When do you think Kaneki started catching feelings for Touka?
Well, we know that by the Kureo Mado arc he hadalready started to care about her:
And that by the Aogiri arc she tied in with Hideas his most important person:
And judging by Haise’s great big crush on her, Kaneki already held romantic feelings for her by the start of :re. After all, the emotions which are obvious in Haise are the ones suppressed in Kaneki.
These are the three milestones, which neatly encapsulate the original series, through which we can plot the development of Kaneki’s feelings for Touka.
Kaneki always had a slight interest in Touka even before the whole spiral of events that brought them together. At that time, he just thought she was cute, but when she force-fed him human meat, he became more curious about her. Although he found her scary, he could not help but feel kind of grateful to her for easing his hunger pains. This was his first introduction to the consideration and kindness that underlies Touka’s hostile demeanour - in his grimmest and loneliest time yet, she and Yoshimura were the only ones who helped him.
The time she saved him from eating Hide also contributed to his interest in and gratitude towards her, but the real turning point was when Uta told him about a different side to her than the one she portrays.
After hearing more about her struggle to connect with humans as Uta implied, Kaneki gained a respect for her. After the death of Ryouko, he related to Touka’s feelings of grief and powerlessness, and, while he didn’t agree with her methods, he still respected that she was the only one doing anything to stop the Doves. By that point, Kaneki found himself liking this scary girl, and had enough faith in her to ask her for training. Their training was intense, but the two evidently bonded over the course for it, and as we’ve seen recently Kaneki was very grateful for what she taught him.
From then on, their teamwork under an extremely high pressure situation led to a real camaraderie forming between them. Touka also did something for Kaneki that practically nobody save for Hide has ever done. Kaneki has a strong belief in his own uselessness and is frequently grateful for the aid of others, but it is a very rare occasion that someone would ever express gratitude towards him (and he enjoys the sensation so much that it initiates the hero complex that will determine his actions in the latter half of the manga).
By the end of the arc, Kaneki cares for Touka a great deal, offering her his shoulder to lean on and carrying through with it despite her protests - no longer phased by her scariness now that he has seen so much more of the real Touka.
He finds more similarities between Touka and herself when he finds out about Yoriko, and he is touched to find she is willing to risk her life for him - another thing that is extremely rare for Kaneki is for anyone to display care for his well-being.
It’s clear how difficult he finds it to register. Kaneki internally expresses worry for her well-being afterwards when she’s torn up about her inability to kill Kimi, and by this point, Touka has joined Hide in the highest echelons of Kaneki’s heart. Close, reciprocal relationships like those are so rare for Kaneki that they’re all the more precious for it. We see just how much he’s come to treasure her in the Aogiri Arc, when Ayato pays the price for it. Kaneki is fiercely, fiercely protective of her, all the more so after seeing the lengths she’s gone to for him, and as we all knew but Ch 122 confirmed, it’s his reason for leaving her behind.
It’s difficult to pinpoint exactly where Kaneki’s feelings take a turn for the romantic, precisely because, in classic Kaneki emotional suppression mode, I doubt he’s aware of it himself. But I would definitely suggest that by the beginning of the Aogiri arc that flower has sprouted, and we see it throughout the second half of the manga in her prominent appearance in his thoughts - not to mention him going out of the way of his great quest to get her a birthday present.
The largest panel of all for Touka in Kaneki’s dying thoughts. When he finally saw her again, alive and well and waiting for him all this time in :re, even without any memories, he couldn’t help but cry.
so ive worked in childcare for a bit now. during the pandemic, the place i worked started a day program for kids whose parents needed to return to work. turns out the school district uses memorization and cueing, and when combined with online learning that read all the instructions to them, overwhelmingly the kids aged 5-9 just... couldnt read.
