Touka and Amon’s Conversation Says More About How They Haven’t Grown

I’ve noticed that I had a vastly different interpretation of the conversation between Touka and Amon then most of the fandom. To be fair the conversation itself seemed okay, until I got to a certain panel.

Amon’s rhetoric has always been a simplification of a much more complicated situation, but this is an especially glaring example. What exactly about the Daughter arc gave Kureo no choice but to murder Hinami’s mom in the middle of the street in front of her daughter, then use her kakuhou and severed arm to lure that same thirteen year old child into a death trap?



If this conversation had been about Touka’s killing of random investigators after Ryouko’s death, which was an act of revenge because Touka felt like a powerless victim in that situation, then Amon’s words might hold more water. Then the conversation would be about how humans and ghouls hold grudges of violence on both sides, and in that case the best resolution is try to let those grudges go so the cycle of revenge can stop perpetuating itself. That was essentially what the Takizawa/Seidou/Houji conflict was about, how revenge based violence would keep on keeping on and only leave those who participated in it feeling empty in the end.

This conversation isn’t about that though, it specifically brings up Mado’s murder of Ryouko, and then Mado’s later death at the hands of Touka. Neither of those were based on revenge, they were rather an exploration of what the Daughter arc as a whole was trying to illustrate. Therefore in this conversation Amon is being deceptively selfless once again, he’s avoiding having to judge any one person this way by saying it was nobody’s fault (it’s the world’s) which has always been more of an excuse to discount individual will in Tokyo Ghoul anyway.

(Notice how the field is turning blood red, not exactly the color symbolism you want to be associated with when making moral statements).

Saying that no one had any choice in what happened to Hinami and her mother in this situation is just wrong, it misses the point of the daughter arc.

Hinami’s family is set up explicityl as a no-kill family. Yet they are cut down, and not just killed, but in an incredibly gruesome way. Mado kills Ryouko in the middle of the street in front of her daughter after making her beg, then taunted her daughter with the body parts that remained of her mother.

There’s a reason this arc begins with Amon robbing a grave, and at it’s climax Mado reveals that quincke’s are made from the parts of dead ghoul. The emphasis of the arc is what the inherent dehumanization of ghouls that investigators are conditioned to accept does to them, how it twists them. Because investigators due have a reason to exist, most ghouls do in fact kill 12 humans a year. If a human killed 12 humans a year they would be demonized too. That’s the point of view Amon is coming from.

However, the reason the daughter arc was set up was because the culture of the CCG, and Mado and Amon who are products of this culture take it too far. This isn’t actually an organization of justice that is trying it’s best to police killers and save human lives, these are people who identities are based around killing things they do not see as human, and therefore can take a sadistic glee in it. That’s also why Amon and Mado are our introduction to the CCG, because from any other point of view, the CCG might have seemed too justified in their existence from the world of ghouls. Amon robbing a grave might seem like a minor crime that leads to saving more human lives in the long run, but it’s because Amon doesn’t see what was buried in that grave as human that he was able to just sit there and watch this and be “Yep, this is totally okay.”



So this is how Amon has not grown, he refuses to condemn Mado for his actions, and refuses to see what Touka did in the case of defending Hinami as explicit self defense. He’s choosing the easier instead of actually trying to face the moral ambiguity set up by that situation. In other words he’s doing the opposite of this:

To those who think that Amon trying to choose easier answers, or not thinking things through is the opposite of his character, I will say this. Characters usually don’t list their character traits out loud. Thats what we call telling and not showing. However, if Amon were to say aloud “Always keep thinking about what’s right”, and then in the next instance he were to fall back on his old rhetoric about the world being wrong rather than trying to take personal responbility that is what we would call irony.

Amon’s justice has always been self serving (I wrote a Meta about it here). This arc has very specifically been revealing that aspect. In this case by distancing Touka from judgement, Amon is also distancing himself from that same judgement. There’s a reason that Amon is specifically attached to Mado as a father figure, especially after his first father figure Donato was revealed to be a sadistic child killer. (Hint: It’s because Mado is also a sadistic child killer). Before, Amon could simply digest the CCG’s rhetoric and say Donato was wrong because he was a ghoul killing children, and Mado was right because both him and Amon were humans killing obligate murderers. Now Amon himself is a ghoul though, so that narrative no longer works. At the moment the best he can do is adopt a narrative that conveniently avoids judging Donato and himself.

Amon is still hung up on Donato then, which means he hasn’t grown at all even after becoming a ghoul. At this point in time what Amon views is wrong is the fact that he was turned into a ghoul and forced to become a part of the cycle of violence, he has yet to see what he did during his time as a human as an objective wrong.

However the point of this post is not to rag on Amon, as much as it might seem like it, it makes sense Amon has not changed much. He hasn’t been a consistent character at all in Tokyo Ghoul, and only began to show up and start talking in the previous and current arcs. A character who is mostly offscreen should not experience their character growth offscreen, because in writing with good narrative pacing, the things that are shown onscreen should be the things that matter the most.

If Amon had grown a great deal offscreen then that would mean Ishida gave focus to Matsuri stripping naked, rather than important character moments for Amon that made him grow. No, as frustrating as it might be to see characters still not grow the way the reader wants them too about 200 chapters into their narrative, it makes sense in a way for Amon to not have changed much. This conversation then is Amon’s reintroduction in the story, it takes advantage of the uneasy peace that Goat shares with its members to use subtext to illustrate what is still wrong with Amon’s point of view.

