It’s funny because a lot of people seem to be reading the chapter this way, but I actually took 161′s Mutsurie talk as a really good sign.
I wouldn’t take anything in TG at face value, after all. But the talk seemed to indicate that Urie still has growth to undergo and Mutsuki is waiting for that growth to happen/will be a part of it/it’s significant for their relationship. It basically confirms why Urie did not discuss his love for Mutsuki when Saiko told him, which is as we thought: he is still “no emotions I can’t have a family.” And the narrative was clearly giving us a sign that he’d need to grow from that and confirming that Mutsuki really, really cares about him.
I mean, I don’t think we’ll see like a wedding or beautiful children, but a kiss and/or a confession? Yeah. That seems reasonable. A confession seems almost necessary for Urie. Otherwise why keep building this up? Like with Touken, it’s not good writing to build something up and drop it–that’s why Touken needed to be canon. So I am expecting Mutsurie resolution, and this chapter was a positive indication of that imo.
Ishida rarely disappoints me, but this one in particular was top tier. It’s probably one of my all time favourites. I mean…even my precious baby is back!
Such beauty.
And,
even more important
, we finally have a
clearer understanding of his “super peace”. Although not everything has yet been explained, the general picture has become clearer.
Honestly, I much prefer this execution
rather than what we believed until now. This makes a lot more sense than having humans and ghouls cooperating to defeat Dragon. What would have happened once the common enemy disappeared?
What
humans
really
needed in order to understand ghouls was a taste of their damned existence. And Furuta delivered.
But doesn’t this concept remind you of something?
Yup.
Our beloved Pineapple-kun
summarizes in a few words what H.P. Lovecraft used as a
foundation
for his writings. The greatest fear that humans harbor in themselves is the fear of the unknown. And of course Furuta, being an
ingenious
little asshole, is well aware of this.
So he plays by these rules, acting in a
rather ironic way. In order to achieve peace,
he thins the boundary between humans and ghouls. Little by little, subtly.
It’s a gradual process, but Nimura is managing to put one in the other’s shoes.
First off, he makes the CCG
feel the terrible sensation of depriving a human of its life,
regardless of whether this happens against the will of the investigators
themselves.
After that, coup de grace. He makes humans understand what it’s like to kill someone not by their own decision, but by necessity.
I define all this as ironic because it tremendously
reminds me
of the words of someone who certainly was not allied with Furuta.
Basically Furuta’s goal (more likely to be just one of them) is to uncover the lying humans, forcing them to open their eyes to the miserable condition of ghouls, abandoning their own comfortable and fictitious truth.
After the last chapter, in my eyes this phrase takes on further significance. It’s almost as
if Nimura was asking humanity if they really are determined to continue
like this, staining themselves with the sin of life without recognizing
the tragedy of death. The tragedy of being born as a ghoul.
At this point i think that it’s safe to assume that,
narratively speaking, ghouls are the living incarnation
of death. Their survival depends on the death of others.
Seidou was afraid of it,
and he defeated it by becoming death himself.
By becoming a ghoul.
Takizawa was an
unaware precursor of this concept that Furuta introduced much later in the story,
along with his friends in black
clothes.
This should also explain the presence of that enigmatic letter on the cover of the third volume.
Also, i almost forgot about something else!
Boom.
Ishida back at it again with the sneaky foreshadowing. It was always in front of us.Ending the conflict = becoming a ghoul. That Sui dude is always 100 steps ahead of us, i don’t even…
That being said,
one wonders how the humans will react to this
terrifying mutation.
I personally believe that the best way to understand it is, once again, to observe the path taken by Seidou.
I would really love
to see Takizawa reintroduced into the story in order to make the mutants aware of this principle.
There’s always a ray of hope, even after turning into the worst sinner. A brighter future awaits you, and you’ll be able to see it as long as you find someone to live for.
Or maybe, something to live for.
Even if you lose your very own humanity, you still have the power to fight in order to achieve true peace. I must assume that Amon will play a huge role in this, considering how important he was for Seidou’s
rehabilitation.
