Mutsuki, Urie and Masculinity

In the Mutsurie fandom we don’t say “I love you”, we say “I couldn’t care less, if you die” and I think that’s beautiful.

Actually though, I think this line is extremely critical to the current motivation of Mutsuki’s character, and the kind of rejection and refusal to cooperate with a certain narrative that Mutsuki ends up representing in his role as an antagonist.

The appearance of the tarot number “4″ quite obviously on Mutsuki’s kagune, reflecting the Emperor illustrates this. The emperor is about traditionally masculine related symbols and roles, the same way the empress is about feminine ones. It’s not necessarily about a male character though, just traits that are usually associated masculine. Which is a distinction that I want to make before this meta even begins. I’m not talking about gender at all, so please stay out of my ask box.

Masculine and feminine traits, or rather traits that are deemed masculine and feminine by a society are present in all people of all genders. All people are made up of both masculine and feminine traits. All societies display and juts masculinity and femininity different, but what I am mainly speaking about in regards to the CCG’s standards of masculinity are the hegemonic circle of corporate culture. Which the CCG has always been a nuanced critique of. @randomthoughtpatterns​ summarizes it way better than I ever could so please go read their post. I just hope I can represent their argument well.

Anyway as I said #4 is the Emperor, it’s the card of masculine traits. The card of the father figure, someone who provides, protects and defends his loved ones. The emperor is stability first and foremost. They are also extremely active and decisive, acting towards bringing a future manifest. Their actions also reflect rule and regulations. They prefer to operate within a defined structure rather than outside of it. All of Mutsuki’s motivations so far reflect a longing for this. Remember, Mutsuki’s primary motivation in all of this is stability, a return to normalcy after having the one guidepost in their lives forcibly ripped away from them and experiencing the total loss of agency with their limbs taken away. All of Mutsuki’s explanations of himself when he is mostly lucid and in control reflects this yearning.

What Mutsuki wants is to correct the initial event of their abandonment. What he hates is the fact that he was abandoned. What he seeks is to climb the CCG ladder of conformity even more in order to correct this abandonment. Mutsuki has literally always operated within the CCG system to achieve what he wants. Even now during the dragon mission, he still stays true to reciting the old system.

Mutsuki doesn’t even kill Yoriko Kuroiwa either. He uses the ghoul countermeasures act, he works within the system, might I remind you doing literally the exact same thing Kaneki did in order to punish Yoriko and draw Eto out. Except Shiono died as a direct result of this and Kaneki cared even less than Mutsuki did. It’s almost like their uh… what’s the word… *puts my tin foil hat on* connected.

The same way that Mutsuki reflects Kaneki’s exact narrative actions, he also reflects Kaneki’s source of trauma and way of coping with that trauma. Remember, Kaneki’s primary beef with his mother has always been the fact that he wasn’t chosen as a priority even though he was literally her direct child. Even at the expense of everyone else, even if it meant letting them all die, Kaneki wanted to be chosen first.

Of course Kaneki chose to be treated as a priority by his mother, but Kaneki’s tendency in response to this childhood neglect and abuse has always been to overcorrect. Kaneki is treated as if he’s the center of the universe by several people who are in fact not actually his parents and don’t owe him that same due.

But Link you say, wasn’t that scene a good thing? And I say AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH. Which in Hylian translates to “Things can be both good and bad.” It’s a good thing that Kaneki is loved, and it’s not wrong that he wants to be loved, but it often comes at the agency of others around him. Kaneki also shows a definite pattern of repeating the same thing his mother did to him on others. This is literally what the Black Goat’s Egg metaphor has always been about.

Kaneki is still doing this and it is still relevant, he named his whole organization Goat, the parental symbolism in Tokyo Ghoul ain’t that subtle folks. So Mutsuki’s primary issue, the same as Kaneki’s is that he was not chosen.

144 even confirms that Kaneki himself knows that he chose to abandon the Q’s.

Even when Kaneki is given a support structure, he himself will never be satisfied with it because he doesn’t just want a family, he wants everybody. That’s why I can’t agree with the majority of posts that say “Kaneki is happy now because he just wants to create a family with Touka…” that’s literally never been the case with Kaneki, he always will try to protect everyone and everything rather than choosing one person. The option is of course presented to him to simply live within his means, but he never takes it. Kaneki himself is aware of this.

