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linkspooky · 6 years ago

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I know you usually don't analyze the quality of writing, I'm not really sure if this question even qualifies as such. So, if you don't mind me asking, what do you think could've been done better in regards to how TG turned out? Or rather what developments would you've liked to see unfold?

Okay, so once again not a commentary on the quality of the writing but I can talk about a few things I would have liked more answers to. This is going to be pertaining to stuff mostly that happened around the ending because that’s the freshest in my mind.

#1 Donato

What does this mean Donato? Literally, what does any of this mean. Do the leaders of the clowns shift? Were you the leader for some time until you were captured by the CCG? Who was the crown, was it the one eyed king? Were there two one eyed kings as some people theorize? Donato you seem to be the only one old enough here do you think you could explain it to us?

Donato’s final speech for his motivations basically just boiled down to something that would not be out of place coming out of Komaeda Nagito’s mouth. “I needed to kill all those people in order to make hope and justice shine all the more!” It’s not that I needed to get into the head of the child eater, but if Ishida was going to make the choice to play this scene as sentimental instead of giving Donato an oppurtunity to rip Amon a new one he could have at least gone with a motivation that... made sense?

Basically the entire Amon and Donato scene is a missed oppurtunity. There was a chance for Seidou and Amon to work together again and for Seidou’s growth to be acknowledged. THere was a chance for Amon to actually have to acknowledge people like Hakatori that he’s made the victims of as well, in person and not just... saying that he totally acknowledges that he’s been screwing up the world too in a moment of tell don’t show.

Amon’s final speech is also peppered with the hypocrisies that a just better written confrontation scene could have solved a lot. For example let’s look at this moment right here.

“Most ghouls are regarded by humans as creatures to be feared” Amon says while recalling the image of a ghoul who was living peacefully until humans went out of their way to hunt him down, then torture him to the point of insanity and kill his brother right in front of him. “Donato Porpora is absolute evil” Amon says, in his big speech about how actually the world is more complicated than he originally thought it was. These two ideas contradict each other, if there are shades of gray then why is Donato still absolutely evil? Is it because he ate children because if that’s the case Amon doesn’t even mention once about the Oggai, or the CCG’s habit of training child soldiers, both of those things which were important to his arc in its conception. The only named Oggai character is Hajime Hazuki who is Amon’s whole reason for going after Fueguchi so hard to the point of grave robbery.

Amon still also approaches the entire scene like he’s merely an observer of ghouls, and not that he’s one himself. All of these things were things that could have been resolved if Ishida used Donato in his original capacity. Just as a character who exists to tear things apart, and especially to do so because of his strange affection for Amon. Play for Amon’s mind and make him stronger so Amon can rise to be a true hero of justice because Amon in particular is Donato’s favorite character. If Donato was going to turn out to be a two dimmensional character anyway then Ishida should have just used him to his full capability. For example you don’t have Emperor Palpatine make an emotional speech when he dies, you have him manipulate the protagonist to move him into action and then he gets thrown down an elevator shaft in the end.

Imagine a confrontation scene where Amon is forced to face all the ugly things about his narrative he conveniently ignores. After facing them he overcomes them, but he actually has to face them, not just reappear after being offscreen for awhile and say he’s totally faced those things and come to those realizations.

It would be using Donato better for his original pruppose as a character, rather than trying to make an emotional scene out of a character motivation that just doesn’t make sense. It would also make Amon’s long stagnation as a character before this make sense as well. Otherwise if the purpose was for Amon to just finish the manga with a big heroic speech about justice, and then defeating Donato by punching him after making his sword bigger why not write Amon actually pursuing justice and self reflecting before this point? The Amon that is written up until this point does not accept who he is, represses it absolutely, and avoids the main plot and confrontation as much as possible. He’s barely onscreen for one, and when he is onscreen he doesn’t make use of any of the information he’s been given before this point.It’s written like Amon is clinging to the vestiges of his past identity and unwilling to admit he was wrong or that he can move on, except then Amon just does and it’s fine. And that didn’t have to be that way, it’s not that everything preceeding it was bad writing but rather the set up does not match the eventual payoff we receive. The character who was written with an arc where he self reflected and grew was Seidou, however the character who was rewarded like they grew and changed in the end was Amon even though Amon is basically just the same character through all of Re:.

