Sidequest #13 – Why I Love Tokyo Ghoul (And Loathe Undertale)

It's not me that's wrong...It's this world!

I began outlining my essay on Tokyo Ghoul a few days back and had to quickly accept that with Fire Emblem’s Revelation campaign being out, there was no way in hell that I would have the time or focus to compose an argumentative essay with the nuance required to communicate the depth of that show’s philosophy (or at least, not without sounding even less personable than I already do). So rather than writing half of an essay, getting frustrated and putting the rest on hold for an indeterminate period of time, or nearly finishing a complex essay and then being forced to cut the conclusion because of time constraints, I’m just going to talk about it more casually here and work on something proper after the heat from Fire Emblem dies down. This also serves as a convenient platform to muse briefly about both Undertale and the Witcher 3, two games I have very strong opinions about and didn’t get to discuss last year. Unfortunately, precise arguments generally require concise language, so I make no promises of consistent diction.

“I Don’t Give a Damn About Anime. What The Heck Is Tokyo Ghoul, And Why Should I Care to Hear About It? Also, Isn’t This a Blog About Gaming. Why Are You Talking About Anime?”

Short Answer: The existential questions surrounding power and how to apply it in order to achieve peace, were explored in several games last year, two of which were high profile game of the year winners. Explaining Tokyo Ghoul’s philosophy, and more importantly how it communicates it will elucidate why one of the two games’ stories moved me almost to tears, while the other outright offended me to my very core, so much so that I couldn’t even bring myself to play it personally – I am talking about anime to better explain videogames which push messages the creators aren’t smart enough to fully comprehend the dangers of.

Long Answer: Tokyo Ghoul is an anime about a college freshman named Kaneki Ken who gets into a nearly fatal accident, and in order to survive has half of his organs surgically replaced with those of a ghoul – sentient super-powered beings that look similar to humans (aside from their eyes and predatory organ) but have one major difference: they must feast on human flesh in order to sustain themselves. The first season chronicles Kaneki’s adjustment to living as a half-ghoul and understanding both sides of an ongoing human-ghoul conflict, while the second season has him engaging in a wholesale war against the humans. As a whole, the show is designed to portray two sides of a racial conflict, discuss three of the most frequently championed solutions to racism, and ultimately explore the ethics and viability of power as a means for change.

It is not a shonen/ doesn’t contain any shonen anime tropes that would turn non-anime viewers off, so if you don’t watch anime and have a strong tolerance for gore (I cannot stress this enough) you’ll probably be okay watching it. That said, if you haven’t seen the show and plan on watching it, I am going to spoil basically everything in it, so either stop reading right now, go onto crunchyroll.com, and watch it yourself...or read on.

I. A Portrait of Racial Violence

Racial conflict is the conduit through which the show chooses to comment about power. In order to quell any inherent biases towards one side of the conflict, the first season operates under the assumption that humans are inherently more sympathetic to viewers than ghouls and, thus goes out of its way to present ghouls as emotional and intellectual equals worthy of sympathy.

First, it breaks down the barrier between humans and ghouls by showing that ghouls do not actually have to kill people in order to survive. The coffee shop Kaneki frequents called Antique (romaji: anteiku) is revealed to actually be a haven for ghouls seeking a non-violent life. In order to survive, the members of Antique periodically go to popular suicide spots and pick up fresh corpses to preserve for future meals. And, because ghouls don’t need to feed for several weeks on end or require an entire human corpse to satisfy themselves, this is actually a sustainable model for the shop regulars (and probably the entire race, based on nature’s allocation of predators to prey) to stave off hunger without killing people. With this major issue addressed, the show nullifies any pretense that ghouls must be violent or predatory creating syncretic possibilities between the races. This position is also reinforced by several of the characters on the show who express major reservations or regrets about killing people, simultaneously making the ghouls more personable to viewers.