It’s literally never going to be enough for him. Kaneki himself admits this, there are several times where if he had just stopped and been able to settle with one thing he would have been happy. Kaneki doesn’t want to be just loved by one person though, his desire is to be loved by everyone.

Let’s avoid the word selfish for now though, and simply refer to this as a bad coping mechanism. Kaneki “overcorrects.” He has always overcorrected and flipped between extremes.

That’s why the seven Kaneki personalities all seem so vastly different even though as a whole they are the same person. Kaneki’s method has always been to find one single thing he thinks is wrong with his current self, and flip it in order to fix the situation. However, that never works so the pattern keeps repeating. Kuroneki too gentle -> Shironeki too unstable -> Haise too weak -> Makkuroneki wants to die -> Kingneki values life too much -> Dragoneki completely indiscriminate towards life.

To go even further, Haise while discintly trying to grow up and imagine himself in a parental position,when the pressure got too great for him imagined his other self as an agencyless child that needed to be protected.



Kaneki also intentionally positioned himself as the parental figure of the Quinx, only to knowingly abandon them later. Without even any kind of explanation at all, he cut them off entirely.

Remember at the time, Kaneki’s intention was not to become the one eyed king. It was to commit suicide. Remember also, that we’re shown just in the previous arc that this is exactly what Shirazu’s dad did to him, killing himself when the payments for Shirazu’s sister became too great and forcing the burden entirely on him, his child.

Kaneki didn’t abandon the Quinx to become king. He abandoned the Quinx to kill himself, and then very conveniently became king afterwards. So in summary Kaneki’s tendency is to overcorrect the circumstances of his abuse by always wanting to be the number one priority or changing himself so that will happen (because Kaneki views the reason he is not loved to do entirely with himself and the idea he has to earn that love), Kaneki also ends up repeating again and again the abandonment that Kaneki himself resents so much. Kaneki has changed neither of those things about himself, and I know this because if he had the tiniest amount he wouldn’t be a giant fucking monster right now. Kaneki says this in 144, very directly, if he had changed even a little bit the result would be different. If both Furuta says this, and Kaneki agrees, I’m not sure how the narrative could make it any clearer.

Why am I belaboring this point so bad? It’s because I’ve read about 500 posts on how Kaneki is never responsible for anything he does because of the circumstances and abuse which drive him to his actions, while simultaenously making Kaneki out to be some serial killer whose love for Kaneki is completely selfish and evil.



So let me make this point again for the people in back. There is no single thing that Mutsuki has done, that Kaneki has not done, and done worse. Mutsuki is implied to pick people off as targets and kill them because of a compulsion to kill. Kaneki’s body count is in the hundreds at this point. Not from Dragon, but rather from Shironeki. In the novels Kaneki during his 6th ward phase literally is said to have picked targets and hunted them down one by one and cannibalized them because he considered them acceptable to kill. He literally exhibited serial killer behavior. A decision he made to hunt ghouls down en masse when he was mostly conscious and in control of himself, before centipede, before dragon.

He also… the exact same way as Mutsuki instead of hunting down people willy nilly, specifically chose targets that he deemed as acceptable. Mutsuki specifically uses the CCG as a way to acceptably be violent towards others. Kaneki does this in the novels, specifically tracks down targets that are acceptable to eat. He does this to Noyama in the book.

After taking off on his own, Noyama’s brutal crimes brought him to the attention of Ken Kaneki. He was tracked down by Kaneki’s group, and cornered in a vacant building where he had been hiding out. After a fierce battle, he was defeated and eaten by Kaneki.



Mutsuki doesn’t just lash out against Akira because she was in the way, or at least not just because of that. Mutsuki does it because he could get away with it. If Akira broke the countermeasures act then his violence was acceptable.

There is nothing that Mutsuki has done, that does not emulate Kaneki in some way. There is nothing Mutsuki has not done, that Kaneki has not already done, for almost the exact same reasons. The one difference is that Mutuski is active, and Kaneki is passive. Mutsuki wants to rip his agency away from others, while other people willingly volunteer their agency to Kaneki. This is what Kaneki wants though, he wants the world to revolve around him.

An overcorrection yes, and perhaps an understandable one. Kaneki is a character whose selfless for a long time, and then suddenly snaps back into feats of incredible selfishness. As I said I’m trying to abandon the language of “selfish/selfless” because it muddies the waters. The point is not that Kaneki should be more selfless or selfish, but that Kaneki should be more aware to his self and the fact that he’s overcorrecting. However, if we were to use the “Kaneki is so selfless all the time, therefore he has a right to be selfish and place himself first, which is what he realizes in his relationship with Touka” argument, remember that this is Furuta logic.

