arima let the butterfly go, he freed it and himself, he wasnt born; he was bred, he was used his entire life, devoid of all free will, never allowed to live at all, put into existence to die and bring death, he was the reaper, the god of the CCG, a cog in the machine thats slowly killing him, slowly killing himself, and his one choice in this life was the take his own, his life in his own hands, by his own hand, for the first and final time in one blow.
People ask a lot why Arima is one of my favorite characters– it’s his end that culminates all my enthusiasm for his character. He was walled off, closed up behind the secrets of the CCG, but there were hints, his foil to Kaneki giving hints at his inner thoughts, the teasing at his true character, and now we see it come into light- a man who never had a say in how he lived choosing how he is going to die. And it’s bittersweet, he hates himself, he hates what he had to be, what he had to do, but he couldnt stop. Death was his calling since birth.
And as we all heard from a wise pineapple once, if you become Death, you won’t be afraid of it anymore.
Arima became the Death god of the CCG. And he wasn’t afraid to die. Not even by his own hand.
You know, to be able to make us feel like this, I have to admit that he’s a amazing story teller. It’s hard to make a story like this, to make the readers feel intense emotions and got immersed into the plot as deep as we are now.
We all know he has already planned everything from the start. He knew the risk of making a story like this (maybe that’s the reason why he hide his identity? He said he wants to live in peace.. afterall…), but he executed it anyway.
Some of us might think that he’s cruel and heartless, to kill off our beloved characters that we already related to. But you know Anon, actually we have to thank him for the wild ride he pulled us in. I think lot of us wouldn’t be at where we are now if Tokyo Ghoul doesn’t have a plot as crazy as it is. We might mourn when we lost our favorite characters and be upset at him, but this is his story, the whole plot is his, not ours. So please don’t be mad at him. Just thank him for this emotional journey he created for us. Maybe when TG had ended, we all will close the book, takes a deep breath, and sigh. “What an intense experience.”
If you think someone could write something this gorgeous and this intense and this layered and this devastating without having human emotions you’re just…….
Can you describe what it feels like to stub your toe? To scrape your knee? To fall? Do you think that someone who didn’t feel pain could describe those sensations? Can you describe what it feels like to find acceptance when you feel unlovable? To find mercy when you feel damned? Can you describe what it feels like to start a new school or job, the nerves in your belly, the anxiety in your mind? Can you describe what it feels like to be so exhausted that you can barely move, to pick yourself back up again, to try just one more time?
Could you describe any of this without human emotions?
In order to write profoundly, you must feel profoundly. There is no person who can write tragedy without having experienced human emotion. I imagine that Ishida is a highly emotional, highly sensitive person. To be only 30 years old and able to write about trauma, abuse, suffering, love, fear, triumph, failure, pain, acceptance…to write about all of this with such a deft hand takes, at the least, an acutely sensitive, emotional nature.
Does Ishida have feelings. Really. Really?
How could he break your heart if he didn’t understand the feeling of a heart breaking?
Imagine when the secret that the Washuus- the founders and leaders of the Comission of Counter-Ghoul– are ghouls themselves. All the fear, pain and suffering ghouls have had to live through for the last 100 years is meaningless.
Imagine Hinami, who struggled with the idea that she, a ghoul, should be allowed to live, finding out that only some ghouls are allowed. And her parents weren’t among that group.
Imagine Shuu finding out that his entire family and household were murdered in an operation lead by a ghoul, under the pretence of hypocrisy.
Imagine Ayato, who joined Aogiri because of his hatred of humans and the CCG finding out it was ghouls all along that his anger should be directed towards.
Imagine Touka, whose deepest wish is to be human and be able to live in the human world peacefully, finding out that all her struggles and losses were due to ghouls.
Imagine the remaining members of Anteiku finding out Yoshimura worked with those people… and that Anteiku was burnt to the ground because of it.
This is just too much. Sure, ghouls are territorial- fighting each other for hunting grounds, food, etc.- and made for killing each other, but this is a whole different ball game. Forcing them to live in fear, exacerbating their need to fight for resources, making the violence a necessary part of everyday life. The thing is, I can’t imagine everyone’s reactions to this. This will flip their whole world view on it’s head and it’s going to be ugly.
