tokyo ghoul reblogs

Oh man, so there could be so much to unload concerning Touka now that the series has been completed.

Touka is fantastic in so many ways, though I am among those that feel like she sort of……deserved MORE. She falls victim to being the heroine of a series focused on a male audience, in that she ultimately becomes someone shuffled to the side more than I would like. 

She is the sort of character that I adore, but wish was able to have her own side adventures. We know that she was doing things but those things were OFF TO THE SIDE, because she is not the protagonist and the story was focusing elsewhere.

When she’s given the chance to shine, she shines so brightly. Her journey and growth are so wonderful, because her story is ultimately about Recovery. Touka was this vibrant little girl that had her entire world systematically ripped away from her. 

First, they took her mother.

Then, in a series of brutal losses, they took her father, her home, and her safety. Touka was a child when she was forced out onto the streets, barely able to survive and forced to grow up too soon to protect herself and her brother. Like many children raised with such trauma, she was forced to become strong and to become vicious. She was all edges and aggression, even though she didn’t want to be. 

Yoshimura gave her a second chance. She was still learning how to be a person, how to be a kid again when she met Kaneki. She was still a little feral then, everything so new and her so painfully aware of how easily it could all be lost. She treats Kaneki roughly, because he is likewise as weak and lost as she once was. She’s angry with him, because anger is how she survived all those years when it was just her and Ayato.

Ayato was still angry.

Touka’s entirely world as loss, and she loses it again just as she becomes comfortable. She loses Kaneki, she loses Yoriko, she loses Yoshimura, she loses Anteiku and her normal-ish life.

But this time she’s older, stronger, and she isn’t completely alone. She rebuilds, creates :Re as a home for others. She builds her own little niche, settled in and letting herself be content. She is selfless enough to stand back and allow Haise to have his stable existence. But she is also fierce enough to storm Cochlea to save Hinami, and to gently scold her when they meet again. 

I wish she’d gotten to do more on-screen than just be “Pregnant Wife”, but even then she is still a great character. She’s grown so much from the angry, feral girl she started out as in the beginning. She’s brave and determined and full of love for so many people. She fights tooth and nail for her loved ones, drags Kaneki free from Dragon, and she reunites him with Hide. She supports him completely, and is such a source of strength in the final arc. 

Touka matures into something close to the classical Japanese ideal. Yeah, she’s a wife with one adorable kid and a second on the way. She may or may not be a housewife, it’s not really addressed. But like the meme goes:

She’s beauty, she’s grace, she’ll stab you in the face.

I wish we’d gotten to see some Battle Couple with Kaneki and Touka. It’s unfortunate and common for the demographic. 

Ahhh thank you! So there are very complex reasons behind Kaneki’s motivations to do everything on his own, but let’s look at the other characters who explicitly embody this trait as well: Shirazu and Urie.

I think it’s notable that the reason Shirazu takes on all the responsibility is not because Kaneki saddles him with leading the squad (Shirazu was a good squad leader), but rather it’s connected to his upbringing. After Haru got sick, his mother left, and this happened to his father:

His father hung himself, leaving Shirazu as the only one who could possibly care for Haru. That’s why, when he’s dying, he genuinely thinks the world is cruel. He doesn’t trust the new family he has–Urie, Saiko, Mutsuki–to try and save her, and why would he? His mom left and his father also left when things got terrible. So he asks them to let her die, because without him, he thinks there’s no chance for her anyways.

And then let’s look at Urie. He takes over the Squad after Shirazu dies, and kind of is not a great leader, unlike Shirazu.

His determination and desperation to be strong and to overcome Kuroiwa is pretty clearly rooted in a childish desire to tell his father he didn’t want his father to leave him and to prove he was worth his father not sacrificing himself, because in Urie’s mind, Mikito prioritized his squad’s lives over coming home to him.

Basically, Urie does not want to be his father, but he’s become just like him anyways, and it almost killed him when he framed out, but Saiko saved him.

So, Kaneki. We know that Kaneki’s mother died from overwork, because she was so desperate to bear the burden for her sister and her sister’s family. Kaneki’s father died when he was so young that his mother is really the only parental example he had in his early formative years. And even though he truly does resent her for prioritizing everyone else, it’s obvious that Kaneki’s followed in her footsteps in that.

But beyond that, Kaneki’s dad died, his mom abused him and died, and his aunt abused and neglected him. These are all things Kaneki had absolutely no control over. He is not in any way at fault for any of these. But it’s highly, highly common for abuse victims to blame themselves–especially children. See, all children are by nature egocentric–but I’m using a psychological term here, not the common way “egocentric” would be used as a negative thing. It just means that children are not able to fully grasp the complexity of the world, and so they believe that they deserve or have earned everything that happens to them. It’s interesting to me that Kaneki is shown in a fetal position last chapter:

So this chapter really highlighted Kaneki’s childlikeness for me (I should also clarify: childlike is not a negative thing; childish is negative, they have different connotations).