“I did one extremely selfless thing when I was young, then later on I walked it back and acted selfish and possessive instead…” is exactly what Furuta’s logic and reasoning for what he did to Rize is.



I mean literally Furuta says the only thing he cares about now is marrying Rize, and that literally becomes Kaneki’s only motivation for becoming King.

Now that the dead horse is so beaten that I have split the atoms of the dead horse let’s get back to the point… Mustuki’s behavior is a reaction to abandonment, but active rather than passive. Mutsuki himself literally repeats all of the lines that the other people Kaneki has abandoned say, just in a darker tone.

Mutsuki even literally describes word for word a honey moon phase in his and Kaneki’s relationship and a longing for Kaneki simply to return to that.

The abuse may be terrible, but the promises and generosity of the honeymoon phase give the victim the false belief that everything will be all right. [x].



I’m not saying that Kaneki is directly abusive, but rather that Mutsuki’s mentality and the way he views the world is entirely as that of an abuse victim. Up to and including hanging onto past moments of kindness that were shown to them as a way to stay invested in a relationship. This is something that /abuse victims do/ it’s a /symptom of abuse/ not of being a weird serial killer.

“He has to have a reason, he was nice to us, etc… etc…”



Literally everything Mutsuki does, every action that he takes is a reaction to abuse. Mutsuki’s reaction to that abuse, has always been to change himself and conform. That’s why I consider the Torso arc actually extremely valuable to Mutsuki’s character even though others consider it gratuitous. What Mutsuki is subjected to is literally the exact same heterosexual society dominant expectations that he was abused for as a child. The heterosexual expectation that a man and a woman have no choice but to fall in love, I mean Torso literally screams it in Mutsuki’s face. That his love has to be returned because he’s a man. There’s literally no way to make it more obvious.

Mutsuki’s response to those desires has always been to conform while secretly resenting it. Mutsuki’s response is to lie, and placate. A common response of victims of abuse to their abuser, is to do everything in their power to try to placate the abuser.

Tension builds over common domestic issues like money, children or jobs. Verbal abuse begins. The victim tries to control the situation by pleasing the abuser, giving in or avoiding the abuse. None of these will stop the violence. Eventually, the tension reaches a boiling point and physical abuse begins.



This is how Mutsuki views himself, all of his actions are specifically in response to abuse.

Men in Mutsuki’s life have always taken whatever they wanted from Mutsuki and then left him behind. That is how he views it, “I guess this is my destiny, to always be stolen away by men.” So Mutsuki’s response. is not only clinging to the only ‘good man’ that Mutsuki perceives as ever having met in his life, but also attempting to take back the affection rather than simply letting Sasaki take it and run with it. To correct his abandonment and abuse.

Mutsuki describes themselves in a feminine way when thinking of their affection for Sasaki. Remember though, Mutsuki has always viewed femininity as a bad thing. Feminine is something to be objectified and taken away by masculinity.

So once again this is an attempt to reclaim that. (This post is about abuse and cycle of abuse and masculine and feminine traits, please stay out of my inbox I’m not talking about Mutsuki’s perception of their gender). Mutsuki views the masculine as takers, and the feminine as those who are taken from. Mutsuki has a literally distinct pattern, Touka, Yoriko, Akira. His violence is never random. Mutsuki doesn’t go on killing sprees he’s never been shown to do that. There is always a pattern.

Mutsuki targets women, because he sees them as objects that are important to the men in proximity to them.

Mutsuki does not want to be on the end of that objectification, so his response is to objectify others. To render them as possessions, the torso-ifying has literally always been about objectification and stripping all the agency away.

So Mutsuki acts in response to abuse and objectification, and their response (like Kaneki) has always been to change themselves in hope of some way of escaping that abuse and objectification. This once again relates back to the emperor.

Domination of the mind over the heart is sometimes unwanted or best avoided but with the Emperor, it is necessary and even welcomed. If you are facing difficult choices, you must maintain your concentration and focus. Enjoy the assertiveness and confidence that this self-control and focus brings.



