Oh, are we talking about Bad Dad Yoshimura and why Bad Dad Yoshimura was such a Bad Dad. Allow me to chime in. Basically since Yoshimura once again (repeat after me) foils Kaneki, he provides a pretty good illustration of what Yoshimura’s major flaw is. This is a comparison that’s been made by the story several times already.
Weeeeeelll… I’m so sorry but: great fathers don’t murder their child’s mother, abandon their children, and raise other adopted children but not care about whether or not said children live because you hate what they are (ghouls) because you’re projecting your own sins onto them. Sorry Anon, but yes, I blame Yoshimura for being a Bad Dad. I wrote this post about it.
But like all things TG, it’s gray. Yoshimura WAS in many ways a great person. But he was not perfect, and his flaws unfortunately had consequences. I actually really like him as a character and his role in Touka’s life, etc. The saddest thing was I think he was so blinded by guilt he couldn’t ever see the beauty that was also a part of what he had created.
“That time, while making sure I would not be noticed by anyone (not even Father), I secretly and quietly rewrote the summary. One can only destroy things one cannot change. This is so for me, a person who left in the womb everything that was needed.” —Excerpt from Dear Kafka
This quote by Dear Kafka really summarizes Eto’s problem with both parents. To whit though as this isn’t really about Ukina, both parents failed to choose Eto. Yoshimura chose not to fight the world for her sake, and Ukina chose Kuzen over her own daughter.
It’s not just that Kuzen chose to kill her, it’s also that Ukina chose to die by Kuzen’s hand with almost no resistance, when she still had a daughter back at home. The only thing she remarked as worrying about was about Kuzen himself, not Eto.
It’s evident in how Eto talks about herself vs. the narrative that Yoshimura presents to Kaneki. She’s not the embodiment of her parents love, a love that crossed species lines. She’s a surplus, an afterthought at best. It’s unknown if the suffering that Ukina went through to carry Eto to term is known by Eto herself, but the words “left in the womb everything that was needed” is highly suggestive.
Imagine if you would, attempting to comprehend this paradox of your birth. That your mother would choose to suffer so much to bring you to term, but once you were already born she would choose to die by the hand of her husband rather than attempt to continue living with you. That is to say, you were loved all the way up until you were actually born.
Everything that was needed was love, and Eto views that love as being left behind from the moment she actually came into this world.
It’s an unsolvable paradox of love, like many of the ones that are thrown onto the childhood minds of the characters in this series. Touka even says something similiar to whit, why wouldn’t her father choose to be with her?
She didn’t care about his grief she just wanted to be with him. That’s kind of the key when realizing the flaws of Bad Dad Yoshimura. The entire time it wasn’t really about Eto, so much as it was about his own grief. Remember what parts specifically Kaneki related to with Yoshimura in giving his rationale for Nishiki as to why he wanted to jump into the fray all alone.
Amazing how… Yoshimura shows up in Kaneki’s monologue when he talks about how he thought he was deciding and making choices, when really all along he was just hesitating and shying away from the answer. It’s almost like there’s some kind of parallel there.
Kaneki specifically related to Yoshimura’s loneliness, his want for his broken family to somehow be fixed again and return home. This was of course not a bad thing, however once again it was more about himself than it was about the other party.
Yoshimura was ultimately too caught up in his own loneliness to do anything at all effective against Eto. He could just like Kaneki, only bother to try to protect her in a half thought out way rather than actually try to confront her, or the world that maligned her.
Ultimately even his death which he framed as a sacrifice wasn’t really that much about Eto. I mean, if we draw the line back to Kaneki again, it was revealed a long time ago what Kaneki’s real reason for charging into the Anteiku raid was.
I mean, the fact that Eto does not feel chosen, the fact that Eto feels like she inherited the entirety of both of her parent’s emotional issues and agendas (against V, the ghoul and human kind divide) with absolutely no support from either of them, the fact that Eto grew up this way specifically because of her parents lack of love should be enough to prove that Bad Dad Yoshimura is in fact a Bad Dad.
The world also doesn’t serve as an excuse to dilute his bad daditude. After all, Kaneki’s mother was surely stressed from her job, her sister’s undue stress on her, and her husband dying and having to handle it alone but that does not in any way excuse what she did to Kaneki even though there were circumstances at play out of her control.
The thing is, even the people that Yoshimura could be called a good dad too he exhibits several of his bad dad tendencies.
