What songs do each of the tg re pairings (canon or not) remind you of? In my opinion HideKane currently makes me think of Wolves by Selena Gomez and Mutsuki x Kaneki/Sasaki from Mutsuki’s end
Hidekane - Wolves by Selena Gomez
Touken - Warm Blood, Flor
Shuuneki - All My Heroes, Bleachers
Akiramon - Aquaman, Walk the Moon
Seiaki - Rotten, The Naked and Famous
Mutsurie - Unconditionally, Katy Perry
Mutsuki/Sasaki - We Sink, Chvrches
Urisai - Hold Back the River, James Bay
Saiko/Hsaio - Boom Clap, Charlie XCX
Shiraiko - Gone Gone Gone, Phillip Phillips
Tsukikana - XO, Beyonce
Tsukichie - Young Blood, The Naked and Famous
Utaren - Wallflowers, The Chain Gang of 1984
Utatori - Look What You Made Me Do, Taylor Swift
Suzuhan - Let’s Hurt Tonight, OneRepublic
Maruchika - Walking the Wire, Imagine Dragons
Nishikimi - Gravity, Jai Wolf
Takirona - Something Just Like This, The Chainsmokers
Fururize - Bad Blood, Taylor Swift
Uihai - Shut Up and Dance, Walk the Moon
Arieto - F**K with You, Cardiknox
Ayahina - Beating Heart, Ellie Goulding
Yoshimura/Ukina - The Energy Never Dies, The Script
Forgive my confusion but, how does that panel equate to Shirazu having romantic feelings for Saiko? We see Hairu and Akira as well as her, so he could easily be thinking about her from a familial or cute coworker perspective. I'm not against Shiraiko because it sounds like a cute ship and the two of them had a lot of moments earlier in :re, but the build up was honestly pretty slim.
I think you’re misunderstanding what I said. He was explicitly asked whether he had a girlfriend or feelings for someone. That pretty much settles it--there’s no way to interpret that familialy. He was also teased for his awkward crushes on Akira and Hairu so he pretty clearly also had one on Saiko. Also, a crush doesn’t mean he was dramatically in love with her, it just means he had some semblance of feelings for her which is all I said. I never said Shiraiko was like endgame romantic canon or had been built up; I don’t think that.
So with the Winter Olympics coming up, which characters do you think would be best at which sport?
Haha, fun question! The problem is there are only two sports I actually care about in the entire world and they are gymnastics and figure skating. So I’m going to split the characters up by figure skating disciplines.
Ladies singles:
Touka Kirishima (Yomo as her choreographer, Yoshimura as her coach)
Kurona Yasuhisa (Kanou as her coach)
Akira Mado (her father as her coach, obvs)
Yumitsu Tomoe (Tatara’s her coach)
Men's singles:
Ken Kaneki (three-time Olympic champion Arima as his coach, Yoshimura as his former coach, Itori & Uta as his choreographers)
Koutarou Amon (Mado as his coach too)
Seidou Takizawa (Houji is his coach)
Juuzou Suzuya (Shinohara as his coach)
Shinsanpei Aura (Kiyoko, a former Olympian herself, is his coach)
Pairs:
Shuu Tsukiyama & Karren von Rosewald (Mirumo can be the coach)
Kuki Urie & Tooru Mutsuki (Arima as their coach)
Ginshi Shirazu & Saiko Yonebayashi (Arima as their coach)
Touma Higemaru & Ching-Li Hsiao (Arima as coach again, also btw every commentator when they skate will be like “and make sure you watch Hsiao”)
Ice dance:
Ayato Kirishima & Hinami Fueguchi (Eto as their coach, RIP)
Koori Ui & Hairu Ihei (Arima as their coach, Hirako can choreograph)
Nishiki Nishio & Kimi Nishino (Yoshimura as their coach)
This is based on an earlier meta I wrote that I decided to clean up a bit in light of what's happened recently in canon. Take it with a lot of salt because it contains a fair amount of speculation.