This is not a central behavior though, this is not innate to Mutsuki’s character. It’s something he was specifically taught by the CCG. The reason Mutsuki displays violent behavior is because the CCG saw Mutsuki’s abuse and tendencies and deemed them acceptable as long as Mutsuki pointed that violence in the direction of ghouls. The environment that made that abuse acceptable was the CCG.



There’s a scene where a character quite literally walks in on Mutsuki being violent towards a cat something that can’t fight back, and rather than stopping them literally just handed them a knife. The CCG as a whole are the ones who handed Mutsuki the knife, knowing literally exactly what Mutsuki was and how he would use it. The knives that Mutsuki now uses against Touka, were literally taught and handed to him by Juuzou, because Mutsuki was told repeatedly that the best way to solve his problems was simply to become better at killing ghouls.

Everything about Mutsuki was given to him by the CCG. The CCG knowingly chose to put an incredibly dangerous biological weapon into the back of a known murderer, and then repeatedly told that person the path to security and doing the right thing came in murdering ghouls.

Which is why I’ve never viewed Torso as an interruption to Mutsuki’s arc that caused it to veer wildly off course. Kaneki was always selfish and trying to make himself the victim in every situation before Yamori tortured him. Seidou was always entitled and the victim of his own hero fantasy before Kanou torutred him. Mutsuki was always a victim of extreme masculine abuse whose every action was dictated in response to that abuse, and who sought to overcome their weakness by gaining physical strength and changing themselves before Torso Torsoed them. In every single case we’ve seen so far, these traumatic incidents don’t cause the issue. They aggravate them.

There was no nice Mutsuki that was trying to live reasonably within their means. Mutsuki never fell from anywhere. They were always like this. The “nice” Mutsuki was simply placating to avoid conflict, but even that was behavior heavily rooted and influenced in his abuse.

Mutsuki even before Torso was a serial placater. What Mutsuki did was not act nice, but rather act entirely avoidant of conflict. He even says it directly to Juuzou, what scared him was the fighting. Even what Mutsuki does in this scene, is placate Urie with affection after Urie lashes out rather selfishly, in order to calm him down. It’s a heartwarming scene of forgiveness and reaching out, but it also is based in Mutsuki’s logic of always letting men do whatever they want to them and telling them what they want to hear in the small hope that they’ll calm down and leave him alone. It’s both things.

This doesn’t actually solve the issue at all, because later Urie berserked once again and did the exact same thing to Saiko, only to have to be told the exact same thing again.

It’s not a coincidence that Urie thinks of Mutsuki at the end of this arc after being brought down again.

So the question is why doesn’t Mutsuki accept Urie’s affection right now, even though Urie’s is much healthier and on more even grounds as Sasaki. It’s because Urie also subjected Mutsuki to that exact same masculine expectations. It’s important to remember that part of the reason it was specifically Aura and Mutsuki who left the Q’s, is because those two people also happened to be the greatest targets of Urie’s own jerkish tendencies.

Urie lashed out at both of them verbally, and also targeted their insecurities several time. Mutsuki knows that he’s a liar, and Urie’s favorite insult for him Pre-Shirazu death was ‘Hypocrite.’ Even when Urie was concerned for Mutsuki’s life and the others around him, it came out in the form of yelling and insults.

Urie blames Shiarazu’s death for the fact that the Quinx broke up, but he’s never thought to maybe… I dunno… apologize for verbally insulting Mutsuki and Aura all the time.

Urie’s narrative is extremely “They left after Shirazu died” and not so much, “I drove them away.” As I said I doubt it’s a coincidence that the two members of the Quinx that Urie historically treated the worst, are the ones who ended up on the opposite side of the schism.

It’s not abusive and I’m not going to call it that, because abuse requires patterns and power differentials, but it is… being a jerk. Urie lashed out at everything and everyone around him and for the most part it was tolerated. It was even placated by Mutsuki, but that doesn’t mean that Mutsuki accepted it. The reason that Mutsuki cannot see Urie the same way that Mutsuki sees Sasaki is because Urie is very much still a participant in the masculine system that Mutsuki is victimized by. Urie even objectifies, idealizes and places Mutsuki on a pedestal in the exact same way Kaneki does to Touka in a misplaced expression of their affection. There’s a reason that these panels resemble each other so much.

Remember that Urie’s character is also somebody who seeks to conform, unlike Mutsuki though Urie was always accepted much more readily. When Urie throws a temper tantrum on a mission and violently lashes out against his squad members, he’s always promoted rather than disciplined.