Arima has been wild this chapter, and I guess it’s frustrating that everybody is reading the chapter at face value instead of recognizing what Arima is doing exactly, but I’ll bullet some info:
Arima has been confirmed to be breaking protocol by not killing Haise
Arima has been confirmed to deliberately disobey Yoshitoki’s and Haisaki’s orders, instead letting Kaneki go multiple times and encouraging him to fight
Arima does not want Kaneki to die whatsoever, both in his speech and in the meaning of 645 (x)
Randomly thinks of that picture Ishida drew: I will not permit you
Arima was the one to breach Kaneki’s suicidal tendencies (desires) so that Kaneki will fight to live another day
Kaneki has genuine feelings for Arima. He doesn’t understand Arima but he desperately wishes he could, and he truly sees Arima as a paternal figure
Kaneki was the one who got Arima to appreciate the beautiful things in life, starting with his poem in v14 (x); he’s also the one to get Arima to enjoy the little wonderful aspects of life (such as reading)
Kaneki is Arima’s rose as his role as the Little Prince. Now where’s the fox who will tell Arima this (x)
This is the most Arima has ever talked in an single go. Wow.
Now it’s just a matter of why Kaneki is so important to him
Maybe Arima doesn’t know
Maybe Arima doesn’t want the one good thing in his controlled life to die; the one human aspect of himself that he isn’t able to achieve as a “god”
Maybe he sincerely wants Kaneki to kill him (paralleling Kaneki’s suicidal tendencies)
Maybe he wants to bring out the best of Kaneki since he recognizes his potential
In TG, the roles of Kaneki’s symbolic parents were taken by Rize and Yamori.
The human Kaneki “died” and he was reborn from Rize’s kagune (her body).
After being tortured by Yamori, he abandons his old way of thinking (“rather than a person who hurts others, become the person getting hurt”) and develops Yamori’s mentality (his mind). He starts believing that only the strong have the right to survive and that all of the liabilities in this world are due to the inadequacies of the person involved.
In :re, the roles of Kaneki’s symbolic parents are taken by Eto and Arima.
Kaneki died at the end of TG and that’s why Eto did everything she could in order for him to return his memories. By doing that, she gave birth to him once again. He’s her child, her egg. She even gives him her kakuja (her body) as a gift.
Arima’s the person who took the role of the father Kaneki never had, the person he looked up to and the person who he wanted to be like (his mind).
This is the reason why Arima dying like this in front of Kaneki really is the worst-case scenario. As usual, Ishida came up with the most tragic way to end this battle.
I don’t even want to imagine how this will affect Kaneki, a suicidal person that has just found his will to live.
While the terms are nowadays mostly used interchangeably for Antisocial Personality Disorders (ASPDs), their meanings do slightly differ. As part of the well-known nature-nurture debate, there has been a lot of discussion about these terms, but usually a ASPD patiënt is referred to as a psychopath when the person in question is completely unable to form emotional attachments and lack empathy and the term sociopath is utilised to describe a ASPD patiënt for who it’s difficult, but not impossible to form emotional attachment. In regard of the revelations of chapter 79, this discussion is reflected in the personalities of Tooru Mutsuki and Juuzou Suzuya.
First of all, I think it is important to point out that these terms are not strictly seperated; a lot of aspects are shared by both, yet the slight difference in meaning makes it rather interesting to look at in the retrospect of the stories of Tooru and Juuzou.
The sociopath – Juuzou Suzuya
Sociopathy is the ‘’nurture’’ side of the debate. The antisocial, violent and disregard towards social morals of the sociopath find their origin in childhood trauma, physical and/or emotional abuse.
By living on the fringe of societ, in the eyes of others, sociopaths will appear to be very disturbed.
But because sociopathy tends to learned rather than being innate, a sociopath is able to have empathy in a limited way. This in not a sense of empathy for other people in general, as they do not care about society or it’s rules.
it rather is a feeling aimed towards select individuals:
This is confirmed by the switch from 13 to 12 of his bobbypins in the two panels (but the tarot behind that is something to explain another time). From here on out, during :re, Juuzou is only developing further towards a more moral way. The violent and antisocial tendency remains, but he is now able to feel some kind of remorse for a select few. This select few is now extend to his squad, although they remain aware of what is really going on:
The psychopath – Tooru Mutsuki
At the other side of the debate, the psychopath stands. Despite of being unable to feel empathy or form emotional bonds, they often have a very disarming or even charming personality. At the same time, this makes them even more frightening.
