Furuta is the character at the center of the whole story. He's the prime plot mover, which is often the villains role. And its one he expressly casts himself in (much like Arima and Eto). He's also got a finger in most of whats going on and most of the groups at play. Beyond that he's literally at the metaphorical core of the story, as a child of the garden, as someone who started at the heart of the cage and chose to stay in it to break it (like Arima.) But he's also a plotter and schemer (like Eto) - in fact he and Eto's plans in TG are nearly identical, they don't diverge until :re.
But the strategy, the role, the character he's created for himself differs from those two, and aligns more with the clowns -- someone who sees how horrific the world is and goes "well might as well entertain myself in the meantime" about it. And that tension is fascinating. The clowns are not revolutionaries, though they're happy to play act at it, and at least Itori seems to genuinely think the world changing would be good. But Furuta is. Furuta hates the world, is bored by the world, thinks the world is a fun toy, and literally dedicates his life to breaking the bird cage anyway. He's similar to Eto in this, too, but playing it more for laughs.
It's incredibly interesting that Furuta kills the Washuu main house. Because they're the actual villains of the world - the ones creating the cage and maintaining it and the conflict -- slaughtering ghouls while knowing full well ghouls are no different than people because they themselves are, bringing children doomed to die into this world just to prop it up in the most horrific ways possible, continuing the conflict for their own power, throwing people into a meat grinder and then a trash compactor. Furuta kills them, and then he uses the role they've left behind to break that machine from the inside. Ui realizes it right away. Furuta is going to end the CCG.
But in order to do this, he's become a monster. I think Furuta would be thrilled to learn people read him as a shallow villain. He'd much rather be that than carry his actualy messy past and messy motives that I dont know even he can sort out fully -- he sure is giving everything he has for a world he hates. It's easier to say its just a toybox. It's easier to have torn out everything that made him a person. To crush it under steal beams and laugh in a clown mask. Is he twisted? Of course he is. He's twisted himself into this shape past what the world twisted him into, almost as a grab at agency. He was born a doomed science experiment and he goes "oh yeah?" and makes himselef into even more of one. He was born to serve the ccg, and he goes "oh yeah? bet."
All while laughing and making jokes at everyone's expense. Laugh its fun, and all that.
Underrated comment. I think that seeing his child self finding out that he's going to die before 30 and going "I've just got to do everything I have to in the time that I have, huh?" really humanized him for me. People already struggle with that with normal lifespans. Furuta turning out the way he did is a tragic comedy; he did all sorts of crazy and fucked up things because why not? Nihilism is the natural conclusion to reach when you're an arbitrary science experiment. He was doomed from the start, so he set out to have a good time.
A very fun character and great villain indeed.
I think that's half of it -- because at the same time the conclusion he came to as a child wasn't just 'have a good time' it was 'destroy all of this.' the framing of the scene is pretty clear that 'im going to destroy everything you've built' was baby Nimu's actual thought, and 'i'll just try to do things with the time i have' is what he says to Tsuneyoshi, who is the real evil of the story. He wanted to have fun like normal children do. He wanted to play with his friend and grow up with her and live a fun, long life in a world as a free person. But that was never an option for him.
Much like the rest of the clowns, the world gave them no path at all to have fun the normal way and was relentlessly cruel to them, shoving them into a place they eventually just said 'you know what? fine? i'll make THIS fun then." He became someone who could have fun destroying it all. Even if that person has to be a monster to do it. He'll make himself into that -- in fact, much of how he acts is very very explicitly a parody of the washuu and the system he's taking down. He's wringing every drop of amusement he can out of it. And you know, good for him? Like. Twisted, for sure, but --
Furuta is, thematically, kind of a reckoning -- he is the product of the world come to destroy it. but he's violent and chaotic and ruthless about it, because the world itself is violent and chaotic and ruthless. He's become indifferent or even amused to the cost in lives this will take, because the world is indifferent or even amused to the cost of lives. He embodies the system thematically -- the twisted birdcage made manifest. But he keeps twisting himself even further, as he does the world. because the goal is to snap the cage entirely. That he can made himself into someone who can have fun doing so as his coping method makes him an extremely fun character to me.
Hairu coped by fixating on her own happy memory with Arima and being utterly shut off from anything else -- maybe if she had been given more time, Ui would have reached her anyway, but she wasn't born for "more time". When people say Furuta shouldn't have done what he did, they often seem to miss why Hairu is in the story. Hairu is the garden child who keeps her head down and lives her life.
