Tokyo Ghoul #2: "Oddity”

The second issue starts us off with another unsettling literary allusion. This time to the work of a real life author.

Gregor Samsa turned into a "beetle," according to Nabakov's literary detectivework. This is the first time I've seen that interpreted as a beetle larva rather than an imago. He was a young adult, after all, so a mature beetle makes more sense. But then, looking this up, apparently Kafka himself was insistent on the exact type of insect (or even if it was a literal translation at all) being ambiguous, to the point where he didn't even want illustrations of it in any printed version of the story. News to me! Why did my English Lit professor not mention this? Eh, I knew I couldn't trust her.

Anyway, Ken read "The Metamorphosis" in grade school, and it was a story that made a big impression on him. Now, looking back on his time at the hospital, he identifies with it much more strongly than he hoped he ever would. These thoughts of his serve as a kind of voiceover caption for a couple pages of recap, from the ghoul attack to the organ transplant to Ken slowly returning to consciousness and regaining the ability to walk. The surgeon who decided to go through with the transplant despite Rize's body being an authorized donor, Dr. Kano, defends himself before a medical ethics tribunal, making a convincing case for it having been the only way to save Ken in the available timeframe. We don't see if he's exonerated or not, but the framing of the scene implies that he gets off pretty lightly if not entirely scot free.

Heh, almost kind of getting shades of "Monster" here. I get the impression that Dr. Kano really meant the best, and is the type to break the rules to do the right thing, but here he is (most likely) creating a monster by doing so.

So, Ken recovers. But he knows there's something wrong. He doesn't know what, but he does know.

We see a follow-up meeting with Dr. Kano, asking how Ken is doing, reminding him that he still needs to take his immunosuppressants scrupulously if he doesn't want complications. He's recovering well, all things considered. He should be be able to return to school within the week at this rate. However, Dr. Kano heard something potentially problematic.

Ken has barely been eating. His recovery is going to stall, and eventually reverse, if he keeps this up.

Ken assures him that there's nothing wrong with the food. He's not having any reactions, or digestive problems. Or, well. He doesn't *think* there's anything wrong with the food. It seems fine. But...well. He has another hospital dinner that evening, and he just can't bring himself to eat it.

It feels and tastes exactly the same way it should. The tofu and miso and rice feel and taste the same way he remembers them, and he was always fine with those sensations. He just doesn't like them any more. They disgust him. His sense of taste hasn't changed, but his personal taste has. So much so that he can barely choke down a few tiny nibbles.

The implication seems to be that ghouls don't and can't eat normal food, even just for the sake of fitting in. Human flesh and blood are the only things they can find even remotely palatable. Or...maybe other ghouls can manage, and Ken is having more extreme reactions on account of the unconventional (and maybe only partial?) vector of his infection.

Weeks pass. He eats almost nothing. But...he still recovers just fine. And also never really feels all that hungry. By the time of his release, he's been sneakily throwing food away just because all the questions were making him uncomfortable.

He wonders if maybe he's turning into a tiny insect, appetite first. Doing a slower, more complete, job of this than Gregor Samsa. He says it to himself as a joke, but his laugh is nervous and uncomfortable.

The day he gets out, Ken is emailed an invitation by Hide to celebrate his recovery at an American-style grill place they both like. Big portions, tons of meat and sauces, cute waitresses. It...really seems more like Hide's vibe than Ken's, but if the two of them have been friends for a longtime I can see how Ken might have grown to be a regular of its. And...okay, now that we actually meet the wait staff, I think this place might specifically be a Japanese Hooters-knockoff.

I've eaten at Hooters exactly once in my life. The wings are supposed to be really good, but I was disappointed. Maybe this "Big Girl Grill" place is better at actual food. Or maybe I just have unusual taste in hot wings.

