#he literally says that he wants to get rid of the ghouls because they’re ruining the experience for people who love card games | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

abjectaspiringfailure · 5 years ago

Text

Words of Advice - Eto's parallels with Amon, Touka, Kurona, Kaneki, and Suzuya

I wanted to take a look at both Eto’s conversation with the twins and Amon’s conversation with Suzuya in the same arc. That is, what Eto and Amon were saying to both the twins and Suzuya, and why they were saying it. Furthermore, I want to address that what Eto says to the twins is something we’ve all seen before with Amon and Touka’s past conversations with Kaneki.

(TG 98, 25, 3)

While Amon’s similarities with Suzuya are well known, Eto’s similarities with the twins, but specifically Kurona, is something I think isn’t noted enough. I also wanted to include an analysis of both Kurona and Suzuya respectively in this analysis - and what Eto’s and Amon’s words to them both meant.

(TG 97)

The first time Eto meets the twins directly is in Kanou’s lab. She runs off when Aogiri meets Anti-Aogiri, but she’s not really trying to escape here. If she did, she could easily outrun them and they’d never find her, as evidenced by her later usage of her superior agility to evade them and make them lose sight of her. Instead, Eto gets just far away enough from the battle where her conversation with the twins won’t be disturbed, and then waits for them to meet up with her. Eto says a lot of things to the twins, but what are her opening and closing interactions with her pertaining to?

(TG 98)

Her opening is taunting them. Specifically, in regards to the fact that they have small kagunes. Now, what’s her closing interaction with them? The last question she asks them is “what does a ‘former human’ think about eating humans?” Note that she puts “become a ghoul” and “former human” in quotes - that’ll be important later.

The twins themselves are no longer able to eat normal food. They are forced now to eat what ghouls eat - other people, be they humans or ghouls. Eto’s words to the twins here are actually similar to the same words said to Kaneki by both Amon and Touka earlier in the manga, with some interesting contrasts. To get into what Eto’s actually saying here, we should compare those situations, and contrast the twins eagerness to be ghouls with Kaneki’s hesistance.

(TG 100, 5)

Notably, Kaneki and the twins are (at first glance) seemingly complete inversions of this state of being. Kaneki had literally no choice in the manner of his ghoul conversion, where as the twins chose to give up their humanity. He was attacked by Rize, and Kanou used his as a convenient test subject, his first experiment using Rize, as preparation for the twins ghoulification. He laments leaving the perceived safety of the human world, and preceived entering into the violent and turbulent world of ghouls.

This is partially because Kaneki hadn’t realized the omnipresent cohabitation status of ghouls among humans. While Kaneki lived a rough childhood, thanks to Hide, he was protected from the harsh realities of his world. But this is especially so especially so with regards to ghouls.

(TG 7)

So when he becomes a ghoul, that’s what ends up becoming among the most shocking things to him in a series of shocking revelations. That the ghouls were always there, this violence and mayhem was always within walking distance, it’s just only now becoming tangible to him. His denials of being a ghoul, and his persistence to claim he’s human, are understandable. First impressions are important, and Kaneki’s first impression, his first few face-to-face encounters with what he acknowledges as ghouls, are incredibly violent.

His predation by Rize, followed by Touka’s killing of a man right in front of him, then his own stumbling upon a freshly killed human by an unknown ghoul when expecting to find a nice home cooked style meal, then watching Nishki kill that ghoul and threaten to kill him, and then topping it off with Nishki being fought off by Touka. Kaneki’s outburst towards Touka makes sense in that regard. His only reprieve from this violence was Yoshimura’s brief offering of food up until that point.

(TG 8)

The idea that he, a person that never engaged in violent acts in his life, would be forced to do battle with other ghouls just to survive is a horrifying prospect. His fears are shown to have a strong basis in reality, and he almost loses his life along with Hide’s later on when he fights Nishki. It’s only because of his willingness to do anything for Hide, and the immense innate power of Rize’s kagune, that he survives his first battle. Even then, this almost backfires, and he needs to be bailed out by Touka before he ends up eating Hide.

(TG 95)

But the twins are completely different. They were there to witness the deaths of their parents at the hands of a ghoul. After this, they were brought into the CCG to become ghoul investigators, as many orphaned by ghouls did.

(TG 102)

So they were brought up with the experience of the horror ghouls could inflict against their loved ones, in an environment that taught the dehumanization of ghouls, and found themselves surrounded by others who were in the same predicament. Instead of receiving proper mental health treatment and counseling, they’re turned into weapons against ghouls. Amon’s speech here is likely meant to represent a microcosm of what they’re taught in the institution. Ghouls are just monsters. Ghouls kill everyone they can. They ruined your life - now they’re going to ruin others. Unless they’re stopped. By you, of course.