Then, after establishing their (relatively) equal survival circumstances, the show goes on to prove that the two races can befriend one another. Kaneki is in a unique situation since he was a human and made a very good friend as one. But, other characters like Touka and Nishiki are pure-blooded ghouls yet still have a close human friend and lover respectively, despite the circumstances. What’s more, Nishiki’s lover is fully aware that he is a ghoul and even offers her own flesh to him in order to save his life. In presenting these two realities, the show elevates humans and ghouls to a near equivalent level in each other’s eyes, and ideally in yours as well. But, if you are still not willing to sympathize with them, the show concludes its initial endeavor by (almost heavy-handedly) presenting a tragic situation that only a genuine sociopath would fail to sympathize with.

A little girl (age 8-10) and her mother become guests at Antique after the girl’s father is forced to help track a psychopathic serial killer ghoul by working for the Doves – human inspectors tasked with hunting down and exterminating all ghouls. The pair deeply misses the girl’s father as he does them, however after successfully leading the Doves to the serial killer, they betray the girl’s father and murder him (they also fail to capture the serial killer, which becomes important a few episodes later). But, wait – it gets worse. The Doves then use parts of the father’s body as bait to lure out his daughter in the hopes of killing the rest of his family (note: ghouls have extraordinary senses of smell). Long story short, it works, and the girl is cornered in a back ally by the same two investigators. Her mother comes to her aid and uses her predatory organ (hereby referred to as kagune) as a shield to cover her daughter’s escape.

The daughter is lucky enough to find Kaneki and brings him to help save her mother, but when he sees the situation, he realizes that he is not strong enough to do so, and instead shields the daughter’s eyes from the unfolding horror. It is here that, the lead Dove reveals to the mother and audience how humans have been able to slay beings as powerful as ghouls: they remove ghouls’ kagune and turn them into weapons with which to kill other ghouls called quinque. Every ghoul’s kagune is unique to them, so this practice is disgustingly similar to castrating someone, then using their penis to rape/kill someone else. In this instance, the Dove had a weapon made out of the woman’s husband, then used it to murder her in front of her daughter. AND THEN, the same Dove creates a weapon out of the girl’s mother and tries to use it as bait to lure out the daughter once and for all.

Bluntly put: It’s fucked up; so fucked up that you would HAVE to feel some semblance of sympathy for the girl, and certainly not the Dove. Once again, this is a careful and deliberate decision: most of the world’s cultures view women and children as people that need protecting, making these scenes powerfully resonant with almost anyone. Whether or not that’s sexist is irrelevant, as the goal of their use here, is simply to humanize the ghouls and inspire sympathy towards their race.

As an aside, it’s worth pointing out that Kaneki being a human who gets introduced to the ghouls’ lifestyle, is not merely a framing device for explaining the show’s world, but also provides a gateway for dispelling the audience’s prejudices and building empathy towards the show’s “othered” group. This show’s premise is not the result of someone asking “wouldn’t it be cool if….” It is a calculated move designed to initiate an inquiry that does not resolve until the final moments of the series. In other words, the seemingly omnipresent idea that this show is shonen (built for a younger audience, purely for entertainment value) is wholly unsubstantiated both by content of the show as well as the framework in which it resides.

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After these horrific events, one of the ghouls at Antique, Touka, understandably flies into a rage and attempts to exact retribution by killing the Doves who murdered the girl’s mother. She doesn’t manage to take out the murderous inspector, but severs the skull of one of the young naïve inspectors who was presumably innocent. This in turn sends another Dove, Amon, on the warpath inspiring him to mercilessly kill more ghouls. In tandem with all of the scenes leading up to this point, the writers have finally laid enough of groundwork to start presenting their own conclusions about racism and racial conflict, beginning with:

1. Racial violence is cyclical.

Amon is driven to kill because Touka killed his friend, because Mado (Amon’s superior) killed Hinami (the little girl)’s mother, because – as is later revealed during the second season – another ghoul killed his wife. Once an act of racial violence is perpetrated, it becomes gradually more difficult to cease the cycle as the justifications for retaliating become increasingly numerous. On top of this, once one side retaliates against the other, the opposing side has reason to do the same, and after one round of this has occurred (like in the above situation) both sides have reason to continue hating each other. This provides the show with an opportunity to tip its hand a bit and overtly tell the audience what I said two paragraphs ago: Kaneki’s circumstances were chosen for a reason.