i brought in a bunch of my books from childhood, and we started having one-on-one reading lessons with the littles. then i went out and bought about fifty more books secondhand. first step was covering the pictures so the kids couldnt guess what the words said and had to actually TRY reading them first. second step was making a list of new words for each kid so we could learn about those words, what they meant, and if the kids were old enough, some of the etymology behind them (because if you can recognize latin root words, it's easier to make connections for pronunciation later on eg. unicorn -> universe).
the kids HATED this. reading was previously the easiest class and now it was really, really hard. but reading class had also previously been the most boring class; their books were ten pictures with a single sentence on the opposite page. we got through it by taking turns reading books the kids picked out from my collection- they would read one sentence or paragraph, then i would read the whole page complete with funny voices, then it would be their turn again, etc. it turns out that if kids are motivated to hear the rest of a good story or a lot of information about a topic they love, they're more willing to struggle.
the kids improved so rapidly that i honestly almost cried a few times from how proud i was. one little girl (kindergarten aged) went from being unable to sound out the whole alphabet to reading goodnight moon by herself in two months :'>
all this, though, was NOT my job. my job was to keep the kids on task during their online schooling and prevent them from killing each other or starving. i am not a teacher. the school system was failing these kids to the degree that outside individual reading lessons were necessary, and school systems across the US are still doing this!
if you are a parent or teacher or childcare worker, PLEASE check to see what your kid is being taught. ask to see examples of lesson materials. raise concerns about the importance of phonics over any other reading strategy. join the pta, go to school board meetings, send emails- just make sure your kid is actually learning to read.
i would like to add that you don't need to have a child to ask these questions of your local school district. regardless of your status as a parent, it is all our responsibility to care about how children in our communities are being educated. not just because it objectively good to care about and engage with your community, but also because the children of today are the adults of tomorrow.
if this backwards way of teaching reading keeps up, then in the future it is going to create more issues, not only those kids but all of us. if you are in the US, i would encourage any adult to look into their local public school district. some school districts have curricula that can be accessed through their website. if what you find concerns you, then it's time to head to a school board meeting and bring it up.
it might feel weird or uncomfortable, but i assure you, you are as a much of a member of the community as anyone else. it is not weird to care about the community and the school district.
this is a problem that is already affecting all of us and it's only going to grow with time. but there are things we can all do regardless of our status as a parent, childcare worker, or teacher.
(p.s. i think sometimes these things are assumed to be the fault of a teacher, but it is almost always a school board issue. teacher's don't typically get to decide on the curriculum)
i don't know a ton about the right terminology for what we should be looking for within those curricula, but phonics is solid. beyond that, it would great if an any educators out there would weigh in with the correct term? method? of the looking and guessing that is pervasive in education at the moment, that would be fantastic. what are some reading curriculum red flags or green flags?
The method being used by schools like this is called "three-cueing", or "balanced literacy", or "Meaning-Structure-Visual (MSV)" reading! This method can also include "whole language" reading (also known as "whole word" or "look-say") programs that don't explicitly mention phonics. These programs often, but not always, also include phrases like "unstructured time" and "free choice".
There is no single program that's best for literacy teaching, but most states (and many parents) are recently turning to "science-backed literacy" or "science of reading" programs. These are evidence-based methods that target different ages and (dis)abilities in different ways to promote lasting literacy and critical thinking skills. Other similar programs are "phonics-based" and "structured literacy". A lot of these tactics actually emerged from teaching kids with dyslexia, and accept that literacy is not intuitive or fun to everyone.
All education red/green flags have to be prefaced with the facts that 1) every child is different, 2) student needs vary by age, and 3) the classroom is only one small part of their lives––home exposure to vocabulary, role models, and intrinsic motivation to read also play major roles. There are also many institutional barriers to access. Disclaimer done, green flags for literacy curricula include:
Small student : teacher ratios, ideally under 18:1 until high school age.
A school library, ideally with an ILL program, and a classroom-specific library.
Consideration of phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension.
Structured time, multisensory techniques, small group work and echo/choral reading, "refereading" (where the student takes the lead with close correction and rerouting), routine assessment (weekly quizzes, book reports, etc.), and a focus on generative writing at the same time as reading.
