#I thought Mutsuki was well written from the sense of “FFS what is this guy gonna do next?”

[javaghoul]

Maybe controversial: I Don't think Tooru is "bad trans rep" or whatever

First, culturally contextually, it's not even clear if he is trans or just using masculinity as an escape. The west projecting transness on him is cool and fun and great, but we need to remember where this story is from, and look at it through a Japanese lens when and where we can - and by that I mean, to the best of our ability while also seeking out what we need to fill in the gaps. Yes, the reading you have as a westerner is important. No, it doesn't mean that was the intent, so no, you can't just assume Ishida is a terrible transphobe or whatever

But even aside from that... People are mad because they... Out him? Ive seen people extremely mad not at Torso as a character but at Ishida for writing a man defiling Tooru and claiming he's a woman. Even through a trans lens, that's not...? Like a transphobe stripping a trans person bare and then misgendering them because they are obviously trans isn't... That doesn't say anything about the writer. The character sucks. Tooru was put in an unpleasant and scary situation. What. Yeah it sucks he had to go through that but???? Why does that make ISHIDA the problem??

"Oh but Tooru does bad things!" Yeah and so do some trans people. We're not pure beings free of wrong. We're capable of being bad too. Everyone in TG is fucked up, honestly it'd be infantalizing imo to make Tooru the only Completely Good and Pure One. Tooru is extremely traumatized and has an episode. So does everyone in TG. Can we get with the program, please?

ooo thanks for sending this, this is really good.

I'm not trans, so I can't say whether Tooru is good or bad or even accurate representation. When I first read re: and he popped up, I was happy that Sui included a trans character regardless of how Tooru was written. I think that was the first manga I read that had a storyline involving a trans character and I thought that was cool.

I'm really glad you brought up cultural differences. when I read the manga, I never thought too hard about how Tooru was MEANT to be seen regarding being trans or like you said, using masculinity as an escape or even as a form of protection, but the japanese-english translations (especially the fan translations) have caused LOADS of problems in the past, like when a small group of people accused Yomo of being homophobic, (which automatically makes Ishida homophobic too of course). I think westerners, myself included, can take things too literal or not look past western norms. It's easy to do, but I think when it comes to transphobia, homophobia, racism, anything like that, it needs to be looked at carefully just in case something's been misread. Translators get things wrong a lot too.

I also think it's easy to forget that Tokyo Ghoul & re: is considered a pretty old manga! Do you think if Re: was written now, Tooru would be different (or if Ishida would do a "better" job?).

I haven't seen anything about readers getting mad at Ishida for how Torso "outs" Mutsuki, so that's completely new to me! I took the entire interaction (for want of a better term) for what it says on the box: Torso is disgusting and a very bad person.

I agree that everyone in TG is some level of fucked up, one way or another. Do you think that Ishida wouldn't get labelled as, or assumed to be transphobic if he didn't have Big Madam as a character or wrote her differently? I ask because I saw a post a few months ago where someone had got to the Big Madam arc and wasn't going to continue with the series because they felt the way in which the character and story was written was transphobic.

I guess one question is, is it better for a (possibly)badly written trans character to be in TG, or for there not to be any trans characters at all?

One thing I did like, and I don't know if this counts, is the reaction(?) given by Saiko to Tooru.

Thanks for sending this in!