After the death of their comrade, Mado retaliates by setting another ghastly trap for Hinami (placing her mother’s head in a bag) and requests that Amon come to assist him. Touka moves to rescue Hinami and Kaneki follows her to protect both girls. Touka catches up to Hinami first and engages Mado, while Kaneki intercepts Amon before he can reinforce his mentor. At this point in time, Kaneki has still never really fought anybody, and is still a pacifist who has no intention of hurting Amon, so he isn’t sure what he can do to stave Amon off. Meanwhile as both Amon and Touka are fighting, they simultaneously give their opponents the exact same speech, serving as a blindingly obvious signal for the audience that both humans and ghouls are fighting each other for the same reasons. It takes Kaneki a little over half-way through the first season to fully comprehend this, but when he does, he realizes that his unique situation affords him the insight required to understand both sides of the racial conflict and actively work towards ending it.

To that end Kaneki maintains his moral “purity” by breaking Amon’s quinque with his kagune so that he can’t fight him, and then with a tear in his eye, begs Amon to leave so that he “won’t make [Kaneki] a murderer.” This gesture was enough to pause even Amon’s vindication, so he honors Kaneki’s wishes and retreats. Unfortunately for him, Mado was not so lucky. After attempting to kill Touka by utilizing a quinque made from Hinami’s mother, Mado gets stunned by a distressed Hinami’s Kagune, then murdered by Touka who, after seeing a ring on his corpse, realizes that somehow even a monster like Mado was loved by someone. This diminishes much of her resolve to fight humans and would seem to put a cap on the pattern of violence. However, upon seeing his mentor’s corpse, Amon’s resolve is reinvigorated, perpetuating the cycle of hatred Kaneki had begun to dissolve.

Before we continue, it is imperative that you do not receive the impression that the grisly scenes I’ve described are here for shock value – They are not. Though graphic, these are incredibly important situations to illustrate because they show that despite the wanton murder, underground gladiatorial fighting, and overall underhanded tactics we see ghouls engage in during these episodes, they still possess all of the fundamental qualities we ascribe to being human – They eat. They sleep. They reason. They love. They feel pain. They have goals. And perhaps most importantly, they want to live in this world without fear of persecution. The shadowy underworld the ghouls live within is not a natural consequence of their existence, but a symptom of the fearful, racist society they inhabit.

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II. The Ethics of Power and Peace: A Critical Examination of Non-Violence

Several months later, a group of ghouls from another district come to Antique looking for the ghoul whose organs were placed into Kaneki. They are fortunately nice people and also provide a warning that other ghouls from an organization called Aogiri Tree – a ghoul liberation & anti-human faction – are about to launch an attack on their ward. But just as they are preparing to leave, the previously mentioned serial killer ghoul, Jason (like from Friday the 13^th) and some Aogiri members barge through the door looking for the dead ghoul as well. And since Jason hates her and Kaneki has her scent, he beats Kaneki into a bloody pulp, then kidnaps and tortures him. I’m drastically simplifying these events, but the situation surrounding his rescue and torture compose the heart of the first season’s thesis, so you’ll have to excuse me for skipping to the interesting part (this post is already stretching a little long).

While Kaneki is being tortured, the ghouls at Antique organize a rescue operation to bring him home. However, the Doves are aware of Aogiri Tree’s intentions and have their supervising organization – the CCG – orchestrate an assault against them as well, eventually leading to a chaotic crossfire. That said, it takes the CCG and members of Antique a week to marshal their forces, during which time Kaneki is tortured in the most vile and inhumane ways imaginable.

As was already stated, ghouls are basically superhuman; they have incredible strength, speed, smell, and – most relevant to Kaneki’s torture - resilience. Additionally, all ghouls have a healing factor that varies between individuals and Kaneki just happens to be cursed blessed with a very strong one. These allow Jason to torture him well beyond the limits of what human beings can go through such as having all of his toes, hands, and feet ripped off every few hours, being periodically bled out to fill a bucket, and having a large aggressive centipede inserted into his ear canal to masticate the insides of his skull, all while being forced to count down from 1000 by 7s aloud, so that he maintains his sanity and continues to process the pain.

