Furuta and his many Masks
So, a lot of people when reading Furuta’s character tend to mitsake what is a deliberate act on his part, for his genuine personality. That Furuta is all the negative traits that he portrays, all the silly traits that he portrays, and therefore a shallow villain filled with nothing but a desire to destroy everything because he sees no meaning in anything.
And at that point you’ve fallen for the mask. Furuta’s identity is splintered, as any character who played so many roles and forced themselves into so many roles would be. People tend to mistake Furuta’s negative traits as stemming from malice, hatred, misogny, misanthropy, a narrative of toxic masculinity, when one of Jungian Psychology applies better to him when you read Furuta as a character deliberately exaggerating the most negative aspects of himself not only to highlight those qualities in his portrayal as a villain but also in the system around him.
he inconsistency in Furuta’s personality, the hypocrisy, it can be read in another way as a deliberate act. A narrative of dissociation and pslintering of his identity, though in Furuta’s case much more deliberate on his part than on Kaneki’s works just as well when reading his character. This is a part of Furuta’s characterization because it connects to Kaneki, it was established with Kaneki before Furuta was even a proper character in the narrative.
Kaneki is a character who seems shy and yet somehow when others have expectations for him, he can suddenly become confident and play the role as expected. Kaneki when interacting with others changes himself to conceal a part of himself, always wearing a mask to cater to their expectations.
The difference lies in the central motive between the two characters, Kaneki wears a mask to get people around him to believe in him and love him, Furuta wears a mask to dehumanize himself because there is a job that he must accomplish that he can’t hesitate, show a sign of weakness, or let his face betray his true intentions because he’s caught in a web of conspiracy. (A literal web because V is symbolized by butterflies, the symbols of life hope and change in Tokyo Ghoul, caught in a web).
The persona, for Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung, was the social face the individual presented to the world—"a kind of mask, designed on the one hand to make a definite impression upon others, and on the other to conceal the true nature of the individual" [x].
A persona is a mask that changes depending on a situation. The simplest way to explain it is that you would not swear in front of your grandma, even though you normally swear in front of your friends. Personality is a flexible thing and people act differently depending on different situations, or rather they present different parts of themselves.
In video game terms in the persona video games you have twenty four social links based on the arcana, and in each social link you basically cater your answers towards what the other person would like to hear. The answers you give to a relaxing and easygoing character’s social link are different from the answers you would give to a strict and serious character’s social link, which is why the protagonist is silent, they’re a person that everybody can get behind because that person really caters themselves to different situations and wears a different mask depending on the person they are talking to which they thinks will best suit that person.
If it’s easier think of Furuta like a persona protagonist, they have to change themselves based on the situation to get what they want. That’s why it’s important to get the outside context of the situation.
One of Furuta’s first scenes after his introduction, note he plays the role as bait flawelssly and then just as easily switches back to his normal self. Kijima even compliments him “That role is perfect for you” In that he’s a natural distraction.
The first role Furuta plays is a harmless errand boy that nobody pays attention to because he’s always in the shadow of Kijima. Then, when Kijima dies we get a glimpse of his true self.
Notice what the first thing he does. It’s exactly what Okahira asked him to do “Stay behind me.” The moment he gets the order, Furuta twists it ironically on its head by using him as a human shield. Remember in the CCG, there’s a pecking order and a hierarchy. It’s seen as heroic and good for agents to stay behind and die for the rest of their squad. This is how Urie’s father died. Not only that but beforehand Furuta was playing the role of the perfect CCG underling, partnered with an advisor and always following them around and going around with them no matter what they did.
He’s basically Amon to Kureo in part one. Kijima was supposed to mentor him. Yet, Kijima is a crazy person with a chainsaw who unilaterally applies torture to ghouls to get what he wants. He’s bloodthirsty he just only directs it towars ghouls. Yet, we’re supposed to read it as shocking when the guy who always follows Kijima around turns out to be violent as well.
Furuta’s still playing the role of a CCG agent, he’s just turning it on his head. These guys are surprised that the guy who always followed Kijima around is violent, because they tolerated his violence, because the system tolerated his violence and they did not really see themselves as violent. The ending of Furuta the CCG agent, he plays the role perfectly, he shows no empathy for a ghoul, and then he mourns his advisor.
Even when wiping out the rest of the CCG members in the room, Furuta says that they have to report because that’s what a good CCG agent would do. THey have to continue following duty, they’re bound to duty.