Hide boisterously points out to Ken how great the food smells, how hot the girls are, all the human-appreciable pleasures of the flesh that surround them that he's now able to enjoy once again. Ken nods and "uh huhs" along. As they wait for Hide's order of two of the usual to arrive, Hide raises the subject of Rize. Apparently the circumstances of Ken's surgery have been the subject of a media circus that's still ongoing, even if the main frenzy has died down by now. Huh, surprised nobody's tried to email Ken trying to get an interview in all that time, then. Or maybe they did and he just had so little interest that the comic didn't see fit to mention it.

According to the news reports Hide watched, Rize didn't have any family. Hmm. Wonder what she has listed as her mother and father, though? How much of her was on government record? To what degree do ghouls exist within the system as they feed off of it, and how much continuity is maintained from their former human lives (assuming most of them have those as opposed to being born ghouls somehow)? And, as Hide prattles on, Ken's internal monologue tells us something I have trouble parsing. The reason he hasn't told anyone what happened that night is apparently because...

Why would no one believe him?

It's been established (and the comic is about to reiterate) that it's known by the public that ghouls can disguise themselves as human. There were multiple ghoul attacks on that street during the week or two leading up to that night. Given those factors, why wouldn't people believe him?

There's a more logical motivation sitting right here, of course. Ken knows he had an organ transplant from Rize, and there's a good chance he'd be turned into a research subject or just killed as a potential threat if he came clean. That would make the story work. Why is the comic alleging another, much-less-sensible, motive instead of that one? It's weird.

The food arrives. Hide is telling a dumb story about a friend's girlfriend as they prepare to eat. Ken can't pay attention to him, though. He's gone straight from thinking about Rize to confronting the daunting prospect of eating the giant steakburger that was just set down in front of him.

Ken used to like this dish. He used to order it with Hide all the time. But, even though it tastes and feels and smells the same, he can't stand it.

He tries to eat, and ends up retching all over the table while Hide tries to figure out what just went wrong and the waitresses crowd around in panic.

Later, Ken sits on a park bench, alone. No longer capable of taking part in humanity as he's used to experiencing it, or at least not the parts of humanity you can take part in with Hide. As he wonders about his situation, trying to figure out what's happening to him and desperate to avoid the obvious conclusion, a little kid accidentally tosses a ball toward him. When she comes to reclaim it he gives it back to her without hesitation, but after she takes it he finds himself...looking...at her. In a weird way. His nostrils catching a scent that humans aren't normally programmed to take note of, assuning they can even percieve it at all. The kid sees him staring and sniffing, and gets understandably spooked.

The girl runs off, and the scene ends there. We aren't made privy to Ken's inner monologue here. We don't need to be. His face and his haunted stare as she departs tell it all.

The choice to make the prospective victim a little kid who he meets alone in the park is...definitely evoking something. Gesturing at something real with the fictional ghouls.

Cut ahead to Ken in bed in his dorm, looking miserable and lonely as he watches TV without really paying attention. Interestingly, he hasn't done anything to acknowledge a feeling of hunger. Or even of any sort of alien sensation analogous to hunger. The sight and smell of the kid seemed appetizing to him, but he isn't feeling any sort of NEED to feed. Which is odd.

Or perhaps not. A news conference comes on, about Tokyo's recent ghoul activity. A preeminent scientist who studies ghouls is heading the panel, and...well, he answers some questions about Ken's situation, but also raises some others about the story's worldbuilding.

Ghouls are a bit like large reptiles, it seems. One kill is enough to sustain them for over a month, which means they have plenty of time to plan their attacks, pick out their victims, and move from place to place. If multiple attacks happen in quick succession in the same place, well, it could be because there are a bunch of them who all got hungry at once, but not usually. Most often, those events are the result of a ghoul starting to eat for pleasure rather than necessity. Doing it because they just have to enjoy that taste again, even though they're not hungry.

Interesting. That implies that most ghoul murders are probably never identified as such, and that the size of the ghoul population is therefore most likely impossible to get a good estimate of. The actions of a ghoul only become apparent if something happens to go terribly wrong during a hunt and expose it, or if the ghoul goes "bad" and starts a reckless killing spree.