Free flow of reading work between home and school; i.e., homework assignments, vocabulary logs, book club check-ins, exploratory literacy work in the community.
Work set at the upper edge of the Common Core standards for the age-appropriate reading band (or some other skill-pushing tactic, such as using Wordly Wise books a year early).
Vocabulary-building homework that focuses on the sound or meaning of the words themselves, in addition to how they appear in context.
For English: some exposure to Latin, Greek, and/or Anglo-Saxon roots and affixes aimed at parsing words on the letter-level. This could be a good litmus test for 3rd grade and up; if a teacher looks at you like you're crazy for asking about this, then it's almost certainly a non-morphological MSV program.
A plan for handling students who are slower or faster than the class progression.
You could directly ask the teacher/administrator what students should do when they come across a word they don't know. Common answers include "skip it and come back later", "stop and look it up" (my favorite), or "assume meaning from context". This last one is three-cueing.
For more information, I suggest looking at the US Dep't of Education's What Works Clearinghouse Practice Guides. This ranks the scientific certainty of evidence-based literacy teaching practices. Anything with a "Tier 1 Strong" ranking is a green-flag in a school curriculum.
For some reason, I've been seeing more dung being thrown at Touka's characterisation in the series, and since I've been wanting to write a meta for a while now, I decided to do a short one addressing some of the criticism I've seen around. This won't go into everything, of course -- the series is far too dense with analytical potential and I am a busy bee. Just know that I do want to dive deeper into Touken/Kanetou at a later point.
Touka is not reduced to a simple, meaningless housewife, and I do not understand why this perspective is used to undermine her character so often in the fandom. For the sake of this argument, I will be mostly focusing on her characterisation in ;Re, as that is where this criticism is mostly rooted. Yes, she is less active in the first part of the second series, but between all the other characters, events, and plot points, it is bizarre to me that people see so little in Touka, despite all that she does.
I could dive into how Touka as a whole symbolises key themes throughout both series, and how that relates to Kaneki’s development, but I think I will save that for a separate meta. For now, I just want to discuss how Touka is positioned in the second series, and how it does not weaken the characterisation Ishida set up in the first.
Following the end of the first series, which set its tone as a tragedy, Touka opens the ;Re café to act as a refuge for ghouls, just as Yoshimura did beforehand. To clarify, Yoshimura saved Touka from her miserable life on the streets, giving her the chance to live with some semblance of normalcy following the tragic consequences of her childhood. And now, as an adult, and with Yoshimura gone, Touka strives to recreate that environment once more. There are those that think she has done this for Kaneki and Kaneki alone, but that is clearly not the case, even if she does hope for Kaneki’s return one day; she allows Nishiki to take refuge there while he tries to find Kimi, she saves Tsukiyama after the Rosewald operation, and before anyone argues that she was still not directly involved in either case, she actively takes part in Ayato’s mission to save Hinami. It is there that she then sees Kaneki and allows him a place to stay too, following his battle with Arima. She even provides Akira and Amon a place to stay, reconciling their differences in the process, (underrated chapters, I think).
Up until this point, Touka has been forced to ‘live while losing’, and whether she decides to fight or not, it is an unavoidable outcome when it comes to war. She is simply trying to do what she can without trying to kill herself in the process – a flawed sentiment she has seen in her father and Kaneki before, and even to some extent, Ayato and Hinami.
She fights when she can, runs if she has to. She is forced to make this choice again and again, especially when the underground ward is attacked, and for the sake of her unborn child and other weaker ghouls, she must retreat if she doesn’t want all of them to needlessly die.
That said, it is not as if she leaves without trying to fight first, she just isn’t stupidly overpowered like her opponents, (and that isn’t a jab at Ishida, I’m simply clarifying that she can’t defeat these foes with just Hinami at her side). Even then, she manages to stand her ground for a long time, despite the pregnancy and her hunger. Moreover, her kagune has developed since the first series, and like Ayato, she’s able to create more advanced structures with her ukaku. You just have to read in between the lines to see that Touka has never allowed herself to grow soft in the years Kaneki was away, and that only now, during this battle, can you see more of her capabilities.
