Sorry, I just want to clarify–do you mean characters who are not initially hinted at getting redemption arcs (like via a save the cat moment, or being originally a protagonist like Mutsuki in TG, or whatever) but then does get redeemed? That’s how I’m interpreting it; if that’s not what you meant please don’t hesitate to correct me!
I rarely hate characters with a passion, and the ones I do are almost always bad parent characters and/or people who hurt children. That being said, I’m not necessarily opposed to getting more from these characters since I don’t believe in monsters but in humans.
I think it all comes down to how it is written and how it is framed. Redemption, like any other trope, is entirely dependent on how the author handles it. There’s no one right way to handle it, but when you can see the author’s hand moving things around it’s just not well written (certain characters from the last arc of Tokyo Ghoul come to mind with this. I wouldn’t even call those redemption arcs; they’re more like “nvm I like them so let’s ignore this issue”). Framing’s important, etc.
So far, I think Endeavor in BNHA is one who comes to mind as someone who didn’t have an obvious redemption arc but is getting one. I don’t care for his character and I never will. The abuse he’s inflicted on his family is triggering, and I wasn’t excited for a redemption arc. I also think it could been better written because I do think the framing of Natsuo has swung wildly around and people who complained about it were not wrong to complain about it pre-192. That being said, I am interested in seeing where it goes especially if Dabi is Touya (and I think he is), and like Shouto, I am interested in seeing his actions as a father. I also did appreciate the variety of perspectives shown in chapter 192, and how not one was coded as the correct one. I hope Horikoshi will continue to frame it like that. If he does sacrifice everything to save his son from himself, I can see myself being moved, which is why I want it.
Thank you for the ask! My answer is probably not what you wanted, but I hope it’s okay?
So, the short version is that I think there’s not much of a point in discussing it before we actually get there, and it depends on what anime onlys think–which manga readers simple won’t be able to predict. So, we’ll see what they think.
Watching a manga you love be adapted is fundamentally a different experience than watching an anime first, and I think manga-readers can project their experiences onto anime onlys (and I think that’s likely what’s happening here). I prefer manga as a medium to anime the majority of the time, but it’s not like, inherently a lesser medium or a lesser way to tell the story; it’s just a different medium to convey the same themes/characters, etc. Of course bad adaptations do exist (looking at you, Tokyo Ghoul :re), but also Tokyo Ghoul and hell, Root A got me into the manga in the first place and yes, I did pick up on a lot of the themes the manga was conveying even if it was actually adapted poorly.
All that to say, manga readers fretting over whether anime onlys will get something is something we can’t predict. It’s not as if manga readers have one coherent opinion on all the scenes. A story told well will definitely lessen the risk that someone would blatantly misread, but telling a story well via anime does have fundamental differences to telling a story well in a manga.
For SnK specifically, I remember all the manga ppl nitpicking things in Annie’s arc, so I’m sure it’ll be the same with Historia’s cave scene even if it is well adapted… like “anime onlys will never understand this important nuance to her character without those three panels exactly adapted!” and like, I watched the anime before I read the manga and I did, in fact, get that nuance about Annie from the anime, because they found a different way to convey that nuance that better fit the medium. But because certain things are emphasized in the manga that aren’t in the anime, to a manga-reader watching it might feel like it’s been cheapened–because we’re used to looking for that moment in the manga, that wasn’t necessary for the anime medium.
I’m sorry that this is kind of a non-answer! I hope it makes sense. But in short, we will see, and even if the anime doesn’t do it for many manga readers, it may not be because it’s a bad adaptation inherently but because we’re approaching with a different perspective.
Kaneki hon no, it’s not all your fault. Everyone else has agency too. Juuzou chose to follow Furuta and to butcher you. Hirako chose to stay behind and fight with the kids. Thinking everything is all on your shoulders is part of the problem, Kaneki-kun, honey. Please. You didn’t make Juuzou attack you or Hinami. You are only responsible for your own poor choices, not theirs.