No Touka just has to suffer because she did the bad thing, let her die in a gutter all on her own because I want to make a philosophical point to her.
God is your solution to everything to shove it to the 24th ward.
Hire Touka… and her other brother…. uhhh… potato I think. When he runs away at 13 don’t even bother chasing him down and trying to reach out to him even though both of us are much stronger than him and it would be a minimal risk on our part to try to straighten him out.
I don’t want to go save Ken, my daughter’s there it would be awkward.
It’s pretty clear Yoshimura only intends to parent those children that are 1) receptive to his parenting and 2) not an inconvenience to him. That’s not really how parenting works, you can’t just only pay attention to the favorite child Touka and let the disobedient child run away and make no attempt to follow up on him. Once you take that responsibility you’re sort of locked in for life.
Also consider all the plot critical details that Yoshimura could have just told Kaneki at the start of the manga but chose to leave him entirely in the dark about for the sake of “protecting him” which meant squat in the end as Kaneki learned all of these facts after receiving several literal punches in the face.
The point is, Yoshimura’s parenting style with the children he does parent instead of Eto is really Lassiez Faire at best. There are several opportunities where Yoshimura could have lifted a finger and done something to act, and clearly chose not to.
As I said before, focus on internal tragedy and how much they miss the others around them tends to render people like Kaneki and Yoshimura completely unable to do anything substantial. It’s important to note, that for Eto what annoys her is just as much about what Yoshimura did do as he didn’t do.
For example, Yoshimura could not directly challenge V or even go to the 24th ward to visit Eto but he could… show up right in front of Arima Kishou to save some Rando.
That’s somehow less dangerous than facing off against V to protect Eto how? Why? Remember at the time Yoshimura has absolutely no clue as to what Arima Kishou’s true alliance might be.
It’s just a repeating pattern. Yoshimura is so held back by his own personal tragedy, when he acts to save others, it’s mainly about himself. When he mourns his daughter and his wife, it’s mainly about how much he wants them to return to him.
It’s not wrong for Yoshimura to want to be loved, to want his family back, but the fact that he imposed all of this onto Eto and made her second priority again and again is. It’s not the job of the children to inherit the issues of their parents, yet we see again and again this theme repeating itself in Tokyo Ghoul. Yoshimura pretty much pushed all of his unresolved feelings onto Eto, and that is the reason he could not face her, the world and V be damned. Look at the art here, it’s clear she quite literally is shown being made to feel small in comparison.
Ultimately what’s important to remember is that Tokyo Ghoul is a book. If Ishida wanted to show that Yoshimura truly truly wanted to see Eto again, than he could have figured out some scenario for him to see her. The fact that we see Yoshimura ultimately do nothing is reflective of the fact that it’s more on Yoshimura’s own personal choices, than the scenario of the world itself for why he did not face her.
Yoshimura also, does quite clearly push responsibilities onto his children that aren’t even remotely their responsibility to handle. He does it to Kaneki twice, first insisting that him, a person whose been a ghoul for five whole minutes a relative newborn could somehow become the entire bridge to end a hundreds of years long feud between species. Second in suggesting that Kaneki can somehow save his daughter Eto, like that wasn’t Yoshimura’s job to begin with. Nah just leave it to the guy she’s never met.
In Tokyo Ghoul this avoidance, this shuffling of responsibility, this indecisiveness, its drawn clearly in a line between Yoshimura and Kaneki but it’s shown to be a result more from being unable to face one’s self, rather than entirely dictated by the situation.
The tragedy isn’t that Yoshimura would have been the best dad ever and they would have had such a happy family if V hadn’t interfered. The tragedy is that Yoshimura couldn’t really get over himself in time to do anything effective enough.
He even says exactly that about Ukina in the end. He didn’t know her very well, he just knew that he loved her. The point being that, if he had understood her from the beginning rather than just looking at her love to solve his own loneliness then perhaps things would have turned out different.
Self awareness and self examination aren’t just nice things to have, they’re exactly the tools that prevent people from shoving all of their own issues haphazardly onto their children. Considering how broken and lonely that Kuzen was, even if tragedy had not interfered it’s likely he still would have been an emotionally distant and hands off parent who pushed some unhealthy stuff onto his children, because that’s exactly what we see him do with Touka, Yomo, Irimi, Koma and Ayato (Who he forgot about).