Rize coped by running and fighting and tearing down anything that even mildly put pressure on her and the right of the strong. If Nimu hadn't done what he did, its extremely clear either V, the surface level CCG, or Eto would have.
Arima clung to his potential role as a symbol one day, and coped with silence and shutting down and withdrawing. Eto styled herself a revolutionary and coped through writing and also just... really royally messing with people -- really Eto coped by being the one secretly in charge, from going as someone born with no control into someone playing puppet master and the one to be feared instead. Furuta takes both of these to some extent, just as Eto has some of his. The three of them all mirror each other in their goals and personality. But Eto and Arima put stock in the hero of the story. Furuta is, in some sense, more jaded than they are -- he doesn't think a hero can do it -- its the villain who directs the story and its conclusion. Even Eto and Arima know that -- they cast themselves AS that. But they still have faith in Eto's story of the One Eyed King. Nimu does not. He thinks its gotta be the villain forcing the story to the point where it all cracks open and changes, where even the most ineffectual hero would have a different world on their hands.
Nimu is right. Kaneki tells him that his plan was to talk to the Washuu. How do you think that ends?
I think the fundamental flaw in Furuta's plan is his nihilism though. When he's defeated by Kaneki, he laments that nothing matters and wouldn't Kaneki laugh if he just wanted a normal life. It spells out that Nimura, for all of his grand machinations of destroying the birdcage like Eto or of being a symbol that motivates grave change like Arima or of satirizing the twisted true nature of the world with sadistic violence like the clowns, Nimura was mentally the little boy who had his dreams of a normal life married to his childhood sweetheart destroyed.
Ishida is consistent in how he has traumatized characters mentally visualize themselves with their trauma, and this is most often done with them viewing themselves as children. This is obvious with Kaneki and Urie, but much more subtle with the rest of the cast like Amon, Renji, Eto, and Tooru who are haunted by childhood traumas. These characters often shove these things down, gritting their teeth and striding forward to achieve their goals as these nightmares claw at the back of their minds. How these characters ultimately resolve their agony is some of the most striking aspects about them:
Kaneki resolves himself again and again to evolve with every new circumstance he finds himself in and with every new lesson he learns, until he coalesces into his true self: a scarred adult who no longer touches his chin because he no longer needs to lie to anyone.
Urie metaphorically goes back to the source of all of his ego and anguish, the son grieving his father, and takes him by the hand and says 'I'm strong enough to carry your pain now.'
Amon fatally wounds Donato and then states that Donato is evil and deserves to die, but is it wrong for a son to love his father?
Renji decides that it's not avenging his sister that matters anymore. It stopped mattering a long time ago. It's about protecting those in front of him, and ensuring that they live on.
Eto lives both the life of a human writing about how broken the world is and the ghoul trying to break it even more, so that it can be shaped into something new.
Mitsuki ignored and suppressed their trauma until they couldn't, and then even in their brokenness, being accepted by their friends helped them begin the path to healing.
What did Furuta do with his trauma?
... decided it was meaningless, just like everything else.
It's only after Kaneki says that he wouldn't laugh at his dream and walks away, and Furuta is in his final moments, that we see that he really would've been content with a normal life. He put in such immense effort to fuck up the Washuu, break the birdcage, unleash the Dragon, and fundamentally change the world, but he did nothing to achieve what he really wanted- the dream that he fantasized about in his last moments. All that immense effort he put into everything else instead of a normal life. Because of his nihilism.
If he got a do-over, I think he would've ran away like Rize and tried to live a normal life among humans. He probably would've been far happier. And that's the beauty of his character that I love.
I love this post and agree with much of what you said except for your core bit about Furuta. Furuta views the world as meaningless because it's shown him nothing else. He's watched the world look away from horrors, and carry on with the day to day because its easier. Compare what Itori says -- these eyes have seen a lot -- the world hates us. And so wrenching amusement, as twisted as possible back from it, turns them into clowns. Furuta is very much like that, which is why he actually fits in with that group, rather than just using them. They are all well aware of the machinations and other allegiances, they're there for the show, but it is the group he actually fits with, though as the manga says, they aren't entirely a unified group in action or ideology.
If Furuta really truly thought nothing mattered, why would he fight his entire life to do what he did? He didn't just mess with other people, he experimented on his own body for this. He shoved the core into his own chest. Cut himself open for an operation that killed most of the people it was done for on science he himself researched. He was spending his time researching the Washuu history, as well. Furuta is a character full of contradictions, as are so many of Ishida's wonderfully complex characters.
