Touka and Mutsuki, setting up foils and conflict

What you said about mutsuki and touka how they are both fixating on the same thing kinda like a dream was really interesting and true to me. It makes the whole touka mutsuki kaneki/haise conflict even more complex would love to hear more about that from you

Alright, since I’m the one who brought up this idea and also I’ve seen it go around in others inboxes, I’m going to devote the Touka and Mutsuki comparison to its own Meta rather than just having it as a point in a shared meta.

To clarify, what do I mean when I say that both Touka and Mutsuki fixate unhealthily on the idea of Kaneki/Haise? Also, why does the narrative set this up?

To begin with, I’ve received several asks as to what I mean by Touka is obsessed with Kaneki, and I’ve also seen other people point out that Mutsuki’s love for Haise is way different and much more violent than Touka’s all accepting love for him and therefore there’s no point in comparing them. However, I raise that this seemingly total opposite difference is exactly why we must compare them. Let me demonstrate to with another chart:

The two are in opposite directions, and Mutsuki is much more extreme yes. However if Mutsuki were not compared to Touka in this moment, you might mistake Touka’s own devotion as healthy if it were not being flagged like this. This is literally the origin of the term foil, which is a foil placed on a stage to highlight something, its something used to call attention to something in someone else. Let’s elaborate under the cut though.

Which means this right here: Is an extreme image that serves as a red flag to return the fandom’s attention to Touka once more.

Foiling though, does not mean equation of two separate things. Which is why saying that Mutsuki’s love for Haise and Touka’s love for Kaneki is not the same, is not really an argument against their foiling. In fact, Mutsuki’s extreme version of love in comparison to Touka’s much more soft spoken and accepting love is deliberately pushed to extremes to serve as an attention getter.

To quote an old meta from @hysyartmaskstudio​ [x]

See, despite the fact that Tokyo Ghoul is billed as a horror manga, Ishida never uses things just for shock value. Not Yamori’s torture, not Kaneki’s abuse, and not even Torso, sick fuck that he is.



The chapter this meta was written in reference to is Chapter 73, Flower. Which featured Torso and Arima as the main highlights of that chapter. In particular there was this scene where Torso’s narration transitioned back to Kaneki and Arima’s fight in a meaningful way.

The boxes are Torso’s narration, promising to take Mutsuki to a field of flowers, which transitions to Arima quite literally making a Torso out of Kaneki as is Torso’s signature habit, in a field of metaphorical flowers.

The question is why draw out this comparison? On a surface level there is no way to equate Arima or Kaneki to Torso, while both of them are killers neither of them enjoy it or find the catharsis needed to survive out of it like Torso does in his predation. While figures that have turned abusive in the past, neither has ever subjected a prolonged violent abuse to the point of dehumanization for the sake of making another love them like Torso has done to Mutsuki.

If you discount the extremities there are similarities between the two of them you might not have recognized were it not for the comparison, though. Look at the narration in the last page:

Connect, his words, his kagune… they cannot reach him. Page 19, Ch. 73

Unlike Yamori Torso’s fascination was not with strength, it was with love and connection. If you read the extra material, that gives a window into torso’s mindset, he craves connection and love while at the same time not understanding those concepts.

A lonely pillow is difficult to sleep on.

If I’m not embraced by that kind of smooth flesh, it feels as though my mind will become very strange.

For me, there is no way whatsoever to understand the hearts of humans. Why they are happy, angry, sad, I cannot imagine.

How must I act so that they do not leave me, I fail to grasp. Since souls cannot be seen, at any rate,

speaking to people besides myself, I think of them as automated dolls, crammed with meat. [x]

Which sounds like the basic concept behind Haise Sasaki’s own birthday poem.

…But how is someone who has never been loved be capable of loving someone else? A child who wasn’t able to receive the minimal love they required at the time they needed it the most will continue to gaze at the illusion of affection and never know how to love until the day they die. [x]

Both of them have a desire to be loved, but also a cluelessness of understanding what that love actually means. The desire for love is not in and of itself unhealthy, but Torso illustrates what can happen when this desire is pushed to extremes. Something that Kaneki also experiences in extremes from time to time.

