Kaneki’s Head Trauma Part 1: Vision
A few days ago I received an ask about the specifics and the consequences of Kaneki’s brain trauma after getting stabbed by Arima’s quinque. I planned to write everything into a single post, but I realized that it was WAY TOO LONG because I want to do this justice, which is why I’ll be writing a mini-series of 3-4 posts on this topic, the first on vision/sight.
I’ll explain everything as best I can, but I’ll include diagrams and pictures for this since this information isn’t intuitive.
Okay so I have this nice grotesque image of Kaneki in chapter 139 trying to pull the quinque out of his head, not to make you cry and relive this tragedy, but to show where the brain trauma would have occurred (I’ve also tilted the image for convenience).
So the difficult thing about this is that the brain is a three-dimensional organ, yet all the diagrams are only in two dimensions. As a result, all the diagrams differ a bit, depending on which part of the brain they want to show, whether it be just the outer parts that we usually see like the cerebrum, or the medial parts closer to the centre of the brain.
So I have here a generic diagram of the brain with its relative position to the face for reference. Looking back at Kaneki, we can see that Arima’s quinque goes through Kaneki’s skull, brain, then eye almost horizontally, maybe angled a tiny bit downward. So the general area of damage would look something like this:
Keep in mind that since this is a 2-D image, the quinque might actually miss certain parts of the brain depending on whether they’re located parallel with the left eye or not. I added the thinner red lines to indicate the area of damage since the quinque is pretty thick.
But thank goodness this is 2015 because there’s a free interactive 3-D brain model that you can look at if you want to see for yourself. I’ve also circled in the general location of the eye as well.
This diagram isn’t particularly useful though since we can only seen the outer edge of the brain, so if I move the brain so that I’m facing it head-on and tilting it slightly upwards:
That red area I marked is where the damage occurs (visible from this POV anyway). The left optic nerve (the thin grey rod, I just labelled the other side since the brain is almost symmetrical), which carries visual sensory information from the left eye to the brain to process, will be damaged. That will cut off Kaneki’s vision to his left eye. Not that it matters though because there’s nothing left of his left eye for his brain to process.
So Kaneki has lost the left side of his vision. He can still see through his right eye, right? Nope. He technically shouldn’t, anyways.
The quinque started from the back of his head and went straight through the left occipital lobe, which is responsible for processing the right visual field, or whatever he sees through his right eye. What this means is that even if his right eye is physically fine, if his left occipital lobe is damaged, then he won’t be able to see through his right eye. This is called cortical blindness, or blindness due to brain damage rather than damage to the eye.
So technically, Kaneki shouldn’t be able to see out of his right eye either and he should be completely blind at that point. But he isn’t. Kaneki can see Arima’s Narukami quinque aimed straight at him and he tries to dodge it. (chapter 139)
An explanation for this might be that after taking the quinque out of his head, Kaneki’s left occipital lobe healed itself a bit, enough for him to see through his right eye. Or there was still enough of the occipital lobe intact for Kaneki to still see through his right eye. Or maybe Ishida didn’t know, because I wouldn’t say that this is common knowledge, although this stuff is taught in high school or first year university psychology classes.
This image below is pretty interesting though:
Kaneki is clutching the right side of his face over his right eye. I think in that moment Kaneki was temporarily blind, but it might also be due to the massive amount of pain the quinque caused.
I mentioned that the occipital lobe is mainly responsible for vision processing. For such a singular role, it takes up a lot of space, but it has a very important role since we rely on vision so much in our daily lives.
The occipital lobe certain areas that have specific roles to them such as colour and motion-processing, but honestly, the left occipital lobe is right in line with the quinque, and so most of it would have been damaged.
Broad damage to the occipital lobe can cause visual hallucinations, blindness, inability to see colour, motion or orientation, and synesthesia. The hallucinations were already there beforehand, we know Kaneki is partly or mostly blind, and there were no signs of synesthesia or an inability to see colour or motion. But what I found interesting was the inability to see orientation:
and how this panel is showing Kaneki upside-down, confused by where up and down and where right and left are.
What about the consequences after the trauma? We know that despite all odds Kaneki’s eye and the rest of his brain regenerated, although he didn’t get off scot-free in regards to vision. (:re 37)
And he experiences sharp pain to the back of his eye when he gets flashbacks
Feel free to ask any questions you have about this post, or if something confuses you. My next post should be up in a couple days :)
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