Rize’s conclusion is also very faulty: do nothing, it’d be better. Um. No. Not true, Illusion Rize.
Interesting it seems like we’re overcoming the lying to self (Mutsuki) flaw first, and now it seems like Kaneki’s going to be dealing with Saiko (do nothing) and Shirazu/Urie (bear the burden) next. He’s got to realize he can do things, that he isn’t like some toxic poisoner who only hurts because ouch. (I think Kaneki’s child may play a role in that–you created a baby, Kaneki).
Also all the focus on Rize’s mouth is um. Increasing my suspicion she will eat him and it’ll be up to the aces/qs to help save him from his despair.
Time for me to ramble about my very favourite character in Tokyo Ghoul: Suzuya Juuzou. Idk what it is about all the murder children like Juuzou Mutsuki Touka Ayato Hajime and Rio but I have a soft spot for all of them. He’s had one of my favourite arcs, going from being completely unable to understand empathy and love and the value of life to realizing how much those things matter to him only when it’s too late.
Since then, he’s become a respected CCG agent, paying for Shinohara’s medical care and earning the respect and love of his squad, as seen in Joker and :re.
But Juuzou’s issues with Shinohara are not resolved–he never got the closure he needs, as we saw when Uta used a Shinohara mask to completely unnerve Juuzou, and more recently when Nakarai tells Hanbee that the reason Juuzou stays with the CCG is because he hopes for Shinohara’s recovery, a hope that is futile (and there is the possible implication that Shinohara has actually died and Juuzou doesn’t know, which might make zombie Shinohara a possibility).
Juuzou wants to honor Shinohara’s impact on his life through how he lives his life. However, he’s going about it all wrong.
Juuzou is operating under the delusion that the path towards being like Shinohara involves becoming a stronger investigator and inspiring others to follow that path as well: he believes that his mentorship should inspire bravery and strength in his mentees. But he’s completely forgetting that the whole reason Shinohara means so much to him is not because of Shinohara being a strong CCG investigator, but rather it was because of the love, kindness, and empathy Shinohara showed Juuzou. That is Shinohara’s legacy to Juuzou: inspiring kindness and love in him, rather than inspiring violence.
The path towards becoming more like Shinohara, for Juuzou, is actually not served by him inspiring lost children to become better investigators, but rather by showing them love and kindness. He’s been mentoring his squad in a sense and while that’s gone fairly well, he’s failing at mentoring someone who had a similar background to him (and who actually killed some of those animals he was accused of killing): Mutsuki. His squad member Nakarai is failing at mentoring Aura Shinsanpei, like Kiyoko requested of him. And now Mutsuki is failing at mentoring the Oggai in any sort of positive direction.
This will probably come back to bite Juuzou at some point, and he’s going to have to realize where he’s gone wrong and try to fix it before he can really become like Shinohara. (And I should say that I really do not see a tragic end for Juuzou, at least as the story stands currently, so I think he will.) He still hasn’t fully understood what he did to Kurona and Nashiro–he really needs to develop a sense of empathy, even for those on the “opposite side.”
And he just might have the opportunity to do that soon. His friend, Kaneki, is the One-Eyed King right now. When asked about how he feels about killing Kaneki, Juuzou says this:
This blind acceptance brings to mind Juuzou’s confrontation with Big Madam in the auction arc, where he tells Big Madam that he doesn’t feel any animosity towards her, but rather is killing her because it is his job.
Presumably he is trying to adopt the same attitude towards Kaneki. However, as Juuzou himself hints, there is a key difference here: Kaneki loved Juuzou as a friend (however imperfect Kaneki’s love was, as Mutsuki calls him out on when he asks Kaneki whether Suzuya and anyone at the CCG at all meant anything to him when he attacks :re). Big Madam really did not, as she brutally tells him:
I do think Juuzou and Kaneki might face off in the future (the “20” that he wears in his hair, a symbol of the Judgement tarot, suggests this as well). But I don’t believe Juuzou will be able to kill Kaneki–not because of his lack of physical ability, but because he cares about Kaneki, and Kaneki has shown him kindness and love. Juuzou’s reaction to fake Kaneki’s execution by Furuta reveals that Juuzou’s statement that “it’s already been decided” is not what he truly feels.
