Yes, he does love Kaneki romantically; I would say it’s actually text, not subtext even! (And I don’t ship it, but it is there.) Like Uta and Yomo is pretty subtextual so you can interpret it how you want; saying Shuu doesn’t have romantic interest in Kaneki is akin to saying Kaneki and Touka never acted interested in each other before their kiss or Urie’s feelings for Mutsuki are platonic. Some people do actually say these things but the text says otherwise. I wrote about it here.
But in case you wanted a quick piece of evidence (and I do reference this art in my other answer), here’s Shuu commenting on how pretty Kaneki is, drawn by Ishida himself:
/2/ go against the series themes or the themes with which the Quinx were
presented? And it would possibly be unrequited on Urie’s part, so I
dunno. Oh another argument was that Ishida loved drawing them together
in the calendar especially and their interactions were curious and
sometimes emphasized in the manga, like Saiko teasing him with her
drawings and him praising her as a leader etc. I’m sorry this is all
over the place I hope you can get my point.
Hello anon! It’s actually not all over the place; I
understand what you’re saying. To start with, no, I definitely don’t think it would
go against the themes of the Quinx–Urie unquestionably is romantically
in love with Mutsuki, and that’s currently unrequited, so I don’t think
it would be against the themes of the story at all to have Saiko in
love with Urie.
But as for whether or not she is…
I’m not certain. Under the cut, because ships!
The word used apparently is a word that could refer to
platonic love or to a partner–it’s the same word Hide used for Kaneki.
On
the one hand, there’s the fact that Saiko has also said she loves
Mutsuki earlier in :re, so saying that she loves Urie is kind of a
repeating pattern (and most people agree that was platonic/even kind of a
joke).
On the other hand
though, she does reference boobs like immediately after hugging Urie,
and most convincingly, the fact that there are hearts on the chocolates
Saiko gives Urie on the calendar’s Valentine’s Day illustration, which
seem to indicate romantic love, and you’re right, they were drawn
together a lot in the calendar.
That
being said, from a storytelling perspective, I guess I’m not sure what
purpose introducing Saiko having romantic feelings for Urie has. Her
having platonic familial love for him seems to fit more to me with her
character and the fact that a few chapters before 112 she was joking
about being everyone’s bride:
From
a character perspective, Saiko’s character arc is currently stagnant
precisely because she keeps pushing off responsibility to Shirazu,
Sasaki, and now Urie.
Even in this omake she tries to mold herself to please Urie:
To grow, you’d think she’d have to learn to stand on her own two feet as her own character, which would mean growing away
from Urie and Kaneki (and coming to peace with Shirazu’s memory)–though since they are a family, I do think Saiko’s belonging is ultimately with Urie and Mutsuki, regardless of what form that takes. I
suppose having romantic feelings for Urie might be a contributing factor
to Saiko’s dependence on Urie, as a foil in some ways to Mutsuki’s
unhealthy dependence on Kaneki. It also could be representative of the
fact that Urie has tried to take on Shirazu’s unhealthy habit of always
trying to bear the burden, which Saiko even observes here but then goes
on to encourage Urie to do exactly that:
But my
other reservation is that Saiko having romantic feelings for Urie is
that, if anything is to come of it, it hasn’t been built up in a
satisfying way by the narrative. Let’s look at our two canon requited
relationships, Touken and Akiramon:
Essentially,
they’ve both been built up as love interests since pretty early on when
they met each other. Additionally, Akira and Amon equally impacted each
others’ arcs in the first TG (not so much in :re from what we’ve seen as
of yet though), as did Kaneki and Touka in the first TG and now in :re.
Now let’s look at our unrequited canon ships:
Takizawa
and Akira are also presented as potential love interests really early
on, even though that one is currently not canon (though it still has
unresolved build-up that does need to be paid off, and Akira and
Takizawa impact each others’ arcs more so in :re).
Same with Shuu and Kaneki.
And also Karren and Shuu.
All
of these ships have equally impacted each others’ arcs from the very
beginning of their interactions in the manga, and are coded in romantic terms pretty early on. That’s not the case with
Urie and Saiko.