The Quinx are foreshadowed to play a role in bringing down Dragoneki. As we're still in the moon arc, that means Kaneki hasn't been able to look at himself or his flaws properly. Fortunately, we have the literal embodiments of three of those flaws and the possible undead embodiment of another flaw trained specifically to take down Sasaki (aka Kaneki's illusionary self). Ishida kind of outlined these flaws for us pretty early on in :re:
Urie: will keep his mouth shut again
Mutsuki: will lie again
Saiko: will sleep again
Shirazu: will carry the burden again
In some ways these are contradictory flaws. Urie's is the passive version of the same flaw as Mutsuki's, which is the active version. Saiko's is the passive version of Shirazu's active one. If we wanted to break them down a bit more I'd say it's kind of like this:
Urie: I can't face the truth, so I will keep quiet about it (passive)
Mutsuki: I can't face the truth, so I'll lie about it (active)
Saiko: I can't bear to lose anyone else, so I will ignore it by giving up my burdens/agency until I have no options left (passive)
Shirazu: I can't bear to lose anyone else, so I will take on everyone's burdens (active)
Kaneki's embodied all of these flaws in the past arc. It's true that these flaws seem to be paradoxical in that Urie's and Mutsuki's are inverses of one another's, and Saiko's and Shirazu's are as well, but Kaneki is often a paradox of a character anyways. In this arc he can't face the truth, and he can't bear to lose anyone, and so he can't make a decision, flounders, and faces severe consequences for it by becoming Dragoneki. He's essentially be consumed into his worst nightmare by refusing to acknowledge his flaws.
He didn't tell Touka about Yoriko but instead passive-aggressively left the papers for her to find, and he also kept quiet about the fact that he's literally dying:
He lied to the ghouls he was supposed to be leading by pretending to be something he's not (a king):
He tried to carry the burdens for everyone:
And he surrendered his agency to Furuta, who literally warned him about his plan:
But if a sun arc comes and Kaneki can look at his flaws/the Quinxes, and accept them and accept that he is both ghoul and human, both capable of good and capable of evil, he has a chance to grow as a character and to actually make a decision about what he wants in life. And he would still have a place with Touka and their baby, since her character is uniquely positioned to understand him and to help him recover from Dragoneki, because he's kind of switched roles with Touka. At the beginning of TG, Kaneki's and Touka's fears and resulting flaws could be summed up as:
Kaneki: don't hurt my loved ones, hurt me instead (passive)
Touka: don't hurt my loved ones, I'll hurt you instead (active)
Like Urie and Mutsuki, and Saiko and Shirazu, they're inverses of each other. And by this point in the story they almost seem to have switched places: Kaneki's become more active, willing to hurt ghouls but not to kill until recently, when he committed the ultimate act of hurting to protect his loved ones by savagely eating a hundred children:
Whereas Touka's been passive for quite awhile now. Her forgiveness of everyone is a good thing in some ways, but it also fits a pattern among members of Goat (Tsukiyama, Hinami, etc.) in that she's prioritizing others' wellbeing above her own, and I think the narrative suggests kind of a gray view of that rather than a wholly positive or wholly negative one. She cut Yoriko out of her life like Kaneki cut Hide out and now the Quinxes, and will have to reckon with that. Which is to say: Touka and Kaneki have each been in each others' place before, and therefore are positioned to understand each other and help each other move forward. (And also, Touka's now going to have to become more active. Her husband is destroying Tokyo and that's not a story you'll want to tell your kid.)
But back to the Quinx. They are kind of a major mess right now. Like, I feel like they all need saving before they can save Kaneki. This is definitely speculation, so take this with like a huge dose of salt, but it is also true that Mutsuki and Urie have also kind of switched places in terms of how their flaws affect them: Mutsuki's inability to face his violent nature firstly drew people to his meek persona, and now his inability to face the truth is pushing everyone away; Urie's inability to face his own weakness led to his desperation to become strong, which pushed everyone away, and now everyone (read: Saiko) is clinging to him because he's focusing on trying to be Shirazu.
Through looking at each other, they might be able to accept their flaws and grow (this doesn't have to mean romance, I know I love Mutsurie and talk about it a lot but that isn't what I'm saying here).
Saiko and Shirazu haven't switched places... yet. But I'm curious because Saiko’s development essentially completely stalled curiously after Shirazu's death. This is definitely speculation, but were he to return--say, without much agency, because even if he does have a free will and I hope he does, he may be limited in terms of what he can do because of that medicine Okahira mentioned--I wonder if that would spur Saiko to have to take agency for herself, and to see each other clearly and save Kaneki.