If a firsthand experience with a ghoul killing your family when you’re a child is the only experience you ever had, Amon’s speech sounds like a nice ideal. Amon, a man they greatly respect, lays it out so simply here. A very black and white justice for a black and white world. You save the world by focusing on getting rid of the bad people.

(TG;re 66)

Reducing the “enemy” to a vague and easy identifiable “other”, rather than acknowledging their existence as anything other than evil, makes things so much simpler. Everything, all of it, it’s their fault. It’s a comfort, in a sense, because it’s easier than thinking about the implications of one’s actions and making choices of your own. And if you start by putting this idea into the mind of children, they’re easier to influence because they lack experience in the world to tell them otherwise. However, this type of thinking can easily backfire. For example, if someone else is aware of it, and is willing to use the same tactics to subvert this programming.

(TG 102)

The twins’ encounter of Suzuya, which we’ll be going into more detail later, likely factored into their disillusionment with the CCG to some extent. From their point of view, the CCG knew that Suzuya was killing animals and was dangerous, but they didn’t care. They knew he was being a “problem child” but they let him roam around free. Instead, they saw the CCG as merely gossiping about Suzuya towards other students. But that’s nothing compared to what Kanou shows them.

(TG;re 93)

Kanou comes into their lives and shows them this new truth. Presented with this new reality, with such overwhelming evidence, they instantly turn on the CCG and humanity. Because when you remove nuance, it’s easy to turn on the “other”. Many times in Tokyo Ghoul, a character changes their entire life outlook by realizing that things aren’t always as they appear. Sometimes, this works out. Other times, such as here? It does not. Because there is no real attempt at understanding at any level, because Kanou really didn’t want them to understand. Kanou wanted them to learn the lesson he wanted them to learn, in the way that most suited his agenda.

(TG;re 93)

Just as Kaneki was sheltered from the world of ghouls, they were sheltered from the world of humanity. They were told a simple truth - humans good, ghouls bad. So if ghouls aren’t the problem, humanity then becomes the problem. The CCG becomes worse than ghouls. After all, they’re the ones who are really distorting the world.

Kanou’s usage of their parents, and his usurpation of the role of guardian figure in their life can’t be understated in how important it was in his manipulations of the twins.

(TG 102)

Their idea of a good afterlife is an afterlife where everyone meets their parents. Placing emphasis on family, blood or otherwise, is common in Tokyo Ghoul. But for the twins, it’s probably one of their defining features. And its understandable. Their childhood before the tragedy was happy, they were well loved, and they always had one another.

(TG;re 93)

So when Kanou comes in and appeals to them with a new justice, when he appeals to clearing the disgrace of their parents, of course they jump in on for ghoulification. Kanou’s making an appeal in the light of the idea that he’s their father’s fellow researcher, that he is on the same path as their father was. He was a collaborator like their father was, and he is now having the same crisis of consciousness he once did. But now, unlike then, they have a means to fix it, and stop further tragedies.

If you actually take a step back to think about what Kanou’s proposing to the twins here, it makes no sense from a logical perspective. Turning into ghouls doesn’t somehow bring back their parents. It doesn’t stop the immoral ghoulification experiments, because they’re literally undergoing the ghoulification experiments.

(TG 102)

The twins dismissal of Suzuya as just a pseudofriend of justice is, in a sense, a rebuke towards the CCG they once aspired to join. Kanou took advantage of that mental blindspots the twins had. The idea that the world was simple black and white from years of propaganda and horrible trauma. He appealed to the idea that they were special, that there was something only they could do, as Amon and the Academy instructors did. He became the parental figure of their life, using the nostalgia of their old home and wonderful life to win them over. All because he wanted some experimental test subjects.

(TG 98)

Which is exactly what Eto says here.

Kanou never revealed his overarching plan. He never explained how ghoulification surgeries would fix the “distortion of the world”. So of course this was never going to work out for the twins. He never really planned it to, and they trusted him in full. This isn’t the twins fault, here, Kanou never should have manipulated them in this manner. They were indoctrinated and emotionally unstable children that he took advantage of. Kanou manipulated them into the same situation that Kaneki ended up in - and he made them complicit with his own actions.

(TG 98)

Eto tells the twins have no one they can rely on but one another with this statement. They’re just two ghouls, with no ghoul family or friends, and no place in the human world. They’re not as extraordinary as they think they are, as evidenced by her effortlessly dancing around them. They’re cocky, and understandably so, given their constantly reinforced “unique” status for most of their life, but that’s not enough to cut it. There’s more here, but we’ll focus on that part for now.