During this grisly torture, whenever Jason waits for Kaneki’s appendages to regenerate, the kind out of town ghouls Kaneki met when Jason arrived, clean up his blood and constantly reassure him that they are trying to set him free. That faint glimmer of hope is the only thing keeping his “self” – the core values and beliefs that make up who he is – intact; that hope is what enables Kaneki to choose life over death and endure the torture.

However, Jason catches wise, bounds the two ghouls before Kaneki, and offers him an ultimatum: He can either select one ghoul for Jason to kill, or Jason will kill both of them. Kaneki recognizes that choosing to save one ghoul is the same as condemning another to death, so he asks Jason to just kill him instead. But of course, he won’t, and because Kaneki won’t choose to damn either of the two people who’ve only tried to help him, Jason kills them both. With his last light of hope extinguished and nothing left to cling to, Kaneki pauses to assess his values, which for our viewing pleasure is presented as an internal conversation between Kaneki and the ghoul whose organs he possesses, Rize.

*We’re about to move into the real meaty bits where I talk philosophy and Undertale, so before we proceed, I need to once again point out that the macabre scenes I described above are not there for shock value. When searching for philosophical truth it does one no good to examine benign circumstances; holistically speaking, they possess too much space for ambiguities, and pragmatically speaking, they lack the relevance to facilitate broader application. It is only through examining the most extreme of circumstances (e.g. life and death), that we can reduce an inquiry to the starkest of blacks and whites and find truth.

Kaneki states that his guiding philosophy is that, “it is better to be hurt than to hurt others.” In the context of the situation he’s in and the way he has acted throughout the series thus far, we can extrapolate that this more broadly translates to the Golden Rule – do unto others as you have them do unto you – or more plainly that “violence is never justified.” Many liberals and leftists here in the West like to trot out this statement and claim some sort of moral high ground, and last year’s indie darling Undertale, outright champions it through the most integral parts of its story and structure. And yet, while the nonviolence above all philosophy sounds morally pure in speech, when one stops to critically examine such a statement, it becomes painfully clear that it is only one step removed from the toxicity of exclusively exercising violence.

Tokyo Ghoul and Undertale both place their subjects – Kaneki and you the player, respectively – in life or death situations. And, as individuals with this nonviolent philosophy in mind, both of you have only three possible choices you can exercise:

1. Discard the philosophy entirely and accept killing as a justifiable means of survival

2. Uphold the philosophy and die, as a martyr for your beliefs

3. Choose to live and avoid killing by utilizing one’s own power; thus upholding the philosophy and avoiding the ultimatum.

Throughout the first season of Tokyo Ghoul, Kaneki strictly upholds choice 2. While in Undertale, in order to progress through the game, the player is “supposed to” uphold choice 3 – despite Undertale granting you the agency to kill each and every opponent in the game, you will receive the “worst” ending if you choose to exercise this freedom on a specific playthrough, and are forever barred from accessing the “best” ending if you choose to kill anyone across ANY playthough. Additionally, sparing NPCs brings a bevy of rewards both tangible and intangible throughout the game while killing NPCs only gets you experience. There is an abundantly obvious bias for how that game is supposed to be played and a clear message that the developer is trying to push. Unfortunately, I do not think the developer fully comprehends what that actually is.

Let’s take a moment to unpack what it actually means to choose option 3. In order to successfully exercise that choice in the first place, you must be powerful enough to either invalidate your assailant’s attacks and or subdue them so that they cannot initiate them anymore. If you have power enough to invalidate your assailant(s)’ attacks, then you technically do not have to engage in violence to get your way. If it’s the latter, then you will have to get physical, but may not have to actually kill. Regardless of which avenue you choose, however, there is no getting around the fact that you will still need to have power enough to force someone else to submit to your way of thinking.

So, the question one in an extreme circumstance who wishes to go down this path must ask themselves and answer is “how do I get more power?” I shouldn’t need to explain the dangers of that question, but just in case: that question, though morally neutral, almost invariably leads people to become extremist crusaders for a cause, amoral power-obsessed monsters, or……self-loathing hypocrites because they’ve had to betray what/who they hold dear in order to uphold their ideology or pursue their goals. It rarely ever yields a net positive outcome for the individual, and only ever achieves whatever result you were looking for. And yet, THIS is what Undertale’s gameplay mechanics, external structure, and narrative are all holding up as righteous – if you’re strong enough to avoid being killed by people, you can make the world a more peaceful place.