A psychopath is perfectly capable of mimicing emotions and displaying them in a way that would appear normal to others. With this ability, they are capable of blending into society and even maintain strong relationships.
When it comes down to committing a crime, Tooru has got it all figured out. What especially marks a psychopath’s work, is the meticulous detail to it. The way Tooru killed Torso also displays careful planning and fearsome detailing:
Psychopathy often originates from a physiological disorder to the brain, causing fundamental changes to the brain’s regulation of impulse control and emotions. Because of that, a psychopath is unable to reflect upon his actions and even dissociate from them, no matter how terrible they are. This is especially the case for Tooru as he has completely forgotten about them until now.
Sociopath or psychopath?
Now here’s the catch: Tooru did get abused as child as well, which is actually very typical for a sociopath.
This might have been the intial reason to murder his family, rather than some sort of brain malfunction. Yet this also shows the duality in between sociopathy and psychopathy, as the line in between is blurred. It also happens the other way around: Juuzou also plans ahead for his actions, which is something a psychopath would do.
This is once more showcasing one of the main themes through out the series; things aren’t as simple as they seem. I think it is really nice to see how these two develop in completely different way although they are somewhat similiar in the first place. If you have any more ideas about this, do not hestitate to add something to this 🙂
I really appreciate this post, because it focuses on two characters that I really love and, to be more specific, I love them especally when they are together. I feel like Suzuya and Mutsuki have been created in a specular way, in which shadows and lights alternate their influence,
blurring boundaries
and complicating already difficult situations.
Let’s begin from this:Suzuya was abused just like Mutsuki, but he developed towards Big Madam a completely different disposition than the one mutsuki harbored against his father(and family in general, as we can guess?).
Suzuya suffered a kind of Stockholm syndrome which prompted him to think he have to love Big Madam, despite her daily tortures; indeed, one could also say that, during the period of slavery,
Juuzou learned to love the pain itself. His body and mind adapted to that twisted environment in the direction of accepting it and survive. Big Madam, for her part, adopted ambiguous attitudes, dosing raw violence and sweetness in order to intensify the psychological dependency of his human pet (it could also be argued that she, in the end, felt a little of affection for Juuzou, but we don’t have to deal with this matter now.)
As for Tooru, adaptation and submission to the violent parent were only a facade. Tooru never really yielded to the abuses: the fierce and savage sparkle in his eyes, the same that would enrage Torso years later, was already a clear sign of the boy’s temperament during his family days, a temperament that his frustrated father could not bear.
At this point, it’s easy to draw a dividing line, although really slim:Juuzou would’ve never rebelled against bigMadamand would’ve never killed her of his own free will. When forced to chase her, he claims that he doesn’t retain any grudge against her and that he’s simply doing his job. Tooru, instead, hated the monster(s) in his house and did nothing but dream of running away. Tooru lied through his teeth every time he flattered his father, but he couldn’t help it because, at that time, he was only a child and he didn’t have any other weapon to protect himself against further beatings and sexual brutalities (however, we’ve seen the use of this same “technique” also with Torso).
Tooru
spent the first twelve years of his life feeling completely helpless,
forced to swallow rivers of contempt and frustration without being able
to do anything to change his so miserable condition of life. At a certain point, some barriers in his psyche collapsed (which is why I find quite appropriate the definition of psychopathy as a “suffering of the psyche” for Tooru’s mental state,
although not completely) and he was no longer able to control the violent
instincts, developed during the repeated abuses, that previously were locked and had no way out. Now It
seems clear that Tooru’s triggers
are all the particularly stressful situations, such as: acclimating into the Academy (change of
environment, new people to meet, gain acceptance etc …), facing the imminent danger during the auction (in that circumstance, he had already been attacked and
was left completely alone in a hostile environment) and no doubt
having to suffer, once again, abuses and violence from a man. Torso’s action were definetly the last step
towards the abyss of psychological breakdown in which Tooru is now isolated.