Then, what in this situation where he is paralleled to Torso is his love forcing him to do? The answer lies in the next image in which Kaneki himself gets torsoe’d by Arima. Having one’s limbs torn off is a really quick and dirty visual symbolism for a limiting of agency.

This entire chapter ‘flower’ is about Kaneki’s attempt to connect to Arima and want to understand him, but Arima’s answer to this is ‘Don’t play around,” and to cut his limbs off. The question is why is that? Why does Kaneki fail to reach him? The answer lies in Torso, because through Torso the audience realizes that Kaneki’s intentions are not in the right place. Just like Torso, Kaneki is manipulating others passively and limiting them of their agency in order to fulfill his need to be loved. Both Hinami and Arima, Kaneki is reaching out to them in the form of this grand martyr plan he’s set himself up for, he plans to save Hinami and then die at Arima’s hand saving Hinami, and in both situations he doesn’t really care that much about the feelings of the others involved in his martyr plan.

He didn’t take into account how Hinami would feel watching her brother die, nor did he think of how Arima would feel having to kill his son. Yet at the same time Kaneki claims he wants to understand Arima’s feelings, that’s why Arima says “Stop playing around”, because Kaneki isn’t doing this to love Arima but rather to be loved by Arima.

Therefore we get two characters who go to extremes to draw love out of others, but do so by limiting the agency of those that they wish to be loved by, because they see no other way of achieving that love. Two character motivated by a fundamental misunderstanding of what love is.

That foiling can apply even further to Arima, a character we see in the next few chapters express true love for Kaneki, but then take his agency away right in front of him by forcing him into the role of Arima’s killer, and one eyed king. In dragging the quinque across his neck he takes away Kaneki’s choice of whether or not to kill him. In it he also takes a way a part of Kaneki’s identity as well, because from now on Kaneki has to conform to the lie that Arima told, that he was the one who killed Arima Kishou. Kaneki after his brief moment of realization and personhood once again finds himself conforming to an idea again becoming the “one eyed king” shortly afterwards.

So with what has been established so far, attempting to gain love from people by limiting their agency 1) often perpetuated by characters who misunderstand love 2) is inherently dehumanizing and often reduces people to ideas 3) can be done actively (torso) and also passively (kaneki) but the passive variant while harder to notice and less extreme, does not equate to healthy. Showing the extreme version also is a way narratively of pointing out the passive and harder to notice passive version, and call into question the healthiness of the motives of a character practicing this passivity.

With all of that established, let’s return to Touka and Mutsuki. First, for a narrative foiling to take place there has to be some similarities between their situations.

Touka and Mutsuki share three major similarities. First, they have an ambivalent attachment to a father and family structure that was suddenly cut out of their lives.

For Touka this is in Arata. Arata however, was a healthy father figure that disappeared suddenly, hence the source of Touka’s ambiguous connection. I’ve seen comparisons that Touka takes after her mother more than her father, but that’s not the point really, Hikari died when Touka was too young to remember her face, all of her formative memories (IE, in a freudian sense the ones that dictate how she sees attachment from then on) are of her father.

That’s why she flashes back to her father, or more specifically her last memory of her father leaving when she thinks of the loneliness she feels or her inability to connect with Ayato from this point forward, because to her the inciting incident of all of those subconscious fears stems from her father’s disappearance. Touka also has a lot of subconscious motivators for her actions that arise from the way Arata rose her. Touka finds herself compelled to eat human food even when she does not have to, something that will intentionally make her sick and weaken her because her father convinced her it was necessary to fit in.

Before the reason is revealed to us though, we see this behavior demonstrated to us when Touka eats Yoriko’s food, above and beyond what is necessary to pass as a ghoul. It even becomes a problem in the final fight against Tsukiyama.

When Ayato is criticizing Touka for her ideals, her pacifism and want to pass as human he says she is being “Just like Pop”.

Which is also a behavior learned from Arata, and further from Yoshimura that ghouls should be content to just blend in peacefully to the human world and observe.

So yes, Touka does physically resemble Hikari, and have her courageous demeanor but most of her the unconscious motivators for her behavior come from her upbringing from her father and not her mother who was not around to raise her for most of her life.