In so many words, Undertale is actually pushing the philosophy that “might makes right” – the exact same message put forth by nearly every violent video game in the history of the medium. It is no more a step forward in respect to its morality or storytelling than it is in gameplay mechanics or art style. More importantly, the philosophy it's championing is akin to that of dictators, and bluntly put, atrocious. So, with all of that established, let’s return to Tokyo Ghoul.

During Kaneki’s introspective conversation with Rize, she presents him with several examples of situations where choosing to martyr oneself was worse than letting someone else die. More specifically, in each of the examples displayed, the reason why it was better to discard the martyr’s burden was that either a kind, selfless person died for the sake of a wicked or manipulative one, or the refusal to make a sacrifice in order to uphold one’s principles was akin to forsaking all of those who were good. In both instances, the world was worse off as a result of the kind individual’s refusal to make a hard decision. Being unable to deny the truth of these examples, Kaneki accepts that sometimes it is better to hurt others than be hurt. However, he does not abandon his own philosophy stating that “it’s not me that’s wrong. What’s wrong…is the world!” Rather he chooses the third option, just like the player in Undertale. Through sheer force of will, he breaks out of his restraints, fights and pins Jason, then eats his kagune to both disarm Jason and make himself stronger.

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In the show’s universe there is a taboo amongst ghouls that they are not to feast on other ghouls. They supposedly don’t taste good or provide any nutrition, but more importantly it’s generally pretty unsafe to even make the attempt, as ghouls all have super human strengths and are specialized to kill certain types of ghouls - all ghouls can be divided into 4 categories based on their kagune, each of which is specialized to kill another type of ghoul. this way the species can “check” itself and no one ghoul can ever dominate the food chain.

However, eating ghouls strengthens one’s kagune and superhuman abilities disrupting this balance. At the same time, cannibalism supposedly erodes a ghoul's sanity, potentially transforming ghouls into actual monsters. These ghouls who cannibalize their brethren are referred to as kakuja (that’s the last new word, I swear) and are feared by both the CCG and other ghouls alike for obvious reasons. The only advantage to becoming a kakuja is growing stronger which, in an erupting racial war, is all the justification one needs. The first season’s closing statement, and the series’ second conclusion about racial issues is thus:

2. Nonviolence is NOT always the best way to realize peace.

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III. On Truth and Hope: How We Constantly Forsake the Former for the Latter

Kaneki adopting the philosophy of Undertale at the end of the first season is not at all a good thing. While it enables him survive his encounter with Jason, it also condemns him to a painful existence for the rest of the series that he himself states he doesn’t want to live with. Ostensibly, the writers of Tokyo Ghoul realize how toxic Undertale’s philosophy is, and by the end of the show, exemplify why through Kaneki’s realizations of what his change of heart represents, and what it means to become strong enough to force one’s will upon the world.

After defeating Jason, Kaneki quickly moves to save Touka and Nishiki (who were both trying to rescue him), then leaves them, his best friend Hide, and all of the ghouls at Antique - his family - behind to join Aogiri and become stronger. He claims that he made his decision in order to protect them, but as Touka bluntly points out around halfway through the season, “that’s bullshit” – it’s a rationalization designed to make a selfish action sound selfless. That said, Kaneki’s excuse is bullshit for more reasons than Touka perhaps realizes.

She (rightfully) homes in on the fact that Kaneki trying to protect others is not a decision for him to make. However, what she doesn’t bring up is that Kaneki’s goal is actually impossible. No matter how strong he gets, there will always be someone else with enough strength to put his loved ones in jeopardy – he will never have the strength to guarantee their safety. This is one of the recurring ideas of season 2, and provides grounds for the series’ third and final point about racial struggles:

 3. Individual power is NOT a means for ending racial violence; Might does not make right – Might makes might.

Unlike in the previous season, season 2 of Tokyo Ghoul introduces a lot of characters, both human and ghoul, who dwarf Kaneki in terms of power. This is not to provide the audience with benchmarks for how powerful Kaneki will eventually become, but rather to show just how insignificant Kaneki actually is in the show’s universe (being the protagonist does not entitle one to godhood). At the same time, these characters all serve as living examples for what Kaneki will have to become in order to acquire such power: a crusader, amoral monster, and/or self-loathing hypocrite. The most extreme example of this on the show, a human named Arima, is specifically written to drive this point home by acting as a direct foil to Kaneki.

