I hope we’re all out here not pointing fingers at Haise’s decency and respect for Mutsuki’s boundaries nor trusting Mutsuki’s clearly warped perspective.
Likewise, it also isn’t Mutsuki’s fault that he started to fall for a person who for the first time didn’t leer at him over his body.
He’s so unused to decency and respect that he can only relate it to himself by perceiving it negatively as lying, and then takes that “lying” and deeming Haise the same has him– that they are deserving of each other and only each other.
However…. Mustuki is not right. He does not understand Kaneki.
He cannot *currently* understand how a person would want to protect others other than for self-preservation. He is only familiar with being pushed passed his limits by his family to the point of violence. Mutsuki handles pain and confusion by lashing out at others because he did not have the foundation that Kaneki is slowly trying to free himself of, that “it is better to be the one getting hurt rather than the one to hurt others.
While I was petsitting a couple of weeks ago, I picked up one of my clients magazines (The Atlantic) and read an interesting article about children and psychopathy. Most of it revolved around “callous” children– those who are born lacking empathy– but it also covered people in Mutsuki’s position and how they can be helped:
“Researchers believe that two paths can lead to psychopathy: one dominated by nature, the other by nurture. For some children, their environment—growing up in poverty, living with abusive parents, fending for themselves in dangerous neighborhoods—can turn them violent and coldhearted.”
Many of the teenagers at [the treatment center for violent youths] grew up on the streets, without parents, and were beaten up or sexually abused. Violence became a defense mechanism.
The second hallmark of a psychopathic brain is an overactive reward system especially primed for drugs, sex, or anything else that delivers a ping of excitement*. In one study, children played a computer gambling game programmed to allow them to win early on and then slowly begin to lose. Most people will cut their losses at some point, Kent Kiehl notes, “whereas the psychopathic, callous unemotional kids keep going until they lose everything.” Their brakes don’t work, he says.
“If you have less concern about the negative consequences of your actions, then you’ll be more likely to continue engaging in these behaviors. And when you get caught, you’ll be less likely to learn from your mistakes.”
In the end, the recovery facility believed in taking a violent youth “who has been living in a state of chaos to slowly rise to the surface and acclimate to the world without resorting to violence.” They didn’t aim to “cure” psychopathy, but they saw a 100% success rate in that none of the boys in their program have since committed crimes or returned to jail.
Now, I doubt Ishida will write Mutsuki in a way that reflections those of the murderers from juvenile hall, for one because Mutsuki is an adult now, and for two this is science fiction and I’m betting on Mutsuki being rehabilitated despite how concrete his ways currently are as a person in their 20′s.
Anyway, my point is that Kaneki is not at fault here, but neither is Mutsuki. The kids in that article knew that they were wrong and did not want to be that way. I love Mutsuki, but he is hella scrambled right now and the things he says regarding his obsession with Sasaki should be taken with a grain of salt until he’s fully decompressed.
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