Because if all you have to rely on is one another, that means you have to protect one another, right? They need to stop trusting others, put up barriers between themselves and the outside world, because others are just hurting them. Which brings us back to her closing statements, which are reminiscent of Touka’s and Amon’s own words to Kaneki.

(TG 98, 3)

Touka’s questioning towards Kaneki highlights another similarity between the twins and Kaneki - what they’re eating, and what they’re no longer eating. Both Eto and Touka question the twins and Kaneki respectively about what food tastes like, but like above, the contrasts are obvious.

(TG 3)

In Kaneki’s case, he never considered what it was like to be a ghoul. He just considered that type of life hell after becoming a ghoul for a few weeks - he says this to the face of another ghoul who had just helped him not too long ago, without even considering their feelings. He’s begging Touka for help while telling her that her entire existence is horrible. Her blatant dismissal and belittling of him, while asking her own pointed questions on how easy it is to live as a human compared to a ghoul are meant to voice her own frustrations at this situation.

(TG 25)

Kaneki didn’t have a choice to become like this, but neither did Touka. Touka didn’t ask to be born at all, let alone be born a ghoul. She simply is a ghoul. No more, no less. Touka didn’t decide that she wanted to eat humans - Touka simply is forced to eat humans.

(TG;re 63)

The twins chose to undergo a procedure that they believed would change their entire species. They chose to give up the comforts of the human world - its relative safety and security - for the troubled and dangerous life of a ghoul. They, like Kaneki, didn’t actually consider what it meant to be a ghoul. Choosing a body which, as Eto would later describe it herself in ;re, as being otherwise only acquired as being “born wrong”. A body that leaves one alone.

(TG 98, 25)

Amon’s questioning of Kaneki here about the number of innocent people ghouls kill and eat is misplaced for Kaneki, obviously, but it’s less so if he were to be saying it about other ghouls. Like Kurona and Nashiro. Eto’s questioning here is very piercing to the twins, because the twins weren’t really thinking about the consequences or logic behind their transformation. The twins chose to become the very thing they were originally training to fight against. They chose to opt into the world of ghouls, with nothing but themselves to rely on, simply because Kanou told them it was the right thing to do.

(TG 98)

Eto’s saying these things to them, but they have no recourse against her. They can’t physically stop her, because her agility is many times greater than their own. They were smart enough to figure these things out on their own, but Kanou went out of his way to influence them. To warp the CCG’s own propaganda for his own usage, giving them a new (but ultimately familiar) sense of purpose. That’s why this reaction is so strong here. Nothing Eto says here to the twins are things they couldn’t figure out on their own, or, on some level, already know to be true.

“Baby kagunes”

“How many people have you killed?”

“What does a former human think about eating humans?”

Eto chooses to focus on the twins’ small kagunes and closes on their eating of other humans because she criticizing them for eating humans, and not cannibalizing other ghouls. Because if they were cannibalizing other ghouls, they wouldn’t have small kagunes, they wouldn’t be as weak as they are, and they would know the taste of other ghouls, and not humans. She makes her point clear by effortlessly dancing around them.

TG 98, 64

It’s not a coincidence that Kaneki mentions cannibalism in this very chapter, right after Eto’s confrontation with the twins, referencing and taking on the mannerism and logic of Yamori while doing so. Cannibalism is the secret to Kaneki’s strength, and is the reason he is able to become as strong as he is as fast as he does. This is incredibly relevant to Kurona’s and Nashiro’s stories. Kaneki is compared to the twins multiple times in this arc, but as we later learn from Kurona, Kanou was always comparing the twins to Kaneki.

TG;re 109

As we later learn in ;re during the laboratory raid, he makes his obsession with Kaneki clear to the twins. He declares Kaneki a success and berates the twins as failures because Kaneki is far more powerful than the twins. While Eto opens and closes with the twins lack of ghoul cannibalization, the meat of her interactions with the twins is that Kanou is just using them.

Right after Eto’s confrontation with the twins and Kanou’s confrontation with Kanou, the CCG arrives. Both of the twins and Kaneki get into battles against Suzuya and Shinohara respectively.

TG 98, 101

The twins completely ignore Eto’s warnings about their lack of strength and skill, and that they can’t rely on Kanou. In fact, they fall into the same pitfalls against Suzuya that they do against Eto minutes earlier. Just like how Eto dances around the twins signaling her superior power, Suzuya does the same. It’s clear the difference in their skills and abilities is there, but the twins are disregarding that fact - they still believe their own power and skill, due to how exceptional it is, will carry them through. There just isn’t enough time for them to properly process the information, and Suzuya and the CCG are enemies that arrive conveniently enough for them to ignore the revelations.