That being said, we can draw a further dividing line: whileTooru’s reactions are strongly influenced by the external environment, Suzuya constantly lives in his own reality and he’s not much affected by the consequences of interacting with other people, except in certain specific cases.
Suzuya
is almost the “perfect model” of a sociopath, since he can’t
functionally interact with normal context because of the special setting, based
on cruelty, his mind had received when he was a child. For
him there are no clear distinctions between “right and wrong”, let
alone social conventions to be subjected to. He reacts
mechanically when he feels threatened or when he perceives
hostility from someone, then his emotions are extremely elementary and
based on the moment, almost like those of animals. This
particular condition, as it may seem desperate, actually makes Suzuya a
subject more “manageable” than Tooru, because as we have seen,
prolonged contact with people genuinely interested in his welfare is
gradually changing his thought patterns, leading him to understand things that his “wild-self” could never achieve alone.
A subject like Tooru, instead, is much more tricky. The particular which I find myself more at odds with, when it comes to define Tooru as a “canonical” psychopath, is the total lack of empathy. Psychopaths, just like lots of people have already pointed out, can not in any way (or at least they can, but very slightly) perceive emotions and understand those of others – in fact, this condition is often caused by biochemical changes in the brain, occured in various ways (drug abuse, schizofrenia, incidents, coma, loss of oxigen, genetic disorders etc..). However, since they are forced to adapt to social contexts and “regular” life routines everyday, this people tend to set up masks that make them more acceptable and, in many cases, even enjoyable. Here seems to lie the main watershed between Suzuya – who is not in the least interested in his appearance in society – and manipulative psychopaths, frequently marked by a distinct chameleonic attitude.
Tooru’s massacres are undoubtedly characterized by rituals typically found in psychopathic tendencies, but he can not be portrayed in the generic conventions of psychopathy because he is an highly empathetic person. His sensibility and susceptibility to external influences are real, not artifacts processed by a cold and impenetrable mind. Accorfing to this assumption, I think the character
closest to the popular imaginary of the psychopath is Furuta Nimura, above anyone else. Although Tooru’s profile seems scarred by the same main elements, Furuta encloses and completely represents the sense of unease transmitted by those individuals who seem to have no qualms or remorse for their actions. All of his behaviors are perfectly calculated, his moves are methodical and studied in detail. His colleagues recognize him more often as a subject a bit ‘quirky but reliable and they always believe in his “tears” (remember the scene during the raid against the Tsukiyama family: Furuta kills an inconvenient witness in cold blood and beats himself up to throw off the other ccg members). However, I’m not making an analysis about Furuta, please don’t mind these last lines too much…
In order to find a definition that approaches better and more widely Tooru’s mental state, we must actually forget the classic distinctions between sociopathy and psychopathy, extending our spectrum of research to a class of more heterogeneous disorders, the DID = Dissociative Identity Disorders:
“ Dissociative identity disorder (DID), previously known as multiple personality disorder (MPD), is a mental disorder on the dissociative spectrum characterized by the appearance of at least two distinct and relatively enduring identities or dissociated personality
states that alternately show in a person’s behavior, accompanied by
memory impairment for important information not explained by ordinary
forgetfulness.
Other symptoms include loss referring to time, sense of self
and consciousness and dissociative amnesia. Dissociative disorders have been attributed to disruptions in memory caused bytraumaand other forms of stress:
The majority of patients with DID report childhood sexual and/or physical abuse. Identities may be unaware of each other and compartmentalize knowledge and memories, resulting in chaotic personal lives. Individuals with DID may be reluctant to discuss symptoms due to associations with abuse, shame, and fear.
Some terms have been proposed regarding dissociation: psychiatrist
Ellert Nijenhuis and colleagues suggest a distinction between
personalities responsible for day-to-day functioning (associated with
blunted physiological responses, referred to as the “apparently normal part of the personality” or ANP) and those emerging in survival situations (involving fight-or-flight responses, vivid traumatic memories and strong, painful emotions, the “emotional part of the personality” or EP). “
I find very amusing that a manga can push so many people to become interested in serious and delicate issues like these. I hope my meta managed to capture your interest, but I want to specify that it has no claim to be a professional analysis on the discussed topics (at least not yet XD), so take it as a light reading…
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.