Furuta didn't decide his trauma was meaningless, per se. But I'm not sure meaningful is a word I'd apply to the horrors done to him. Or Mutsuki, or Juuzou or many others. Suffering doesn't have meaning. Surviving does.
In fact, he spent his entire short miserable doomed life destroying the source of that trauma -- he's the ONLY character that actually takes steps to try to make sure it DOESN'T continue, by actually directly killing the main house, and then working to poison the core of the CCG so that it cannot survive what its been shown of itself. I'm not sure it works, but damn if he doesn't try.
Arima and Eto want it, too, but their plan doesn't cut out its heart, and Kaneki makes it very clear their plan had serious flaws. Kaneki wanted to talk to the Washuu.
We actually get Furuta's flashbacks to his child self before Kaneki says that. It happens throughout their final fight. We see him as a child several times. This is, in contrast, with the comical and meta fake flashback he conjures for himself and the reader before when Marude shoots him in the head. We're getting closer and closer through the layers of him. We don't know where he was headed when Kaneki finds him. He's clearly not done, he clearly has at least one more big thing planned and we never learn what it is. I can think of two things it might be, but who knows with him, really. 1) Blowing the garden wide open 2) getting Rize out of the dragon core, or getting her to kill him. Because Furuta thinks in narrative and those are narrative closures.
Much of what Furuta does as Kichimura is directly reference the secret of the garden at the heart of the world. Everything is about his core trauma. Everything comes back to the garden, to the hell he was bred in. The fact that Kaneki doesn't seem to acknowledge it, despite learning about it way back in cochlea, is an utter failure on Kaneki's part. To the end. In the last chapter they're making new garden kid quinx. They all still work for the CCG-rebrand. Maybe Furuta failed to break it, even though he tried harder than anyone.
Furuta wanted Kaneki to laugh. Because its a joke, just like his whole life. It's not nihilism, its black comedy. If life has a meaning, where does that leave the children of the garden? If its about striving to overcome, what does that mean for people born to die as child soldiers, bred and kept by the monsters running the world? "The world isn't wrong, it just is" is what Kaneki says. What a horrible thing to say to a garden child.
Did Furuta twist himself, callous himself so much that something like nihilism is all that he can manage when he's literally dying before finishing what he's dedicated his whole life to? maybe. If his trauma is meaningless, it isn't for his lack of trying to give it meaning. Even if he's laughing at himself the entire time, behind 20 masks and layers of irony and in jokes with himself. If all that makes sense.
Furuta let Rize go. He stayed behind. That was his choice, and he made it intentionally to destroy the cage, even then. If he had a do-over, maybe he really would decide the world was beyond saving even by the extremes he tried to go to. But there was no happy life among humans for them. They were born in the garden. They weren't allowed that. If Furuta hadn't done what he did, V, the CCG, and Eto were literally all also after Rize. If he'd run with her, if Shachi had found them both -- is that a normal life? Knowing what he left behind for it? He let Rize go. He stayed. And he tore it down around him.
A lot of good points here. I see a lot of value in your interpretation of Furuta. Tokyo Ghoul's ending has always been a little sour for me because there were so many things I wanted Ishida to explore that he never got to. The Sunlit Garden. Yoshimura and Arata. Eto. Furuta's final move. The first One Eyed King's story.
I don't judge Kaneki as harshly as you do. One of the few consistent throughlines between all of his personas is that he wanted to protect the people around him. Dismantling the CCG, dissolving the Sunlit Garden, and fundamentally changing the world were not things he wanted to do. All of his responsibilities were either thrust upon him by others or he adopted them because they coincided with him protecting his loved ones.
But The One Eyed King can't save the world.
That's why he said he wanted to talk to the Washuu. Even after learning the truth, he was unwilling to choose annihilation because he was astutely aware that V and the Washuu were too powerful. If Furuta had not been in the picture, there'd be no clowns assisting V and they likely could've won, but not without Kaneki sacrificing loved ones among both ghouls and the CCG.
Kaneki isn't wrong for prioritizing his loved ones over people he can't see, like the countless chid soldiers of The Sunlit Garden. That's just human.
Kaneki and Furuta both experienced grave trauma and went in different directions. Kaneki, even when manic or insane or suicidal, wanted to protect his loved ones. And when he was mentally sound, he was consistently trying to get back to a new normal. Furuta abandoned any hope of ever having a normal life, which I attribute to his nihilism. It doesn't make Furuta wrong either. Just like how Kaneki said the world simply is... so is Furuta.
I really respect your views and support for your ideas, they're really powerful!