Arima is the most powerful inspector in the CCG, and as you might (accurately) guess based on everything I’ve said in this article, he is an inhuman, soulless, shell of a man without interests or desires other than killing ghouls – he never expresses anything other than stoicism and doesn’t even write a will before walking into a warzone. However, Arima is also the only character on the show other than Kaneki whose hair color changes from black to white. At the end of season 1 when Kaneki changes his philosopy, his hair inverts its color to reflect it. So, since the Arima we see is also walking the same path to power as Kaneki, we can infer that he went through a similar transition during his career as an inspector. Granted, we don’t see Arima enough during the show to pinpoint when or why it happens, but considering that Arima’s hair is white when Amon joins the Doves, we know that it is well before Kaneki becomes a ghoul. Then, when one factors in the cold brutality he exhibits during the last episode, we can further discern that, unlike Kaneki who fully discards the path in the same episode – and whose hair reverts back to black – Arima never left it; his hair never changes again. Basically, Arima is what Kaneki would have become had he stayed on the path.

Sidenote: This show isn’t really a validation of the saying “absolute power corrupts absolutely,” but rather a parable illustrating Nietzsche’s point about how when one gazes into the abyss, the abyss gazes back. It strongly reminds me of dark/elder magic in the Magvel and Elibe Fire Emblem games, most notably Fire Emblem (The Blazing Sword). Elder magic is the most powerful, but least understood school of magic in that world. However, the more one understands it, the less of the individual remains. Personality, desires, and even memories all erode as one pursues the dark and the power it holds. Similarly, the power in Tokyo Ghoul’s world always comes at a price, even for the humans, that gradually eats away at its pursuer.

Of course, wars are fought by armies, not individuals, and race wars are no exception; Arima is not the only person to choose that path (just the one to move furthest along it). With exactly one important exception in the manager of Antique, these powerful ghouls & humans have all chosen a side in the human-ghoul war and acquired their power in order to claim victory. The show doesn’t go into every character’s backstory to show this, but that’s because it doesn’t have to.

Early in the season we learn that in order to become a kakuja, a ghoul has to commit the ultimate taboo and resort to cannibalism. Shortly thereafter, we also find out that that the CCG’s new weapons are made from kakuja ghouls and eat away at the flesh of those wearing them. In other words, we know just based on the origins of each race’s weapons/powers that the ghouls resorted to desperate tactics in order to fight the humans, and the humans returned the favor to keep up. The show offers hints of the next phase in their arms race (one-eyed ghouls & chimera quinque), but the underlying point is that chasing power only causes others to do the same. As such, an individual can never command absolute power; an individual will never be able to force their will onto the entire world.

In relation to the show’s overarching discussion of racial violence, this conclusion has many far reaching ramifications. The first is the same point I stated four paragraphs ago: Kaneki’s goal throughout the majority of this season is unachievable. The second is that racially motivated violence will not cease due to violent action as a result of violence’s cyclical nature (i.e. Conclusion 1). When taken in light of the fact that pure non-violence is not an option either, this presents the single most important idea of the entire show: chasing power is meaningless, when it comes at the cost of those we love. However, as long as there are those willing to make this sacrifice, there will be others who will do the same in order to defeat them. So, if we desire to live peacefully – nonviolently – and also refuse to lie down and die when challenged, then “all we can do is endure;” endure the violence that comes our way, and endure the losses we will inevitably sustain.

That quoted segment is the last line spoken in the Japanese version of the show (I added the unspoken context). It is sad, completely lacking in hope or positivity, is the logical conclusion of everything you see in the series, but above all, it is the truth. Racial violence – violence in general is not something one should actively seek, nor is it something we should stubbornly avoid. It is simply another tool available to humanity that we should exercise with the care and thoughtfulness we afford to any other capable of ending a human life. This entire season, and by extension the anime Tokyo Ghoul, is a carefully constructed argument against the myopic selflessness of works like Undertale.