I think Juuzou is likely to defect at that point, or at least come to work alongside Kaneki and thereby with ghouls. He might not literally become a ghoul, but he could work with them. Maybe then he will cast off the “new Arima” label Furuta has saddled him with–essentially proving that he is not so easily bent to Furuta’s will even though he currently is indeed being bent by Furuta’s will despite knowing how shitty Furuta is–and be able to truly follow in Shinohara’s footsteps: becoming a mentor to other lost children. He might help Mutsuki, and/or the Oggai who survive. Unfortunately, if Shinohara is indeed dead and/or zombified, he might realize this too late to help his old mentor (paralleling again how he realized too late how much he loved Shinohara in the first TG), but he can honor his legacy.
Because this chapter hurts, goddammit (it’s my favourite in quite awhile though).
I
still am not very worried about Urie. Quite possibly that’s foolish of me, but
unless Ishida is suddenly veering down a very nihilistic route I think
there’s been too much build-up over his frame-out for him to just die
after being swallowed by Roma like that. We might have to wait a few
chapters while we return to the Mutsuki-Aura-Yomo showdown, but I think
he’s pretty likely to frame out and attack Roma from the inside (pull an
Eren Jaeger essentially), quite possibly killing her.
Additionally,
I think the elephant in the room (Shirazu) is plot armor for all of the
three original Quinxes. And oh look, the elephant was brought up this
very chapter and I may or may not have cried at my desk at work.
Anyways,
the Quinxes are all scattered now. Mutsuki and Aura are off committing
atrocities for Furuta–but what Mutsuki really wants is to bring them
all back to that house.
What Saiko really wants is for nobody else (of her family/friends) to die.
And what Urie really wants, as he seems to have finally realized, is his family. The Quinxes.
I
think it’s possible that all three of the original Quinx are going
to be separated after this–Urie as a prisoner or a rogue ghoul, Saiko
may decide to defect (but I think thematically it makes more sense for
her and Urie to be separated but who knows), and Mutsuki with the CCG (I’ll add that
given Urie’s situation the fact that Mutsuki and Urie’s arcs mirror each
other in some ways, I would not be surprised to see Mutsuki frame out
and/or reach his lowest point here). But at their core, they are a family, however dysfunctional.
I
strongly believe Shirazu is going to come back sooner rather than
later, and his reappearance in Urie’s memories seems to foreshadow his
return too. He’ll return, however himself or not he will be, and find
that the Quinxes are scattered and frankly, all a mess. I do wonder if
what makes the three original Quinx–and maybe even the new
Quinx–finally come together will be to save Shirazu from Furuta and/or
Kanou (though saving him will likely mean letting him die again). They may
also need to work with Kaneki to do this.
If Shirazu is going to be revived, and if he’s going to be on the next volume cover as people have theorized to complete the four wise monkeys symbolism, it would make sense for him to appear in the ongoing volume.
Volume 10…
…ends with chapter 110, in which Urie’s completely framed out and is left begging for someone to save him (thank you Saiko for answering that call please go save Mucchy now.)
Volume 11…
…ends with chapter 122, in which Mutsuki appears at :re and then burns everything to the ground.
Volume 12…
…ends with chapter 132, in which Saiko (who had otherwise barely appeared in that volume at all) confronts Urie about the wrongdoings of the CCG and sparks his confrontation with Furuta someone save him again please.
Hence I’m wondering whether, if Shirazu is truly going to appear on the next volume cover, he might appear in the last chapter of the volume. Given how many chapters tend to be in a volume, I wonder if Ishida will end volume 13 with chapter 143, which was, of course, the number of chapters in the original TG.