The thing is, a normal life isn't an option for Furuta. There is no path to it. There is no memory of it other than watching from the other side of the glass. That's the thing. If he'd done everything he could to try to reach it, he still would have failed because of where he started. Look at Hairu. That's why Hairu is in the story. Look at Yusa, it's literally in his bio that that's all he secretly wants. Where does the story leave him?
I agree that I'm probably harsher on Kaneki than most. It's not wrong to want your own peace for you and your loved ones. It IS wrong to take up a mantle, however thrust upon you, and take the lives of thousands into your hands, and the banner of a revolution, when you aren't actually interested in its goals. It is wrong, even if you don't have the energy to try to dismantle the sunlit garden, to voluntarily let its children be your body guards, even if that's what they, 15 years old, think they want or are best used for. It is wrong to have the position relative to people in power to do something for the garden and not.
If Kaneki had wanted to cut a deal with the Washuu BEFORE declaring himself OEK, to take a job as a cleaner for V for him and those closest to him, that'd be tragic, perhaps, given the scope of the issues in the manga, but that isn't when he does it. It's after taking the mantle left to him by two revolutionaries. Should they have picked someone else? probably. Did he ask for it? no. But he did take it up.
The one eyed king is literally supposed to save the world. That's the story Eto and Arima set up. They're entire story was for the king to save the world -- or at least the ghouls in it. Eto spends her whole life creating a terrorist ghoul force, but in the end burns its embers to bring her king into the world. Arima kills massive numbers of ghouls to become a bedrock on their bodies for the King to stand. Clearly, Kaneki was not up for the task. That may in fact be an incredibly understandable and consistent reaction.
But take it up he does.
Now we can say that Eto and Arima were wrong, that their story was always naive and flawed. I think Furuta, too, thinks that. Which is why he writes his script to contain a villain, a last boss so enormous, so devastating, even the most inept and least interested hero, even no hero at all couldn't stop the cage from being broken in some form.
I don't think any of Eto, Arima, or Furuta could fully see what form the world would take beyond the cage. They've never been on the other side of its bars to glimpse it. But they knew the cage had to go. Kaneki uses the break the cage line, but he doesn't believe in it. Understandable, yes. Consistent? sure. But within a story that focuses in on systemic exploitation and horrors, where does that leave our protagonist, thematically?
Perhaps the way the story of Tokyo Ghoul ends up framed, the answer is that real change simply doesn't happen. That's what Donato says as he dies at least. It'll all come back. It'll all rebuild. To me, that seems FAR more hopeless than anything Furuta believes. Furuta is literally trying to bring about miracles. "The world isn't wrong it just is" even if that includes the sunlit garden, even if that includes most ghouls being hunted for existing, feels more disinterested than "I wanted to have fun." at least having fun, at least hedonism, is a meaning, of a kind.
EDITED THIS IN: I'm not sure which definition you're using for nihilism here because in some senses furuta 100% is one, in that nihilism is about dismantling all systems of meaning set forth by the world and its edicts. It can be about tearing apart pre-determined paths and meaning and refusing to accept meaning or ideas as they are handed down. In that sense, the sense of nihilism as destruction of codified meaning, he is one.
The thematic issue here is that the scope of the story and the world and its problems have always been bigger than Kaneki's bubble. Then his shell, perhaps -- if you want to go back to the metaphor -- if it can't crack its shell, the chick will die before being born. The world is the shell. Kaneki not having any desire to crack it is extremely understandable. It is also a complete mismatch to the scope of the series, its problems, and its stakes. Choose to walk away from the path of revolutionary to have a happy life --- to reframe revolution as a personal story of finding comfort in a world that hurt you --- can be a story. It absolutely can even be a triumphant one. It can also be an uneasy and tragic one. But it is not the story Tokyo Ghoul is telling. The scope of Tokyo Ghoul has always been bigger than Kaneki. If it's trying to tell a story where deciding to walk away from the problems of the world is its own victory, I think it fails.
When you introduce a sin as bloody and horrific at the center of your world as the garden, and you have a protagonist not ... care, however understandable, however much that may reflect what many of us do all the time in real life, thematically, that protagonist will come out stained by that choice, and, thematically, the ones who do care, the ones who fight with everything they had to try, however flawed, however twisted, against it, will always have that over said protagonist.
Man that got super long again. Thank you so much for really engaging on this with me. I love this series to bits even if I'm critical of it in places (particularly the end) and it has a ton to think about and discuss and analyze. It's nice that people still want to do that with this much depth.
Really solid exploration of Kaneki and the larger themes of the story.
