Tokyo Ghoul #3: "Worst"

Touka stands over the dismembered body of the old drunk. Ken stares at her in confusion and terror. She repeats her offer of the corpse, and starts looking a little concerned for her fellow ghoul's health on account of him just gawking there silently for so long. Then, she notices that only one of his eyes is red, which isn't how ghouls typically transform; it's either both eyes, or neither.

Apparently those swollen, shiny black eyes are supposed to be "red." I guess this is a case where the limitations of black and white do the work a favor, because the monochrome depiction of those eyes made me imagine something much more disturbing than the apparent authorial intent heh.

The eye detail prompts Touka to look at Ken's face more carefully, which leads to her recognizing him as that boy that it looked like Rize was about to eat on right before she died. Touka's confused. What the hell sequence of events could have possibly resulted in this? Was she NOT about to eat him, even though she was treating him exactly like she usually acted to lure in her prey? He obviously isn't human, though. This makes zero sense.

I do like how the way Touka narrates her thoughts, showing her rational thought process given the evidence available to her. It's a very relatable progression of thoughts, as she tries to puzzle out what she's looking at and has the same emotions throughout the process that a human would. Again, showing without telling us that ghouls are quite humanlike in most mental and emotional respects, even if there are almost certainly some important differences as well.

That said...it doesn't seem like ghouls have a special ability to recognize each other while they're in human form. It seems like Touka would probably just assume that Ken and Rize both mistook each other for human and simultaneously tried to hunt each other, no? Or maybe they do have such an ability, but it isn't activating here for some reason, possibly related to Ken's hybrid state. I don't know.

Well, Ken might be as confused as Touka is, but unlike her he's also terrified. So, this meeting is cut short in much the way you'd expect.

The 2D pattern on Ken's hoodie is bothering me.​

Touka just sort of stares after the retreating Ken, blinking every few seconds.

Then, she sighs, decides she just can't bring herself to eat right now after all, and tosses the old man arm on the ground. It was a weird experience, but Occam's Razor guides her to a conclusion.

Heh.

The next day, a hungry, exhausted Ken takes bath after bath, washes his eye over and over again, trying to make himself feel clean or at least make his eye go back to normal. No success on either front. He gets a call from Hide, asking him if he's still sick. He hasn't seen him since he threw up at the restaurant, and he hasn't been going to classes.

Notably, we also get to see some of Hide's positive qualities, after most of his screentime thus far painting him as a tiresome douchebro. Proactively offering Ken his notes from the classes they share that Ken missed; even though he knows he's not a good note taker it's still the best he can do. Hide's unpleasant in his resting state, but if his friends need help he makes sure to be there for them in whatever way he can.

Hide also reminds Ken that that ersatz Tom Harris whose books he likes so much is doing a book-signing at a store just a couple neighbourhoods away today. If Ken is at all well enough, he probably won't want to miss this.

Since he can't disguise his ghoulish eye, Ken resorts to rigging together an eyepatch for himself to wear. He heads out, if only just to make himself feel a little bit more normal again. And, perhaps, to distract himself from the growing hunger for a little while.

Unfortunately, he succeeds at doing neither. By the time he finishes hiding his deformed eye and dragging his exhausted, depressive self over to the bookstore in question, the event has ended. Figures. Once he no longer has that goal to distract him, and he just has to mope his way back to the dorms, there's nothing to distract him from the people on the street around them. His eye is first drawn to a little girl, possibly the same one he returned the ball to in the park the other day. The hunger grows at the sight of her, so he looks away, but all he can see is another person, and another person, and another person.

Man, woman, child, meat. Meat, meat, meat. Different qualities and quantities of meat. In a few more panels, he's not even seeing them as people at all. Just meat.

People notice him staring, and start getting creeped out. He gnaws on his own finger to stop anyone from seeing that he's salivating, and he runs out of sight as quickly as possible.

Gregor Samsa didn't have it anywhere near this bad. Or...maybe he did? It's a toss-up, honestly. Depends on how much you care about other people's safety relative to your own, I suppose.

