Ah! Sorry for this, but can you explain what the poem Ishida made means? (The tumblr post he wrote which you recently reblogged), I'm not quite perceptive enough to understand the meaning and it makes me sad because I is a beautiful poem on its own :)
Sorry for the late reply anon! I haven’t had the time or the mindset to carefully go through this poem until today, so hopefully this will make up for my tardiness;; (btw for anyone who doesn’t know what I’m talking about, Ishida’s poem is found here, and the translation here.
The poem mostly talks about Kaneki and the revelations revealed in chapter 53, such as his suicidal thoughts and his abusive past. I’ll go through the poem in four parts, and I’ll save the “I had a dream” lines and the title of the poem, “The Sky Falls” for last.
I had a dream where the sky fell down.
The bloodstains won’t come out, no matter how many times I pour warm water on them, they won’t come out.
Only words begin to dissolve everything, and get stuck in the drain.
And you become unable to forgive yourself, unforgiving.
The first four lines of the poem are about Kaneki and how he coped with his painful past. The “bloodstains” are his painful memories (from his abuse and whatever else that we might not know of), and even though he tries to get rid of them by “pour[ing] warm water on them”, it doesn’t erase his pain. He ends up coping through some of the pain through “words”, whether that be through books or the lies he tells himself (like saying that his mother was a very kind person), but even that doesn’t completely get rid of it, as it “get[s] stuck in the drain” and refuses to leave. And because he only gets rid of the pain superficially by suppressing them, Kaneki is unable to move on from his past and dwells in it instead, which leads to his twisted belief that love is pain and that he would be better off dead than alive.
I had a dream.
A failure of a God
She laughed and squeezed my throat.
It’s always like this.
Only people dull to pain hurt me.
She truly loved me,
Only she didn’t know how to love.
What a stupid God.
I’m not entirely sure about these lines, so feel free to comment on this interpretation and come up with your own!
From the mention of a God, it seems like it’s Eto that’s being mentioned in this poem. But there would be no reason for Eto to “truly love” Kaneki, so I thought that the “she” was referring to Kaneki’s mom, who probably loves her son (”She truly loved me”) but coped with her stress by abusing her own son (”She laughed and squeezed my throat”, ”Only she didn’t know how to love”). To Kaneki, whose main and important person in his life was his mother, she must have been like a God to him, but that image was shattered by the abuse, calling her “a failure of a God” and “a stupid God”.
Another thing to mention is that Kaneki is used to the abuse and being beaten, as “It’s always like this”, which might refer to both how his mom is always like this, and how he is treated by other people as well, such as his aunt, and even his ghoul friends when they first meet. Also, it seems that people who have already been in lots of pain and are used to it (”dull to pain”) such as his mom, are able to truly hurt Kaneki.
My nerves grow strangely and pierce through my skin.
All at once they sing out.
Far away, someone laughs. Soon, it’s not even my voice any more.
My brain becomes transparent, and there’s nothing I can’t see.
On knowing the things you didn’t know, you die.
This set of lines refers to V14 fight with Arima. The first two lines refer to his kagune, and specifically to this scene here in chapter 139:
where all his kagune are released, “sing[ing] out” (this specific wording emphasizes the beauty, however horrific, of this scene). Kaneki starts losing his mind after being stabbed in the eye by Arima. The third line is really similar to a quote from chapter 61:
but the “far away, someone laughs” line can also refer to this in chapter 140 before Kaneki loses consciousness:
My brain becomes transparent, and there’s nothing I can’t see.
On knowing the things you didn’t know, you die.
I copied these two lines again since it’s hard to scroll back and forth. So anyways, this refers to the entirety of chapter 140, where Kaneki becomes aware of his mistakes, his thoughts completely “transparent” and free of repression, and once he realizes it, he “dies”.
I had a dream where the sky fell.
A checkerboard sky.
Squashed by it, I died.
Yes, I wished for that.
These lines refer to another scene in chapter 140 again:
Checkerboards in Tokyo Ghoul have been associated with manipulation (for example, Uta has been associated with the checkerboard pattern multiple times), so one interpretation of this is that Kaneki “died” partly to being manipulated by others around him (for example, he wouldn’t have become a half-ghoul if it wasn’t for Souta who dropped the steel beams on Rize). Kaneki would have been fine with it, because he would have been “dead”, which is what he wanted all along, but “Yes, I wished for that” means that his death didn’t occur, which is shown by him returning as Sasaki Haise.
I skipped the “I had a dream” lines to discuss at the end. The dream aspect, which was also mentioned in chapter 53 many times, is about what is inside Kaneki’s mind. He dreams to pretend that he isn’t completely broken, and that his mother truly loves him. He dreams that he wants to die because he believes everyone would be better off without him, and that this act would show his love for them.
What about the “sky falling”? It’s obviously very important, since “The Sky Falls” is the title of the poem. This one is definitely up for lots of interpretation, but the main one for me is extreme hardship and destruction due to reality, where you’re so drowned in your sorrows that it feels like the sky, the weight of the earth is going to collapse on top of you.
The sky is falling when Kaneki copes with his painful memories, and when he “dies” by Arima’s hand after realizing his mistakes. Both greatly challenge his sense of reality, but the difference is the result, where in the former Kaneki lives on by avoiding his past, whereas in the latter Kaneki is able to be reborn and use his second chance wisely.
So ultimately this poem is about Kaneki’s mindset up until he “died” as Kaneki Ken. Ishida is seriously amazing…
Anyways, feel free to send me any other interpretations you have for this poem!