In :re, we have two potential
relationships with build-up (on both sides) that are not canon
because one person is oblivious/focused on someone else: Ayato and
Hinami, and Mutsuki and Urie. Again, like with Touken, Akiramon,
Shuuneki, Seiaki, and Tsukikana, Hinami and Ayato’s arcs and Mutsuki and
Urie’s arcs have been intertwined with each others’ from the beginning,
and their relationships with each other parallel each other too. That
doesn’t mean these ships need to become canon (they don’t, please see the unrequited ships I cited above), but if
Ishida plans to make something of Saiko having a crush other than it just being
yet another example in the moon arc of the dangers of counting on one
person to fix your problems (because that axe is gonna fall probably
soon-ish), I have questions about why Ishida waited so long to even
begin hinting at it (because there’s, like, nothing. If you think I
missed something please point it out, but I really can’t see any
romantic hints between them prior to Saiko’s proclamation in 112 and the
calendar hint, and I’ve looked multiple times. Mutsuki having a crush
on Sasaki was actually something I did pick up on in the early
chapters of :re, so that actually had more build-up in my opinion than
Saiko having a crush on Urie did.)
If Saiko x Urie is endgame,
my personal opinion is that it came out of nowhere and so should have
been hinted at way earlier, because I’m not sure how Ishida can pull it
off and still make it well-written when it doesn’t follow the same
patterns of the other ships involving major characters, requited and
unrequited, that we see in the manga. And I prefer to be optimistic
about how well-written a series will be, even if no series is perfect.
However, it is possible Saiko will learn to stand on her own two feet
and then meet Urie on a more equal plane, and if that happens, I’m certainly not opposed to it.
Can you
tell I’m just desperate for a Saiko arc? I love her so much already, and
if she just struggled, she would easily be one of my favorites. We’re
so close to an arc for her and I crave it like water. She deserves it.
“You can’t just sit there and put everybody’s lives ahead of yours and think that counts as love.” The Perks of Being a Wallflower
Also known as: Hamliet compares and contrasts Touka and Kaneki’s relationship to the relationships Kaneki has with three other characters who love Kaneki: namely, Tsukiyama, Mutsuki, and Hinami.
PSA: This is not specifically about romantic love and is therefore not about ships, as I think Tsukiyama’s and Hinami’s feelings are too complicated to be classified as strictly romantic (Hinami’s I feel is more like hero worship with maybe a tiny crush mixed in, and Tsukiyama’s while it started as romantic affection has moved beyond that as shown in how he planned Touken’s wedding), and also while Mutsuki’s love for Kaneki has a blatant romantic aspect, it’s complicated too. (I’m not discussing other characters who love Kaneki like Hide or Saiko because their arcs in :re are just beginning.)
Let’s first examine how the characters have responded to Kaneki leaving them/appearing to die on them. Touka sets up her own business and hopes for his return, but never presses.
Hinami, on the other hand, joins a terrorist organization to become stronger.
Tsukiyama has a mental breakdown that almost kills him.
When Kaneki returns to Hinami and Tsukiyama and Touka, he abandons the Qs, and Mutsuki too falls into a downward spiral.
But now that Kaneki’s returned to Hinami and Tsukiyama, I’ve seen many people say that they seem irrelevant to the plot in this arc, and that their characters aren’t growing. And I think that’s the point. Their unhealthy sense of finding their sense of self-worth in Kaneki has not changed, and they cannot and will not grow further into who they ought to be so long as they keep prioritizing how they can serve him. The quote I included at the beginning kind of applies to them here. They’re not loving Kaneki as well as they could be by serving him like this since love cannot fundamentally be about meeting only one person’s needs. Love should be about two people (again, not just romantic love).
Tsukiyama’s certainly moved on from Kaneki as a romantic interest–planning Touken’s wedding even (good job Shuu, I’m so proud)–and claims that he’s forgiven Kaneki, and I think that’s a great thing. However, he has not forgiven the CCG and is clearly struggling to obey Kaneki’s pacifistic leanings towards the people who mercilessly slaughtered his entire household:
Hinami accepted Akira–but was that really for her growth, or for Akira’s and Kaneki’s?
Hinami was showing her love for Touka and Kaneki in the last chapter, and that’s beautiful and there is nothing wrong with that. But there is absolutely the implication that part of her motivation is that she just doesn’t want to feel useless and wants to prove herself to Kaneki (similar to why she joined Aogiri, too).