Furthermore
he is one of the few already aware of how the real enemy is the world itself, bounded in a twisted birdcage.
That’s it for today!
I wanted to write something longer and more articulate, but I think this is enough for a first timer. Also italian is my first language, so sorry for eventual potato english. I’ll discuss the rest another time.
Obviously, in case you want to see me discuss something specifically do not be afraid to ask. ;}
Good meta! I hadn’t even thought of the Takizawa connection!
proves that deep down aknowledgement from the institution wasn’t what U was searching for) and M was used by the CCG and it is the main reason he was negated a true chance to truly integrate with society again. Sa and Sh are 2 normal people dragged in the CCG in opposite ways: Sh did so actively, Sa passively. Sh bcs he was trying to substitude himself to a parent Sa bcs she couldn’t be independent from a parent. Either way even if to a lesser extent than U and M they were manipulated by the con
CCG as well as it’s safe to assume they wouldn’t have become doves if they hadn’t attended the academy which in itself proves how subtle propaganda can be. No, the CCG doesn’t force its students to enter, but strongly encourages them and since the majority is either investigators’ children or people in some kind of economic necessity they’re easier to manipulate and convince. U, M and Sh try to be more ghoul-like to gain strength. U by following the rules he’s given: op the frames hurting cont.
himself and so on. They were all things approved by the system. M tries to do so by stepping on the lines the system made for the Qxs not to trespass i.e. eats “meat”. Hwv, ironically it’s U who followed the rules who loses control over his powers more easily and who can’t eat and who has a too high level of RC. M’s Rc levels are the lowest of the Qxs. So who’s mre ghoul-like? What does it mean to be a ghoul? Sh becoming ghoulish is linked to him trying to find an alternative to his quinque. con
conflict: he wasn’t able to solve the tension btw human and ghoul. Sa’s avoided the struggle, so her possibly becoming a full ghoul bcs of K’s spores like all the other “good people” who were at best indifferent and at worst were cheering Furuta while he was on a mountain of corpses fits thematically. Sa isn’t inherently better or worse than others morally, but she could act as a good person because she was privileged in a way for example Touka wasn’t. Meta Anon
Thank you for writing another amazing meta!! Everyone read this pls.
LMAO. But seriously. At least this chapter had a scene focusing on their relationship? And confirmed that Mutsuki respects Urie still and cares deeply for him. Honestly that was the hard part imo. Now that that’s established, Urie just needs to. Break with the CCG and open that goshdarn mouth. Mutsuki’s doing more than his fair share of the work.
Shirazombie please show up and call shenanigans. Or possible Saiko being a ghoul now will create an issue. Anything. Anything.
I absolutely love Furuta. He’s a genius and he breaks my heart. He’s how you write a villain. I don’t expect redemption for him, but I don’t want him to die. If he dies, though, I really don’t want it to be laughing.
He’s a perfect foil for Kaneki, exactly what Kaneki could have become were it not for people who love him. Basically both Kaneki and Furuta are motivated by desperately wanting to be loved but believing they are unlovable. Kaneki thinks “well I’ll die as a hero and make everyone love me that way” Furuta thinks “well I’ll die as a villain and make everyone hate me.” They’re both suicidal and it’s heartbreaking.
I don’t think he’s a meme man at all, but an extremely well done antagonist. He has been planned since the beginning of TG with Souta, etc. His current motivations are not clear to me, but I do believe he wants a new world. He seemed sincere, vulnerable, and broken with Ui after Dragoneki, apologizing. But now with V he’s putting on that same front again.
Furuta is a wounded child just as much as Kaneki is, crying out to be loved, but he’s lashing out rather than hiding in a corner like Kaneki. He’s one of the kids who is desperate to be acknowledged but only knows how to get negative attention thanks to how he grew up. And it breaks my heart.
This isn’t a meta so much as speculation + what I would like to see.
Itori starts this question by telling Kaneki that a ghoul named Kamishiro Rize does not exist… but also that Rize is the key to everything. Which the latest chapter reinforced.