And when Kaneki is trapped within Dragon, she finally decides that she cannot lose him – she refuses to lose him, because to do so would bring on too much despair. Just as Kaneki has prioritised Touka, Touka, too, will prioritise him, and so, even with her exhaustion, she battles against Mutsuki, digs through the Dragon’s flesh until her fingers and nails break, and almost succumbs to grief at the thought that he was already lost to her. The chapter is overlooked far too often, her desperate determination conveying to the reader the importance of love as a driving force.
Again, we saw this with Kaneki, who pushed himself past his limits in hopes of reaching Touka. Whether you like it or not, love is a powerful thing, and that has been shown throughout the series with many, if not all the characters. And for Kaneki and Touka, their love is their hope, and to lose that love is to lose their hope. So they fight, again and again, for each other and the light they bring into each other’s lives.
Now I can argue all day about how Touka is far more active in the series than people care to admit, but I do not think that is why Touka is labelled as a housewife. I’ve been in the fandom for a long time and this label has been around long before their relationship was canonised, and I think it’s to do with the fact that Touka is clearly more feminine in ;Re.
I’ve already explained that in terms of action, Touka still has plenty of moments to speak of, and personality-wise, I really don’t think she’s as different as people claim her to be. Yes, she’s calmer, but that shouldn’t be seen as a bad development. She’s an adult now, and with adulthood comes maturity, (or it should, anyway). She doesn’t need to fight anyone and everyone to prove herself, that is simply a childish perspective to take. Besides that, she’s still curt in the way she talks, is sarcastic and blunt, though not as harsh as she was before, and she still carries herself with plenty of pride and dignity, which was what was so appealing about her in the first series. Ffs, she confronts the whole CCG and tells them to eat shit because their arguments were annoying her. It’s ridiculous to me that people think she is a shadow of her former self, when there’s plenty of great moments involving her.
As for her more maternal depictions, that is also something that has always been present, if you take a moment to connect the two series together. She was forced to grow up quickly when she became responsible of Ayato, and she effortlessly took Hinami under her wing after the death of her parents. This is an attribute that she continues to exhibit throughout ;Re, watching over the children and trying to comfort them. It’s a touching image, one that circles back around to her pregnancy. And to deem this progression as detrimental is rather…strange to me. In a time when we see women as strong and powerful for everything we represent – our hardships, both physically and emotionally, as well as our strengths – why is it seen as weak when female characters are utilised to represent the strength of womanhood. Because she’s a woman married to a man? Don’t be so childish. If you respect her characterisation at all, you will acknowledge how she continues to exhibit her strengths as an adult, whether that be in battle or beyond it.
After all, Ishida could have easily written it so that she is no longer involved in anything past the discovery of her pregnancy. Except he doesn't, and instead, she fights even more, even harder, in spite of her pregnancy. Because of her pregnancy. And yet, this is somehow weakens her character? She is quite literally going beyond her limits to fight for her future, I see nothing weak in that.
It might be that readers dislike how she changes aesthetically, and that’s fine, but from that comes arguments that excuse why they don’t like her character. I could argue against every little argument I’ve seen about her, but at the end of the day, I feel like most of these points are made just to excuse a personal preference. And that is not an effective use of critical reading. You can’t make the story something it isn’t, and you can’t assume Touka was going to be a character she wasn’t written to be. If you don’t like that or disagree, then maybe this series isn’t for you and it’s time to move on. For now, at least, please give her characterisation the respect she deserves. Her role is so much more than the shallow labelling this fandom tends to give her.
humans should be able to do a special Ultra Sleep after major life accomplishments where you're just out for like 32 hours or something and then you wake up fully refreshed in every way
izzy806
origamiaround
jacobvanloon
dailybridgerton
