Anything’s possible, but I think he’ll go frame out just to survive. He may not lose control (think Urie recently), though he also might. I think Kaneki’s likely to snap before he meets Mutsuki (Hajime and the Oggai are nearby), so Mutsuki’s unlikely to see him so defeated. If Kaneki is Dragon, I uh think that may have a part in breaking Mutsuki and Hinami’s idolizations of him though, for sure.
If Yomo isn’t around though (hopefully he ran off with Uta) I’m not sure what the point to Mutsuki framing out would be, but I’m sure there would be one. Maybe Urie will show up and have to pull a Mutsuki/Saiko and save Mutsuki with a hug. But that’s just baseless speculation right now.
if that ever happens you will all have to check on me to make sure i’m still breathing
Also known as: live while losing, or the thing almost every character seems currently unable to do.
In this dark moon (eclipse really) arc, everyone seems to be incapable of making a good choice because they’re too preoccupied with obsessive clinging to an illusion of someone or something they’ve lost, rather than forging their own paths ahead–which they need to do if this story isn’t to end in tragedy. It’s quite reminiscent of Hamlet (sorry I have to bring Shakespeare into anything I possibly can), wherein Hamlet clings to something that claims to be the ghost of his father told him (even though he’s not really sure whether it’s actually his father’s ghost or a demon) and his inability to decide what to do then drives him (plus you know everyone around him) into madness and tragedy. Since this is TG and everyone and everything parallels each other, we see numerous characters focusing on illusions rather than on the logical steps they could take to improve themselves–and as a result of their inability to figure out how to live, the narrator (Furuta) cheerfully takes their strings and makes them do what he wants.
Urie made some progress (possibly the most of anyone this arc), but still seems to be under the delusion that if Shirazu just hadn’t died, everything would be fine.
Were it not for the sudden appearance of Mr. Sunshine Hide, he would have been killed as fodder, because Furuta (our narrator) doesn’t see any use for him.
Ui thinks that if he hadn’t lost Hairu, everything would be okay, and allows himself to become Furuta’s puppet as a result.
Mutsuki believes that if Sensei would just return, everything would be okay, and allows himself to become the puppet of his mental illness and Furuta as a result.
Aura believes that if he could exact revenge on Sasaki for what happened to his aunt, he’ll have proved himself, and he’s become Mutsuki’s (and thereby Fruit’s) puppet as a result. The irony here is that it’s looking increasingly likely that Kaneki is not the one who chopped Kiyoko’s legs off, but rather, Hirako is.
Hirako believes that since Arima asked him and 0 Squad to protect Kaneki, they must do that. Sounds noble until you realize he likely lost two kids in Cochlea and just lost Shio and Rikai, because he hasn’t turned away from the concept of child soldiers. Because of this, he’s allowed Shio and Rikai, whom it appears he has paternal affection for, to become pawns in Furuta’s sick game.
Hajime feels only hatred and the desire for revenge for his parents, because if they were still alive everything would be okay. He is now the puppet of Furuta, and may just have been left behind to become a snack for Kaneki as part of Fruit’s dastardly plans.
Tsukiyama and Nishiki believe they should obey their king, and they’ve become Kaneki’s puppets, even though they both seem aware that he’s not exactly being a competent king. Because Kaneki, in contrast to Furuta, can’t seem to make a move, they do nothing as a result, and Furuta seems to have been well aware no one would do anything to stop Kaneki.
Naki believes similarly, and also that he wants to fight to the end to honor the dead Yamori. It may have cost him his life, and his demise is another pawn for Furuta to capitalize on.
Hinami believes she should lay down her life for her loved ones–which is very beautiful–but there’s also the motive of guilt, as she blames herself. She’s a puppet to her guilt and insecurities, and focuses on chasing what Kaneki wants her to be, rather than whom she should be. Furuta literally calls her “bait.”
