AME YASHA

NPC Oberon Voice Lines [Spoiler]

One Last Talk with Oberon - Avalon le Fae (30-4)

Please feel to correct me if there are any mistakes. Ishida’s handwriting is hard to read at times so I may have gotten some words wrong. (source of the afterword)

Lastly

I’m truly happy that I was able to finish Tokyo Ghoul.

Once it was set free, I was able to think a lot about myself that I had done by drawing this work. About myself, creativity, drawing, the creative industry. I was also able to meet lots of great people.

For the last half year, I really enjoyed drawing Tokyo Ghoul. I discovered and learned to appreciate all sorts of things.

“Why am I drawing manga?”

If I ask myself that now, my answer would be: “Because it was necessary.”

Tokyo Ghoul is a crude, unpolished work, but I love it nonetheless.

Those who have been involved with the series, those who have been reading the series. I have nothing but gratitude to whoever is reading this sentence right now.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

While I’m At It

This is a diary entry I wrote 9 years ago. I discovered it recently.

I want to bring this immature young man out here and bring shame upon him.

Amen to myself of 9 years past.

July 7, 2009

I’ve arrived in Tokyo. I am living alone.

Looking back at my diary, I can see just how rough around the edges I was. Foolish, short-sighted, and fresh-faced.

For about 2 years (in technical college) I was a giant brat who couldn’t stop laughing.

Compare that to now and I sure have grown a lot! Looking back at the recent diary entries, it occurred to me, why didn’t I write a lot…

I want to grow, even a tiny bit…

Why do the diary entries from my technical college days have nothing but dreams written in them?

I must have been dozing for quite some time…

Right now I’m creating storyboards that I can bring to Shueisha. I’m bringing them in tomorrow at 17:30.

It’s a story about war. Though I’m not sure whether I can draw a sci-fi with my skills as they are now.

Sometimes I’m at a loss, and there have been times I’ve had regrets.

Like, what was the point of me going to technical school for the last 5 years?

Or if you tried harder, would you be living a better life? Stuff like that.

But everything in the past is connected to the present.

Every mistake, every bit of suffering, every little success is creating the person that I am today.

If I can acknowledge myself now, that will acknowledge everything in the past.

All my failures are all a part of who I am today.

If I’m happy now, I owe it to my past (and of course to my present) self.

I can’t acknowledge myself 100%. But I kinda like who I am.

Then I can’t be that bad, right?

Please feel to correct me if there are any mistakes. (source of the afterword)

Heading to Tokyo

After studying manga and heading to Tokyo, I asked if Matsuo-san, who was in charge, to first introduce me as an assistant.

For a period of time I gratefully worked under Hara Yasuhisa-sensei of Kingdom.

I really was a useless assistant and I only caused trouble, but I learned many things.

That was the first time I’d seen a pro mangaka’s manuscript, and I remember being very shocked and impressed by his flaming passion.

From those days, Hara-sensei has always been standing at the top of the magazine, and he is still a huge feature that supports it. He is truly amazing, and I respect him from the bottom of my heart.

Things That Made Me Happy

I’ve listed only hardships so far, but there were lots of good things that happened as well.

I was able to request songs from my favourite artists:

TK-san of Ling Tosite Sigure for “unravel”,

People In The Box for “The Saints”,

amazarashi for “Seasons Die One After Another”,

Takahashi Kunimitsu for “Incompetence”.

And for :re,

Jooubachi for “HALF”

Cö shu Nie for “asphyxia”.

(the songs for the latter half of :re are still in the demo phase, but both songs are amazing).

Even now, when I listen to them it brings back memories. They are very precious songs to me.

Through the Hisoka spinoff project for HUNTER X HUNTER, I was able to meet and talk with Togashi Yoshihiro-sensei. I have many wonderful memories of it.

Togashi truly was a great and cool person.

“I’m always coming up with storyboards,” he’d say, demonstrating it while sprawled on the bare floor, which I would watch while kneeling.

During that time I couldn’t tell whether this was reality or just a dream.

Before we met, he gave me a letter that had a HUNTER X HUNTER storyboard written on one side. It was the storyboard for chapter 351 featuring Hisoka vs. Chrollo. I can’t believe he did something so stylish, I thought, deeply touched.

I look back on it when I need courage, even to this day. It is an heirloom.

…it gives me pure happiness that I could get readers to enjoy themselves. Even though it was tough for me to draw, if there was someone out there who could take pleasure in it, I could do my best.

It may seem like lip service, but that is the best reward and means just about everything to me.

Please feel to correct me if there are any mistakes. (source of the afterword)

My Dream Back in Elementary School

I remember writing “gymnast” for this prompt in the school anthology.

Up until the first year of junior high, I was very thick and so overweight that I looked like a pig, but I had fairly good motor skills.

Mat competition and horizontal bar were my forte, and I also did backflips.

Though in reality I had no desire to become a gymnast. Somehow I felt that I’d feel guilty if I wrote down my dream was to be a mangaka.

My Junior High School Days

At most this is just a memory from my junior high days, but I was able to study during those times. My parents kept nagging at me to study, study, so I was studious to placate them.

I liked English, so when I was in my second year of junior high I took the grade 2 English proficiency exam, which was the highlight of those days. (Apart from that I don’t really understand English that well.)

My parents scolded me as my grades dropped. I didn’t want to be reprimanded again and so I kept studying.

When I got the highest grade in the school, I happily announced it to my father, and he said, “Keep it up.” 

Now that I think about it, that might have been his way of praising me, but back then I thought, “There’s no point even if I do my best,” and so I lost meaning in studying.

University Moratorium Period

I wanted to get away from my parents, so I applied for schools that had dormitories.

I enjoyed the dorm life and I mainly spent my time playing only games.