In Rize's case, it didn't seem to just be the sensual pleasure of eating that motivated a reckless spree, but a sadistic enjoyment of torturing and killing her victims. This implies that her behavior wasn't typical, and most ghouls either don't derive enjoyment from playing with their food that way or at least have enough self-control to only indulge in it when they need food anyway.

Reptile parallels aside, I'm thinking of cats now. Some felid species don't play with their food at all. Some do play with their prey before killing it, but still only go out hunting in the first place when they're hungry. Then there are the fuzzy little psychopaths like our domestic cats that will hunt purely for the purpose of playing with the prey. Most ghouls act like leopards. Rize acted like a housecat.

Additionally, because of their unique set of digestive enzymes and taste bud structures, ghouls can only get nourishment out of human flesh. No other food. Anything other than human is both nutritionally useless and wholly unappetizing to them.

So, presumably, Rize's guts had enough energy in them because of her wildly excessive feeding to fuel Ken's recovery and still have a week or two's worth of juice to spare. But it'll run out sooner or later. Probably sooner, by now.

At the same time...how does nobody know what a ghoul looks like, if we know so much about their biochemistry, metabolism, etc?

If ghoul enzymes have been isolated, shouldn't they have been apparent in Rize's remains? Wouldn't they have tested for those in any victims of sudden, unexplained violence that showed up at night on that street?

Ken's "no one would believe me" assertion becomes even more baffling in light of this, if they know what to look for. Even if they weren't already testing Rize's body, they'd certainly do so if he told them his story.

Hell, if ghouls are known to be living among humanity in secret, why aren't people being routinely checked for ghoul biochemicals just as a matter of course?

Like I said. Plot questions answered, worldbuilding questions raised.

...

Honestly, I'm a little taken aback that ghouls have a biochemistry that can be studied. Rize seemed pretty damned supernatural in how she transformed and such. Are these science monsters, magic monsters, or a mixture of both?

...

Well, anyway. On the screen, ghoul specialist Ogura is being told that with that overly sensory description of how ghouls experience the world, he's kind of seeming like he might be one himself. Heh, I was low-key thinking the same thing as I read his monologue, especially with the unsettling close-up shots of his mouth that some of those panels focused on. He dismisses the question with a chuckle, and says that most ghouls probably don't know nearly about themselves as he knows about them; an outside perspective armed with the scientific method yields a kind of knowledge that insiders might never grasp.

Heh. Not sure if I buy it, but the comic pretty clearly wants the reader to not be entirely sure which way to lean on this guy, so that's working as intended.

Ken understands, now. He knew that it was the ghoul organs causing something weird to happen to him, but he didn't realize that he was experiencing the life of a ghoul full stop. IS he a ghoul? Has he been completely taken over, or is he still some kind of a hybrid? Again, are ghouls in general humans who have been transformed, or were most of them never human to begin with - and where does his condition fit in, in either of those cases?

And then, to his great dread, Ken realizes he's starting to feel hungry.

In Kafka's "Metamorphosis," Ken reminds us, Gregor lost interest in the kind of food he used to enjoy, and started hungering for insect-appropriate fare. Spoiled vegetables. Rotten meat. Moldy cheese. As he goes to his refrigerator and tries, in desperation, to make himself eat one thing after another searching for anything he can stomach, he wonders if there's another moldy cheese that will work for him.

But really, he knew before he even started rummaging what the answer would be. It was a false hope. Denial, really. The TV panel already explained this to him, and Ogura's pronouncements haven't been wrong yet.

One thing this comic is very good at is knowing when to give us the protagonist's thoughts in text, and when it doesn't need to. More importantly, it understands where it can communicate his thoughts much more effectively using meaningful silences and body language, and the artist has enough skill to go through with that. Like, just look at this panel:

Laying on the floor surrounded by discarded food, like the insect he keeps comparing his situation to. But the way he's facing upward, hand on his face in desperation and dread, makes it clear that he's not OF the garbage and food waste. He isn't fighting back feelings of disgust. He's confronting the knowledge that he ISN'T that. That really, he already knew this, and that he's just been wasting his time playing stupid for his own benefit.

Really well done.