And. I. Love it...

Which is why I was appalled to find that the English dub changed the show’s final line.

The new closing words of the show are “this will only make you stronger.” In context, this new line states that Touka letting Kaneki march with Hide to his death will in some way prepare her for the future – she doesn’t have the strength to set things right now, but she might be able to do so in a similar situation later if she’s strong enough. This sentiment is pretty much the most tone deaf approximation of the original words they could have possibly used. It completely ignores all of the events that occurred over the course of the series, and spits in the face of the show’s pragmatic theses. And of course it’s not hard to guess why they changed the line – the new one is hopeful while the original one isn’t. The original line presents a sad truth with a path forward, the new one offers hope with an empty promise.

As a viewer who actually payed attention to the entire show, the most frustrating part of this change to me is that it gives speculators weak, but observable, grounds to demand a third season, even though the show blatantly does not need one. The new line places an emphasis on future possibilities which, when paired with the numerous subplots that don’t receive a decisive conclusion, could lead one to assume that the story is going to continue. With that said, the protagonist of the show didn’t change just because a line did, and his story ended pretty damn conclusively. Consequently, such speculation is still devoid of any consequential bases. And it’s not just Kaneki’s story that indicates this, but all four of the main purposes of the second season:

1: To narratively set up the Owl extermination at the end of the season

2: To humanize the human characters in order to make the Owl extermination a genuine tragedy

3: To diminish Kaneki’s significance/shatter all notions that he is “special”

4: To logically lead to the show’s concluding idea about wielding power

Again, all of this should go without saying considering that a primary theme of this show is the nature of power, but based on fans’ RIDICULOUSLY stupid reaction to the ending and entitled demands for a third season, it apparently requires more in-depth explanation. Rather than looking at these purposes, and leaving room for speculation however, I’m going to cut to the root and explain the lingering questions people have about this show. [You can skip all of this if you just want to continue to the conclusion. I’m only going over this out of spite.]

Q. We never know what happened to Kaneki!

A. Yes we do, Arima killed him. When Kaneki finally reaches Arima after his long sorrowful walk through all of the wounded combatants, he stands before him holding a dying Hide clinging to the tiniest bit of hope that Arima will help his friend. Arima’s response is to draw his weapon. We don’t see him do this, but we hear it when the screen cuts to black. Afterwards we see Arima with one of his weapons planted in the snow, and get a cut to his white hair blowing in the wind. The hair’s relevance is only apparent when you consider that near the start of the episode we see the exact same shot of Kaneki’s hair switching from white to black physically representing the reversion of his philosophy. Juxtaposed with this shot, Arima’s white hair is a physical manifestation of the power craving philosophy being victorious/the only philosophy left standing. In so many words, Kaneki died for his beliefs becoming the very martyr he vowed against at the end of the previous season.

Q. What happened to the Owl?

A. It doesn’t matter. The Owl’s purpose was to exemplify how horrific ghouls/Kaneki can become (physically and psychically – she eats her own father) if they endlessly pursue power, inspire the humans to improve their weaponry, and imply that the ghouls are doing the same (one-eyed ghouls). [Sidenote for those who haven’t seen the show: One-eyed ghouls like Kaneki and the Owl are said to be stronger than normal ghouls].

Q. Who is the One-Eyed Owl?

A. It’s hinted that she’s Takatsuki Sen (look at their height, the way both say Kaneki’s name, and how Takatsuki asks about creating one-eyed ghouls). However, it doesn’t really matter as answering this question does not help meet any of the purposes outlined above.

