#tgre 146

[justapanda]

For those who didn’t notice

Furuta is just casually reattaching his arm here, after Kaneki attacked him in 144

[silverbulletsama]

It might be just random scribbles but they look like the word أمل in Arabic. 

Ironically, the word means Hope. 

the brand of cigarettes Ui smokes, as well as

the general atmosphere surrounding Ui’s next move.

[dreamofcentipedes]

do you think touka will still love kaneki even if he is a monster right now?

The specific mention of bodies changing feels like it has to be foreshadowing that this tragic affair can have a somewhat happy resolution - at least, so far as these two are concerned. Touka and Kaneki won’t stop loving each other no matter what, and he’ll always come back home.

[longsketchmarks]

Touka: (giggles) Oide! Kentipede: (screeches)*Gyaaaahhhh gyaaaaaahhh* (Chotto mattekudasai yo~ Touka-chan!) A “quick” fan art of that cliche anime beach scene that no one asked for and can never exists in TG except in Omakes. I need a break from the heavy chapters. 145 and 146 are giving me chest pains. Anytime now Hide. Anytime.. I’m counting on your plannnnnnn!! Huhuhuhuhu. P.S. I was listening to a song about washing your hands while sketching them this morning.

[afrofairy96]

Furuta: *See's Kaneki as a giant monster completely demolishing the entirety of Tokyo*

Furuta: You know what, I don't even want to do this anymore.

[lunaamatista]

A reason to live

We spend time wondering if we should go on, or head back – but after the slightest hesitation, our forms are seen moving onward. That’s right, we have to go! Even if we have nothing, we have to go on living!

amazarashi - The Seasons Die Out, One After Another (Tokyo Ghoul √A ED)

A common theme throughout the current arc has been emptiness, and the measures one takes to keep on living while being beat down by it. Without being tied down by a chain, one will go and die. Kiyoko said it as well – people without things to protect never fight to their last. In a world that’s been constantly threatening their lives, finding a chain to tie them down, finding something that will allow them to fight to their last could be called an act of survival. As long as it will allow them to achieve the end of going on living, most characters will not stop to wonder whether the means can be justified.

But in their pursuit of reasons to live, most characters have also become so single-minded it’s like they’re walking with blinkers. They’re so fixated on not losing what their perceive as their reason, that they have failed to look around them and be flexible enough to take the alternatives that are presented to them:

We see it with Takizawa, who in making his purpose to save Akira and Amon, has let himself believe that his destination was the end, when he has not even spoken to the very people he made his reason to live, 

We see it with Akira and Amon, who in believing only each other could help them find purpose, did not see the one who saved them both, and excluded themselves from a conflict they could learn from, 

We see it with Ui, who in thinking his allies could only exist within the CCG, had not realized his ties to them did not have to be as colleagues alone, and instead reached for whatever allowed him to keep on being himself within the organization,

We see it with Mutsuki, who in latching himself to the first person that showed him kindness, has let his found family be torn apart, 

We see it with Hinami, who in the pursuit of forgiveness from a single person, has failed to see nobody blamed her and she was accepted as she was,

We see it with Juuzou, who in chasing after a person that won’t wake up, might have lost the squad that cared about him, 

We had seen it with Arata, who in seeking revenge for Hikari, allowed his children grow up without both parents, 

We had seen it with Kureo, who in seeking revenge for Kasuka, allowed his daughter to grow  up with guilt about simply letting him do his duty as a father, 

Finally, we see it with Kaneki, who in thinking that Touka is the sole person in the world that could ease his loneliness, cannot see that he has never been alone at all, and that saving her won’t change his fundamental belief that he is.

Furuta’s plan was as follows: create an enemy so strong, that both sides have to unite to defeat it. When pushed into a corner, Kaneki, the strongest ghoul, would look at his reason to live to find motivation to go on, then feed on the Oggai to become the common enemy, and then the script would proceed as he had written it. He got it, to an extent – Ui and Hirako could become a single team once again. But now we’re presented with a defeated Furuta, who does not seem to believe that there will be a world left to unite after all. As he said himself, kagune are the fruit of the imagination, and without getting into Kaneki’s mind, he could not have anticipated that Kaneki’s own imagination was nothing but despair.

