Reaction: TG:re Chapter 158
First Impressions:
Hello everyone! I hope you are having a good week. I am back again with a reaction/analysis of the new chapter of Tokyo Ghoul:re. This was a wild chapter and I have lot to say, so let’s get right into it.
First and foremost, wet hair Kaneki is a next-level cutie:
I was really happy to be seeing more of him, but his conversation with “Rize” had the opposite effect on me:
I am going to talk more about this later on, but I was shuddering to think that the self blame train was leaving the station at full speed. Next, some more cute Kaneki (I know he is stressing, but these panels are great):
The next one had me thinking “is ‘Rize’ a tumblr meta writer?”
No shade intended here, this just reminded me of the popular opinion that Kaneki was not leading Goat well (I discussed this more here). Next, his face is definitely me when I wake up and realize there is a new chapter out:
This is more of what I mentioned above. I really hope Kaneki grows in a positive (or at least productive) way after realizing what he has done, but that seems less and less likely all the time:
Okay, what is with this mouth?!?!:
Analysis:
First off, I want to talk about some callbacks to older parts of Tokyo Ghoul. I think there are some cool visual references like this one:
The scale pattern seems to be part of the snake symbolism that is often associated with Kaneki (he has so much animal symbolism my goodness, maybe I should write about it sometime). What stood out to me more were the parallels between this interaction with “Rize” and the one that occurred during Yamori’s torture of Kaneki in the original Tokyo Ghoul. There are some interesting framing parallels like this one:
There were also many similarities in the contento of their conversation. First up is the, *sigh* raging self-blame:
This is followed up by confusion (with some tasteful roasting from “Rize”):
And the icing on the cake is naturally some unhealthy conclusion about what caused something bad to happen in his life:
Now, I want to discuss this pattern, but first I want to talk about “Rize.” I have been putting quotation marks around her name throughout his post because the person we are seeing inside Kaneki’s mind is not really Rize. As she points out in one of the panels above she is just a personification of feelings within Kaneki created by his own imagination. I point this out because the character Rize is separate from this mental projection.
As a side note: this mental Rize does seem to be somewhat similar to the real Rize based on what limited glimpses we have gotten of her. This does not make that much sense considering the small amount of time Kaneki spent with her. However, this is a work of fiction and I can see how Ishida benefits from using her “real” characteristics with this imagined version. I would love to see what is going on with Rize in the real world though (please Ishida).
Anyway, if Rize is just a projection of thoughts that Kaneki already, it is worth considering what those thoughts are. The most obvious thing she represents is the ghoul inside of Kaneki as evidenced by him “eating” her in the original TG to embrace his ghoul side and the power it contained:
Beyond that, I think imaginary Rize embodies Kaneki’s self loathing. As I pointed out above, she ridicules Kaneki whenever she appears and laughs at his attempts to struggle against the world. “Rize” pushes Kaneki to adopt some new belief that usually leads him down a dark path. The parallels between the two major Rize encounters almost makes it feel like Kaneki has not changed at all since being tortured by Yamori, but that is not certain yet (please Ishida and God let this not be the case this time).
One final thing I noticed was a seeming contradiction in Rize’s criticism of Kaneki. When Kaneki says he should have been more active in attacking the CCG she questions him:
But concludes by saying he should have done nothing at all:
Seems kind of like a damned if you do damned if you don’t situation to me, but maybe that is the point.
That is going to be all from me today. I have to apologize for not posting more regularly. I don’t really have a good excuse outside of just being busy. I promise I will have some more content this week though! I hope everyone reading this has a good week and is enjoying TG as much as I am right now.