I’m probably overthinking things, and of course chapters in :re don’t automatically correlate to ones from the original TG, but it’s something I think is possible.
Why hello, it’s time for me to blab about the Quinxes again because I love them.
Every single original Quinx also struggles with a flaw that Kaneki is trying to overcome. The predictions offered by Ishida way back in volume 2 of :re about what the Quinx will do next pretty much lists them:
Mutsuki: will lie again
Urie: will keep his mouth shut again
Shirazu: will carry the burden again
Saiko: will sleep again
Like Mutsuki, Kaneki’s not really honest with himself, or with other people. Hide notices that he has a habit of holding his chin when he’s lying, and we see this as Haise when he claims to be happy…
…and when he’s struggling with becoming a king who’s supposed to lead ghouls.
Mutsuki likewise has seldom been honest with himself, and his dissociative issues have only compounded this. He didn’t remember killing his family, or the cats. He’s telling himself he loves Sasaki and can only be happy if their entire family is back living together (which also parallels Kaneki’s desire to keep those he loves close to him) even though he knows it’s not going to happen.
Both Kaneki (as Haise) and Mutsuki (as a CCG investigator) have accepted roles that were forced on them when they were in vulnerable states. Kaneki, too, had the One Eyed King role essentially forced on him by Eto and Arima, and he didn’t seem to really want the responsibilities, as Ayato calls him out on.
However, I do think Kaneki’s making progress in recent chapters towards accepting his role of King, as imperfect as he might be, thanks in part to his relationship with Touka.
Like Urie, Kaneki has been known to keep his mouth shut–and in particular, it tends to be detrimental to his relationships with those he cares about. It’s one of the main causes behind Kaneki’s frequent miscommunications with Touka, as seen most recently in how he doesn’t tell Touka about Yoriko’s arrest and pending execution but rather leaves the papers around for her to find.
And we also see this again in how Kaneki has presumably not told Touka that he’s aging rapidly and his prognosis looks grim. Instead, his reaction is to cling to the happiness he does have and marry Touka, which I won’t lie made me extremely happy as a Touken shipper, but while I think their wedding was beautiful and fundamentally a positive development for both of them, he really needs to tell her; if he doesn’t tell her soon, it’s only going to hurt her when she does find out.
Urie, likewise, is unable to do what he needs to do. We see Urie being unable to make a proper decision when he’s just discovered Mutsuki’s fixation on Touka and by extension Yoriko.
The next chapter, Urie thinks about wanting to talk to Juuzou, Mutsuki’s mentor, quite possibly about Mutsuki or maybe just about the direction of the CCG, but either way in the end Urie chooses to say nothing.
After Yoriko’s arrest, he should have confronted Mutsuki about his actions–it actually would have made way more sense to talk to Mutsuki about Yoriko rather than storming Furuta’s office, but he didn’t. And going even further back, if Urie really meant it about getting Shirazu’s body back, he should have prioritized that, but he didn’t. To be frank, he should also just tell Mutsuki about his feelings for him–even if Mutsuki doesn’t reciprocate, I doubt that, given the level of trust Mutsuki has in Urie, it wouldn’t benefit Mutsuki to know he’s loved. He keeps silent, and it has the same consequences it has for Kaneki: hurting everyone he loves and hurting him as well. (It’s also interesting to note that Mutsuki and Urie’s situations are inverses of each other: Mutsuki
chooses to actively pursue a lie, whereas Urie knows the truth, but
chooses to passively not speak up about it.)
Like Shirazu, Kaneki constantly tries to carry the burden alone. He thinks it’s his duty to protect the people close to him, but he’s actually motivated by his own selfish desire to keep them close to him. It’s a very human desire and it’s one I confess I relate to a lot personally, but within Tokyo Ghoul and :re Kaneki’s constant trying to carry the burden for others has only led to disastrous results.