Urie’s attempts to sabotage and his resentment of Kuroiwa is seen as a rivalry by the overly masculine Kuroiwas, and thus none of the terrible things he thought or said about Takeomi are ever held against him.

Urie ends his confrontation with Furuta, perfectly accepted into the system of masculinity and standing in the place where his father once stood. Even though we’re already told that this is not what Urie wants, and the path that leads him to destruction.

As I said it’s no coincidence that those who go along with Furuta’s regime are the traditionally non masculine, Juuzou who is prepubscent, Mutsuki, Ui who is remarked upon as being femine several times and unlike Take and Arima thinks often with his emotions rather than his head, and the literal children.

Hajime literally says that only cool men can fight him. The ones who rebelled against Furuta’s regime within the CCG were the traditionalists and the traditionally masculine, the old boys club.

The CCG is returned to it’s old status by Marude’s hands. However, Marude represents the same toxic masculinity that Furuta was exaggerating in the first place. Marude does absolutely nothing at all to distinguish himself from Furuta or even change his ways. Urie even says this literally, that Marude is the type of person who will even use old women to succeed.

If Marude has an arc, it’s that his masculinity and bravado have always prevented him from saying what he really feels, and that is completely unchanged in Marude.

The one thing Marude says pre-hide is that there’s no reward for meaningless death. His issue with the Washuu seems to primarily about how they manipulated investigators into phantom conflicts.

Yet we see in the current arc, none of that bravado is dropped at all. The same bravado that leads Marude to command men to their deaths rather than admit weakness. Rather than admit to it or worry, Marude remains cocky. His response to men dying under his orders once again is to double down on the bravado rather than look honestly at the loss.

You cant’ say that Marude isn’t a participant in the patriarchy that corrupts the CCG, especially since half of the fandom now calls him “Marudad.” They wouldn’t if there wasn’t something distinctly authoritative and masculine in the character.

So Furuta is excised, the Hegemonic masculinity is restored and this time Urie is on the side of the CCG. He picks Hegemonic masculinity because he’s finally accepted into it, however, on the other hand Mutsuki cannot be accepted. This is why Urie’s argument fails to reach Mutsuki entirely.

Urie’s argument to convince Mutuski is once again rooted in the hegemonic masculinity structure of authority. “It’s right because the higher ups told us it’s right.” Juuzou is simply told it’s okay to choose for himself by Marude. Everybody cooperates with the ghouls because Juuzou tells them it’s okay. The ghouls are cooperated with not because it’s determined they have a right to live, but it’s proven they are “useful.” The logic that strips people down into resources and objectifies them in a top down fashion is still there. Even Kimi’s and by extension Kanou’s method of saving ghoul kind was not to prove that they are sentient and that it’s a net wrong to exterminate and genocide sentient lives that are capable of feeling emotion and pain (ala Ender’s game, or the speaker of the dead trilogy, of Phillip K Dick’s Do Androids Dream fo Electric Sheep), but rather to convince the CCG that they are useful. To reduce them once more down into parts, and Kimi quite literally is so utiliatarian she doesn’t care about a body count in the thousands as she strip mined both humans and ghouls for research material.



“If I can convince people that ghouls have medical use, if I can convince other people of their use, they’ll be accepted into society.” That’s her logic, to appease once again rather than tear down the system that renders people into uses and objects.



After all how is Juuzou’s complex arc simply resolved by Marude just telling him to make his own decisions. Damn, if only somebody had just TOLD Shinji to get in the robot, the entirety of evangelion would have been solved so easily. So Mutsuki is told by the system that has told him repeatedly, to forget about his own personal problems and focus at the situation at hand, the system that has systematically exploited him again and again to once more simply shut up and cooperate and Mutsuki rejects that.

If Mutsuki and Aura’s problems are rooted in their own inability to try as they might, to fit into the hegemonic system of masculinity. At the inferiority they feel for doing so, because Aura is sensitive and childish, and Mutsuki is passive and conflict avoidant. If their response is to try to build up their own strength at the expense of others in order to make themselves more secure… if what’s wrong is that they are afraid of their own weakness that they’ve been taught to see weakness as a bad thing… then how is calling them a wimp the proper response?

Mutsuki and Aura were both created by slipping through the cracks in flaws of hegemonic masculinity, but because Saiko, Urie, Hisao, and Higemaru all still wish to conform to that system, they’re all completely unable to reach out or come up with any kind of argument in order to stop Mutsuki or Aura.

