Hello Danie, I hope you have a great day and get some good rest!
I read your theory post about Elias working for the US branch, and I really agreed with your point about ghouls still having the choice to accept DW’s offer or not. It feels like they can still choose whether to enroll there.
I’ve always been a bit unsure about this though, mostly because of Ren. He never seemed like someone who genuinely wanted to be involved with anomaly related activities, so I’ve always wondered why he chose to come to DW when he knew anomalies would be involved. I thought maybe it was because of the benefits they could offer, but aside from school fees and stuff, I don’t think DW gives average students that many extra benefits compared to top/honor students. And I’ve always assumed Ren is just an average student, so I can’t really see him getting much out of it.
I’m also unsure about the financial side. We know he grew up helping at his dad’s food stall by the beach, and I like to think he probably worked a lot of random jobs too, maybe handy labor and things like that. His age is still unclear, but I assumed he’s very young, probably early 20s, mostly because of how Haru treats him. I don’t think Haru would call him a “young boy” just because he’s a first year. Haru feels like someone who has experienced a lot, so he naturally sees people like Ren as younger and inexperienced.
Even if DW gives financial support, I still think students need part time jobs to live comfortably. Ren doesn’t seem completely broke, but he also doesn’t seem financially comfortable either. He can still afford games, movies, snacks, and hobbies, so I’d say he’s stable enough for now or having enough saving from his past job.
But if money is not really the issue (and if he still has a decent relationship with his dad who might support him sometimes), then I can’t really understand why he would enroll at DW if he truly wanted nothing to do with anomalies. Especially because becoming a ghoul student there would automatically tie him to missions and all that stuff 🤔
So I’m really curious about why he came to DW in the first place. Did he maybe have a fallout with his family and see DW as his best option after leaving home? Or was he persuaded by the idea that graduating from DW could guarantee him a stable future and job? Maybe he just wanted to get through school, graduate quickly, find a decent job and quietly live his life.
Sorry for rambling 😭 I remember seeing people on RD say Ren was basically forced into DW the moment he became a ghoul, but from what I remember, that wasn’t confirmed for everyone. So maybe Ren genuinely chose to go there himself.
Hello anon! I hope the same for you! My day was fine, a little annoying but mostly uneventful. I think I slept through most of it because. It was 85°F and warmth makes me eepy.
For starters. Ren works right now. Like of everyone who works Ren is the only one who works at(as in doesn't run himself) a non-house-affiliated business. The Mystery Diner pays very well. So in terms of having part time work to live comfortably, he's not a good example of anyone on campus who doesn't lol he is not living off of savings at all, he immediately asked Hyde about jobs he could do.
Back to your main question, who's to say Ren knew anything about anomalies before arriving? Anomalies are kept secret and aside from the "encounter"(if one could even call a voice in their head, receiving an incantation, and then having a super power an "encounter") with a demon, we don't know that anybody's had any non-pact related exposure to anomalies pre-Institute involvement(except obviously Jin, Haku and Yamato, Sho, Jiro sort of, Ed, Lyca, Towa, and Shion.) So who are we to say he knew there'd be anomaly involvement to begin with? Moreover, he sure as hell didn't know how much or what kind of anomaly involvement there would be when he arrived--we don't even know that the pamphlet talks about sending the students on missions. Kaito accepted his invitation, so it probably doesn't say much about all of that rather than sometime after accepting the invitation, when it's probably too late to back out. Ren never would've even remotely considered that he'd be placed in the house that takes care of anomalies without gen students' assistance even if he did know about the expectations for missions--and if it did talk about missions it probably framed them primarily as researching and recovery, not caretaking, and probably pointed out that the students can choose the missions they take(which, on paper at least, opens up more of an opportunity to avoid anything he wouldn't wanna do.)
As for why Ren would accept, think about Ren. Think about things he hates and is afraid of. Now think about Ren's home life. In case you forgot the things we've learned: he worked at his family's business at a beachside, preparing and selling food and having learned to rescue people from drowning. Even before coming to Darkwick he was big and sturdy from performing manual labor.
So. Ren, who outwardly hates working hard and is afraid of the ocean, lives and works every day next to/on a beach or coast. He receives an invitation to attend the country's most elite academy--because they know he made a pact with a demon, somehow.
Assuming he's completely honest in his expressions, why do you think he accepted that offer to go be a student?
If you were given the opportunity to leave a dead end life of undeairable manual labor that heavily involved your greatest fear, would you not take it?
(Also think about his parents' perspective here--their son got invited to Japan's most prestigious college? They didn't even know he applied! They have their own little business yes but surely they could surely see that Ren wasn't happy there. You don't think they'd encourage him to go--which, knowing Ren, made him feel unwanted but they didn't consider that--so he could maybe pursue some other dream?)
Idk it seems pretty apparent to me that he chose to be anywhere but home and that everything else was an unfortunate surprise or something he thought he could work around(and, under non-jabberwock circumstances, he probably could've.) He probably didn't know anything about most of this when he arrived.
If we don't assume complete honesty on his part, I would guess he wants to be more than he's always been his whole life and possibly live a life that frees him from everything he's always known so he accepted even knowing about things like missions and studying anomalies(again, the degree of which he knows about this beforehand is unlikely to be high) because. It was something new, an opportunity. Compared to working, how hard could getting a passing grade at a school that deemed him special(positive) be?