Once he's back in his room, Ken - looking ragged and wretched beyond belief now, even without the eye - grabs a knife and heads into the bathroom. Damn. Well. Not sure I can totally blame him, but still, damn. Before doing it, he roars in anguish, wondering why this had to happen to him of all people, and bashes his head and fists against his bathroom mirror.

The rapid healing that follows gives him an idea. A better idea than suicide, hopefully.

Or....um...

Well, I guess it's not the worst plan in the world, but I'd hardly call it the best either.

Actually, I take that back. Thinking about this for a second, it actually might be the worst plan in the world.

If he has superhuman durability, then maybe he can survive the removal of the ghoul organs that caused this transformation. If he passes out during the attempt, or bleeds to unconsciousness before he can reach the phone to call an ambulance, then Hide will have to do it for him. He sends Hide a message asking him to come over and bring those class notes in a few minutes.

Cut them out and mangle them badly enough, and they'll be forced to give him another transplant. Hopefully that will turn him human again. And hopefully he'll be tough enough to survive until then.

His expression as he bites his shirt against the expectation of impossible agony really does speak for itself.

The thing is, though, while I'm reading these panels, I just can't help but wonder why he isn't just telling someone.

Like, seriously. What does he think he can accomplish here that wouldn't have better odds of success if he just went to a hospital or police station and explained his situation?

Is he afraid of being kept prisoner and experimented on for years instead of just being given the sweet release of death? Maybe. But, does he really think the doctors WON'T NOTICE his superhuman toughness and residual signs of fast healing while they're operating on him? Even assuming that he reverts to normal human as soon as those kidneys are out of him, won't they notice that the knife wounds had started the process of healing before that moment? They're going to find out anyway. Why not tell them?

He's panicked and having an existential crisis, but...I'm not sure if that's enough to excuse this. The way he's acting seems more appropriate to a world where ghouls aren't publically known to exist and he's afraid of not being believed. That is not this world. I suspect this is a case of the still-learning mangaka not quite managing to realize what makes his story different from those that inspired him yet.

Anyway, it doesn't matter. Ken's face and hands might heal quickly, but his stomach is full-on uncuttable.

Unless he can stab himself with the force of a steel beam falling from rooftop height, it ain't happening.

So, with that option no longer an option, he does the only possible thing left and goes to the authorities withNOPE HE STILL DOESN'T DO THAT FOR SOME FUCKING REASON. Instead, succumbing to spiritual defeat and moral damnation, he goes back outside (not sure if he bothered to get the notes from Hide, or if he left him to knock on the door of an empty dorm room) and drags himself to the cafe where Touka works. He arrives just as she's closing, and it takes her a moment before she recognizes him and asks what he wants this time after being so weird toward her before.

This really is trippy.

Falling to his knees, Ken begs Touka for help. Telling her how horrible everything has been for him since the transformation. She, in turn...asks him what cake tastes like. Cake, or tarts, or any other baked goods for that matter. What they REALLY taste like, to humans. She's only ever known them to be disgusting. She asks him what it's like to not have to live in secret, hiding from ghoul-hunters every day of your life from birth onward. Not having to deal with other members of your species who break under the pressure and go on wild killing sprees that might get the entire lot of you caught and exterminated.

He thinks being like her is awful? Well, thanks. Thanks a lot. She really appreciates the sentiment. But also, it hurts even more because it's actually true.

So, if he thinks she should help him, well...he can go fuck himself.

Damn. "Trippy" isn't even half of it.

Like...man. Okay, so. Ghouls prey on humans. But they're also terrified of humans. And, at least in some cases, jealous of humans. They have an understanding that their prey is actually superior to them in most respects besides individual strength and toughness. That they are few, and therefore weak, and must hide in the cracks and dare to strike only when desperation and opportunity align.

Sort of casts a new light on Rize's sadism. Letting out her constant fear of humanity as a whole in cathartic, vengeful dominance displays over individual humans when she can manage to get one alone.