For Kaneki’s part, Kaneki’s… just kinda lost it, of course, because he’s overworked. So, lets compare these two fights. The parallels are immediately apparent. Kaneki and Shinohara are the “seniors”, while the twins and Suzuya are the “juniors”.

TG 101

Both Kaneki and Shinohara use kakujas, be it through their own or through their quinques. The twins and Suzuya, meanwhile, fight with just kagunes and regular quinques. The point is communicated rather easily - the seniors are more powerful than the juniors. However, there is some foreshadowing of who will win their respected fights evident even before the battle, and it’s actually kinda clever.

Adapting to environments and growing is key to success in life, and especially battle. Both Kaneki and Suzuya have “ugraded” over their “baseline equipment” using Yamori, cannibalizing him in the literal (Kaneki) and metaphorical (Suzuya) sense. This puts them a step above the twins and Shinohara, who are using the same “equipment” and level of training as they do in their first canonical fights in the manga.

During the course of the battle, both Kaneki and Shiro take nearly the exact same wound.

TG 104, 103

A blow right to the kakuhou. Kaneki even takes this wound from a bikaku type quinque of similar power rating, wielded by a more experienced, stronger investigator, who has had their strength enhanced even further by a kakuja quinque. By all rights, Kaneki should be the one who dies. His injury is far worse. But as anyone who’s reading this should know, he doesn’t. He goes on to defeat Shinohara.

TG 105, 103

Meanwhile, Kurona is forced to flee from a victorious Suzuya. Kurona banks her hopes on Kanou - her “father” - saving her sister. But of course, he doesn’t. He tells Kuro to discard Shiro just as he told Kuro to discard Madam A. He’s entirely callused, and his response of “We can just have you make new friends!” may as well be worse than mockery. He doesn’t even make an attempt to save Nashiro, or put in the effort to alleviate her suffering, or console Kurona.

TG 105, 107

And the reasoning for why Shiro’s injuries were irrecoverable is simple - because Kuro and Shiro only had one kakuhou due to their lack of cannibalization. When her only kakuhou was too damaged, she was unable to repair it. She was unable to heal the injuries Suzuya inflicted on her. Kaneki, meanwhile, had multiple kakuhou, and by taking a bite out of Shinohara was able to fully heal his wounds.

TG 99

Her lack of cannibalization leads to her lack of power. She loses her fight against Suzuya, and subsequently, she banks her hopes on Kanou saving her sister. But Kanou doesn’t save her sister, because Kanou doesn’t actually care about Kuro or Shiro. Kanou merely saw the twins as a means to an end - and failures to that end. He had hoped that killing their emotions would, in some way, increase their power past Kaneki’s.

TG 98, 62

Eto’s comments about Kanou buying their home meaning nothing? Her comments about how her parents were the only ones who truly loved them? These are mimicking Kaneki’s own thoughts on his situation with his aunt. Kaneki’s conclusions, based on his analysis of his aunt’s actions, is similar to Eto’s judgements on Kanou. That this is the last thing that Eto says to the twins before she starts bringing up the fact that they’re just eating humans, is again, meant to stress they can only rely on each other. That they need to put barriers between themselves and others, while making themselves as strong as possible.

TG 89, 92

That Kanou would turn on the twins is actually foreshadowed well in advance.

Kanou is remorseless (something he himself admits), and entirely dedicated to his goal. To him, there is nothing he will not sacrifice. He actively encouraged Kuro to abandon Madam A the moment she becomes inconvenient to protect. He speaks only of Kaneki with his daughters and laments the failures of his floppy that has rejected Rize’s kakouhou. His doing so with Nashiro right next to him is meant to foreshadow the treatment Kanou himself will put Nashiro through. Of course he would abandon Shiro at the drop of a hat, just as he abandoned the floppy when it went on the “Taro route”, just as he abandoned Madam A.

However, this doesn’t make Eto’s methods of communicating what she did correct. A more proper method to communicate a warning is shown just chapters later.

TG 107, 101

Because Amon’s warning to Suzuya is similar to Eto’s warning to the twins. Amon warns him not to split up from Shinohara, and not to be so calloused about Shinohara’s life, because he’ll regret that. Amon actually showed concern for Suzuya earlier during the battle, he’s just only getting the chance to voice it to him now.

TG 100, 107

And just like the twins, Suzuya brushes it off. But the difference between the two situations is rather clear cut. Suzuya has more time to think about his situation, and he’s being told this information from an ally, not an enemy. Come to the 20th Ward battle, and Suzuya does exactly what the twins did: ignore the warning given.

TG 134, 101

He decides to engage Kuzen while alone, just as he did the twins. And just as he did the twins, he confidently proclaimed that he was going to take something from his opponent, only to have something taken from him. Against an even stronger opponent. Suzuya attempts to use the same strategy he used against weaker opponents whom he had the advantage over, against a stronger opponent who had the advantage over him.