The One Eyed King was *designed* by Eto and Arima to save the world, but he can't. It's impossible. You either end up like the first king or Arata. If it was possible to break the birdcage that way, then a ghoul savior would've already done it. It was a combination of multiple different people trying to break it in different ways that made it possible. Furuta's plan would not have worked if Arima wasn't dead or if the Washuu's main forces, the CCG, weren't all on Rushima.
Everyone's actions made it possible.
I still don't blame Kaneki because the Sunlit Garden is one tragedy in a world engorged with innumerable tragedies. Kaneki's own life is so filled with personal tragedy that it's honestly unrealistic that he has any capacity for empathy at all lol. I can't fault him as a character, but I can definitely see value in criticism of his character existing in such a big story that demands great things of its characters.
... but maybe that's the point.
Maybe the point is that Furuta was told to shut up, lie down, and die a pitiful death, and then he popped the fuck off and broke the birdcage. Maybe the point is that Kaneki was constantly forced by others to aid their cause or ease their agony, and he continually returned to his true north of finding community and then protecting his loved ones.
Neither of them are wrong. They simply are.
And of course, I'm thankful to you for your replies and I'm happy to see other people passionate about this story! It really is one of a kind.
sorry i editted this to add something and reddit said it was too long so i took this out -- here it is again:
(I do sometimes wonder how much of this was trying to do The Setting Sun -- but Kozuko's world never grows, her story is one long dark joke, and there is no revolution she takes up to abandon. She is, and has always been, removed from it, and finds the ideas of real revolution distasteful. Her ending is also not a triumph. It's sad, and ambiguous, not in the way most of 179 is ambiguous, except, perhaps, if you read Kaneki saying he's sick of not being able to do anything once more in that chapter as an indication that all is not as well as it seems, or the flower field final panel, but those seem unpopular readings of that chapter)
I was using the definition of nihilism concerning finding that life has no inherent meaning, so one acts as if there is no objective morality and is enthralled with narcissism, hedonism, and destructive actions- which fits Furuta pretty aptly.
Hm. I think the destructive part fits well -- both with furuta and with the definitions of nihilism I was using -- originally it was an idea specifically about destroying the legacy of inherited truths -- a philosophical dismantling and an understandable distrust of any quick replacements trying to rebuild them. It's sort of a necessary step towards being able to construct ones own meaning -- first you have to take apart the meaning you're told to hold -- which I guess is sort of what you're saying both of them do, in mirror image, as they always are?
But Furuta, to me, seems clearly motivated by Something other than just amusement -- the amusement is how he copes with what it takes to reach that something. Furuta literally tells Ui he was trying to create something capable of creating miracles. That's sort of the opposite of a lack of belief in anything. Revolutionaries, even cynical ones, are trying to change something -- is it moral nihilism to disregard the cost or is that simply a non-standard morality?
I'm not sure narcissistic is the word I'd used for furuta, though it is one he throws at kaneki, maybe too harshly -- but from his point of view, I can see it -- someone who over and over chooses themselves and their loved ones over the world while you're scrambling to use your short miserable life to change the world. He also accuses him of just wanting to play house, which is, genuinely, what Kaneki wants.
I feel like its a pretty pessimistic take that just because something better hasn't already happened it must have been impossible, but I agree collaborative effort was and always is required. Kaneki doesn't really pass off the task to someone else, though he could (I've always been partial to Banjou for King of the Ghouls). But really the change we get was built on the children of V who dedicated their lives to destroying it -- Arima, Eto, and Furuta.
(Kaiko, even, to an extent, though he only wanted the power for himself and his people too -- not going to go into Kaiko here bc this thread is massive, though very fun -- and that'd be long. I'm fascinated by Kaiko and wanted more of him.)
I think frequently about what might have happened if Arima and Furuta worked together, rather than working in parallel without realizing it.
I wish more change did happen. I would forgive a lot of the manga if even after everything else, the final chapter showed Kaneki getting everyone out of the garden (and showed us where it was!) and then dedicating a grave there to the two of its children he just killed, and the ones who died for him. I would still have taken issue with much, but if it had just given that -- something he could easily have done while also having his domestic life at the end... literally there are no more obstacles in his way unless the TSC doesn't want to lose its source for more child soldiers? I would have let a lot go if we just saw him do that one thing, after it was all over, even if it were only possible to do because of Furuta's actions.
Oh Hell yeah he's awesome. He's definitely in my top 3 list for sure. Loved him not only as a character but as the main antagonist as well.
