Holy shit. Need your post about roma's revelation
Who saw that coming? Here I was thinking she’d get one-shotted! The thing about the Clowns is they all love playing with other people like puppets too much to really function as a cohesive organisation, and the wiser the prey the more enjoyable the hunt. We’d already seen some of this with Furuta, who tries to play the Clowns like everyone else, but I doubt even he has any idea that he, too, is being played by Roma. I thought for sure Donato was the true brains behind the Clowns, but from a group as chaotic as they, we can expect one twist after another.
Potentially a meta-jab from Roma/Ishida. Yes, I’m spending my day reading manga and yes, I did spend way too much on TG merch. You can’t peddle the poison then blame me for getting sick, sensei ;-;
Loved the quote from Juvenal - goes to show Roma’s literary interest, the mark of a meta-character, as well as explaining the Circus imagery behind her organisation. For some context, the satirical poet Juvenal mocks how the Roman people no longer care about politics and only for food (bread) and entertainment (circuses). The Clowns are all about Satire, so the quote is fitting, especially as how the rest of Ghoul-kind view people solely as their bread. It’s the latter part that the Clowns focus on. The Ghouls provide the food, while the Clowns provide the entertainment.
Roma’s alias speaks to the heart of her character - a homeless wanderer. Roma has no place in the world, so she created an organisation that stands apart from it.
The first panel reminds me very much of Uta’s comment back in 116:
All the Clowns seems to have led horribly lonely lives that led them to become who they were. We know Furuta experienced this as well. That kind of experience lends itself well to the individualist and isolationist philosophy of the Clowns. Without any connections, they can treat the world as a story separate from themselves. Their existence is also a metafictional comment on our own; fandom, and our consuming fascination with stories, more often than not arises from our own prior loneliness. The Clowns are fans and writers just like we are - only, they do so for their own world, not someone else’s.
Because the world has given them such great tragedy, and because they have no Hide or Anteiku of their own to ground them, they cannot cope with it; so they convert it into comedy - something they can take pleasure in rather than pain.
And so they contribute to the greater tragedy and willingly become its thralls.
And here Roma makes the link between her depression and her depravity very clear. Her grand games serve simply as a distraction from her existential torment - and Roma’s view is that the grand games of everyone else serve much the same purpose, too. The hunt of the Doves and the rebellion of the Ghouls are, to her, unified battles against ‘boredom’, or, more accurately, ennui from living in a tragic world - and given what she knows about both Kaneki and Furuta, she may have a point. Very Toads Revisited.
So, when Furuta talks about ‘Super Peace’, he’s really talking about constant violence - the only kind of peace there is in the war against ‘boredom’. So following that train of logic, in the panel below, there’s no contradiction at all between what he’s thinking and what he’s saying.
This is how the Clowns have been able to work with V thus far. V also encourages ‘Peace’ through a state of constant war. Very 1984 - and fascist in general, for that matter; Hitler’s ideal world outlined in Mein Kampf was a state of constant war to keep the ‘master race’ in their fighting prime.
Of course, the difference is that V uses this war to foster order, while the Clowns use it to foster chaos - and they aren’t afraid to collude with the enemy to achieve that. Something which will surely be a thorn in their relationship in the chapters to come…
Roma speaks to both Furuta and Kaneki here. She doesn’t give a fig who wins, so long as the parade continues. Thus why Nico helped Goat find a cure for Akira; just to keep the ride running.
And finally we reach the “Oh shit boi” panel of the chapter - Roma’s suitably hideous Pierrot-Meets-Mothra-Meets-Victreebel kakuja. Her alias here refers to her status as Mother of the Clowns, and ‘dodgy’ - well, Roma’s not exactly a reliable and trustworthy person. But what’s most interesting here is Roma’s throwaway comment - and what it might have to do with her thoughts before her transformation.
The former One-Eyed King was active, in Nishiki’s words, when your “gramps and grammies were kids like you”, and he stated that humanity was vulnerable to the King because “they were still exhausted from the war”. A seven-year old today would be born in 2010 (assuming the series is roughly parallel to our timeline), have a parent born around 1985, and a grandparent around 1965, so we can assume the insurgence happened in the 70s. The war comment might warrant it being placed earlier, but the effects of WW2 were still felt that late on. Roma is 51 years old, and so would be born in 1966 - the right age to wreak havoc as a child during the insurgency period just like Eto did.
So my question is: Did Roma rebel with the original OEK, for the biggest circus in town? Is he the ‘Demon Tsune’ she refers to? It sounds like a nickname for ‘Demon Kitsune’, a kind of Japanese fox spirit with nine tails. We’ve already seen the naagas, which I believe to be his kagune; perhaps nine of these once sprouted from his back? [Edit: Been informed that ‘Demon Tsune’ was the nickname for Tsuneyoshi Washuu, who Roma presumably lost to, so ignore most of that] As we all know, the OEK lost, which explains why Roma says it won’t go like it did back then as well as how she became interned in Cochlea in the first place. Some food for thought.
I’ll be following Roma’s movements much more carefully from now on. She is the literary Jack-In-The-Box; you know a Clown’s going to pop out, but it’s a lot scarier than you anticipated.