Eventually, Ken sets out into the nighttime Tokyo streets. He might not be actively planning to do it, but, well. He tries to find other food that will work, and when he can't he goes out into the nighttime streets.

After some aimless wandering, interrupted by horrified recoiling from the growling of his own stomach when he hears it, Ken happens into another pair of evening strollers. One of them is the waitress who Hide sexually harassed back at the cafe in the previous chapter. The other is a drunk-looking older man who is sexually harrassing her. She gets that a lot, it seems. He's being much more forceful and scary about it than Hide was, though. To the point where it seems like there's a decent chance - albeit still nothing close to a guarantee - of sexual harassment escalating to sexual assault.

Eh. Why does this happen in every single vampire or dark superhero or vigilante story? The newly minted predator of the night just haaaaaaaappens to stumble into a lone young woman being sexually threatened on their first prowl? Like, seriously, how often do you just happen into a scene like this, even in a bad neighbourhood? I'm not saying that lone women aren't routinely harassed and assaulted, but the odds of catching it in progress as an outsider...I dunno it's just always bugged me.

As Ken watches the altercation, he realizes how...edible...the girl looks. The smooth skin and slender curves that once would have excited him sexually now make him wonder what they'd taste like. What the flesh beneath them tastes like. Interestingly, he doesn't feel the same way about the assailant. Too old perhaps. Or too fat and unhealthy. Pretty sure the ghoul victims we've seen and heard about thus far were all young, so I think it's the first one. Regardless of who Ken was watching though, the man spots him watching the altercation and starts getting up in his face. And then freaks out when he notices that Ken's left eye is going ghoulmode.

He towers over Ken. He's a big guy, even if he's also old and fat and drunk. Ken is deer-in-headlights, not sure if he should run or fight or ask him what he means about his eye. Then, all of a sudden, a lightning-fast tendril whistles through the air, and bisects the man's head. Cutting through the skull as if it were cardboard. He's dead before he even realizes something's happened.

I was sure that Ken had done it, in an involuntary fear response using his developing ghoul physiology. But then we see the killing from his own POV, and...the hell?

Hmm. It occurs to me now that she's also one of the girls who suddenly got a panel or two following them in the middle of Ken's interactions with Rize. The ones whose designs reminded me of "Look Back."

Were those both ghouls?

Did they know Rize? Maybe that's why they were glaring at her like that, as she and Ken passed by? "What, she's killing another one already, what the fuck is she trying to get all of us caught or something?"

Hmm. Looking back at those panels in "Tragedy," it actually seems like only Touka the waitress was glaring. The other girl seemed sort of confused by her suddenly glaring after this couple. So, maybe the other girl was human? Either Touka's own intended victim, or just an ignorant acquaintance of hers who she had no intention of eating at least in the near future? Maybe?

Anyway, the man is dead. As Ken freaks out at what he's just witnessed, Touka complains to herself about how she really needs to learn to control herself better; she isn't due to feed again for some time yet, and here she goes creating corpses anyway. She supposes she might as well eat him, since he's dead and all, and this way she'll at least postpone her next hunt for a little while extra, but old people really don't taste good. Hehe, looks like I got that one right.

Just as she's decided to take an arm and drop the rest in a manhole or something, she notices Ken still watching, and asks him if he'd be willing to take this off her hands.

She doesn't seem to recognize him as Hide's friend. Also, man, Hide really dodged a bullet there lol. But, the way she does react to Ken's presence suggests that ghouls are still social creatures, at least among themselves.

Or, actually maybe not even JUST among themselves. Touka notably lashed out and killed the guy when it looked like he was going to hurt another innocent human, not when he was bothering her. I'm not sure what, other than the desire to protect Ken, would have motivated her to lash out at that moment and not before.

It seems that ghouls are more complicated than Rize's solitary example would lead one to assume. They're monsters, but they aren't just monsters. Granted, there's already a whole subgenre of vampire literature about basically this exact concept, so I can't call "Tokyo Ghoul" a fresh take, but once again it's being a very competent example of its kind.


That's chapter two.