I keep seeing a certain kind of conversation and I just want to add my two cents, if anyone even cares.
I don’t think the takeaway is that anyone could become like Torso given the right circumstances? I think it’s that Torso became Torso because he as a person had that potential, and then the circumstances drew that out of him.
There are many characters who go through horrible experiences and react in different ways. We can’t say anyone but Torso would end up like him in his circumstances because he’s the only one who will ever be in those situations, and he’s the only one who is, well, him.
There are core characteristics and there are circumstances, and both combine to make a character.
I pretty much agree with you, but some people are pointing out that the needed characteristics can be found in ken and many of them are shared with tooru.
I think Kaneki is a kind and caring person and he’s always been shown to be one. The CCG even put in a report that he’s extremely empathetic. He loves people and he doesn’t want to hurt them. His circumstances did change that at one point, and made him believe that the only way to protect the people he loved was to hurt others, but he didn’t lose his caring core.
I absolutely do not think that Kaneki would end up like Torso. There are similarities in their pasts to be sure, but they are very different people.
Mutsuki too is a kind and caring person, unlike Torso. They may have similarities in their pasts, but they are not the same.
sorry to jump in here, but i think there’s definitely a huge difference between mutsuki, kaneki and torso. if we even examine seidou and kaneki, who both went through the same ghoulification process, as well as torture, and turned out completely differently.
while mutsuki and torso share the same past of being abused by their fathers, you have to see the difference in their personalities- for whatever reason, torso decided to hunt down women who reminded him of minomi only to murder them and dismember them for his own pleasure– kaneki and mutsuki have been shown to have experienced abuse that has changed them but not into the people who were abusing them, nor did either of them exhibit pleasure from hurting others.
somewhere down the line torso started hurting people because he wanted to, whereas mutsuki first used his kagune to comfort urie, and kaneki only fought to become strong enough to protect others.
Sorry to jump in, but I was one of those people who first drew a parallel between Kaneki and Saeki. If this post was meant also as a reply to mine, I just wanted to specify a few points.
First of all, in no way I meant to say that Kaneki and Torso share the same characteristic or that everyone could’ve ended up as Torso, given the right circumnstances.
My point was something else entirely: I was talking about bad writing (and thus bad narratives concerning Villains) and I was doing it by contrast, that is by praising Ishida’s skills in portraying a realistic and deeply well though antagonist.
The villain tropes I’ve seen most often portrayed in mangas are the following:
1. The character is inherently evil and so no redemption nor empathy from the target audience is possible. 2. The character is not inherently evil but they turned into an antagonist after something terrible happened to them, making them “diverge from the morally white” path. 3. The character is as much as an evil person as the main character, their motives are anything but evil, they just happen to be on opposing ends to those of the main character. Or 4, Torso’s case, the character was mentally unstable from the beginning, but only took the morally black path by chance.
Sure, you may argue that Torso is also an example of point 2, and I would respect your opinion all the same. People are entitled to relate to characters in the way they feel appropriate after all. But I personally think that Young Saeki could still have been saved. What impacted his frail psyche in all the wrong ways wasn’t just Minomi’s death. That was just the final nail on the coffin. He was a phylosophical zombie since the beginning. And he felt that way because he couldn’t fully relate to others. The only other people beside his own father he’d ever came in contact with (before Minomi) were corpses, and so the first thing he thinks when Minomi reaches for his hand is that she’s warm.
But despite all those red flags about his mental sanity, he was getting better. Human contact (both literally and metaphorically) changed him. He genuinely wanted for Minomi to escape her “family complications”. Hewanted to be the one saving her. I don’t think this is a sign that he is an inherently evil character, or that he was this super cold and uncaring person he is now since the beginning. He was unstable, sure, he probably needed therapy anyway, too, but honestly it annoys me when people insist that he’s this one-dimensional character only meant for tragedy and bad plot twists. He was a random guy, a victim of abuse like so many other morally gray characters in Tokyo Ghoul, and later he became a villain because something didn’t quite go the way it was supposed to.