Furuta’s masks aren’t just there to be confusing and edgy, they’re purposeful, they’re intentional parodies. Furuta’s role as a ccg agent is the extremes of how ccg agents act, either completely cowed to the violent atmopshere around him to the point of enabling people like Kijima without speaking up, or violent and heartless towards ghouls who are nothing more than man eating monsters so therefore whatever emotions they fight with or whoever they fight to protect does not matter. They’re a critique of the CCG agents he’s pretending to be. How violent was Kureo Mado towards other ghouls, even women and children and how much did Amon just sit there and watch without interrupting or doing anything.
Yet, at the same time a part of Furuta slips out with his masks. You can easily interpret what he says “You can try to cover it up all you want but in the end you’re just a man eating monster” as about the Washuu as well ghouls who pretend to be human, and ghouls with money and influence just like the Tsukiyama. Who pretended to be human and claimed they wanted to be captured and meet their end as humans and yet with a portion of their wealth did things like attending human auctions and covering up Shuu just killing people at random.
This is also a good time to notice that Furuta slicing up parts of his personality and presenting them like masks means there is sometimes a lack of his central personality. It’s important to remember that Furuta was not raised as a human being, he was raised as a child soldier, he was raised for a role from the beginning not a child to be loved so even in his formative years there was not much to give him a personality of an individual person and not a cog in the system. When Furuta’s profile is revealed he seems to be a nobody, no age, no honors, and no hobbies or interests in particular when even a bloodthirsty guy like Kijima likes to tap dance.
Not only does the act of wearing masks wear away at Furuta’s original personality, he also actively suppresses any trace of humanity inside of him so he can better fit the roles. Once again Furuta is caught in the middle of both the Washuu and V’s machinations, if he slips he would have just been erased and killed. He has very heavy pressure not to hesitate, second guess himself, or act as a human would and not a machine that’s bent on destroying the system around him.
I also think Pandora Hearts explained it in a much clearer way with the character Jack Vessalius who parallels Furuta in a lot of ways.
Furuta, continually dehumanized, by the system and then by himself eventually splinters and tries to dissociate his own humanity from himself until all that remains of him is a pile of masks that he stands on, united together by a centralized goal of destroying the Washuu.
The next Furuta we’re introduced to is V Furuta. This is how Furuta is demonstrating that the Washuu and the agents of V act to the audience. The Washuu a patriarchical, heterosexual dominant chain of command that enforces that power structure on the CCG as well.
I mean look how Matsuri acts with Urie.
Or the way Matsuri has to act as family head.
Power, dominance, control with sexuality mixed in as well. Not to mention later on it’s revealed Furuta was raised in a literal rape garden. So there, Furuta is emulating the dominant culture of the Washuu. He spouts their philosophy like he’s nothing more than a loyal follower of the Washuu.
However again a grain of truth is mixed in with Furuta’s dialogue. (Also notice that Furuta often adopts different personas visually when explaining these bits of exposition as if he’s acting them out like an actor on stage. This is genuinely how Furuta believes people will act, they don’t care about the truth, they need to be manipulated, cajoled, they need to be convinced through scapegoats rather than to act on their own.
For the biggest hint that this is all an act Furuta straight up says “You even had to kill your father tsk, tsk, that’s the worst thing to do” and then kills his father 30 chapters later. Loyal V agent Furuta, just a cog in the system, spouts the rhetoric of V, gets off on the tiny amount of power he has working behind the scenes the same way that Kaiko does. Then Eto dregs up a tiny bit of his humanity and look how he acts.
He has an uncontrollable flashback on the level of a PTSD flashback to one of the more human moments of his youth, and a reminder that he was a bred child and then goes actively right back to suppressing his humanity.
Because for Furuta humanity is bad, it makes him lose control and act irrationally.
So one quick detour for Souta the clown, he’s introduced in the Gourmet club the most inhuman of ghoul activities shown in the manga besides the Auction hall, and he acts basically the same way Tsukiyama does. Reveling in his ghoulhood, mentioning how fun others would be to eat, only pretending to be human to string along a target that he wanted to eat, basically the way that all ccg agents think ghouls act that they simply pretend to be human and have human emotions and are heartless killers only concerned about eating.
The clowns specifically as well revel in their roles as outsiders and embrace their monstrosity, claiming that since the world will never sympathize with them there really is no reason to act sympathetic. This is just a brief aside though so I can’t get into the entire clown dogma, but there is a general theme of suppressing your humanity and playing the role.
The world will never love us as much as humans no matter how we pretend to be so why even pretend, why engage at all. This is especially relevant for Furuta who can never be fully ghoul and never be fully human because he was born as a breeding experiment. If he had conformed to the CCG’s desires he would have died as fodder like Hairu, or many of the other nameless V agents, or died young regardless.
