- Episode 10: “Aogiri”
It is Anteiku’s policy to help each other out, after all.
I really like where the episode started. It moved away from the focus on our main characters and their personal struggles, and gave us a bigger picture of what was happening between the ghouls and the CCG. I liked all the action! It made me wonder why the ghouls never banded together like this to eliminate the CCG and why now of all times. How is Rize involved with the members of Aogiri Tree? What has the “One-Eyed King” been doing all this time?
We get introduced to more CCG investigators as Amon picks out the important ones by name and position, although it’s hard to tell if the newly named characters are going to be important to the story or their presence there is just supposed to signify how dire the situation is. The CCG meeting gives us a lot of explanation for the upcoming war between ghouls and humans. We learn that the kid with all the stitches is Suzuya Juzo, another CCG investigator under Shinohara. He really breaks the heavy mood and makes me wonder what’s wrong with this kid… He apparently well-known enough that others have heard of him, and he makes a lot of scary faces.
It was hard to tell if Banjo was supposed to be threatening, funny, or endearing. He obediently ordered some coffee after Touka said he should, and he jealously assumed Kaneki was Rize’s lover since he smelled like her. His subordinates even apologized for him after Kaneki knocked him out in one hit, and he later genuinely apologizes for his mistaken assumption. But when Banjo tells Kaneki to tell Rize to run, we then know that Aogiri Tree isn’t an ally of hers. In the middle of explaining the situation to Kaneki and Touka, Ayato busts into the cafe and starts a fight. Yamori and the ghoul he was with earlier, Nico, also walk right through the door. Apparently they’re all part of Aogiri Tree, but their interactions show how different in goal and method they each are despite having banded together.
Kaneki’s scent of Rize gets him violently kidnapped. Although his “one eye” status surprised the Aogiri ghouls, he wasn’t strong enough to defend himself, and neither was Touka. Despite the fact that we’ve seen Touka be incredibly strong and persevere against those stronger than her in previous episodes, we find out that there are ghouls on a whole other level than those in Anteiku, and she gets easily knocked out by Ayato.
Yoshimura seems to know more than he lets on since he realized immediately and calmly that Kaneki had been kidnapped (he also knew from the beginning that Kaneki became a ghoul because of the operation giving him Rize’s organs). It seems really messed up, then, when he suggests giving up on Kaneki. Nishiki, Touka, and even Hinami react strongly to the idea, and refuse to not try to save Kaneki. This is when Yoshimura flips it and says he always meant to save Kaneki and even brings in Tsukiyama to help. But why is Tsukiyama all healed up so fast? And can he really be trusted after he went through an elaborate plot to try and eat Kaneki himself?
Notes:
- It’s easy to see how the two siblings went diverging paths after the death of their parents. But what really interests me now is that Ayato has two wings while Touka has one. I always assumed her one wing was normal, but seeing Ayato have two makes me wonder if Touka also had two before or if Ayato also started with one and got himself another.
- Who is Rei? Who is Suzuya’s “mama”? I need some explanation on this kid because he unsettles me.
- We also get a glimpse of Hide’s room, which shows how much research he’s done and how much he’s been following the news on ghouls. I really want his involvement to play a bigger role in the story, but I don’t know how that would work out without him getting killed somehow…
- The epilogue shows Banjo wanting to give Rize a present but being too shy to ask her what she wants, so one of his subordinates asks instead. The answer is any and all internal organs.
- Episode 11: “High Spirits”
Merely dying for no reason won’t even buy any time.
The episode starts with a small timeskip to when Amon is already fighting Aogiri Tree. I’m glad they later go back to following the story chronologically because the last thing I needed when watching Tokyo Ghoul is to be even more confused with Amon. But the real deal of the episode lies in the CCG’s attack on Aogiri Tree, Anteiku’s attempt to rescue Kaneki, and Yamori’s torturing Kaneki. A lot of things going on in this episode, which makes me extremely uneasy about it being the second-to-last one of the season.