TG 134, TG 102

Suzuya’s leg injury is not as simple of a patch job as it is his stomach wound. It’s a far more debilitating of an injury that removes him from the battle. Much like Kurona, he treats his wound as if it’s not a big deal. Kurona saying “she can heal” and Suzuya saying “it doesn’t hurt” foreshadowing what happens to both Nashiro and Shinohara. Because Nashiro doesn’t heal, and Shinohara does hurt.

So of course when Eto shows up, he’s in perhaps the worst possible position. While the entrance became synonymous with Eto later on for much of the fandom, it didn’t originate with her.

TG 135, 136, 60

For example, we see a similar event with Suzuya earlier on. Both Eto and Suzuya end up breaking blockades of overly confident opponents, leading to their allied forces subsequently making the charge in the ensuring chaos.

TG 136,141, 60, 77

Followed right after by the overconfident forces dismaying that their plans were foiled. Both sides mention one of their more important fighters, both of whom were incapacitated by Kaneki, who defeated them in their kagune derived states, and defeated them in their kakuja derived states. Both Ayato and Takizawa, the ones who brought attention to their lost ally, end up being taken by Noro and make their next on screen appearances with Aogiri Tree. Both of the characters Kaneki defeats but refuses to kill end up leaving Aogiri Tree, and end up fighting against it either metaphorically (Yamori as a quinque) or literally (Amon as a One Eyed Ghoul).

TG 54, 49

When they’re introduced into the Aogiri arc, they are very similar. Both are small and childlike in stature and mannerisms. The stitching on Suzuya’s arms and legs makes the appearance comparable to Eto’s bandaged arms and legs. The stitches on her hoodie lining up roughly where Suzuya’s are; the stitches on his neck, on her scarf. Even his hair has the same type of general as Eto’s hood, and her own hair when she pulls it back. The character design of these two character elicits immediate visual comparisons to how similar they are.

TG 135

That’s the reason that special attention is brought to Suzuya and Shinohara when she makes her entrance. So of course, now Suzuya is the on the receiving end of the type of pain he inflicted on Kurona and Shiro.

TG 107

Because Eto was watching the entire engagement on the monitors. She saw Suzuya’s response to Amon, and she saw Suzuya’s fight. And while she’s seeming to talk about Amon here, she’s actually not. Or rather, she’s talking about who Amon was talking about - Suzuya. There’s a reason why the chapter Eto begins torturing Shinohara has a flashback that directly parallels the Yasuhisa twins when Suzuya began torturing them. Eto’s reaction is in response to this chapter, as Suzuya’s reaction is a response to the twins reaction earlier. There is a reason why Eto isolates Shinohara and tortures him specifically, rather than anyone else.

TG 137, 103

The flashback immediately opens with Suzuya being told he has his new quinque Sasori (Skorpion as most people know it now), which is the name of the chapter wherein Suzuya tortures the twins. Shinohara tells him to use his knives for the good for others, but instead he uses them for himself. Shinohara’s comments about humans breaking is mimicked by Suzuya about breaking ghouls. Suzuya’s comments about not caring about people he doesn’t like and wanting them to die coalesces into gleeful torturing the twins physically and psychologically, forcing them to watch one another as he makes them die.

TG 137, 102

He was actually ecstatic to jump at the chance to do so. Suzuya wanted to kill the twins ever since they saw him the night he encountered Tokage and was framed for the murder of the animals by the staff. He thought the twins hated him the entire time since the academy. The irony is that they actually didn’t. The hatred, up until this point in time, was entirely one sided on Suzuya’s part.

TG 102

Kurona and Nashiro actually stuck up for Suzuya, despite his eccentricities. Despite seeing him crushing ants all day and avoiding class, things that would normally be red flags for others. They didn’t actually think badly of him, and they doubted he’d be capable of killing cats and dogs like the staff member attempted to imply. They didn’t even care about his past of being raised by a ghoul. This only changed when they saw him that night, but they still didn’t hate him. Even when they met in the lab, Kurona didn’t seem to be angry at Suzuya, so much as take his employment as confirmation of Kanou’s words about the corruption of the CCG.

That is, until he tortured her as he made Nashiro watch. Then made her watch as he killed Nashiro, mocking her all the while, taunting her all the while. The thing is, this was logically what was going to happen here.