Because Kaneki believes he is somehow responsible for every bad thing that’s happened to him (thinking of himself as the protagonist also ties into this), and because he also doesn’t want to be his mother and wants the bad things to stop happening to both him and to those he loves, he believes he alone can stop it. Which is a faulty mindset: Suzuya made his own choice to fight in the 24th ward. So did Mutsuki. Hinami chose to stay behind and almost sacrifice herself. Naki expressed that he wanted to die. Those are not Kaneki’s fault.

Like Shirazu, due to his childhood experiences teaching him he could not rely on others, Kaneki is too scared to actually rely on others. Like Urie, he’s still grief-torn over the loved ones he lost even though he had no control over most of them. He’s a traumatized child.

And furthermore, Kaneki absolutely loathes himself. He sets up seemingly hypocritical boundaries like “killing ghouls fine, killing humans no, but I’m the ghoul king” because it’s literally the only way he can live with himself. It’s a maladaptive coping mechanism. He does not believe he’s worth love if he isn’t good enough, if he isn’t kind enough, if he doesn’t get hurt enough. Love for Kaneki is inherently tangled in him being hurt, just like his mom hurt him but also loved him. Touka is not abusive, Tsukiyama is not abusive, Hide never was, so Kaneki must hurt himself to protect them.

(I’m crying as I’m writing this, because it’s really damn relatable and my heart’s broken for him.)

Kaneki does know he’s loved. Touka, Tsukiyama, everyone in Goat could not show him more how loved he is–except they actually could if they confronted the worst parts of him, like Urie and Saiko did with Mutsuki recently (what is foreshadowing). Because he doesn’t trust them fully to love him if he’s what he fears he is (a murderer, and he is a murderer). But they love him anyways, and I expect them to show him that at the end. Like Mutsuki, he’s probably going to be in complete and total despair after this, but accept that he’s a murderer and he cannot justify his murders.

But. But Touka and the others still love him. The entire CCG and Goat are trying to save him because to them, he’s worth it, even though he killed countless CCG agents in the 24th ward and countless ghouls. Like Urie and Saiko had to acknowledge Mutsuki’s wrongdoings, Touka and the others need to acknowledge Kaneki’s, and tell him that they love him no matter what. And they will, I believe that.

The Many Stages of Kirishima Touka’s Life

Wanted to try to include as many Touka-chan’s as possible so here are some more!

Bonus Variations:

Oneshot!Touka

Snow White!Touka

In the Mutsurie fandom we don’t say “I love you”, we say “I couldn’t care less, if you die” and I think that’s beautiful. 

Just thought I would write a quick post about this because my dash is filled with people suddenly seeing death flags for Kaneki everywhere. x)

Anyway, as the title mentions, in my opinion the fact that Kaneki became the equivalent of the Nagaraj and is destroying Tokyo doesn’t mean that, ultimately, the only possibility left for him is to be killed by an alliance made between Scarecrow’s side and the ghouls, led by who will probably be Tsukiyama (since he’s another ace card). 

I won’t disagree that it is definitely what Furuta has in mind…

but narratively speaking, in my opinion, at this point it doesn’t make sense for Kaneki to become the “truly great enemy” and to die tragically when:

he doesn’t care about the rebellion

all he ever wanted ever since the very first chapter of TG was to belong in a family.

Kaneki’s OEK role was literally given to him by Eto and Arima…

at a time when Kaneki found that he had no reason to keep on living, which is why he focused on this task, because that was all he had to keep going forward. However…

…and even after his relationship with Touka blossomed, this part still didn’t change….

…the only reason that he “cared” about the future of ghouls mainly being related to Touka and the future he wanted with her (AKA becoming a family).

Now, I think that it’s no secret for anyone, and for Kaneki as well, that this lack of belief is mainly why he never managed to be a good leader:

…Leading to Ayato and Irimi trying to give him advice, and Tsukiyama being tired of the way he does things when they’re at war. So, in the end, it’s not surprising that instead of being the leader fighting for victory, he ends up being only a mean to someone else’s grand plan for the ending:

Back to the point at hand, the other reason I don’t think that redemption and happiness are out of Kaneki’s reach, despite the massacre he’s currently committing, is because…

…the Clowns are the public of this play…

and they already told us at the end of TG (”the tragedy” before :Re kicked in) that Kaneki dying tragically didn’t make for the best ending either (”how lame~”).

Finally, I’d like to add that if Kaneki dies, then Touka’s own development will stagnate because her fatalistic side has grown to be probably too overwhelming for her to manage dealing with it on her own [x] [x] and thus, the only way for her to have hope again is if Kaneki is by her side as well. 

Readers tend to criticize Kaneki’s happiness for resting mainly upon Touka’s survival, but in my opinion the same goes for Touka, because they are a set (as said by Ishida sensei himself).