CCG’s attack on Aogiri Tree: It looked really cool when the CCG sortied for their attack. I thought it was a bit funny and unnecessary, though, that despite it being a really serious attack, all the important named characters weren’t wearing helmets like the rest of the investigators (probably so we’d see their faces better). Aogiri Tree is ready for war too, and it’s scary to think that despite Ayato and Yamori’s power, there’s still someone in charge of them. When the fight started, I thought it was a little stupid how the CCG was being overgunned just because Aogiri Tree has scopes. Where are the CCG’s scopes? I thought this was an all-out attack! Even more unreasonable was how Marude just grabbed a gun, walked to the front lines and shot some ghouls down so easily. Why wasn’t he gunned down when he stood in plain sight with no armor or shield? Why isn’t he fighting if he’s so damn skilled? It seemed like unnecessary humor too when Suzuya used Marude’s motorcycle and got it destroyed. Who cares that much about a motorcycle at a time like this??? We get a peek at Suzuya’s amazing fighting, though, which answers some questions of why such a goofball would be included in the team. The CCG was making great progress storming Aogiri Tree’s hideout too, except when they reached the top floor and encountered the “one-eyed owl.”
Anteiku‘s rescue attempt: It was no surprise for me that Uta was also coming to help. I think I was most interested in Hinami’s role being that we’ve witnessed how powerful her kagune is. Although she isn’t violent or aggressive, I wanted to see how wanting to save Kaneki would urge her into the battlefield. But alas, she’s staying back with Irimi, whose ghoul skill is such incredible hearing that she can track what’s going on with the fight from afar. This hints at what Hinami might do in the future as a noncombatant ghoul. All in all, the Anteiku team seems to be breezing through the Aogiri Tree members and Touka even narrowly avoided Amon since the Bin Brothers came to fight him instead. We see Yoshimura join the battle to give Anteiku more time, Touka and Ayato meet again to fight, and Yomo, Uta, and Tsukiyama team up to fight an incredibly strong mystery ghoul.
Kaneki being tortured by Yamori: I guess week after week of seeing ghouls fight each other and watching Doves and ghouls kill each other got me used to that level of violence. But the scenes of Kaneki being tortured made me a bit queasy, even when we didn’t get to see it happen straight up. In a way, it was much worse to leave it to the imagination: hypodermic needle through the eye, his toes and fingers being cut off over and over again, whatever happens with the centipede… The counting backwards freaked me out at first too since Kaneki first said “five hundred and fifty-nine” and I wasn’t sure if that was the number of fingers/toes (if it was, that would’ve been so messed up!). We learn that this torture is a direct reflection of the torture Yamori himself underwent in the past, signaling another vicious cycle of violence. Yamori’s creating a second personality to endure the torture foreshadows Kaneki’s own coping later on. Banjo’s promise of helping Kaneki escape seemed pretty futile and it made me even more worried when his friends Shu and Haru were also going to help in his escape. Yamori’s definitely going to crush those hopes. In the end, we see some white hair…
Despite all the action and the defining things that happened this episode, I am once again going to call it a set-up episode. All the forces started moving, but they all got to a cliffhanger that signals something bigger to come. At this point, I was really worried about what the last episode would hold–several big fights were set up and Kaneki’s situation was yet to be resolved. I wasn’t sure how everything could be finished in one more episode and how well it could be executed because of that.
Notes:
- The inconsistency of Amon’s new quinque:
- Episode 10: Shinohara says to pick from Mado’s effects since it’s in his will.
- Episode 11: Shinohara hands Amon a case and says Mado told him to give it to Amon.
- Episode 11 (flashback): Mado himself tells Amon about a quinque that suits him that he should use if Mado dies.
- Episode 12: “Ghoul”
White it seems like you’re choosing both, you’re really forsaking both.