Mutsuki is also someone who came from an unstable home, and lost a father figure, but Mutsuki’s case is more extreme. One Mutsuki is responsible for both his brother, his father, and mother leaving all at once by being the one to kill them. However, losing them still had an affect on Mutsuki. One of his first internal narrations is that he wants to meet his family, even though his life is not pretty.

Mutsuki’s family was abusive and horrible though, so this urge can rather be read as Mutsuki simply wants to have a family. The same way that Touka longs for the return of Arata after he was suddenly cut out of her life, (Ayato too) Mutsuki wants to experience a stable father and brother figure after being denied that by being born into a family of horrible abuse.

Mutsuki still displays a lot of unconscious behaviors from the way he was raised the same way Touka does. Mutsuki’s however are based upon appeasing individuals rather than trying to fit into a human society. Mutsuki’s are individual, Touka’s are societal. Mutsuki while being drowned by his father and later abused had to shout out that his father was the best, in order to get the violence against him to stop.

One of Mutsuki’s main coping mechanisms after that is simply to appease to try to get himself out of tough situations. There are times where it’s minor, like Mutsuki simply trying to avoid conflict. Mutsuki has a habit of reading the mood and trying to go with the flow in the room, rather than standing up on his own for what he wants. He doesn’t speak out against Urie until Shirazu throws a fuss.

There are other subconscious times where this passive behavior is pushed to extremes, and Mutsuki ends up taking and forgiving abuse from male figures in his life as a way of pacifying them. We see this with Mutsuki bringing Urie back from his freakout.

What is textually a heartwarming scene, and subtextually a bit horrifying as it signals what abuse has done to Mutsuki, made him so passive to the abuse of male figures that he is literally willing to forgive immediately being stabbed by them. Moreso than that though, Urie deliberately led Mutsuki with him into a trap in order to gain a promotion when Mutsuki was harmed and in need of a safe place, then left Mutsuki behind and Mutsuki instantly forgives him. Mutuski also lies to Torso in order to pacify him.

Mutsuki’s words here “I guess this is my destiny, always stolen away by men… completely ” means that he feels compelled to surrender his agency to men in order that they might not harm him.

Mutsuki surrenders agency to men, Touka surrenders agency to humans, two different flavors of the same action, and both from the same source their fathers.

Second, both of these characters find a substitute for their father figure in Kaneki.

I’ve heard it argued in the past that Arata is meant to resemble Kaneki from Ayato’s point of view only, but there’s too many similarities between Kaneki and Arata not to make the comparison.

It’s brought up first here:

Arata is brought up again while Kaneki is fighting Shinoara while wearing (surprise) Arata armor.

A third time right before Kaneki fought Arima:

Also in the context of a ghoul cannibalizing to gain great strength in order to save his loved ones, only for that strength to become his downfall. Sound familiar?

Besides that though the way Kaneki enters the scene when Arata is first brought up is him physically forcing himself to become a substitute for Arata.

When Touka says don’t leave me alone here, she’s specifically talking about her family, not Kaneki. Yet in Kaneki comes, assuming it’s about him or otherwise making it about him by fulfilling that promise.

At the end of the arc, we see Touka holding Arata’s wedding ring mentioning her mother and father but thinking of Kaneki, which means that Kaneki was sucessful, he’s become a standin for the kind of love that Touka wants from others.

Then we have Mutsuki, once again Mutsuki’s example is different and more extreme. Mutsuki does not so much slowly grow attached to Kaneki as Touka does, but rather gets attached to Haise because he is the first real stable familial figure after coming from an extremely unstable home environment and mistake that for love.

It’s made very obvious in 114 Dear, where what earns Mutsuki’s supposed love is just Haise providing for him a safe and stable home to wake up to. Even within the context of the chapter that it’s revealed though, Mutsuki’s love is questionable.

Phrasing it as a question provides room for the itnerpretation that what Mutsuki is doing is feeling attachment to a familial figure and mistaking it for love primarily because he himself has no experience with love. It’s different from Touka because Haise doesn’t physically resemble Mutsuki’s father at all, but rather he’s the first healthy father figure Mutsuki allowed himself to get attached too. Even before this chapter, Mutsuki and Haise were set up as having a familial bond.

In the first arc, Mutsuki and Haise spend the entire time on each other’s sides. Mutsuki was also the first Q to act cooperatively with Haise, while Shirazu, Urie, and Saiko all were off doing their own things.