Juuzou hasn’t gotten over Shinohara’s falling into a coma, and allows himself to become Furuta’s puppet as a result, and is more than willing to kill his friend if it keeps Shinohara alive (even if it endangers Hanbee’s life too).
Kaneki hasn’t forgotten those he lost:
And now he’s still operating under the delusion that he can protect everyone, and that’s his purpose:
And that’s led to Kaneki being a puppet of Furuta, because it looks like this is exactly what Furuta wants (quite possibly to become Dragon).
Really the only ones who actually made a choice this arc so far are Yomo and Touka. Good job, Kirishimas. But even that’s limited, because Touka now finds herself as Furuta’s bait just like Hinami:
And Yomo seems to have forgotten his words to Touka about living while losing things:
And Uta warns him that it may cost him his life.
Essentially, everyone in this arc is the puppet of the ghost of someone and/or something they loved and lost, and now are falling prey to the master manipulator in Furuta. I personally think the extremely tragic 143 was another illusion of the moon tarot (and how are we going to get any darker from here, we’re at the apex of it) and the sun is likely coming soon. But for that to happen, for :re not to end as a tragedy (and I don’t think most arcs will, though tragedy=/=survival) they have to get rid of Furuta, the (unreliable) narrator of these illusions, the moon tarot, and direct their own stories.
(Also quite likely certain characters will have to confront certain dead characters as zombies to fully move on, but their only hope for being able to come to some sort of peace even when confronted with the zombies of their loved ones comes if Furuta isn’t around to pull the strings, in my opinion.)
started wearing black clothes to symbolize his change, but which are also fitting for a reaper, Then the third may be Kaneki himself if he is dragon. The title implies some kind of nurturing and both J and Ui received it even if in different ways and if Kaneki is the 3rd he sure received it as well (abt J not killing K, not even the old reaper did). Still, even if dragon and Juuzu are the 2 reapers I think their target is more important than Ui’s if it’s Hirako. I don’t know, just some ramblings
You’re always welcome to ramble on my inbox, anon! All theories are welcomed.
I’ve considered Ui as a reaper as well, though I think evidence would suggest he didn’t kill Hirako or Yusa because you would think Hajime would have their heads too. Ui also didn’t seem particularly eager to kill Yusa (in contrast to Hajime promising Shio that he would die there).
My guess for where Ui is right now that he’s too injured to continue and Hirako took Yusa and ran… somewhere (hopefully to, you know, reconsider his use of child soldiers because as much as I adore Hirako I’m not letting him off the hook for this–you can’t claim to be that much better than the CCG if you’re using kids to fight too and you already lost two).
Maybe one of the reapers is Furuta for himself rather than Dragon, because I still think he intends for Dragon to kill him.
Maybe the reapers are the friends we made along the way
But I’m with you in that it’s very interesting to consider all the options; that’s such an intriguing title for a manga chapter though that I would be disappointed if we don’t eventually find out what the reapers are and who these three people are, presumably by the end of this arc.
started I thought Kaneki’s arc would have been completed when he stopped trying to fill the role of a hero and would have started to fight for his personal happiness. In this moment he is doing this in a half-assed way in the sense he wants to live with Touka, bu he still fills the role of OEK. In the beginning I thought Kaneki would have been more than a catalyst for the union of humans and ghouls than a leader and that his arc would have found its meaning in somehow helping Hide: I thought con
that would have been a good ending because in TG we are shown how it’s mainly Hide who keeps doing things for Kaneki while he avoids him and is shown probably not to know much abt Hide’s situation despite him being his best friend. So I imagined Hide being in somehow some kund of predictment and that this time Kaneki would have been the one to help him. Well, no idea about all this will turn out. Sorry for all these asks, I am having fun discussing possible endings.