Shirazu also literally took the burden by charging at Noro to save everyone else, and he died, as Kaneki almost did at Anteiku. (This isn’t to demean Shirazu’s sacrifice by the way, but rather it’s to point out the ways in which they are alike.) Even when he was alive, he focused on trying to force others to be responsible (like Saiko), which is not necessarily a negative thing for Shirazu, but for Kaneki it often becomes about control, which Touka called him out on in 120 of the original TG. Again, he’s only recently starting to take some steps to move past this.
Like Saiko, sometimes Kaneki would rather sleep (i.e. ignore/postpone what he should do). Saiko, of course, had no agency when her mom signed her up for Quinx surgery, and since then has handed that agency off to others–namely, Sasaki, Shirazu, and now Urie. While she initially wondered whether it might not be right to kill ghouls, she didn’t follow up on that, and only recently have we begun to see Saiko express her own desires and the determination to follow through with them, and only after her friends’ lives are in danger: first Urie when he frames out, and then when Yoriko is sentenced to death.
However, despite Saiko’s vow to talk to “Mucchy,” (a nickname I am so going to use, thank you Saiko) she apparently did not before Mutsuki left for the 24th ward. Saiko has also noticed before anyone else even did that something is wrong with Mutsuki and asked him about smelling human blood, but chose not to follow it up just like she chose not to follow-up with Urie after his frame-out, presumably because those would be uncomfortable actions to take, actions that would threaten the family she loves dearly.
Again, Saiko essentially passed the burden onto Urie here. Now, with everything that’s happened to Shirazu, Yoriko, and now Urie and Mutsuki, Saiko’s paying the price for her inaction. (Like Mutsuki and Urie’s situation, Saiko and
Shirazu’s are inverses of each other: Saiko willingly hands
over her responsibilities to others to handle, and Shirazu takes up
those burdens.)
Kaneki, too, struggles with inaction. In the first TG, before his ghoulification, he essentially clung to Hide the way Saiko attaches herself to Sasaki, Shirazu, and Urie. (I love Hide and Kaneki’s friendship and think it has lots of positive traits, but it also has some codependent ones as well.) And as has been demonstrated in the original TG and very recently in :re, Kaneki cannot make (admittedly horrifically hard) decisions because he doesn’t want anyone’s deaths on his conscience.
But of course, that only leads to two deaths on his conscience in TG. And while he’s supposed to be leading ghouls, he’s been letting them starve because he doesn’t want to have to do what he needs to do. However, recently in :re, he finally made a choice when he chose to marry Touka and go out to procure food for the ghouls he’s leading, so there’s some progress.
Basically all the living Quinx are currently, like Kaneki in the end of the original TG, losing everyone and everything they care about as a result of their flaws (I covered the irony of both Mutsuki’s and Urie’s situations previously). But I don’t think they’re all necessarily doomed to tragedy. Everything seems to be hinting that Shirazu is likely to be revived, too, though in what state we don’t know, and I don’t think the story is going to end with Kaneki losing all of his Quinx children to their flaws–rather, I think Kaneki will overcome his flaws, and therefore it’s likely the Quinx will too. While the original Qs all parallel Kaneki, they are not Kaneki: they are fully rounded characters with their own arcs (well, Saiko doesn’t have an arc yet, but I think she will, and she’s still multi-dimensional)–as opposed to, say, the second-generation Quinx who are not going to have their own arcs and seem to represent something that the three living Quinx need to grow away from (Aura is essentially the personification of Mutsuki’s dark side, sadistic and seeking revenge for petty reasons and as far as we know sans the brutal past and dissociative mental illness afflicting Mutsuki; Higemaru, like Urie, focuses on success, and Hsiao, like Saiko, chooses to do nothing about Important Things she knows about–namely, the Sunlit Garden). I don’t have a lot of hope for most of the second-generation Quinx (maybe some for Hsiao), but who knows. The original Quinx, on the other hand–I think there is plenty of reason to hope for them.
