Anonymous: Hmm, I don't know why people say :Re isn't a tragedy. For me, is a tragedy, not same TG OG was, but still. You think the same? :Re isn't a tragedy for you? Now, I think Comedy and Tragedy are complementing each other, so this is the result.

This was a point brought up in discussion by Charade @hysyartmaskstudio a long time ago but I think it’s a good one. Let’s pretend for a moment that Tokyo Ghoul isn’t written by some faceless guy known only as Ishida-sensei, and instead imagine the piece itself without the author behind it.



In that case, why exactly is Tokyo Ghoul a tragedy? Is it because it ends with a lot of character death, but not much having changed in the world at large because of it? Is it because it’s a story where a lot of sad things happen? I think to make it simple as possible, ignoring Aristotle’s Poetics and what a classic greek tragedy would be in comparison to modern tragedy, the reason why Tokyo Ghoul is considered a tragedy is because in the first chapter Kaneki Ken tells you that his life is a tragedy.

The fact that Kaneki both refuses to call himself a main character of his own life, but at the same time clearly marks his life as a tragedy tells you a low about how Kaneki frames the narrative of his own life as the outset.

Moving onto Re: the way Kaneki sees his true self, the representative of his memories is as a child.

The big debate about Oedipus is, was any of the tragic happenings of the play the character’s fault?

Remember Oedipus was born with this terrible prophecy over his head. His parents also, abused him by throwing him out and chaining him to a cliff by the heel, to the point where his name becomes synonymous with his abuse, the sheperd who found him named him Oedipus which is greek for “Swollen Ankle.”

When Oedipus is also informed of his eventual fate ahead of time, he himself takes action to avoid it. He moves away from who he thought was his birth parents, and went to an entirely new city. He even saved that city from a terrible monster.

If Oedipus was born fated from the gods to do this terrible thing, he makes every effort to avoid it but then still ends up doing it anyway, why does the fault lie with him?

This was common for greek tragedy, because it was an age where contemplating who was in control of your fate was common public thought. However to look at greek tragedy from a modern perspective, is to notice that the characters in these tragedies often lack agency. That is they are not culpable for their own actions.

Which is why Kaneki defining his life as a tragedy, and seeings himself as a child is willingly forfeiting his own agency. Kaneki’s narrative as a whole could be described as a struggle to reclaim his own agency, but rather than against the world that struggle is primarily against himself, as Kaneki’s main method of coping with situations is to see the fault not in himself but others. He always needs to maintain a pure self, all the while imagining others telling him what to do, where to go, both conjuring up pictures of Hide, Rize, and even centipedified versions of himself.

Kaneki frames his life as a tragedy, because that’s how he copes. Characters in tragedies are only questionably responsible for the own tragedies that befall them.

Every time Kaneki tries to reason himself through situations, he is always telling himself “This is your fault, these voices are yours”, it’s a struggle to see his own self.

Kaneki’s main defense is also an ego defense. Not only does he defend himself, he also works to preserve his ego. That is why when he finally admitted fault for his actions, he also severed himself in two and tried to live free from his past self in the form of Haise. His sense of depersonalization is so strong when he can no longer put the voies on Hide, or Rize, he just severs some part of himself away.

If Re: is a tragicomedy, it is therefore because the narrative is not on Kaneki alone this time, or rather he does not solely set the tone of the narrative. Rather, right at this moment Re: named after the italian word for king is a story of two kings attempting to set the narrative.

However, Furuta’s route is much different from Kaneki’s. Once again it comes down to framing, Kaneki sees all of the events in his life as a tragedy his route is to give up agency. Furuta sees his life as a comedy.

In a comedy, the characters retain their agency because that is the joke. Take an episode of It’s Always Sunny in Philadalphea for example, all of the bad things that happen to the characters is the character’s own fault. Their refusal to grow and change despite everything they have been through because they cannot find fault in themselves, they are too egotistical to, is a joke because the audience is so far away from it.

These characters which could so easily be tragic victims of circumstnace are instead turned into a joke because they retain their own agency.

That is Furuta’s coping device in essence. Rather than give up agency like Kaneki he viciously grabs for it. He makes himself climb to the structure that is the cause of everything awful in his life, so therefore he can continue to be at fault for it.

He mocks the system while at the same time becoming an indispensable part of it.

If Kaneki’s lesson to be learned is that he is in control of his own life and his own self, then Furuta’s is the opposite. That he does not need to be in control of absolutely everyone and everything.

The two of them cope in similiar but opposite directions, and what this creates is a narrative between protagonist and antagonist of competing tragedy and comedy, and that is why Re: could be best defined as a tragicomedy.