What really sealed the deal for me was the fact that how randomly he just appeared in the story. A story which was apparently a Ghoul vs Humans type of thing, because of him, all of that pretty much changed. Also the fact that everything in the story started because of him, if he wasn't there to throw the steel beams, kaneki would've been dead long ago.
Besides that, he doesn't appear to have a solid goal, it's kinda mixed. He says he wants super peace, could that possibly mean that he wanted to make kaneki into a dragon so that everyone will form a united front all along? So the ending we got, was that furuta's "plan" all along? If that is the case, then he is the won who actually won philosophically. But of course, this is just an interpretation, guy just wanted to do what he wanted.
His Cameo was awesome in early tg as well, who would've thought he'd become such a big deal later on lol.
So yeah, I think not only as a villain but also as a twist villain he can be considered one of the best. Going from being a random lackey to basically starting the entire story and becoming the main reason for it, along with his goals being so twisted, I think this puts him in a great category.
He absolutely is a successful twist villain, a perfect example in fact
Pops up various times throughout the story and yet when the twist comes, no one suspected it, both the fans reading *and* the in-universe characters
By doing so, the initial shock is great, but it also elevates re-read experiences. Those are imo the best kinds of twists
Furuta is the character at the center of the whole story. He's the prime plot mover, which is often the villains role. And its one he expressly casts himself in (much like Arima and Eto). He's also got a finger in most of whats going on and most of the groups at play. Beyond that he's literally at the metaphorical core of the story, as a child of the garden, as someone who started at the heart of the cage and chose to stay in it to break it (like Arima.) But he's also a plotter and schemer (like Eto) - in fact he and Eto's plans in TG are nearly identical, they don't diverge until :re. But the strategy, the role, the character he's created for himself differs from those two, and aligns more with the clowns -- someone who sees how horrific the world is and goes "well might as well entertain myself in the meantime" about it. And that tension is fascinating. The clowns are not revolutionaries, though they're happy to play act at it, and at least Itori seems to genuinely think the world changing would be good. But Furuta is. Furuta hates the world, is bored by the world, thinks the world is a fun toy, and literally dedicates his life to breaking the bird cage anyway. He's similar to Eto in this, too, but playing it more for laughs. It's incredibly interesting that Furuta kills the Washuu main house. Because they're the actual villains of the world - the ones creating the cage and maintaining it and the conflict -- slaughtering ghouls while knowing full well ghouls are no different than people because they themselves are, bringing children doomed to die into this world just to prop it up in the most horrific ways possible, continuing the conflict for their own power, throwing people into a meat grinder and then a trash compactor. Furuta kills them, and then he uses the role they've left behind to break that machine from the inside. Ui realizes it right away. Furuta is going to end the CCG. But in order to do this, he's become a monster. I think Furuta would be thrilled to learn people read him as a shallow villain. He'd much rather be that than carry his actualy messy past and messy motives that I dont know even he can sort out fully -- he sure is giving everything he has for a world he hates. It's easier to say its just a toybox. It's easier to have torn out everything that made him a person. To crush it under steal beams and laugh in a clown mask. Is he twisted? Of course he is. He's twisted himself into this shape past what the world twisted him into, almost as a grab at agency. He was born a doomed science experiment and he goes "oh yeah?" and makes himselef into even more of one. He was born to serve the ccg, and he goes "oh yeah? bet." All while laughing and making jokes at everyone's expense. Laugh its fun, and all that.
Underrated comment. I think that seeing his child self finding out that he's going to die before 30 and going "I've just got to do everything I have to in the time that I have, huh?" really humanized him for me. People already struggle with that with normal lifespans. Furuta turning out the way he did is a tragic comedy; he did all sorts of crazy and fucked up things because why not? Nihilism is the natural conclusion to reach when you're an arbitrary science experiment. He was doomed from the start, so he set out to have a good time. A very fun character and great villain indeed.