Q. What about the two one-eyed ghouls, who just kind of disappear?

A. The two girls are proof that Kaneki is not the first created one-eyed ghoul. However, considering how badly they get beaten by a normal Dove without his primary weapon, we can also infer that they are not as powerful as Kaneki. So, in conjunction with the speculations thrown around by Akira and Takatsuki Sen about Kaneki and One-Eyed ghouls respectively, we can infer that a.) the girls are the result of a failed attempt to create a true one-eyed ghoul and b.) Kaneki’s situation was not an accident of fate; it was rigged - he is not special. More importantly, they serve their purpose in conjunction with Takatsuki Sen’s inquiry that the ghouls are attempting to create more heinous weaponry just like the humans. In short, they fulfill their narrative function and we don’t need to know what happened to them.

There may be more questions, but these are the only ones I remember off the top of my head. Anyway, let’s refocus:

The refusal to accept and address reality is why I cannot stand works like Undertale. They encourage people to pull a veil of simplicity over their eyes and blindly cling to rosy beliefs, instead of critically examining their own ideologies – Dogmatic absolutes get placed on a pedestal while reason and nuance are squashed into the dirt. That kind of thinking is juvenile, it’s dangerous, but more than anything it’s just wrong. It doesn’t matter how good it makes you feel, a work championing this kind of thinking is not worthy of support: Undertale does not deserve to be honored for its ethics, and certainly doesn’t deserve to be honored for its presentation, aesthetics, or gameplay.

Having said that, I don’t think the game is unsalvageable or doomed by design. If the dev had simply made it so that you had to kill enemies in a few encounters, preferably directly and not during the final battle, I would play it and call it an iterative, but interesting game. I have not personally played the game, so I cannot suggest from experience which specific encounters should be changed, however if any such unavoidable encounters existed in the game, I would be far more receptive to it. This change would at least acknowledge the nuance of reality without compromising the belief that a dialogue is better than physical violence.

As I type these words, though, I can’t help but point out that another game very near and dear to my heart did the same damn thing I'm suggesting: The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings. You can talk your way out of many fights in The Witcher 2, circumvent entire quest lines with simple dialogue decisions, and even have the option to just not fight the final boss. However, unlike Undertale which presents the world with a child’s grasp of non-violence, in the Witcher it is sometimes better to choose violence over non-violence and vice-versa – as is the case in the real world. The Witcher 3 even rewards you for choosing not to fight the final battle in its predecessor, and has an even larger volume of quests where pure investigation and knowledge is rewarded over brute force. I don’t have enough time or energy to go into the depth required to fully present this, but in so many words, the Witcher games and Tokyo Ghoul are on the same page while Undertale is a fair few steps behind them.

And look, I understand that games present us with fantasy worlds that don’t have to represent reality. Hell, the majority of MY favorite games are divorced from it entirely. But, there’s a key difference that allows me to give those games a pass and still come down hard on Undertale: Those games that I love are made for kids, while Undertale is made for adults. Regardless of what the art style or age rating may suggest, Undertale targets an older audience. It primarily borrows from two different games/franchises both released 20 years ago for older people, and itself contains a lot of content that only an adult/“mature” individual is going to fully appreciate (and this is ignoring the basic business reality of the age demographics of its distribution platforms). I can’t in good conscience give the game a pass for pushing ideas that we are all supposed to grow out of. 

Creation and destruction are NOT two equal paths forward; all creations can be destroyed, but something once destroyed cannot always be rebuilt. Life and death are NOT two halves of the same coin; Life is an ephemeral rarity. Death is a permanent inevitability. Good and evil are NOT equal and opposite forces; evil is stronger than good – good can be undone, evil cannot. Even the goddamn bible acknowledges these truths Ecclesiastes is the shit – which is to say people from over a thousand years ago understood these basic facts of human existence. Yet, nowadays, such truth is too “saaaad” for us to face. So we bury our heads in sands of sugar and rainbows, and deny the cosmic nihilism that defines the known universe. Does acknowledging this mean we should all go kill ourselves? NO, of course not. It just means that we have to live with this knowledge. But in our intellectually regressive socie(ties) this knowledge is deemphasized, frowned upon, or in the case of Undertale outright denied. And it is in this childish world that works like Tokyo Ghoul, like The Witcher 2 & 3 gain their importance. We have to be willing to address the realities of existence, both the uplifting and the depressing, if we are ever to constructively work towards replacing one with the other. Do not lay back and die, and do not force others to follow you. Endure, and construct something that you can believe in.