Do we know for sure that he wouldn’t have become an abusive and pshychotic serial killer if he and Minomi did manage to escape that town? Of course not, and that’s not what I’m saying, either. I absolutely do not empathize with Saeki nor do I condone any of his actions. I’m just saying that sometimes villains don’t need a reason to be villains. Sometimes they just end up as ones also because of a trick of fate.
Saeki doesn’t have an ultimate goal like Eto, or Kanou. He didn’t choose to become mentally ill, either. He was the result of a secluded education, of the lack of affection on his father’s side, on his own shy and introverted personality, and who know how many other factors.
Also, In a sense, Kaneki did become an antagonist, too. Post torture, he becomes the antihero of himself. His personality still stayed fundamentally gentle and caring, but because of that, and because of his own traumatic experience (the torture), he ended up constructing this mental idea of a second personality that could be “switched on and off like a light switch” (I can’t find the exact panel but I’m sure you remember it), aka his “Shiro” persona, and later the Centipede one. When he lets himself become violent, he shows some traits that are usually associated with pshychopathy: lack of empathy (need I remind you of the ghoul restaurant, or the fight with Ayato?), irresponsibility, selfishness, violence, yaddayaddayadda. The only true difference is that, as I said, for Kaneki this is just a persona that he puts on and off. A borderline dissociative identity disorder, as I see it. He still remains the kind-hearted person he was as the black-haired self he still idolizes in his mind.
If I drew the parallel to Kaneki it was to say that both of them are rooted on shaky and morally gray foundations, not really to compare their personalities, so if you guys were really referencing my post, I think that you’re twisting my words a bit. Their personality is fundamentally different, that’s not up for debate of course, and that’s why one ended up as the main character and the other as one of the antagonists. One of them used his inner strength and his fundamental empathy to pull himself out of his own misery and start afresh from a traumatic experience, the other instead let himself drown in it because he’d never been able to fully understand his own feelings. It was exactly the relationship they had established with others that shaped them and let them become such opposites. Kaneki had known love. Saeki hadn’t.
So I guess that what I was trying to say is that both circumstances and education make a difference when it comes to good narratives for writing villains, and they usually go together with a well written trauma/drama. The last one without any of the other two makes for bad writing, imho. But Ishida is above all of that, and he proves it times and times again with his muti-dimensional and gray characters.
I’m kinda of angry at the fandom’s inability to differentiate between fiction and reality at the moment, but personally I’m glad about Torso’s characterization in this chapter
Has Torso presented as a realistic serial killer versus the stereotypical manga serial killer that is bland and incredibly unrealistic. Ishida wrote an incredibly scary and realistic antagonist who actually unsettles people (including myself), that’s great writing
Torso’s backstory maintains the idea that ghouls cannot be born evil. Monsters are not born, they are made.
Ishida suddenly stopping the use of the above trope and having Torso be “uwu he’s just evil” would make Torso’s longevity in the manga unreasonable. You can’t have a character introduced at the beginning of series be as two-dimensional as a sheet of paper. That’s bad writing
Torso’s entire backstory reveal and his portrayal in the manga has made him the quintessence of the idea “his past explains his actions, but does not excuse them.” If you read the last chapter and did not see that message then you aren’t reading the manga right
Ishida’s still portraying Tooru’s entire situation in a highly negative light. Tooru sympathizes with Torso (not empathy), which is a result of Stockholm syndrome. But despite Tooru’s Stockholm syndrome, he is still highly intelligent and is scheming to escape with the newly acquired information he got from Torso. Tooru is not finished, he is still fighting, please calm down
Now I know somebody will come charging into my inbox yelling how I’m apparently supporting Torso’s actions, or how I’m supporting transphobia, or some other A+ bullshit like that, but I do have a piece of advice for anybody who is incredibly angry at this chapter:
Please go outside. It isn’t healthy for you to rage this much over a fictional story that dissects nasty morality issues such as kidnapping, sexual assault, human trafficking, genocide, torture, bigotry, abuse responses, and many other ‘taboo’ tropes. TG is a small part of your life, and it isn’t even a narrative directed at Western audiences (us). Just go take a walk and eat some ice cream and come back
Relatable FE Quote or Something 