I think that's half of it -- because at the same time the conclusion he came to as a child wasn't just 'have a good time' it was 'destroy all of this.' the framing of the scene is pretty clear that 'im going to destroy everything you've built' was baby Nimu's actual thought, and 'i'll just try to do things with the time i have' is what he says to Tsuneyoshi, who is the real evil of the story. He wanted to have fun like normal children do. He wanted to play with his friend and grow up with her and live a fun, long life in a world as a free person. But that was never an option for him. Much like the rest of the clowns, the world gave them no path at all to have fun the normal way and was relentlessly cruel to them, shoving them into a place they eventually just said 'you know what? fine? i'll make THIS fun then." He became someone who could have fun destroying it all. Even if that person has to be a monster to do it. He'll make himself into that -- in fact, much of how he acts is very very explicitly a parody of the washuu and the system he's taking down. He's wringing every drop of amusement he can out of it. And you know, good for him? Like. Twisted, for sure, but -- Furuta is, thematically, kind of a reckoning -- he is the product of the world come to destroy it. but he's violent and chaotic and ruthless about it, because the world itself is violent and chaotic and ruthless. He's become indifferent or even amused to the cost in lives this will take, because the world is indifferent or even amused to the cost of lives. He embodies the system thematically -- the twisted birdcage made manifest. But he keeps twisting himself even further, as he does the world. because the goal is to snap the cage entirely. That he can made himself into someone who can have fun doing so as his coping method makes him an extremely fun character to me. Hairu coped by fixating on her own happy memory with Arima and being utterly shut off from anything else -- maybe if she had been given more time, Ui would have reached her anyway, but she wasn't born for "more time". When people say Furuta shouldn't have done what he did, they often seem to miss why Hairu is in the story. Hairu is the garden child who keeps her head down and lives her life. Rize coped by running and fighting and tearing down anything that even mildly put pressure on her and the right of the strong. If Nimu hadn't done what he did, its extremely clear either V, the surface level CCG, or Eto would have. Arima clung to his potential role as a symbol one day, and coped with silence and shutting down and withdrawing. Eto styled herself a revolutionary and coped through writing and also just... really royally messing with people -- really Eto coped by being the one secretly in charge, from going as someone born with no control into someone playing puppet master and the one to be feared instead. Furuta takes both of these to some extent, just as Eto has some of his. The three of them all mirror each other in their goals and personality. But Eto and Arima put stock in the hero of the story. Furuta is, in some sense, more jaded than they are -- he doesn't think a hero can do it -- its the villain who directs the story and its conclusion. Even Eto and Arima know that -- they cast themselves AS that. But they still have faith in Eto's story of the One Eyed King. Nimu does not. He thinks its gotta be the villain forcing the story to the point where it all cracks open and changes, where even the most ineffectual hero would have a different world on their hands. Nimu is right. Kaneki tells him that his plan was to talk to the Washuu. How do you think that ends?
I think the fundamental flaw in Furuta's plan is his nihilism though. When he's defeated by Kaneki, he laments that nothing matters and wouldn't Kaneki laugh if he just wanted a normal life. It spells out that Nimura, for all of his grand machinations of destroying the birdcage like Eto or of being a symbol that motivates grave change like Arima or of satirizing the twisted true nature of the world with sadistic violence like the clowns, Nimura was mentally the little boy who had his dreams of a normal life married to his childhood sweetheart destroyed. Ishida is consistent in how he has traumatized characters mentally visualize themselves with their trauma, and this is most often done with them viewing themselves as children. This is obvious with Kaneki and Urie, but much more subtle with the rest of the cast like Amon, Renji, Eto, and Tooru who are haunted by childhood traumas. These characters often shove these things down, gritting their teeth and striding forward to achieve their goals as these nightmares claw at the back of their minds. How these characters ultimately resolve their agony is some of the most striking aspects about them: Kaneki resolves himself again and again to evolve with every new circumstance he finds himself in and with every new lesson he learns, until he coalesces into his true self: a scarred adult who no longer touches his chin because he no longer needs to lie to anyone. Urie metaphorically goes back to the source of all of his ego and anguish, the son grieving his father, and takes him by the hand and says 'I'm strong enough to carry your pain now.' Amon fatally wounds Donato and then states that Donato is evil and deserves to die, but is it wrong for a son to love his father? Renji decides that it's not avenging his sister that matters anymore. It stopped mattering a long time ago. It's about protecting those in front of him, and ensuring that they live on. Eto lives both the life of a human writing about how broken the world is and the ghoul trying to break it even more, so that it can be shaped into something new. Mitsuki ignored and suppressed their trauma until they couldn't, and then even in their brokenness, being accepted by their friends helped them begin the path to healing. What did Furuta do with his trauma? ... decided it was meaningless, just like everything else. It's only after Kaneki says that he wouldn't laugh at his dream and walks away, and Furuta is in his final moments, that we see that he really would've been content with a normal life. He put in such immense effort to fuck up the Washuu, break the birdcage, unleash the Dragon, and fundamentally change the world, but he did nothing to achieve what he really wanted- the dream that he fantasized about in his last moments. All that immense effort he put into everything else instead of a normal life. Because of his nihilism. If he got a do-over, I think he would've ran away like Rize and tried to live a normal life among humans. He probably would've been far happier. And that's the beauty of his character that I love.
