Life, Death, and Resurrection: The Nature of Change in TGRE 171
This chapter we see Uta try to make sense of the genre shift from the first series to :re. Now that the world is no longer destined tragically - and now that the characters no longer believe such is the case (most famously Kaneki’s decision to live in Cochlea) - fighting to create a better future is a genuine possibility. It’s the potential to create new life from tragedy, just as how Kaneki and Touka managed to find each other again after all that tore them apart.
The child is a symbol of hope - both in the natural hybrid of human and ghoulkind, and for life to finally surface in the series after so many deaths. The thing “gained” from all this horror. It’s Kaneki and Touka that managed to teach Yomo this because of how they strafed the lines between human and ghoulhood and managed to unite those sides of their personalities: thus paving the way for species-wide reconciliation and long-term hope.
Uta’s problem is that he can’t change and adapt to the world in a way that would allow for survival and hope in the first place, instead drowning out the pain through adrenaline thrills. Feeling victim under the oppressive pen of the tragedian, he attempts to recreate some agency by manipulating events to make himself the tragedian, or in his mind, the comedian or clown.
Comedy in its traditional sense is not necessarily related to humour (although the overlap is apparent here) but rather just signifies the opposite of a tragedy and the potential for a happy conclusion. For Uta, the tragedy of others is his comedy - it allows for his salvation by becoming the oppressor rather than the oppressed. When this too is taken from him by Yomo’s victory, we see the vulnerability and sense of powerlessness that hides behind the mask.
Believing the world characterised by loss, Uta being utterly dead inside doubtless led to his alias “No Face” and the need to play various roles to feel alive and be somebody. But it was not true - this is what Uta’s real face looks like.
But by demonstrating to Uta that the world is not a tragedy anymore (Yomo only realises this when seeing the remains of Anteiku - aka the ending of the first series), he no longer needs to inflict tragedy on others to keep up that sense of control. And so his reconciliation with Yomo is characterised by laughter - true comedy and true happiness unwarped by a twisted world.
As Itori remarks, only Yomo can get Uta to change. He gives him death in killing his old self, and grants him life in allowing him to start afresh. Change is to kill and to resurrect, just as how Tokyo Ghoul had to end and take a whole host of main characters with it, so that they could find salvation in :re.
Uta’s belief that “everyone’s gone” is undermined by Yomo’s “cause you’re my friend” - if Yomo’s still here, it can’t be over yet. And how close he came to removing him too! Uta, and through him Ishida, decides that believing oneself victim to an inescapable tragedy is the perspective of the child and teenager who lack the power to take control of their own lives. The adult on the other hand is duty-bound to be optimistic, and to fight for their change that they can affect. That is what constitutes strength.
After all, all our main characters are in their teens in the first series. In :re they reach not only adulthood but even parenthood, not only becoming responsible for their own lives but the life of another.
It’s fitting that they talk about Kaneki and Touka as Yomo supports Uta physically as well as emotionally, because it parallels the scene in the first series where a wounded Touka leans on Kaneki’s shoulder, reflecting her decision to rely on him.
These duos have found peace in each other; but where in the first series this had to be done through the world being wrong, in :re they are brought together by the world being right.