Haise protects and reassures Mutsuki, here, here, and here.

In the rose arc, Suzuya specifically asks why Mutsuki of all people only refers to Haise by his last name and Mutsuki says that he was used to calling him that after attending one of his academy lectures. In other words he’s used to seeing Sasaki in a formative position.

There’s also the fact that in this case Haise deliberately inserted himself into the position of father too. It was his decision to play family and care for all of the needs of what were essentially work assocciates.

Now the third and most important similiarity is that Kaneki/Haise after assuming this roll of surrogate father/family member, then deliberately abandoned both of these people “for their own good” in his mind. This abandonment also comes after promising to be their for them.

This abandonment leaves both of them fixating on the idea of Kaneki or Haise (because the real one is not around for whatever reason) in his place, to fill whatever emotional need that Kaneki was trying to fill for them. For Mutsuki it was safety and for Touka it’s more ambiguous, but Kaneki has at least taken the place of the loneliness Touka felt towards Ayato.

Both of them also fixate on a past version of Kaneki, or Haise that they knew.

In Mutsuki’s case it’s more obvious though because the person named Haise never existed. He was Kaneki’s dream.

Mutsuki’s obsession is also telegraphed far better because it’s hyperviolent. It takes the form of selfish, possessive love, the same kind that Torso displayed. The want to just make sure Haise never leaves again by rendering him unable to. This:

Is very different from this:

But if the two of them were not compared, you might mistake the latter for looking healthy when it’s not. It’s not for several reasons, one and most apparent is that Touka only knew Kaneki consistently for two months, then he abandoned her for six of which she only saw him once during that time, then he died. Yet she’s devoted three years of her life to the creation of RE:, which is stated textually and explicitly to exist for the sake of Kaneki, maybe, if he wants to come home eventually.

The reason I phrased that last sentence so iffy is because Touka also says that she doesn’t even want Kaneki to come back in the same sentence that she also says that :RE exists as a place for Kaneki to come back to. So, which is it? Touka’s actions while entirely selfless, are not based around romantic love. They’re based around fixation, or obsession the same way that Mutsuki’s are for Haise. The reason why they are based around obsession is because of this extreme amount of selflessness. Real love requires give and take, an element of selfishness. Touka’s love is akin to projecting love at Kaneki from afar, but you can’t love at a person only an object.

In terms of Tokyo Ghoul itself used though, Human relationships are chemical reactions. (Hello Jung, we’ve only been talking about Freud up until this point).

In other words you can’t react with a noble gas, you need the other person to participate in the reaction. You need to want them to be with you, putting them on a pedestal and sacrificing yourself in the name of them just denies them their agency.

So while Touka’s actions may seem selfless and noble, it’s comparing them to Mutsuki that makes the reader go “Hmm, something’s not right here.” Which is also what the focus of the next arc seems to be setting up to. As you can see, Touka’s broken family has resolved itself the best it can, Ayato and Yomo have both returned.

She still has a “thing” with Kaneki that will be unresolved, and will also continue to be unresolved as long as she continues to render herself passive and resign herself to just crushing on Kaneki from afar.

As for what idea that Touka sees in Kaneki, that’s also unspecific. It’s really specific with Mutsuki, Mutsuki sees Haise as the stability and also self control from his bloodlust that he’s never had. That’s why he associates Haise going out of control with his ghoul powers as fear, and also why he says he needs Haise to stick around while violently dissociating and stabbing him.

I would say that if Mutsuki wants Kaneki to stay around to fix himself, that is to fix Mutsuki. Touka wants to be the one to “fix” Kaneki. Which is also why Touka makes it her job to be the one to call Kaneki out, and also after the fact the one to provide a home for Kaneki.

Which seems heartwarming at first, but reminder she knew him for two months. Imagine spending three years of your life searching for a coworker at target that you knew for two months and worked the same shift with.

Both of these desires to fix are freudian ones as well. The flaw, Arata disappearing on Touka, Mutsuki being denied a stable household by his father, is sought to be fixed by romantic connection to another similiar father figure, Touka to Kaneki and Mutsuki to Haise.

It’s a complex that both of them will have to get past if they ever want to connect with Kaneki the person, rather than the idea of Kaneki that exists within their head.