That is not healthy. I’m not saying what she did was wrong (I was like yas queen and I probably would have done the same thing in her shoes), but rather it’s another example of Ishida’s masterfully gray writing: Hinami is doing a beautiful thing out of love for Touka and the Aogiri kiddos, but her dying thoughts shed some light on her motivations and we see how lonely and broken she still feels–and that’s why she’s saved, from a narrative perspective at least. Her character still has to grow, and death here would be an incomplete character arc unless her arc is meant to be a tragedy (I don’t think it is).
It’s funny, if Kaneki were to return to the CCG, Mutsuki thinks everything would be fine, and that’s why he’s so desperate for it:
But really what I think would happen is that Mutsuki would experience the same thing Tsukiyama and Hinami are experiencing right now: stymied growth. It would not save him. Mutsuki’s salvation, therefore, has to come from a source other than Kaneki. If Kaneki were to return (he won’t, but hypothetically speaking), he too would stall as a character, as it would be about Mutsuki’s needs, and not about Kaneki’s needs.
All of these examples contrast with Kaneki’s relationship with Touka, because Touka is not projecting onto Kaneki and thinking he will fix her problems. She doesn’t look to him to feel useful–she made herself useful in rescuing Tsukiyama after the extermination and Hinami in Cochlea–or connected to others–she set up :re with Nishiki and Yomo–or for security, as she’s willing to let him go his own way if that makes him happy.
She sees him as he is. She’s always done that, for better or for worse:
She’s also not idealistic about what being with Kaneki means. Being with him and having his child may have cost her her best friend, whom she dearly cares for and who first connected her to the human world (I don’t think Yoriko will die, but Touka probably thinks she will).
Yes, I do think Touka still has growing to do, but her growth now I think is towards dealing with her self-hatred of being a ghoul and with her unresolved issues with her father. Kaneki will hopefully help her in this aspect, as she originally projected her father issues onto Kaneki. But she has since overcome that projection, and yet she still needs to face the damage Arata’s choices made on her, and no, condemning him here is not closure enough given what we know about him being harvested by the CCG:
For Touka, reciprocated love with Kaneki is fundamentally a good thing that will anchor her empathetic side as she grows in the future and becomes a mother herself (and deals with Arata). Her love helps root Kaneki in the ghoul world, and grow his empathetic side for ghouls (it’s still got a ways to go, but he’s made some progress).
In contrast, I think Tsukiyama’s path forward includes confronting Kaneki over their ideological differences–not because Tsukiyama harbors bitterness towards Kaneki or wants to betray him, but because he cares about him, because he loves him even if it’s not romantic love anymore (healthy platonic love is just as beautiful). But the point is, for this love and care to be healthy, issues have to be addressed. Ignoring them=/=healthy. His path forward doesn’t necessarily lie in serving Kaneki but rather lies in honoring his family legacy, the legacy his entire household gave their lives for. Kaneki helped fulfill his desire to connect with people originally, and then Sasaki took the other people who loved him all along away (Karren, Matsumae, etc.), and Tsukiyama needs to deal with that.
Hinami and Mutsuki’s paths forwards I think are also divergent from Kaneki’s, even more so than Tsukiyama’s actually. Hina and Mucchan are characters who, unlike Touka and Tsukiyama who are presented as Kaneki’s peers in the narrative, were coded instead as children of Kaneki’s/Sasaki’s. Hinami and Mutsuki need to find their identity outside of Kaneki, because he cannot meet their needs (not necessarily through any fault of his own! But because he’s human–er, ghoul-human, but you get what I mean). It’s much the same as Touka and Ayato needing to find their identity away from Arata’s, and Akira currently trying to find her identity away from Mado’s legacy, and why Amon needs to confront Donato to do the same thing. And Hinami and Mutsuki both have people besides Kaneki better suited to meet their needs, much like Akira has Amon and Kaneki has Touka: Hinami has Ayato, who does not think she is weak, and Mutsuki has Urie, who wants to take him home and offer him the security and family and even the romantic love he desires, and Saiko, who also wants to offer him the family he desires, and Juuzou, who offers him the mentorship he desires.
But Goat as a whole seems to be trapped in thinking Kaneki’s desires matter most, but that isn’t the case. They all matter, and that’s why I think the people around him are going to begin to realize that in this arc and in the next. It’s necessary to achieve a world in which humans and ghouls can coexist.
hamliet 