At the same time, ghouls aren't misunderstood. They're not persecuted in the traditional sense of undeserved or needless targeting. They kill humans. They *have* to kill humans. Humans, in turn, *have* to defend themselves. Peaceful coexistence is a biological impossibility. If the ghouls are losing, well, that's just nature taking its course. If the ghouls start going mad with fear and resentment at their only source of prey coming to overpower them and start getting wilfully malicious as a result, well, that's also natural. Doesn't make it right. Just makes it happen.

Ken was right. This story is a tragedy. Not just for him, though. For everyone. Everyone is terrified. Everyone is lashing out. Everyone is more or less justified in being terrified and lashing out.

It's the same themes that cosmic horror often explores, but the framing and attitude here are less horror and more what Ken said. Cosmic tragedy, then?

As Ken tries to process what he's just been told, an old man steps out of the cafe behind Touka and tells her to give the poor guy a break. Seems like he's her boss. And, with so many ghouls apparently being regular patrons or employees of his establishment, it stands to reason that he's a pillar of the Tokyo ghoul community.

Touka tells him that Ken used to be human, and she's not sure how that's possible or how far they can trust him. Bossman - I'll just call him Pickman for now - tells her that that doesn't matter. He's a ghoul now. Ghouls look after ghouls, no matter what. That's how things are going to work for as long as Pickman is in charge around these parts.

Touka acquiesces, quietly apologizing. Pickman ushers them back into the cafe, and then down into a basement under it.

Inside the walk-in freezer are a great number of paper-wrapped packages. One of which is generously given to Ken, along with the reassurance that this should last him for at least a little while.

Where does it come from? How do they get it? I don't know. Ken doesn't know either. He just knows that he needs it.

End chapter.


I've already gone into the existential aspects of this story. Predator and prey, the undeniable truth of life's brutality that no amount of fiction about "sapience" or "personhood" can falsify. But, I feel like it's getting political now, too. The friendly ghoul leader-man trying to soothe Ken's conscience by giving him a flash-frozen box of impersonal-looking meat instead of forcing him to look his prey in the eyes before killing it is...pretty dang self-explanatory.

Merging the political with the existential, though. It creates an interesting scenario. The ghouls are the first world consumers, but they're also weak and vulnerable in a way that - uncomfortably, I must admit - maps to persecuted minorities hiding their cultural practices. So, I have really complicated feelings.

On one hand, the conjunction of "underground minority living in fear of flash mobs" with "man-eating predators" reminds me a LOT of antisemitic blood libel. Like, a lot a lot.

On the other hand, the way that the story frames this as an absolute biological neccessity for the ghouls rather than something they could learn to live without, well...that's not how the blood libel ever worked. This isn't coming from remotely the same place (and I'm not sure a Japanese author would even have enough familiarity with that historical blood libel to draw on it, consciously or otherwise).

Being critical again, drawing a parallel between the ghouls and the global consumers sort of implies that the imperial powers HAVE to keep exploiting and oppressing the rest of the world. That they'd die without it, and that they're therefore blameless. That this is the way the world needs to be, so there's no point in working toward a better way.

But then, on the other hand 1) the ghouls are much too weak and threatened for those to be directly analogous, and 2) the story isn't really taking the side of the ghouls, per se. And also, with me being only three chapters in, I don't yet know that there really isn't another solution to their conflict. Where did the ghouls come from? How long have they been around? They're close enough to humanity that a simple organ transplant can turn one into the other, which isn't generally how things work in nature. Who knows how much of what Touka believes is necessary actually is so, versus being mere tradition and propaganda?

I don't know. It's interesting no matter what. And the dialogue and art are both very good, so no complaints when it comes to production values. Even if I end up strongly disagreeing with what this story has to say, I do think it's at least making an honest, heartfelt attempt at saying it. I'll have to see when I get to more Tokyo Ghoul a bit further ahead in queue.