space and time, – we’ve only seen the best and brightest, because what fun would it be to mull about with Rank 3 investigators (of which there are probably dozens, if not hundreds) for the whole manga? And there can only be a handful of best and brightest in any field.
To see just how good and bright they are, please consider this: when Ishida wrote CCG guidelines slash comparative analysis on how many investigators it would take to change a lightbulb, it was:
against an A rank ghoul: one First Class investigator.
against an S- rank ghoul: several Associate Special Class investigators and their squads comprised of investigators of any class and rank.
against an S+ rank ghoul: several Special Class investigators and their squads comprised of talented investigators of any class and rank.
against an SS rank ghoul: many Special Class investigators and their squads.
This isn’t untrue, we’ve seen how many people died trying to capture Yoshimura and Eto, Houji alluded to dozens of investigators dying during the Chi She Lian operation, etc etc. So far, everyone we’ve seen has been grossly overperforming imo. By official CCG guidelines, Hirako should be able to take on, like, Torso. Meanwhile Suzuya’s squad just single-handedly defeated Kurona, who has to be at least a tentative S+ at this point (a ghoul’s rank is tied to their perceived danger to humans, not raw strength per se).
Speaking of tarot, though, while I had my tarot number goggles on, I spotted this from the end of last week’s chapter:
That’s almost certainly an intentional 2 on Akira’s ear there.
2 being the High Priestess, linked with femininity and, most crucially for Mado, intuition.
It can also be linked to the innately nurturing powers of the “feminine subconscious”, which in the situation might be a good thing. Akira could use anything that’ll help her reach the parts of Takizawa that still care.
(The last time the High Priestess appeared, it was in association with Yomo’s desire to protect his sister’s children and in relation to her continued impact on him.)
The need to constantly escalate and increase the threat level and reveals, mostly? Like Tokyo Ghoul ended with Eto, the little kid in bandages from Aogiri turning out to be Yoshimura’s daughter, the One-Eyed Owl, the head of Aogiri, a One-Eyed Ghoul, and Takatsuki Sen with a flesh mech. Also Arima appeared and fucking destroyed our protag. Anteiku was burned. Everyone scattered. Shit was fucked.
And Ishida had to go UP from there.
It’s related to the (TV)trope of serial escalation.
But honestly, I don’t think we needed it. At all. I don’t think we needed the Kirishimas and Yomo to be able to do in life what Arima use Hikari kakuhou to fuel in death. I think it was plenty clear that the CCG uses the organs it harvests to fuel energy weapons that are not exactly the same as the original kagune. Don’t get me wrong, it’s bad ass, but I don’t think it was necessary.
I think Yomo and Touka could have been really formidible fighters without it, based on other abilities. The fact that Touka blocked higher mind and Aura’s quinque with the burst of her wings was amazing. She didn’t need to be able to shoot lightning. She had her ukaku already.
And it kind of seems like Yomo’s actual fighting ability has been nerfed with this lightning reveal. I mean, I know that he just fought Arima and Arima fights on a ghouls level at least plus had a two quinques plus wasn’t protecting two people with his life, but… but Uta comes off as a bad ass fighter because he’s strong and he fights like he gives zero shits, and because he uses his natural ghoul abilities to his advantage not because of whatever cool trick he is inevitably gonna pull out soon (which I’m probably gonna love, tbh)
Tatara’s huge bikaku, wielded like we’ve never seen someone wield a bikaku before would have been amazing to watch. Bikaku got a lot fancier in :re, with the three-blades and especially with Mutsuki, but the single tail deal that Minami, Tatatra, Nishiki, and Big Madam have has been shown to be plenty deadly, and I would have loved to see Tatara wreck the CCG’s shit with that. Bikaku’s could really use something like that.
But all this said, I don’t think any of this was unplanned.
Narukami has always been made from Hikari who has always been Yomo’s sister and the Kirishima’s mother. And it’s always shot lightning.
Tatara has always been named Tatara (ie smokestack) and he’s always been from the Red Tongue company and he’s always worn the mask over his face, not his tailbone.
I think Ishida has always had this whole thing if not fully storyboarded, at least outlined.
He’s been holding these reveals since the beginning. That doesn’t mean they start being more believable or stop stretching the credibility of the world that had been built until then, but I don’t want to make it sound like I think Ishida is scrambling for something to keep us interested or whatever.
In fact, quite the opposite – because in his mind, Tatara and Chi She Lien have always meant the weird 4000c firebreather shit and the Yomo family has always had lightning in their blood, none of this probably seems as suddenly shonen to him as it does to us.
He may have explained it to his editor back at the beginning too, so who knows if there is anyone but the weekly readership who feels like these developments don’t fit so well into the world.
It’s one of the issues with being a content creator. You always know way more about your world and your plan for it than your readers. So just because something seems perfectly reasonable or well built up or within parameters to you, it might seem completely bizarre to the readers. (Or occasionally vice versa – we have no precedent, for example, for how common it is for ghouls to subsist nonviolently, because we were introduced to ghouls in a group where quite a few did.)
I can’t be happy with Takizawa jumping on Tatara’s back and seemingly stopping him from killing Hoji.
Because I know this fight ends up no matter what with Takizawa trying to strangle Akira.
And I know whatever journey that takes will be painful.
(unless he’s not and last week’s image was a trick as they never showed Takizawa’s arm directly connected to Akira’s throat).
Shinohara and Dr. Chigyou, when explaining Kagune to Juuzou: Kagune are liquid muscles made of RC cells
Matsumae: can generate walls several meters away from her
Nuts: can set motion detecting spring loaded booby traps in the walls
Eto: can generate a 3 story tall flesh mecha
also Eto: can inject her abilities into people and maybe preserve their almost dead bodies
Eto, again: can make her kagune float and carry someone
Eto and Kaneki: mouths and eyes seemingly capable of semi-independent action and thought
Noro: ???
Kurona: possibly absorbed her dying twin?
Noro and Kurona(shiro): can eat through their kagune
Kaneki: can regrow entire body parts with full structural and mechanical function in under a minute
Yomo family: can shoot goddamn lightning
Banjou: can just fucking heal people, apparently
Tatara (and family): Can sustain fire that is apparently hot enough to vaporize diamond right next to his face holes. Is apparently not the only known ghoul to do this sort of shit. (He can also do the eye thing)
So if Tatara really has a flamethrower-like kagune/kakuja…the name of his organization in China (Chi She Lian translated to Red Tongue Company) makes a lot of sense, too =o. Ishida strikes again OTL…
Relatable FE Quote or Something 