You've mentioned a couple of times how Black Reaper is misunderstood. Could you elaborate on that?
Okay, so most people think of Black Reaper as this:
And that’s both right and fair, because this was his insanely badass introduction and potentially the most memorable aspect of his personality. But behind all this sound and fury, we also have to remember we have this:
We think of Reaper as cold, but his character isn’t defined by his lack of feeling, but the fact he just feels so damn much. His hair is the black of Yin, and Reaper’s mind is a sea of turbulent emotion that is crashing against the inside of his skull. His negative thoughts have spiralled so deeply out of control that he no longer can bring himself to care about anything else other than achieving a single goal to placate them and then silencing them forever. But the aura of cool confidence is a facade, and what we have is far more similar to the Kaneki we all know - someone filled with incredible anxiety and a fog of unshakeable, oppressive depression where the only confidence is that salvation will never come; there is no light at the end of this tunnel. That’s not a liberating feeling; there’s no kind of relief in that conviction; it’s just pain, constant, horrible psychological torture that haunts you every waking moment. To end that, Reaper is willing to do anything - moral or immoral, it doesn’t matter, he just wants a glimpse of love so that he can finally die.
This nihilism manifests itself as searing rage at first against Eto, but his cold, ruthless demeanour when he first earns the moniker of Black Reaper was in many ways an imitation of Arima in order to reach his level and understand how he thinks for their inevitable battle, as well as a means of gaining the full trust of the CCG by not showing any mercy to ghouls like he did as Haise. The projection of confidence is also, probably, what gave him the courage to keep moving forward. When the awaited hour comes and he opens the gates of Cochlea, we can see this outer appearance slip away as he no longer needs to maintain it and as his heart is warmed by seeing his loved ones one final time.
In panels like these, he seems just like Kuroneki. At first I was surprised to see Kaneki’s hair turn black when Reaper seemed much more akin to Shironeki, but as his character unravels we can see just how similar they are as people whose actions are dictated so exactly by their emotions. Not just the face, but the mind of Kuroneki is always in the Reaper.
So occasionally I’ll see a post that just refers to Reaper as a dick and I’ll get annoyed. Obviously he does extreme and immoral things, but when someone is suffering that much, can you look on them with nothing but contempt? Can you blame them for wanting to alleviate their suffering however they can?After fighting so long and so hard against a world constructed for his suffering and getting nowhere, Reaper was the Kaneki that gave in, accepted his lot, and allowed the tragedy to consume him. Reaper is a compellingly, wonderfully tragic figure and for that, my favourite Kaneki.
To wrap things up, George Orwell’s 1984 might explain it better than I:
“Of pain you could wish only one thing: that it should stop…In the face of pain there are no heroes.”
2087
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