If the Dragon’s rampage were only about saving Touka, he could stop once this goal is achieved. But where Furuta’s plan failed was in trusting that Kaneki’s foremost intent would be to save someone else. After all, though we don't know exactly which reason he had, he had talked about the need to have reasons to act. After all, Furuta had saved Rize from the Garden so she wouldn't become a womb to the Washuus. Where he failed was in thinking Kaneki could be the same, but he was a King without a purpose, and the first person he intended to save was his lonely self.

Over and over, Kaneki has been surrounded by people who supported him, yet he has never been able to get over the idea that he is alone. Now, being literally married to Touka, he has tangible evidence that he is not, but being unable to actually accept it, he clings to this proof with utter desperation. The Dragon can't be stopped until it achieves its goal, but if the goal is unachievable, its rampage won't end. His many eyes can search for solutions anywhere but inside himself, where Kaneki needs to find that his loneliness is a falsehood.

Kaneki does seem to have realized where exactly his loneliness starts: it's in the absence of Hide. There is fault in Kaneki himself, as Hide was the first person he pushed away to protect without realizing he was doing more harm than good. Like Touka, Hide continued to support Kaneki from behind the scenes, but unlike her, he did not ever reach out to tell him his modus operandi was flawed. Believing Hide sacrificed himself so that Kaneki could confront Arima feeds straight into his idea of letting oneself be hurt for the sake of others, as he kept on living while Hide did not. Death by sacrifice aligns perfectly with Kaneki’s principles, and death is eternal, painless rest.

So what could finally challenge Kaneki’s core principles?

Perhaps realizing that pushing his friend away actually hurt him. Words alone have not been enough for that to sink into Kaneki, but if Hide is truly as scarred as he is believed to be, Kaneki might finally be able to see that sacrificing their friendship hurt him emotionally and also condemned Hide to live with his wounds – something worse than death, where one can't think or suffer.

If, like Ui

Kaneki can see that his reason to live won’t save anyone around him, and that those people are and have always been there for him, perhaps the fruit of his imagination does not have to be destruction alone.

[bubblytealatte]

MIILLKKKK

[hamliet]

How could the mystery person be Hairu? I’m confused because Furuta said to Ui that the chances of resurrection are essentially zero so if that is Hairu then he has no idea she’s been resurrected ? I know he’s the king of lies but it seems like he’s actually being honest with Ui here. Could it have happened without his knowing? I’m sorry if that doesn’t make sense.

No worries, that makes sense! Thanks for asking me about Sad-chan and about Hairu, because I’ve been thinking about that a lot. 

While I do think Furuta was largely being sincere when he apologized to Ui, there is the existence of Okahira. We already know that he has been revived, so what Furuta is saying cannot be true:

Unless, of course, we take Okahira at face-value for his words here:

The explanation of how he’s still sitting there chatting with Ui despite having been killed ostensibly by Furuta earlier could be simply that the kind of life Okahira is living is no life at all–the medicine he has to take chains him to this life, but he’s not fully alive in some sort of sense. There may be some kind of psuedo-sciencey explanation as well. 

But given Furuta’s dismay this chapter, and his words here: 

I’m actually wondering if that was actually part of Furuta’s plan/hope. To revive people like Hairu and Okahira in that sort of no-life, which might become actual life if Dragon shared his life force with them. 

If that’s the case, it might make sense that Hairu is Sad-chan, brought back to await actual return to life only for the world to be ruined instead. 

If this isn’t the case, it is definitely possibly Furuta is unaware. Kanou is a mercenary scientist essentially, working for Aogiri, now for the CCG, whoever can help him pursue his interests. There’s really been way too much foreshadowing around a resurrection for Hairu (and probably Shirazu as well) for me to think it was all just a red herring. Kanou is likely to act on his own because he’s all about serving his own interests (read: science). It’s possible he already revived Hairu and that’s her, but even if Sad-chan is Hinami or an Aogiri ghoul (the clothes do match the clothing of those seen with Touka), I still expect him to revive her somehow.

Thank you for the ask!