Due to their development and due to Kaneki’s arc as well (which is about reconciling his two natures and with it the world) I think Kaneki needs to reconcile with all of original Quinx–if it’s possible, maybe even with a revived Shirazu before he inevitably gets to finally rest in peace–to really grow, and I think all of the Quinx need that too. He doesn’t need to lose the ‘children’ he has who share his flaws: what Kaneki needs is to face them honestly, admit he has these flaws and that he does love the Quinx and knows he hurt them by leaving (instead of pretending his flaws/the Quinx don’t exist like he’s done in the past), and hopefully make peace with the three/four of them.
Which doesn’t necessarily mean that I think they’ll all survive, but I don’t see any of them, including Mutsuki, being relegated to pure villain-who-needs-to-be-put-down status (we already have a Kaneki “what he could have become” foil who will be die as a villain in Furuta), or dying before they have the chance to reconcile with Kaneki (which is why I’m still confident Urie’s going to survive this encounter with Furuta, Roma, and Rio).
Totally agreed agreed!!!!! Good analysis thank you 😍 Everyone’s putting hate on mucchan but for me she is a very interesting and complex character 😊 I’m persuade that the one who will save her is Urie (well I hope so 😁) as he already did to him 👐
You’re welcome! 😀 Mucchan is indeed a very interesting and incredibly complex, and I’m very intrigued to see where Ishida takes him. I do think it’s entirely possible that Urie (with possibly the help of Saiko) will save Mutsuki in a parallel scene to the auction arc, as you speculate… after all, we did have that panel during in chapter 65 where Sasaki asked Urie to “please” save Mutsuki for him, which Urie kind of didn’t do on Rue (though not for lack of trying), as Mutsuki saved himself from Torso… only to lose himself to himself if that makes any sense.
Maybe this is foreshadowing. But in all seriousness, I think @linkspooky wrote a meta recently that I can’t seem to find right now about how Urie hasn’t really succeeded at several things he’s promised to do so far (like retrieving Shirazu’s body). And in this current arc all of Urie’s failed promises are kind of coming back to bite him (Mutsuki’s time with Torso triggered this current descent, Shirazu’s probably going to be revived as a zombie, etc.) It’s very ironic because at the beginning of :re Urie was so hyper focused on success, which he saw as promotion, only to get a promotion and lose pretty much everything else that mattered to him (Mutsuki, Shirazu’s going to be revived into a life Okahira implied is no life at all, plus Urie’s likely going to be separated from the rest of the Quinx now whether he’s scheduled for execution or escapes because I doubt he’ll have time to take Saiko with him). Urie and Mutsuki’s arcs have some parallels in this tragic irony (though they have differences too), which is another reason I think Mutsuki’s current role as an antagonist may not be his final role in the series. What matters to Urie most is his family: the Quinx, which includes Mutsuki. Maybe after this showdown with Furuta/another frame-out, Shirazu’s inevitable soon-coming revival, and whatever Mutsuki does in his cruel state in the 24th ward–which are all going to slap Urie in the face with things he’s failed at–he’ll actually focus on succeeding at the promises he made that matter most to him.
But really, who did stab him? I think there are four main possibilities (knowing Ishida it’ll be a fifth that I haven’t even thought of but whatever):
1) Roma. The most obvious practical one. She seems to be indestructible. Every time I think she’s gone she somehow survives to laugh another day and I would like to transfer that indestructibility to a few other characters. We’ve also seem other ghouls (like Karren) sustain heavy damage to their heads and survive, so maybe this is her kagune. However, while practically I think she’s quite likely, for thematic reasons I think she’s actually the least likely possibility (though Urie did ‘kill’ her, so maybe?)