Confronting Amon about literally any of this would have been a good move to alleviate a lot of this odd build up and pay off problems, but Donato doesn’t play it like a confrontation he just loses on purpose because of fondness for Amon. Which is fine but also, as I said before the emotions of the scene don’t make any sense at all, nor does Donato’s motivations he sounds like a Dangan Ronpa character so it’s a weird choice around. Not to mention Donato in the end answered none of the questions of his association with the clowns, the previous king, or clarified anything on the timeline which could have been a useful spot for that.

#2 Ui’s Entire Subplot with the Garden

So the garden is an amazing world building idea, but it’s also something that should have been covered far more than it was in canon. The problem with introducing victims like the garden children into canon is that they kind of need their story to be told, just because their problems seem a lot more pressing than everybody else’s but that’s not really the case. The person who knows the most about the garden Furuta, as I jokingly said before we ever got more than a few pieces of his story got killed in a ditch by Kaneki because Kaneki doesn’t care that much about the garden. Which is... weird, because the garden should be a really big deal to anybody who hears about it. “There was human breeding going on, and these children are being forced to be child soldiers for life, and some of them are forcibly raped” you think would rouse most people with the ability to do so to an immediate call to action. If the ending of the story is a more empathic world like Ishida is trying to tell us it is, it’s weird that basically nobody cares about the garden of the children left behind in the garden after Furuta’s Washuu purge.

Not only do we as an audience not get any more information on it in the sixty or so chapters after 101, but also it’s not revealed to any of the other characters besides Kaneki, even those with strong connections to the garden who it seemed like they were building up for a reveal towards, Ui,. We don’t know even what exactly and how much Take told Ui about what Arima’s plan was, and why he defected from the CCG because it’s a conversation that mostly took place offscreen except for a joke line of it that made it into an omake.

So we never get clarification on a bunch of key worldbuilding elements, all of thme having to do with the washuu and the garden, and also the garden children’s story really never gets told, or it’s only told tangentially to Kaneki’s story, and that in itself is a problem because the garden children are such huge victims it kind of necessitates the story be told. They are the literal bottom of the ladder, the lowest rung of society.

It’s like “Why do people have a problem with Endeavor’s Redemption Arc in MHA?” and it’s not really the concept of an abuser getting a redemption arc in general, but rather that Endeavor’s perspective is being favored over his victim’s. Endeavor gets five times more screentime than Rei, his primary victim and we never see her chance of healing, or her chance to redeem herself as a mother to Shouto. Endeavor’s emotions and thoughts take precedent, but at the same time Endeavor’s not a victim to anything but his own bruised ego and hurt man feelings, so his story is a lot less narratively interesting to read.

When you set up victims like this, it’s good to have their story be told. But we really only get to see them from an outsider’s point of view. Matsuri, one of the oppressors of the garden children gets a much happier ending than most garden children, and way more narrative coverage. And I’m not saying Ishida is bad for not telling the garden kid’s story, but rather that it’s such an interesting story it really should have been told rather than hinted at and it seemed so much like the last portion of the manga was building up towards that reveal and we just never got it. Only bits and pieces. Which makes me question why Ishida even introduced it in the first place if he was only ever going to leave it vague when it’s something that requires a lot more explanation than we were given.

On that note what happened to Hairu’s head? Ishida at least told us her revival was impossible, but they had her head and body in preservation. Wouldn’t an Ui who had moved on make sure to at least recover the body and bury it?

Really it seems rather than Hairu was never going to be able to be revived to begin with, Ishida was building towards a revival and changed his mind at some point because a lot of ideas with Ui and Hairu’s plotline were pretty much dropped. What Okahira was referring to here was never explained, and also the kind of revival that Okahira himself experienced was never explained either even though they were given a brief mention in the epilogue.

So yeah, the garden kids are kind of a big black spot. Especially since there are more garden kids being made into half ghouls by the CCG’s mad science (sorry the TSC) and nobody seems to see anything wrong with that.

Especially since the TSC apparently made no effort to actually help the shortened lifespan of either of the garden kids until they stopped being effective soldiers.

Just any kind of coverage on whether their lives are better or worse since the Washuu were purged, because it kind of just sounds like they’re being used exactly the same way the Washuu used them.

#metasks #donatoporpora

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