Reaction: TG:re Chapter 159
Hello everyone! I am here on this lovely Monday to discuss my thoughts and feelings about the newest chapter of our beloved series. First up are my initial thoughts with some analysis a bit later on.
I have to say, these sad Ken faces make my heart a bit heavier every time. He looks especially forlorn in some of these panels:
It does not help that “Rize” is really slamming this boy. Her comments may not be wrong, but they are definitely harsh:
On a related note, I am starting to have trouble telling if this is just Ken roasting himself or if there is actually a real Rize in his mind (I will talk more about this below):
I was so excited (even though it was really sad) to see Kaneki confess something that the Tumblr community has been theorizing about him for ages:
But, it is extra frustrating because even Kaneki is aware that, in some ways, he got exactly what he wanted:
It is starting to look like there will be some actual progress though. Also, is Kaneki aspiring to run his own Tokyo Ghoul meta-analysis blog?:
I really do not want to admit this, but I was actually almost crying (I couldn’t even spell crying right when I drafted this post) when I read this:
This ending had me cheering. It FINALLY feels like Kaneki is going to try moving forward in an actually positive direction (please do not let this lead to another post-Cochlea regression Ishida):
I want to start off by talking about some of the imagery in this chapter. First, the black borders have completely replaced the white borders from chapter 157 and 158. When I first commented on this when discussing chapter 157, I did not have a super concrete interpretation of what this artistic choice represented. I still don’t, but it definitely seems to be associated with Dragon and the destruction it has caused (I know that Ishida also uses the black borders during flashbacks quite frequently).
Next, there are some obvious changed to Kaneki’s dream environment. There is now a forest surrounding the temple and the sky has become overcast:
This seems to be associated with Kaneki regaining his memories of what he did while inside of Dragon. I am not sure what the forest represents (perhaps a shadowed forest in which one can easily lose their path...or have I just been reading too much Dante?).
Finally, there are a lot of hands in this chapter:
I am not an expert on symbolism, but if I had to guess I would say this has something to do with Kaneki reclaiming agency (hands are our primary tools for manipulating the world after all). The fact that he has human hands instead of his red Kagune ones might me relevant also. Or maybe Ishida is just proving he can draw hands after last chapter’s six finger misdraw (joking of course).
Next, I would like to talk about what is going on with Rize. Up until this point, I was firmly convinced that she was just a projection of some of Kaneki’s negative emotions that was here to flame him. This chapter is making me doubt a little bit though. Sometimes she speaks about things that happened to the real Rize as if her interpretations are her own:
She even says things that Kaneki does not seem to know about:
This combined with her comments about being torn apart then put back together inside Dragon creates the possibility that this really is Rize. That being said, all the comments she makes are things that Kaneki would know from what Furuta told him during this conversation:
And it is not completely far-fetched to think that he could recognize his own/Rize’s kagune when he was eating the Oggai. Thematically speaking, I think it makes more sense for this just to be him projecting, especially considering how personal Rize’s attacks on Kaneki’s actions are.
Next I want to talk about progress. It is definitely too early to make any definitive claims about Kaneki genuinely changing and moving forward, but it really seems like he is going in the right direction right now. In this chapter alone we had denial:
Bargaining and depression:
If you have not already caught on, these are the first four of the five stages of grief. It seems like Kaneki is going roughly following this process within in his mind right now. The good news is that the final stage of grief is acceptance, and that seems to be exactly what Kaneki is striving for at the end of the chapter:
As I said when discussing Mutsuki, changing how you see yourself does not equal redemption. However, one cannot be redeemed if they believe they are unworthy or undeserving of redemption. If Kaneki can maintain this state of mind and keep moving forward, he will still have a long way to go to before he can truly atone. Though, I think this has the potential to be a vital first step.
I would put money on the next chapter being something going on outside of Dragon. Although, we could also have Kaneki swimming through the sea of blood and ermering in the real world. Either way, I think there will be some progress made towards getting our boy out of Dragon next week. Also, we got a nice little tease about the Sunlit Garden. Maybe that’s in there to prime us for the next arc?
This is going to be all for me. I hope you all have a good rest of the week. Also, let me know if you have any questions you want me to answer and/or unrelated TG topics you want me to discuss.