2) @kingkishou mentioned the possibility that this is Uta shapeshifting as Mutsuki. That would definitely mess with Urie’s mind as well as with him physically, and my guess is that since Furuta’s trying to provoke a frame out, he’s going to try to play with Urie’s emotions, and what better way to do it than to pull the same dirty trick Uta pulled on Mutsuki earlier and shapeshift as the person Urie probably loves? Then again, we have no indication Uta is there, but other clowns are, so.
3) Shikorae/Rio. He definitely looked pretty done after Kuroiwa strangled him, and it’s an obvious callback to the time when Bujin strangled a ghoul, but I’m not sure he’s really dead (I’ll fully admit that I have a soft spot for Rio/Shikorae and thereby really don’t want him to be dead, so I’m biased). The kagune definitely looks like a rinkaku to me, and we haven’t seen Shikorae’s rinkaku kagune yet–if indeed he has one, and the confirmation that he’s Rio and the fact that we know he has the other three types of kagune make it likely he has a rinkaku, and I think it’d be odd for him to die before we’ve seen him use all four types of kagune.
4) A revived Shirazu. Since the chapter title is pronounced “iza shirazu” and due to the symbolism of the three wise monkeys we’ve received on the recent volume covers of the other three Quinx and the name of the occasional fourth wise monkey, it seems highly likely that Shirazu is going to be on the cover of the next volume and therefore would presumably show up in the coming chapters. The chapter title could just be foreshadowing what’s to come, but it would also make sense for Shirazu to appear this chapter… and it would definitely mess with Urie’s mind. Of course, Shirazu was an ukaku, but it’s not unthinkable that a revived Shirazu could have an altered kagune. But would a revived Shirazu really attack Urie? Granted we haven’t seen much of the revived characters like Noro and Okahira, but Okahira in his talk with Ui in 126 seemed to maintain his memories and did not seem entirely like a mindless monster… though he did seem to warn Ui that this kind of life isn’t one worth having.
Of course, maybe Kanou changed the process since resurrecting Okahira, and the few scenes we’ve had with Okahira really can’t make a definitive statement on what level of control the revived have over their minds. It seems likely to be minimal.
So really? I have no idea, but I think the latter two are the most likely possibilities. In the meantime you can find me biting my nails acting like a productive human until we find out next week.
(Sorry not sorry for talking about Mutsuki again; he’s one of my faves so I’m probably always going to talk about him no matter what happens.)
It’s just so tragically ironic that in his desperate quest to maintain the family that he truly felt safe among–the only time he really felt safe in his life–and in his quest to get Sasaki–an illusion–back, he’s ignoring the family he still has (Urie and Saiko).
While he’s off chasing Sasaki under the delusion of loving him, the man who actually has feelings for/quite possibly loves him is dying.
While I don’t think there’s even a remote chance Urie will die here, he’s probably going to frame out and then either be captured and scheduled for execution or be forced to flee and abandon Mutsuki. Either way, Mutsuki is the one who set this in motion (not that he’s in his right mind and is possibly not capable of understanding what he’s doing) by going after Yoriko to get at Touka and Kaneki, and now he’s facing consequences for it: he’s hurt Saiko, because Yoriko is her friend, his actions have led to Urie trying to talk to Furuta and now Urie’s being attacked, etc. If Urie is captured and scheduled for execution, Mutsuki will know he is partially responsible; hopefully Saiko will confront him about it like she confronted Urie and said she would do a few chapters ago.
If Urie is forced to flee and leave them, it’s going to be tragically ironic that Mutsuki’s attempts to bring back Kaneki after he left them directly led to Urie–the one Mutsuki seems to trust most–being forced to leave him too.
His attempts to save the family he desperately wants have only hastened its destruction. Whatever happens next, as Urie forewarned Mutsuki back in 126, there’s no going back to that house Mutsuki wants to return to.
And whatever happens in the 24th ward, he’s going to return to the CCG and find that what he told himself he was fighting for has fallen apart. Hopefully then Mutsuki will be forced into a realization instead of sinking further into denial/an inability to face what he’s done like he did after the deaths of biological family.
hamliet 