No need to be sorry; I enjoy answering them! Theorizing is always fun. XD
So… uh, here’s the point where I probably lose a ton of credibility with everyone and state my highly unpopular opinion: I didn’t like the Dark Knight as a film 😛 I know, I know, everyone loves it, I’m sorry (I don’t tend to like Christopher Nolan’s films in general, with the exception of Dunkirk). So I never saw the third film as a result. Hence I can’t comment on the similarities there, but what you describe certainly sounds possible, and like it fits with the things we know about Fruit’s plots.
Yeah, I agree with you about thinking Kaneki should develop more agency. That’s my preferred direction for the story to go, but at this point, he really has very few options left and that’s a fact. He’s going to have to eat the dead Oggai and probably take a bite out of Hajime first (run and leave the dead, Hajime, run for your life, my son; you’re currently grounded for probably forever but I still love you). I don’t see room for him to develop agency right now; however, once he heals, he may still do so if we ever get a Sun Arc (though with Juuzou’s association with XX or Judgment I wonder if the arcs are kind of overlapping rather than being strictly linear?)
As for Hide, yeah. He was super important the first half of the first TG and then marginally important and then vanished, and now appears to be coming back. I really love chiastic structures in literature, so I’m hoping that their relationship will get a focus as TG:re (or God forbid a third series) spins towards its conclusion. And there is a ton about Hide that we don’t know. He’s very mysterious. Like we don’t even know if he’s a ghoul or not (I think he is, but the question is when that happened). From what we do know, as Scarecrow, he’s been pulling the strings a bit, helping Kaneki at the auction arc, etc. I do think he has a very important role to play going forward… and he’s been associated with dragon imagery before. So whatever role he’s going to play moving forward, I do think it will be significant.
Crack theory: maybe Hide is Dragon and has Washuu roots and will appear to help Kaneki survive and then Kaneki will have to save his friend from himself. I don’t really think that’s terribly likely, but ya never know.
Thank you again for sharing your thoughts! I love hearing other peoples’ thoughts/theories.
ghouls through becoming a villain and all because he didn’t have the agency to become a hero and so in the end he found himself in the role of a passive villain. Obviously there many things that may disprove this idea, like apart from Furuta the clowns still didn’t have a great role, many characters must finish their character arcs and so on, but that other ask about the Quinx killing Kaneki prompted me to think what good would be to kill Kaneki for the revolution of the conflict.
I mean… yes. You’ve raised some good points and if that other theory about the Quinx turns out to be true, this is pretty much what I’d expect. It’d also fit because we know Tsukiyama’s, Hinami’s, and Mutsuki’s various obsessions with Kaneki have to break, and Kaneki turning into a rampaging nameless dragon would probably do that. It’d be tragic to an extreme, and really ironic.
But like you say, there are many things that seem to hint at a different direction/don’t fit as well, like Hide’s role, the Clowns, what would happen to Touka and their baby, etc, as well as me doubting whether the people who love Kaneki so much could ever really turn on him to the point where they’d kill him. Because Kaneki is very loved–sometimes not in healthy ways, as I’ve discussed before–but loved, and love in Tokyo Ghoul is presented a good thing.
Some of this is my personal opinion and therefore has no basis on what might actually happen, but I really want Kaneki to develop some agency. I would love for him to stop being a pawn of Eto and Arima’s and now Furuta’s and decide his own destiny. Then again, the fact that he hasn’t learned very much might indicate that isn’t in the cards.
That being said, Furuta’s not entirely correct here. Kaneki has learned one thing: he wants to live. And that is a huge change and an important one. He wants to live because he is loved and he knows it now, instead of wanting to die because he feels unloved. It’s the one sliver of light in this darkest hour right now, and seeing as how important the theme of living, even with it isn’t stylish, even if you can’t be happy, is in this manga, I am not certain the manga would turn that into a toxic thing for Kaneki and have his life be destructive. I also am not sure how working together to kill something will actually bring unity, or how that fits with the themes of the manga.
But of course, this is possible, especially if Kaneki goes berserk. Anything is possible, as Ishida knows and likes to tease us with 😛
Thank you so much for sending me your thoughts, anon!