Then finally moving on to Kichimura.
The first mask he wears is a party mask, because that’s what they’re doing at these promotion ceremonies, throwing parties to celebrate how many people they killed.
Then in one chapter, Furuta as the chief brings everything to the forefront. The CCG actively recruites from orpahned children. They actively pressure those orpahned children to go into human experimenation such as Shirazu being finanically pressured to accept the Q’s surgery or his sister would die, Mutsuki getting a murder sentence suspended because he would make a good tool for the CCG.
Peace on Death is not even soething Furuta originally said. It was said by Marude, let’s kill all those ghouls and give them peace with death.
The traits which Furuta shows in his performance as Kichimura were all present in all other heads of the CCG. The mission from the beginning had always been mass extermination of ghouls, there’s literally a law that says every ghoul captured must be killed. Amon says multiple times the world is twisted because fo ghouls and he wants to get rid of all ghouls. Urie says that in the first chapter we need to get rid of all ghouls. This is dogma parroted by the CCG over and over again.
Tsuneyoshi and Yoshitoki simply dressed it up, claimed it was just a job, something they had to do. Furuta pushes it to the extreme so people cannot ignore him.
“It’s just a job” for the same reason V agent Furuta parrroted “this is all just to maintain balance, it’s necessary.” The CCG is so blind that literally when Juuzou says “I’ll massacre everyone on the bridge” somehow one member of Juuzou squad says “they’ve managed to make us feel like murderers.”
Then finally, the conversation in 101. Why does Furuta act the way he does in front of Kaneki. So, the first thing Kaneki does is after establishing himself as Furuta’s opponent say “I wanted to talk with the Washuu.”
Furuta even says this. “I had the clowns do a bit of acting.” he’s already staging the role. He’s scoping things out with Kaneki, Kaneki to be his hero and Furuta to be the villain everybody unites to defeat.
So, if Furuta wanted the same thing as Kaneki, the destruction of the Washuu, coexistence, why didn’t he just state it? Why did he antagonize Kaneki on purpose? And the answer is quite simple.
“I wanted to talk to the Washuu.” imagine you’ve been planning your whole life to overthrow the evil family that bred you, raised you as a child soldier, and having to betray and stomp over others all this time to get this far and secure this one opening and you’ve finally killed the family that’s oppressed you your whole life.
THen the person whose been chosen to lead the violent ghoul revolution that definitely needs a plan to improve the world goes. “Oh I was just going to talk to them.” like he’s just winging it. He’s scoping out Kaneki, and he realizes right away Kaneki’s not serious about this. So, Furuta defaults to what he believes, that people will not act unless they’re cajoled into it, that they need narratives to act, that they need to be manipulated with stories, stage trickery, and spot lights rather than being convinced to care through empathy. He basically tells Kaneki what he’s going to do, create a great enemy for everybody to unite and fight behind and that it’s all scripted beforehand. They’re all playing roles.
Then, Kankeki during his scoping out reveals his real reason for doing this. It’s about him, not about destroying the Washuu, hence why he has no real plan.
Then, Furuta explains that he’s a bred child soldier that he was going to fight all of his life in servitude under the Washuu until he died a useless pawn and Kaneki still doens’t get why he might want to overthrow the Washuu. So, Furuta puts on the mask he’s expected to in this scene.
‘I DON’T CARE I’M DOING IT FOR THE LULZZZZZ” because Kaneki doesn’t even want to try to see what Furuta’s motivation might possibly be. He can’t put together that a child soldier might want to free himself from a system that created him.
Furuta reveals one small part of his humanity, that when he was a child there was somebody he had a connection to, that he cared about.
Then, immediately the mask comes back on. LOL NO ACTUALLY I’M A CREEP. I JUST WANT TO MARRY RIZE THERE’S NO MORE COMPLICATED REASON THAN THAT.
Furuta knows his actions towards Rize were monstrous. He did it to sever away that human portion of himself, to become the mask, to not care about anything and prove that he’s a monster and every time he slips and pretends to have actually been a human at one point in time he reasserts that he’s a monster even harder, he doubles down on the act and exaggerates the worst parts of himself because that’s how he sees himself too. He wants to become the mask, because Furuta the scared garden child who did one good deed can’t possibly bring the whole system down.
Furuta says in his most honest moment. I decided I’d destroy everything, his whole life devoted to that goal, and thus he had to do terrible things, fit himself into roles without ever giving away his true motivation, all to accomplish that.
So if Furuta acts inconsistent, acts inhuman, it’s on purpose, it’s a mechanism to deny his own humanity and better fit the role he’s playing by necessity in order to accomplish his goal,