This is foreshadowing both for Rize’s past in the Sunlit Garden (was her original last name Arima? seems possible), but also for her role in the story going forward, in which Rize is not given agency since her attack on Kaneki. She’s first captured and mined by Kanou and then she loses her mind. She’s then recaptured in :re and taken to the lab again, where Furuta turns her into the Oggai. She appears in Kaneki’s mind, but she’s just a hallucination in Aogiri, unable to speak for herself. Kaneki instead projects the worst of himself onto her and this continues. Furuta becomes enraged she wasn’t grateful to him for freeing her and lashes out.
Personally, if Furuta and V are intending Rize to be some kind of final Dragon/Boss, I’d like her to subvert that expectation in the end. Because the Rize we have known has been a plot device more than a villain, an unkind person yes, but someone who never deserved the things that happened to her. Unlikeable people are victims too, and I would really like to see Rize say “fuck it” to Furuta and his expectations one last time. He’s someone who, while I love him, has repeatedly seen himself as a god in her life, as someone who can give and take her agency away from her (and V has as well, given what she was born to do).
Rather than the ending be Rize being killed by Kaneki as the Revelation/Kaneki as Christ symbolism seems to hint, I would like Rize to say “No” to Furuta’s plans again, as saying “no” to expectations is something Rize does best. I’d like her to begin by not eating him, leaving him alive to witness her defiance of the constraints he repeatedly places her in.
If Kaneki’s identity is a giant question mark to us, and it is, so is Rize’s. Kaneki willingly submits himself to the loss of his agency, Rize does not submit but loses her agency all the same. If Kaneki is going to take his agency/responsibility the next arc, as the story seems to be setting up for him to do, I would love to see Rize, a foil and parallel of Kaneki, do likewise in the end–choose not to be some sort of villainous Dragon, or (more likely) choose to stop.
That would be hard to do, of course, given that facing all you’ve done is something that Kaneki could barely do and Rize even said so (hallucination or not it seems pretty likely Rize wouldn’t really want to do this)
Plus. Rize doesn’t have the world working together to save her. But there are a few people who might try to stop her without killing her. Banjou possibly, Yomo, Uta if he is the previous Nagaraj (for Yomo’s sake lol), Kaneki even, and Yoshimura in the lab who made that promise to Shachi.
Basically I just want to learn who Rize is, and for her to choose her own path rather than serve as a plot device for Furuta and Kaneki.
The manga needs to explain! I’m not sure exactly, but it’s obvious Furuta is suicidal and wants Rize to eat him.
I’m not sure she is reborn tbh. I think that’s jumping to conclusions–we don’t know that she’s still in Kanou’s lab tbh. Remember we didn’t see her end up in that lab in the first place (Shachi told her to run, then we never heard about her until Furuta was tapping on her glass case). What if she was just moved from the lab by Kanou or V or someone? We really, truly do not know.
…all indicate that Furuta just wants to die. He wants Rize to eat him. The question is whether or not that will happen. Furuta is unloved, unlike Kaneki. No one is coming to save him. But I would prefer his depression and despair not be rewarded with death. He cannot, must not die laughing.
This chapter was pretty astounding. I hope Mutsuki taking responsibility for Aura’s going off the rails is foreshadowing (since Mucchan is Aura’s mentor) that Kaneki is about to do likewise for the Quinx (since he kind of failed mentoring them and he did say he was about to take responsibility when he talked with Rize).
I think you’re not understanding the situation logically. Think about it. If your city was just torn apart and hundreds-thousands murdered in their beds presumably because of Kaneki (they don’t know ANYTHING about Rize, keep in mind) wouldn’t you want to do further analysis of the person who did it to ensure that he couldn’t do this again if you just let him wander free? You have to do that. You just have to, or else you’re irresponsible.
I love Kaneki and yes, the CCG has a habit of dehumanizing him, but tbh right now the lab is probably the only place that can help save him too as Ken isn’t in great shape and Touka would do anything to save him.
hamliet 