The same way that the system failed Mutsuki every step of the way, Urie and Saiko also deliberately failed to confront Mutsuki at every step too. Urie says this quite clearly as to why… it’s because he didn’t want the perfect of image he carried of Mutsuki in his head to be ruined. He wanted to objectify the same Mutsuki he wished to save and come home. The Mutsuki who placated him.

So when Mutsuki says this line. It’s actually a callback to this.

Touka’s affection for Kaneki is rooted in the fact that he gave her life value, sos he no longer had to give it to herself. So Touka herself would never have to love herself or assign value to her own life, because Kaneki would do it for her.

This is something that’s literally never been addressed in Touka’s arc, her own self loathing and self harm, and the fact that she’s still doing it. (Eating human food again just like Arata, just like Yoriko, wandering straight into danger while still pregnant.) She’s never had to confront it because she still has the Kaneki bandage. Kaneki will see her as beautiful in her place, and of course that’s not a bad thing as all, but Touka should still learn to love herself on her own. She deserves to love herself and be free of her own self loathing. The point is however, that Mutsuki’s kagune is drawing exact visual parallels to Touka here a few chapters after it’s brought up.

Mutsuki’s line here is a rejection, the complete and utter opposite of that sentiment. Mutsuki does not want to exist to give Urie’s life value and meaning. They do not under any circumstances want to become an object.

Therefore because of that, Urie and Saiko are going to fail entirely. They’re weaker than Mutsuki is, because the place they’re trying to convince Mutsuki to go to is to simply conform again and cooperate for the greater good. To repress everything like they are.

Except if what makes the Q’s strong is their suppression, than Mutsuki is several levels ahead of Saiko and Urie. Mutsuki so effectively compartmentalizes that both their RC Count stays entirely low in their blood and they pass as human despite being the most ghoul like and having the most ghoul like qualities of the Q’s, but also that Mutsuki compartmentalizes so effectively that he can literally change his own personality and flip like a light switch.

Which is why I love this one scene so much. Saiko’s magic kagune that saved Urie before, is countered effortlessly.

If Saiko’s strength comes from natural talent. If she’s able to maintain an extremely high level kagune, but with a low rc count and therefore does not pay the price that most ghouls pay for acquiring such power (loneliness, psychological damage, mass slaughter, rejection from society), if Saiko is able to maintain a kagune without any of those

Then she has to invoke some kind of consequence for the narrative to be balanced. Arima is the strongest ghoul investigator but he hates killing, has almost no agency, and is slowly dying. Kaneki becomes the strongest ghoul but he starts hyper aging, and then can’t bring himself to eat or be violent properly against humans. Here is Saiko’s weak point, when it comes to confronting Mutsuki her massive kagune control is essentially useless, because Mutsuki is better at conforming than her. Mutsuki has a pathological need to conform. Mutsuki’s kagune control therefore, is 800 times stronger.

Mutsuki is copying! The same way Kaneki already has. Mutsuki seeks conformity the same way Kaneki always wanted to.

Urie and Saiko are not going to beat Mutsuki with the approach of telling him to calm down and conform, and overpower them, because they are not as good at conforming and hiding parts of themselves as Mutsuki is. The same way nobody was ever going to be Furuta by conforming to the regime and the system, because Furuta simply plays the system and dehumanizes himself better than anybody else in the manga.

It’s not even a matter of “Mutsuki should be told he’s loved because he deserves to be part of the Quinx family” anymore. Urie and Saiko’s strategy is simply not going to work because they cannot overcome the antagonist in this situation. They literally never even overcame Furuta… he just… gave up and walked off after he got what he wanted.

Which is where I reach my final point, chapter 153 is named “One piece of trash.” Chapter 90, the fight where the Seidou, AKira and Amon confrontation finally began is called trash.

What exactly is trash? It’s thrown away. Seidou and Mutsuki’s point of resentment is that they fell through the cracks, and were abandoned by the same people who say they will save everyone. Amon says he came here to save Seidou, but also let Houji nearly kill him and only interfered when Akira was in danger.

The chapter beforehand, Takizawa is told that Houji was being kind by trying to kill him and that he’s terrible for insisting he still wants to live. That the proper response would have been to simply shut up and die.

It’s also important to notice that while Seidou managed to salvage it partway, this situation went horribly wrong. Amon started his attempt to save Seidou by ripping his arm off, in a direct parallel to the same kind of pain Kanou inflicted on him.