It’s possible but not terribly likely imo. Isayama wants us to sympathize with Gabi and it’s Eren she’s after. If she kills someone, my money is on Floche.
I was thinking about this whole thing, and the ideological divide we’re seeing with Paradis. We have folks like Jean, Sasha, and Mikasa that refuse to engage in senseless killing. And then we have folks like Floch (and Commander Zackley) that support the wholesale slaughter of the people outside the Walls.
Isayama has been very intentional from the beginning with showing how Gabi is another Eren, just on the opposite side of the story. She’s quite literally a recycling of a Girl!Eren design. Now, she’s caught in the latest cycle of revenge as Eren repeats the sins the Warriors committed on the people of Liberio. Just like younger Eren, she’s too hard-headed and emotionally invested to slow down.
I feel like her confronting Eren and co is necessary, sooner or later. While none of them are happy with what is happening, I feel like the only way forward is for them to eventually confront how innocents are going to suffer as long as things remain an endless cycle of retribution.
On the other hand, I could TOTALLY see Floch forcing things to a point where they have to make a stand. He fully embraces the themes of becoming a monster to win against monsters, and doesn’t seem to understand or acknowledge the heavy toll. He’s revenge-hungry and wants to make others suffer as they have. He wanted Erwin to survive, because he was a “monster” and now he’s praising Eren as a “demon”. I wouldn’t be surprised if he tries to kill Gabi (or a civilian), because he thinks that is the right way to do things.
Yep. Thanks for adding to this. Gabi needs to confront the Paradis crew soon, but I also hope she will escape the fate that’s overtaken Eren… but seeing Floch attack her is entirely possible.
I have to be honest here i’m not THAT impressed with urie this chapter saiko really did all the work. He kinda did not overcome his flaw imo or i missed that and he did?
So what were your (possible) issues with the chapter now that it’s out?
From different anons but they can be answered together.
No, Urie didn’t overcome his flaw, and that’s what I’m disappointed in. THOUGH him letting Saiko help might have been him not doing everything on his own so maybe there’s progress there? I wish he had said it, but also, I think there’s some good to him not confessing now, especially given Mutsuki’s unhealthy relationships with romance right now. I think that will be developed upon though.
And yeah. My frustrations are with Saiko’s character–or should I say, her lack of character. She continues to seem like just the cute one rather than a character in her own right. She doesn’t struggle–like that confession would have meant a lot more coming from Urie, because, much like 112, this didn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know.
I’m going to quote @amonmahboi here from our conversations about this chapter and say “loving someone is a constant effort.” Just saying it isn’t enough. Saiko says it but seldom shows it in-between and I wanted to see that addressed.
@hamliet Ah, I’m glad we’re kinda agreeing on that. 🙂
I do think that both Urie and Saiko are stagnating, since it’s basically ch112 2.0 but at the same time, I find that such a conclusion was to be expected since Mutsuki wanted to kill themselves. So Urie and Saiko showing comfort and using the magic hug instead of confrontation about what Mutsuki did so far was the best way to make them feel accepted and to give them a chance at redemption, in my opinion.
However, it doesn’t mean that everything is now solved since redemption just started and first Mutsuki needs to get help, to want to live, to accept themselves, to try and get rid of their flaws, to move on from their crush on Haise. That’s also the reason I’m kinda glad the Mutsurie thing that seemed to have been foreshadowed with that editor’s line in the last chapter didn’t happen, as much as I like them together.
As you said, I’d rather not have Urie confessing to someone who barely held it together for a while because they’re coming back from so far away. For now Mutsuki needs to learn to love themselves and to realize that, even if they loved Haise, Kaneki won’t love them the way they’d want him to, so that Mutsuki will be able to move on and to finally possibly consider someone else’s feelings.
Finally, about Saiko, I agree that she doesn’t seem to be struggling, but maybe that’s because she too went through a difficult past with her previous family and learnt that someone at least needs to keep it together during tough times, otherwise everything is falling apart. Maybe her turn will come next, since we still don’t know what happened to her brother (I’m thinking, especially if the Qs confronting Kaneki after the Dragoneki arc doesn’t go well since Haise was the first stone of Saiko’s new family)?
In the meantime, I’m glad Mutsuki managed to get the idea that they were still wanted, despite everything they did so far. Obviously it’s definitely going to be developed further later on, since they still need help and it’s barely the start of their redemption path anyway.
hamliet 