TG 103, 122

The very same tactics that Suzuya learned under Big Madam are being employed here against other children who have been manipulated by a parental authority figure. Note that when Suzuya says “after 46 more times, please die” he’d already hit Kurona six times. The total number of hits (51) is the same as the number of seconds he was hung by meat hooks in his flashback to his treatment by Big Madam. What Suzuya is doing here is acting out the trauma inflicted upon him as closely as he can. This is entirely the fault of the person who decided that Suzuya needs not be brought into psychiatric care, but sent out to fight against other children as a soldier. That person being, of course, Shinohara.

TG 122

Shinohara knew exactly what he was doing here. He was warned, rather explicitly, that Suzuya had incredibly dangerous tendencies. Suzuya needed severe psychiatric help, not having his skills for torture and murder further fostered and turned on other children in the form of Kuro and Shiro. Shinohara rightfully recognizes that Suzuya is a victim, but then proceeds to overturn the decision to keep him out of the CCG’s academy.

Note that the discussion wasn’t about punishing Suzuya for being forced to kill for Big Madam. The discussion was about the CCG’s standard operating procedure of turning victims of ghouls into indoctrinated soldiers. Suzuya was deemed to mentally unstable to become a CCG investigator due to his violent tendencies. This is what leads to Suzuya being framed by the CCG Academy for killing animals. This is what leads Suzuya to assault a police officer and physically maim him. This is what leads to his hatred and downward spiral against Kurona and Nashiro.

Shinohara had every warning sign even before the twins. After the assault on the police officer, Shinohara says this:

TG 137

Had Suzuya not reacted as he did, he wouldn’t have triggered Eto’s reaction here. What Shinohara tells Suzuya is that if he gets angry at someone, he should act out that anger on him. But Suzuya didn’t, and took out that anger on the twins. Now as Suzuya promised, Shinohara suffers the same fate as Nashiro. That’s why this scene pops up during Eto’s torture of Shinohara.

TG 137

Eto’s not just referring to Suzuya and Shinohara here. She’s referring to Suzuya and Kurona.

TG 143, 107

Because at the end of their respective battles, both Suzuya and Kurona end up in similar states. Both of our two survivors take their respective partners to doctors. Both of the doctors tell them that there’s no real chance of survival here for Nashiro and Shinohara respectively.

TG 110

Amon’s words to Suzuya at Kanou’s lab weren’t empty. He was speaking from his own experiences. After all, Amon’s partner at the time is Akira because he lost Kureo, a mentor figure to him, as Shinohara was to Suzuya.

Because when Kureo Mado split up from Amon, that was when Kureo Mado needed him the most. When Amon’s talking to Suzuya here, this is what he’s thinking of. The loss of his mentor - the loss he wants Suzuya to avoid. Suzuya doesn’t take Amon seriously, because Suzuya’s not in a position to understand. He struggles to understand why anyone care about death, because people die all the time. And technically speaking, he’s correct. But empathy is what makes people care about the death of others.

TG 28, 137

Suzuya empathized with Shinohara - and as Amon said, Suzuya regretted his rash decisions. In the end, both Amon and Suzuya ended up sharing the same loss.

Amon’s focus for Suzuya was on staying with the mentor figure and family you care for because you should fear losing the ones you love. Eto, meanwhile, focuses on increasing personal power and putting barriers between oneself and those around you.

This is not the only character that Eto interacts with whom she does this with.

(TG 114)

The subtext of this scene is that Eto was encouraging Hinami to cannibalize, as she cannibalized at her age, even if Hinami doesn’t realize it at the time. Because the “worries” Hinami has are related to her weakness, and the fastest way for a ghoul to grow in strength is to cannibalize. Eto’s own struggles against a Mado Senior are what got both Hinami and Eto on the CCG’s radar, at least publicly.

(TG;re 43)

This is also made explicit with her confrontation against Kanae (which is another discussion entirely in and of itself which is too big to cover in this post or honestly, even one post). Eto has an obsession with the power gained through cannibalization. This is part of Eto’s complex, brought on by her own personal insecurities.

(TG 62, TG;re 3, TG;re 73)

Characters having complexes is brought up multiple times throughout both Tokyo Ghoul and Tokyo Ghoul;re. The above three are notable examples and just plainly explained. For this I’m only going to briefly touch on these examples to explain the point. That is, how it shows in their actions. We could go more in depth with just his complexes, but for now, we’ll keep it simple, and I’ll make another more in depth post later.

(TG’re 83, TG 139, TG 138, TG;re 74, TG;re 65)

Arima’s obsession with eyes is a result of losing his own eyesight, which is caused by his ghoul parent DNA causing artificially fast aging in his otherwise human body. He takes out his anger by engaging in extreme sadism towards ghouls. Specifically, for this complex, he goes for the eyes, but especially ghouls’ left eyes whenever the opportunity presents itself. When looking straight at someone, it’s like looking at yourself in the mirror; the image is flipped. Your right eye looks into their left eye, and vice verse. He’s gauging out his own weak eye that he sees in others. He’s resentful of their eyes.