At the time I made this meta saying this conflict was going to go horribly wrong, precisely because Amon insisted on fighting it out rather than simply trying to talk to Seidou to begin with. Especially since Seidou was quite clearly begging for some small amount of acknowledgement. [1, 2]. I think everybody who read this scene is conveniently forgetting that this entire scene is a screaming hellfire disaster of miscommunication. It ends with Akira half dead, Amon berserk as a kakuja, and Takizawa clinging to the barely alive Akira.

Takizawa paractically begs Akira to just tell him with her words that his life is worthwhile, that he should live. All she had to do was say something, but she waits until the last possible moment and then decides she suddenly can’t stand to see Takizawa die, even though she followed Houji’s order to exterminate him earlier and told him himself he should have lied down and died four chapters ago.

Akira literally waited until things were life or death, and then reaction to Mutsuki’s aggression to finally do something. All because these characters are just so terrible at feelings. Almost dying, being whipped on a kagune repeatedly, murdering your own former friend in cold blood (remember Takizawa didn’t attack Houji and Akira then he saved them from Tatara and Houji gave the extermination order), apparently all of that is easier than just directly saying that she feels guilty over Takizawa’s death.

These characters have proven time and time again that they would quite literally rather die than talk about their feelings. This is how conformed they are and how much they repress.

If there is one point that is made again and again in the arc post 143 is that things did not have to turn out this way. “Things didn’t have to get this bad, we could have saved them earlier. If only I had done something different.”

Mutsuki is a clear case of that. Urie and Saiko are not going to be rewarded for literally letting it get this bad, for letting Mutsuki slip this far and then going “Oh, okay now we have to stop Mutsuki because it’s directly interfering with the mission.” For forgetting and not caring about Mutsuki until suddenly he got in the way of things.

Of course I believe the Q’s are going to recnocile, but just like Takizawa, Akira and Amon the fact that they’ve chosen to go directly to fighting rather than talking, is telling about how much they’re going to talk about their feelings in this situation.

I’m not saying Mutsuki is irredeemable, or that the Q’s are never going to be whole again. I’m saying that this approach they’re using right now won’t work, and it’ll get far far worse before it gets better. That once again we’re going to see another screaming hellfire explosion of feelings like we did on Rueshima.

That not only that but you should keep in mind when reading this scene that both Urie and Saiko waited until literally the worst moment possible to finally confront Mutsuki. That they decided to finally have this conversation on the BACK OF GODZILLA. That while Mutsuki is responsible for his own actions ultimately, the same way that Sasaki deliberately chose to make himself out to be the parental figure of the Q’s and then dodged that responsbility the second it became too hard and inconvenient, Saiko and Urie themselves were completely obsessed with saving Urie and CHOSE THAT RESPONSIBILITY FOR THEMSELVES only to suddenly forget about it when it became too hard and Mutsuki did not comply to their own narrative.

It’s not that Mutsuki is obligated to be saved. It’s that Urie and Saiko both literally chose to take that responsibility and then half assed it and gave up entirely on it. It’s important for Saiko and Urie’s characters, because they have to work towards the goals they set for themselves, and both of them have consistent patterns of behavior of completely giving up and losing focus of their reason to fight. (They are Kaneki-lite after all). So it’s important to Saiko and Urie’s characters to resolve this conflict, because this is the goal they set for themselves, they are the ones who wanted to save Mutsuki. Not because it is owed to Mutsuki, but because they themselves set themselves up on this path.

If Urie wants the Q’s to be a family, he has to treat them, open up to them, and view them as a family not a military brigade. My point is that if the Q’s want to stop Mutsuki the strategy that they’re using right now is doomed to failure, because as we’ve said before several times all of these characters would rather die than admit their true feelings and motivations.

Mutsuki himself would rather die than face who he really is. Which is utlimately what I suspect Mutsuki’s true motivation in this line is as well.

It’s a lie, Mutsuki is a liar, their tell has always been tugging on their own clothes around the waste. Mutsuki is baiting Urie into killing him, because as he said he doesn’t care anymore. He’s given up. That’s the kind of ending Urie is going to get if he keeps going down this route.

The answer doesn’t lie in fighting, but rather in feelings. Except this is Tokyo Ghoul and feelings are rather incendiary so it’s probably going to explode and get 100 times worse.