Let me say this first: this finale was great! I don’t have much to say negatively about this episode except for what was problematic with this whole last arc and the pacing themselves as a whole. But as a stand-alone episode, the imagery, the hallucinatory coping, the backstory, the deaths and the choices that led to them, the acceptance of being a ghoul, and the fight scene at the end were all amazing. We finally meet the white-haired version of Kaneki that we’ve seen in the opening sequence every week. Rize returns for the longest screentime she’s had since the first couple of episodes, and serves again as a catalyst of change for Kaneki, this time more mental/philosophical/emotional than his previous physical acceptance of being a ghoul because of her urging. It was a great way to end the season, but it also came with its problems–to get this well-paced, impactful, amazing last episode with Kaneki and Yamori, we had to lose all the other stories that were set up in the previous episodes. We are then left excited over Kaneki’s developments while not knowing how anything else in the show turned out.
But for now, let’s talk about how awesome this episode was and why. There’s so much to cover just in terms of symbolism, but all of it is important to Kaneki’s transformation. Switch between reality and the white world of Kaneki’s psyche was such a great way of showcasing his thoughts without just simply narrating them. The symbolism of Kaneki’s white carnations morphing into Rize’s spider lilies shows how, even before he makes the final decision to accept himself as a ghoul, his will was already breaking. Calling out for his mother but getting Rize connects the two women in his life who have shaped and will shape his sense of self. His mother represents everything Kaneki has inspired to be so far: kind, generous, and hard working. Despite being thrust into the world of ghouls, Kaneki has remained relatively naive and innocent about killing people and the consequences of certain decisions. But his nice mother who filled the house with carnations also made Kaneki feel lonely and she eventually died from caring too much for others, basically. Coming to terms with his mother’s incompatibility to the cruel situation he’s now in pushes Kaneki to stop trying to embody her goodness and instead accept Rize’s qualities. Rize was never supposed to be a ghoul conscience for Kaneki; she’s always been there for life preservation. And what he needs right now, in the midst of being tortured, isn’t strength in kindness, but actual physical strength and the will to kill and be cruel. With Rize questioning Kaneki’s admiration of his mother and pointing out Kaneki’s emotional and moral shortcomings because of it, she serves to make Kaneki realize that things weren’t as simple and wonderful in the past and that being nice doesn’t work in real life now.
Loss is another aspect of Kaneki’s life which seems to never end. He told Rize when they were on their date (before she rudely starting trying to kill him) that he was an orphan, and his telling the story again in more detail give the season book-ends. Just as he lost his mother and lost part of his humanity in becoming a ghoul, Kaneki only stands to lose more and more–his place in Anteiku, Hide, and everyone else he cares about–if he continues to try to be the good person and scrambles to always do the right thing. His inability to choose between Haru and Shu, leading to both of their deaths highlights the mistake in his concept of “it’s better to be hurt than to hurt others.” Not only does Kaneki not get anywhere by being passive, he losses more than he gains in doing so. It’s especially striking, then, when Kaneki takes it one step further: he’s not just going to accept Rize, he’s going to surpass her. All the white carnations turn into red spider lilies just as Kaneki devours Rize, turning him into a real ghoul instead of his half-hearted “I can help humans and ghouls understand each other.”
The resulting fight scene is nothing short of amazing. Playing the opening song hearkens back to the image of Kaneki sitting down in the opening sequence, questioning himself, and then standing up with his white hair at the end of the opening, much like he is now that he’s accepted he’s a ghoul. Even the lyrics matter so much more now that Kaneki really has “disappeared” and become a something more than either himself or Rize were. Just like Yamori, Kaneki changed into a much more violent and powerful ghoul because of the torture. He’s even taken on cracking his fingers and the same cruelty that characterized Yamori. The last scene of him eating Yamori and justifying it gives us a new Kaneki with a higher pain threshold, a willingness to be selfish and kill in order to protect, and finally willing to eat others as a ghoul. Is this the creation of a new villain? Is Kaneki going to be anti-hero of sorts? Or is he just a powered-up morally ambiguous good guy, still? We have no idea because that’s where the episode and the season ends.
Notes:
- The red spider lilies are not just symbolic for their color, check out this article about them and learn just how well they were used in this last episode.
- While the imagery is awesome, I couldn’t help but be bothered by the color of Kaneki’s clothes inverting too. His hair turning from black to white, fine. His pants and shirt going from black and white, respectively, to white and black makes no sense.
Always Sometimes Never 