There’s more to Arima than that, of course, but I’m using this to demonstrate Ishida’s usage of complexes to assist in explaining or elaborating upon character action, which he bakes into his characterization. Eto’s obsession with cannibalization hints at a similar, but obviously different, obsession with kakuja power.

(TG;re 61)

Eto’s loss against Kuriowa was a wake up call about her own weakness, that she was nowhere near as powerful as she thought she was. Despite her statement here that she tried to win through quantity, she still didn’t stop increasing her own strength and continued to cannibalize.

(TG 136, TG;re 61)

It’s pretty evident in her kakuja when she was 14 versus her kakuja when she was 24. Eto never stopped acquiring personal power, even if she gained an army.

TG;re 86,

I’ve brought this up in other posts I made, but all implications are that Arima treated Eto as his own Quinque before he decided on Kaneki. The stance Eto takes while Arima looms over her is no different than the stance Kaneki makes for a reason - because Eto and Arima weren’t equals. Their walking side by side is even preceded, in the chapter before, by Haise walking side by side with Arima.

(TG;re 86, 85)

It’s the same thing, just from a different perspective. Even everything Eto says to Kaneki is the exact same thing that Akira tells him in the first chapter of ;re. Even Kaneki’s stance with the Qs behind him communicates the same general image, and the same general message. “You must either surpass Arima and create One Eyed Ghouls more powerful than him to create hope for Ghouls/CCG”.

TG;re 86, 1

This is highly relevant to the discussion at hand - because Arima rather explicitly uses a mother figure to manipulate Haise to his own ends in Akira. This is meant to communicate that Arima’s involvement with regards to Ghoulification programs of both Aogiri and the CCG. This makes sense, of course. Arima is the One Eyed King; he’d want as many One Eyed Ghouls on the board as he could get.

TG;re 15

Arima is deferred to by Yoshitoki of all people with regards to whether or not Urie’s frame opening should be allowed. This is meant to indicate that Arima is directly involved and highly influential in the Qs program. This makes sense on multiple levels - if your goal is to create investigators that surpass Arima, Arima’s approval makes sense. He’s the best gauge of his own strength. Yoshitoki also defers to Arima on multiple occassions throughout the manga and trusts him greatly, such as thinking of him on Rushima, or discussing Furuta with him.

Urie’s curiosity is meant to lampshade the importance of this scene, which when taken into account his reveal as the One Eyed King, takes on a new meaning. It’s because of Arima’s recommendation that Urie be allowed to undergo the frame opening procedure that leads Urie down a dark path that leads him to lose control of himself and go completely berserk on multiple occassions.

TG 98, TG;re 45

I bring this up because the way that Eto describes the twins as being used as Kanou isn’t that far off from the way Arima manipulates Haise in ;re using Akira. In fact, it is literally the same thing. Arima picked up on the trauma of Kaneki’s childhood and his abuse at the hands of his mother leading to his deference to authority figures and mother figures in particular, especially those who are willing to use corporal punishment (eg Akira Mado). Akira also looks past his “killing” of Amon to literally embrace him. This information is also introduced during Eto’s torture of Kanae to indicate the relation of those two events - but again, that will be an entirely different post.

Eto is not speaking about Kanou’s manipulations and the twins without reasoning - she’s speaking about this from her own experiences. Eto wasn’t strong enough on her own to defeat V or defend herself and what she cared for, so she ended up under the thumb of Arima. Eto’s first appearance as a One Eyed Ghoul also shows she has “merely” an ordinary kagune, and this appearance is implied to be shortly after Noroi’s death.

As I’ve mentioned in other posts, in Eto’s first chronological appearance as the One Eyed Owl, she doesn’t have a kakuja, and it’s a direct parallel to Touka and Hinami’s experiences with Kasuka Mado.

TG;re 66

It’s actually explicit that a strong impetus for Eto’s rebellion was, in fact, the loss of Noroi. Because her mother was dead before she could remember, and she says she’s unable to accept Furuta’s premise about “peace” as the one on the receiving end of that “peace”. Most likely, given how these situations played out, Eto wasn’t cannibalizing ghouls until after Noroi’s death. In fact, it’s actually rather likely she wasn’t eating like a ghoul at all.

TG 98

This explains why Eto is putting “become a ghoul” and “former human” in quotes here; because this doesn’t logically make any sense for her to do so for the twins. They did not quote-unquote become ghouls and they were not quote-unquote former humans, they became ghouls and they are former humans. Eto’s quotation marks here only make any form of logical sense if she’s talking about somebody else; and the only logical person here for her to be talking about aside from them is herself.