It does the same with Touka as well. If you want a solid answer for why Touka and Amon of all people were having a conversation rather than Amon and Kaneki, that’s why. Touka and Amon are characters who both need to be reintegrated back into the manga, and also whose opposing viewpoints would highlight each others flaws. I hate to be a naysayer but a Kaneki and Amon conversation would be pointless at this point, as neither have grown enough to earn it. A really basic rule of writing is “You don’t get to do the thing you want, until you’ve grown enough to earn it”, that’s why Takizawa was the one to bring Amon back even though Kaneki wanted it.

What way has Touka not grown though? In all aspects she seems pretty set right now, Hinami, Ayato, and most importantly Kaneki have all returned, and Touka has always had both RE: and Yomo from the start of the manga. So far it seems that Touka has completed her arc in Tokyo Ghoul, and in RE: she exists to guide others, but that is a misnomer. There’s no point in having a stagnant character in a narrative.

I’m going to sound terrible when I say this, but Touka’s problem in this conversation is that she’s all too passive and forgiving, she’s almost nothing like the old Touka we knew. In dismissing Amon’s troubles and not even talking about the specifics of the situation, or even presenting her side of the story Touka sounds almost nothing like the person who was so hurt by the injustice did to Ryouko that she was spured to do this.

I actually do have a point in this besides also bagging on Touka along with Amon so bear with me, I would say Touka’s two big mistakes in this conversation are here:

and here:

To clarify, Touka saw a half ghoul wondering about where they belong in the world and rather than providing a clean answer on that topic Touka immediately changed the subject to talking about crushes. Yoshimura, Mr. Parent everybody but my own child was wrong about a lot of things, but he was right about a few.

Touka’s connection to Yoshimura also, provides context for where her arc is at now. As his heir, and as her father figure, Yoshimura is the example which Touka follows. Touka however, has never thought critically about the way Yoshimura raised people, or the flaws in his parenting because 1) he was taken from her suddenly in the Anteiku raid and died protecting her and 2) unlike Ayato and Eto Yoshimura’s actions ended up benefitting her.

Therefore she would have less reason to question him than say, Eto did. Yoshimura has a lot of flaws and I don’t want to go over all of them, but to summarize Yoshimura in making Anteiku thought of himself as basing all of his actions around Eto, but he really wasn’t. It’s the reason why Kaneki identifies with him here, before charging into the Anteiku raid. Because Kaneki is also a character who acts selfishly in order to absolve his own loneliness.

Touka is repeating that mistake, but instead of basing her actions around herself she’s basing her actions around Kaneki, Kaneki’s presence, Kaneki’s approval. It’s not the same, it’s different. Touka is genuinely selfless, unlike Yoshimura and Kaneki. In this situation though, it might even be worse.

Yoshimura at least had an obligation to Eto, she was his child and Yoshimura decided to both have her, and arrange for her to keep living. Touka is not Kaneki’s parent, she’s not even his girlfriend. She’s a person who knew him for six months, then saw him again one more time six months later, and then decided to devote three years of her life to him.

This is the point where we left off on Touka, her moment of breaking where once again she’s scared of being abandoned again after losing everyone in her life. She never resolved that though, instead she’s been basing her existence around Kaneki and having faith he’ll come back. Even though she has Yomo, Hinami, and Ayato right now she’s scared of losing other people, so she fixates on Kaneki in a dreamy like sense. That’s why the Mutsuki and Touka conflict is being set up.

Not because Touka and Mutsuki are in a love triangle, but because Mutsuki sees and sees she is fixating on the same thing he is. They’re both fixated on the “idea” of Haise or Kaneki, because of the stability and caring he represents to them that they’ve never had.

It’s a twisted kind of foiling between the two. You could even go a step further and say both of them see Kaneki even in a freudian sense. They see him and try to resolve what they’ve lost with him, or what they should have had growing up, a comfortable and safe support structure and environment.

Therefore Touka talking about crushes with Amon when he brings up the conflict between people and ghouls is indicative of where her priorities are at the moment. She ultimately cares the most about the personal relationships she’s made, and how they walk out on her frequently, and her life is based around coping on that, and providing a safe place for them to come back home.

It’s more emotionally healthy then where Touka was at the start of Tokyo Ghoul, but it’s also not the solution. If Yoshimura’s way was the right one, he currently would not be in a tube. Karma is funny like that. Back thn though, even though she was directionless with her anger, her anger still meant something. Touka actively cared about the issue of ghouls vs humans, and screamed in the face of the injustice done to them.

The current Touka just seems to have accepted that to live means to lose things however, not realizing that part of the reason why she has had people taken from her her entire life is because she’s on the losing side of a rigged system that needs destroying.

Touka’s emotional growth and ability to accept people is good, but it shouldn’t come at the cost of her anger. I’m not sure what exactly could set her off again, but there is an arc being set up to reunite her with Yoriko, and at the same time there is still the floating question of what happened to Eto. This meta points out the foiling between Touka and Eto and foils are usually destined to interact, though I will say it’s a bit flawed at one point. I think the narrative of setting Touka up as the good daughter of Yoshimura and Eto as the bad one misses the point. If anything, Touka could learn from Eto’s ever burning anger at the world.

I think Ishida wanted us to see this too, because he made a deliberate point to show Touka cozying up to Amon in the same chapter that Hinami is absolutely miserable with grief because nobody but Ayato is acknowledging how she feels about the situation and her unresolved feelings about the injustice done to her. To Hinami no matter how much she tries and wants to, she simply can’t move on with it even if it seems like the simpler way right now. Originally Touka would have been the person she went for to seek that comfort, and now it’s Ayato.

I leave you with a piece from a good comic dealing with the same issue.

Magneto 11 2014 (x)

A lot of this post comes from discussion between me and Charade so if you have any questions @hysyartmaskstudio too.