Haha, I’m teasing, anon. This is a great observation. And timely because I actually recently had this exact discussion with a friend of mine. There is indeed some foreshadowing in the manga that the Quinx will be the ones to kill Kaneki. I hadn’t even thought of the Mutsuki panel, but you’re right about the Urie as a knight imagery, and knights typically oppose dragons. There’s also this:
Should Kaneki truly be Dragon and turn into a monster, I could see it happening. That would certainly make Kaneki a tragedy, though, though again, a fundamental part of Kaneki’s character is that he has so little agency because he doesn’t want to have it. He’s a tool for Eto and Arima to groom into the OEK and for Furuta to (maybe) groom into Dragon. Should his personal life end tragically, I would imagine Goat would still create a better world against the odds because that fits with the Fool’s Journey.
The question is how that works with where the Quinx are now. Saiko adores her Maman, and Mutsuki loves his Sensei, and Urie just teamed up with Hide, Kaneki’s BFF. Yes, Mutsuki’s love is twisted, but I really don’t think he wants to kill Kaneki (I think he was lying to Aura there). Should Kaneki turn into Dragon, that could definitely help wreck Mutsuki’s obsession over him, which would be a good thing, but I question whether that would be enough for Mutsuki to want to kill him.
But yes, you’re right: there’s been some foreshadowing in that direction. It’s looking like Shirazu isn’t Dragon, but should Ishida suddenly surprise us, that would also fit, as there’s this panel that seems to indicate the Quinx may have to kill him at the end:
But overall, it’s looking like Dragon will be Kaneki, and given the original purpose of the Quinx… yeah. There’s also the fact that if Kaneki’s personal life is to be a tragedy, it’s interesting that the Quinx, who share fundamental flaws with Kaneki and all kind of represent part of him might be the ones to end him. I hope this isn’t how it goes, personally, but yes, there’s been some foreshadowing that this could be where it heads. A lot depends on what happens next chapter though! (*prays for no third series*)
Hopefully this will answer most of the asks I’ve been getting about this chapter.
Kouryuugi is written in only hiragana and katakana. It itself is an obscure term meaning ‘catadromous’, a type of classification given to freshwater fish that migrate to saltwater to spawn. Depending on the kanji, kouryuu could mean exchange, confinement, prosperity, slipstream, or mizuchi (a Japanese aquatic dragon or serpent). Also of note is the ryuu in kouryuugi, which means ‘dragon’.
Hajime doesn’t say anything about ‘nuggets’, like the MS translation has written down (I have no clue where that came from).
Instead it says:
Hajime: Daruma-chan, ain’t this paradise?
Furuta: Hazuki-kun. It’s “Daruma-chan, please take care of/look after paradise. You need to be polite.
The “Daruma-chan” is referring to the daruma that we’ve seen often associated with :re, in regards to the colon in ‘:re’ having different colours, and Kaneki. You make a goal/wish for yourself and colour in one of the blank eyes, and then colour in the other eye after it’s been achieved.
Kaneki has once again been referred as a Daruma, this time by Hajime and Furuta. Hajime tells Kaneki that this situation is ‘paradise’, but what’s interesting is that Furuta corrects him and replaces it with a request for Daruma-chan (aka Kaneki) to look after ‘paradise’, especially since this isn’t what Hajime wanted to say. To me it seems like Furuta is wishing/asking Kaneki to look after a world where humans and ghouls can co-exist, an “ideal paradise”. Though Furuta’s idea of paradise may slightly differ from what I’m thinking of.
Some other things to note about the daruma:
Bodhidharma, the Buddhist monk that the daruma was modeled after, has a legend where he meditated for many years, which caused his arms and legs to fall out from atrophy.
Daruma dolls have a spherical base, and so symbolically mean they can fall and get up again to overcome adversity.
The daruma insult coming from Hajime can also be taken literally, as Kaneki’s limbs have all been severed and he is left to flop uselessly on his belly.