So her main thrust in all of her discussions with other ghouls is that they should be cannibalizing, that they need to enhance their ghoul power, because otherwise they’re weak. And if you’re weak, you’ll lose what you value. You’ll be alone. Someone will manipulate you. Keep strong, because only your parents will love you, and push others away, because they’ll just use you.

Eto targeted the twins because she could relate to them. They made a similar choice to what she made, choosing to “become a ghoul” and becoming “former humans”. Their situation with Kanou was what she saw as analogous to her situation with Arima. Arima and Kanou even end their stories the same way.

TG;re 82, 149

Because both Arima and Kanou decide to kill themselves in front of their adopted child after they got what they wanted. Arima wanted a One Eyed Ghoul that could beat him, and Kanou wanted the Washuu’s secrets exposed. Both decided that their final act would be to exert power over their adopted children - Arima depriving Kaneki of his decision to have both of them live, and Kanou depriving Kurona of her revenge. Neither Arima or Kanou ever really cared much about the damage that their deaths would cause. There is far more to the situation than that, far more, but for this post, we’ll stop it there.

In the end, both Eto’s and Amon’s words, and Suzuya’s and Eto’s subsequent actions giving meaning to those words, inform most of the character development Kurona and Suzuya undergo in ;re. The varying ideologies of Amon and Eto inform both Suzuya and Kurona greatly. This is very noticeable in Kurona.

TG;re 53, 56, 81, 87

As one of the characters Kurona takes on the most is, in fact, Eto. But Eto’s advice fails Kurona, because Eto herself never managed to successfully manage her own issues. Eto’s advice no longer has the proper context and came too late for Kurona to properly use it. Nashiro had already died, and her cannibalization which allowed her the strength to overpower Suzuya was rendered meaningless because she was already alone, just as Eto is alone. Pushing others away is a dangerous game even if you’re not already alone - and Kurona has no one.

TG;re 80, 87

Amon’s advice to Suzuya, meanwhile, is still highly relevant to his situation. Suzuya manages to change himself so substantially by his experiences in TG, that by TG;re, he’s seen in a different light. His subordinates follow him, not because they’re his subordinates, but because he genuinely cares about those around him. He’s a completely different person. Physical strength and acknowledging the reality of your situation are, of course, important. But no amount of strength can allow you victory if you are well and truly alone. Quantity is a quality in its own right - and while there are no certainties in life, as these situations show, they do help tip the scales in ones favor.

TG 107, 106

This is foreshadowed by Kaneki’s interactions with Amon and Banjou in Tokyo Ghoul. Does Kaneki manage to defeat Shinohara in battle? Yes. But Kaneki’s goals are not related to being the strongest and killing Shinohara - his goal is to avoid loneliness, and protect the ones he loves. Kaneki’s become strong and developed a kakuja through his cannibalization - but his isolation and loneliness are killing him metaphorically and physically. Kaneki is individually stronger than any one person of the CCG members he fights at the Kanou lab raid, but he ends up losing his fight against Suzuya and Amon because he is alone, worn down, and uncertain.

Kurona and Suzuya are quite alike in that their situations were negatively impacted by the bad decisions of both humans and ghouls. However, the differences between them stem from the differences between humans and ghouls in the world of Tokyo Ghoul. Suzuya is afforded the protections and safety of the human world - while Kurona is not. She’s alone, fighting both humans and ghouls alike.

You can’t save anyone if you, yourself, are not saved. Amon was “saved” by his friends, as Suzuya was by his family (his squad). Note that “saved” is not the same as “flawless” - both Suzuya and Amon have immense flaws that make them so appealing as characters, things that they address through confronting their emotions and theirselves. Eto is someone who, as I mentioned earlier, has too many issues of her own to give as good of advice as Amon.

TG;re Volume 5 Black Goat bonus

Eto is, of course, aware of her own short comings. She sees herself as inherently toxic and believes everything she touches dies - like her mother, or Noroi. This is communicated partly through her novels and their negative endings for characters. Her using such a harsh tone with the twins and others (such as when she later pushes Hinami away after initially showing her kindness), as opposed to Amon’s friendly tone with Suzuya and others, is meant to keep them away from herself.

There’s more I’d like to discuss about all of these characters, but I’ll just leave it at here for now. I feel like I can always add more and I haven’t really been putting out any content recently.

#tokyo ghoul #tg meta #Eto Yoshimura #kurona yasuhisa #juuzou suzuya #kotarou amon #Ken Kaneki #Touka Kirishima #Arima Kishou #akihiro kanou #yukinori shinohara #Nashiro Yasuhisa

61 notes · View notes