My grades were beyond horrible, and I was at the bottom of my class. The content I studied in school just didn’t hold my interest.

I also began drawing via the Internet. Although I started out by drawing with a mouse, I bought a pen tablet and began drawing colour illustrations on my PC.

Finding a Job

I began looking for jobs, but I wasn’t doing anything at the time. There wasn’t any job that I could do.

The only jobs I could find required expertise you only learn at school, but because I wasn’t interested in studying the content at school, it was impossible for me to do them.

Left all alone, I fretted over what I should do.

I fought a lot with my parents.

In the end after much blaming and shouting by my father, I gave up and agreed to find a job. I don’t remember it well, but on that occasion I seem to have told him, “I’m dead.”

I wonder if it was those words that broke me, because in the end it allowed me to choose a path that didn’t require job hunting.

The path that came to mind at the time was to become a mangaka.

Please feel to correct me if there are any mistakes. (source of the afterword)

My Childhood

My family moved a lot due to my father’s work.

By sixth grade of elementary school I had lived in Tokushima, Tokyo, Kanagawa, Saga and Fukuoka. I’d even lived in Taiwan when I was in kindergarten.

I’d continuously make friends and part ways from them, so I never really made any childhood or close friends.

My relationship with my family became strengthened as a result, but because my father was so strict, my home felt cramped.

I liked playing games when my father wasn’t looking. Drawing wasn’t so bad either.

Drawing

It was around first grade of elementary school that I’d play with my older sister by drawing.

We’d collect bundles of paper, and draw fantastical manga that included adventures, dragons and swords.

Eventually I wanted the real, professional tools. If you studied with Shinken Seminar* at the time, you could receive and save up achievement points for a free gift. Knowing that I could exchange those points for a become-a-mangaka set, I worked hard and saved up points.

I think it took several months to save up because the set was expensive point-wise and of good quality.

I finally saved up the points, and with the mangaka set in hand, I grasped the G pen for the first time in my life.

When I dipped the pen in ink and drew a line on the stiff Kent paper, I felt like I had opened a forbidden gate.

Some time passed after I became a mangaka, when one day my hand slipped and spilled ink on the tatami mat.

I watched despondently the sight of my exasperated mother, wondering why she was wiping the spilled ink off the mat with steaming hot rice (is it that good at absorbing things?).

I couldn’t endure it, and so I sealed the mangaka set. From then on I didn’t hold a pen again for more than ten years.

Who knows, if I hadn’t spilled ink at that time, I might have become a super genius mangaka…

Note: Shinken Seminar (進研ゼミ) is an educational correspondence program run by Benesse.

Please feel to correct me if there are any mistakes. (source of the afterword)

Edit 1: Correction made about volume 7. Ishida was referring to how starting from OG vol. 7, he began pushing himself more and more. Apologies for the confusion.

Edit 2: Missed a couple lines, so I’ve added them in. Also corrected for grammar and fluidity.

I’ve already handed in the final manuscript, and I’m now writing this letter.

I would’ve written 4-komas at the end of the volume as usual, but I had a hard time writing “what comes afterwards” in such a format, so I thought that I would write an afterword instead.

Preface

Tokyo Ghoul began its serialization in September of 2011.

7 years have passed since then. My life has revolved around chasing the deadline, week after week.

I felt that if I took a break I wouldn’t be able to bring myself to draw again, so I refused to give myself a break.

Now that the series has ended, I’m finally living a life where I haven’t had a deadline looming over me for the first time in 7 years.

I wonder how I used to spend my time in the past.

If I want to be frank about how I currently feel, should I say it feels…liberating?

Tokyo Ghoul has been something that was intimately intertwined with my life, something that dominated my time and emotions, and something that changed my relationships with other people.

There was good that came with it, but oftentimes there was more bad than good.

Because of this, I felt like I was finally being released from a cage after being trapped in it for so long.

“But it’s just manga. There’s no reason for you to be pressured so much by it,” people may say with a laugh, but to me manga has always been by my side as a huge obstacle.

From the original volume 7 onwards, my stance regarding the manga changed.

I took on impossible amounts of work to try to push myself.

I cast away all sorts of things from my life, and poured all of my time into work.

I think it was because I was trying to get closer to Kaneki who’s been subjected to torture.

I’ve developed complications in my body.

I was scared at first. But after seeing all sorts of symptoms show up every few months, I resigned myself to the fact that this was the kind of body I had.

The most striking part to me was that I lost my sense of taste.

No matter what I ate, everything would taste the same. Even though the symptoms were different, I felt like I’d turned into a ghoul.

I was surprised by to what extent the human spirit is tied to the body.

There may be some readers who are disappointed by this, but I haven’t thought of drawing Tokyo Ghoul itself as fun. I hate working.

“Why am I drawing manga?”

These doubts grew ever more in my mind.

When I’m hiding something, I end up touching my chin.

When Hide is thinking about something, he puts his hand on his cheek. Haise imitates that and touches his cheek.

Akira-san braids her hair so that she can remember her parents.

Whenever Urie-kun paused, he was thinking about something. When Mutsuki-kun grabs the hem of his shirt, he shuts away his own feelings.

Saiko-chan often cried when she thought about her mother. Shirazu-kun said that he wanted to go on a motorcycle trip with his sister.

When I saw Touka-chan’s true feelings, she looked straight at me with her right eye.

Tokyo Ghoul:re volume 15 omakes part 2 (courtesy to TG_Hub for the scans). I’m not 100% confident about Kimi’s lines, so if you find anything wrong, please let me know! I’ve also compiled the omakes here for easier accessibility.

Enjoy!

unpopular opinion but Kaneki in a constant state of

👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀

Chapter 146

Chapter 147