One nitpick about kouryuugi—
Judging from context alone, I’m certain that this has little to do with fish and would have been represented as 降竜儀 if it were written in complete kanji. The fact that it was only in kana hints at the intentional stylizing of the term perhaps in order to raise ambiguity.
降 → kou, descent 竜 → ryuu, dragon 儀 → gi, ritual
What with Furuta’s scheme to summon this “Dragon” out of its supposed roosting place, it’s thematically expected of him to give the operation such a decorated name, and it makes sense. The reason why the fight was cut out is likely for narrative expediency, or in order to allow revisiting it at a later time through a flashback when Dragon canonically appears. Furuta tells Juuzou that the objective is to kill the “opposing forces,” but he views anyone that isn’t himself as an enemy. Those he keeps on his side for the moment are pawns to throw away when he’s finished toying with them.
Dragon could be Kaneki. It could be Hide. It could also be closely related to Juuzou, the person that has now descended from the surface world to the one below to deal with Kaneki; he is the symbolic heir to two significant figures that “killed” Kaneki and triggered his psychological awakening: Yamori and Arima. Whatever Dragon is, what doesn’t change is that it is still a means to Furuta’s end.
My first reaction was to think that this is the end of :re and onwards! to series three.
But now that I think about it, there are too many loose plot threads. I mean the first TG series had loose plot threads too, but the character arcs were pretty complete for a tragedy. In :re, that’s very much not the case except for like Touka, Kaneki, and Mutsuki (fake-out death). Where is Yomo? Isn’t Dragon supposed to show up here? Akira? Amon? Donato? Clowns? Hide? Urie? Matsuri? SHIRAZU AND HAIRU? Hirako and Ui? Yusa?
No, I don’t think Mutsuki is dead, and whether there is a third series or not, Kaneki and Touka and Hinami aren’t going to die either. I’m going to hope that this is an illusion put on by the embodiment of the Moon Arc (rotten Fruit-chan), who actually gave Kaneki some very sound advice: learn, if you ever want to lead a successful rebellion.
As for whether Eto is alive or dead, I don’t know personally. After reading her last appearance in the manga I thought she was dead, but I also thought Matsuri was dead, so I tend to be a pessimist about who survives lol. There are real reasons for thinking Eto is alive too: namely, that her arc isn’t as wrapped up as Arima’s was when he died, because she has a dangling plot thread in terms of her father, who, like Arata, is being farmed by the CCG. Should she return to the manga, that is where I’d expect her arc to take her: reaching some sort of closure with her father much like Touka and Ayato will have to with theirs.
What happens now?
So there are two ways this could go down: series three or this is an illusion brought about by the embodiment of the moon (Furuta), and next week Kaneki will encounter a source of RC cells and go full kakuja. I infinitely prefer option #2 since unlike the first TG the character arcs are not even remotely wrapped up and dragon was supposed to appear and–yeah. I’m going to hope for option 2.
I’m so hyped for this chapter. Also terrified but mostly hyped
^^ me if Shirazu appears.
If it’s Saiko, you won’t hear me complaining, lol. But yes, I agree: I will be very, very surprised if Shirazu doesn’t appear either here or next chapter (likely here I think) based on this theory. Also considering that Hairu’s birthday was a few days ago, I wouldn’t be surprised if we see her reappear too… and if this theory is correct, maybe even Karren (less likely but she was too important in the first part of :re not to be relevant later on, even if it’s just through dealing with her memory, but revival is possible).
Whether or not Shirazu is Dragon (there’s some evidence Dragon might be Kaneki, but I still prefer it to be Shirazu, or if it is Kaneki maybe Shirazu is a part of provoking Kaneki) I am expecting to see him. I also think he will be on the volume cover (his memory has also been a primary motivating factor this volume, given those Urie flashbacks).
Give me my shark son and pink-haired princess back, please Ishida.
hamliet 