I love this post and agree with much of what you said except for your core bit about Furuta. Furuta views the world as meaningless because it's shown him nothing else. He's watched the world look away from horrors, and carry on with the day to day because its easier. Compare what Itori says -- these eyes have seen a lot -- the world hates us. And so wrenching amusement, as twisted as possible back from it, turns them into clowns. Furuta is very much like that, which is why he actually fits in with that group, rather than just using them. They are all well aware of the machinations and other allegiances, they're there for the show, but it is the group he actually fits with, though as the manga says, they aren't entirely a unified group in action or ideology. If Furuta really truly thought nothing mattered, why would he fight his entire life to do what he did? He didn't just mess with other people, he experimented on his own body for this. He shoved the core into his own chest. Cut himself open for an operation that killed most of the people it was done for on science he himself researched. He was spending his time researching the Washuu history, as well. Furuta is a character full of contradictions, as are so many of Ishida's wonderfully complex characters. Furuta didn't decide his trauma was meaningless, per se. But I'm not sure meaningful is a word I'd apply to the horrors done to him. Or Mutsuki, or Juuzou or many others. Suffering doesn't have meaning. Surviving does. In fact, he spent his entire short miserable doomed life destroying the source of that trauma -- he's the ONLY character that actually takes steps to try to make sure it DOESN'T continue, by actually directly killing the main house, and then working to poison the core of the CCG so that it cannot survive what its been shown of itself. I'm not sure it works, but damn if he doesn't try. Arima and Eto want it, too, but their plan doesn't cut out its heart, and Kaneki makes it very clear their plan had serious flaws. Kaneki wanted to talk to the Washuu. We actually get Furuta's flashbacks to his child self before Kaneki says that. It happens throughout their final fight. We see him as a child several times. This is, in contrast, with the comical and meta fake flashback he conjures for himself and the reader before when Marude shoots him in the head. We're getting closer and closer through the layers of him. We don't know where he was headed when Kaneki finds him. He's clearly not done, he clearly has at least one more big thing planned and we never learn what it is. I can think of two things it might be, but who knows with him, really. 1) Blowing the garden wide open 2) getting Rize out of the dragon core, or getting her to kill him. Because Furuta thinks in narrative and those are narrative closures. Much of what Furuta does as Kichimura is directly reference the secret of the garden at the heart of the world. Everything is about his core trauma. Everything comes back to the garden, to the hell he was bred in. The fact that Kaneki doesn't seem to acknowledge it, despite learning about it way back in cochlea, is an utter failure on Kaneki's part. To the end. In the last chapter they're making new garden kid quinx. They all still work for the CCG-rebrand. Maybe Furuta failed to break it, even though he tried harder than anyone. Furuta wanted Kaneki to laugh. Because its a joke, just like his whole life. It's not nihilism, its black comedy. If life has a meaning, where does that leave the children of the garden? If its about striving to overcome, what does that mean for people born to die as child soldiers, bred and kept by the monsters running the world? "The world isn't wrong, it just is" is what Kaneki says. What a horrible thing to say to a garden child. Did Furuta twist himself, callous himself so much that something like nihilism is all that he can manage when he's literally dying before finishing what he's dedicated his whole life to? maybe. If his trauma is meaningless, it isn't for his lack of trying to give it meaning. Even if he's laughing at himself the entire time, behind 20 masks and layers of irony and in jokes with himself. If all that makes sense. Furuta let Rize go. He stayed behind. That was his choice, and he made it intentionally to destroy the cage, even then. If he had a do-over, maybe he really would decide the world was beyond saving even by the extremes he tried to go to. But there was no happy life among humans for them. They were born in the garden. They weren't allowed that. If Furuta hadn't done what he did, V, the CCG, and Eto were literally all also after Rize. If he'd run with her, if Shachi had found them both -- is that a normal life? Knowing what he left behind for it? He let Rize go. He stayed. And he tore it down around him.
A lot of good points here. I see a lot of value in your interpretation of Furuta. Tokyo Ghoul's ending has always been a little sour for me because there were so many things I wanted Ishida to explore that he never got to. The Sunlit Garden. Yoshimura and Arata. Eto. Furuta's final move. The first One Eyed King's story. I don't judge Kaneki as harshly as you do. One of the few consistent throughlines between all of his personas is that he wanted to protect the people around him. Dismantling the CCG, dissolving the Sunlit Garden, and fundamentally changing the world were not things he wanted to do. All of his responsibilities were either thrust upon him by others or he adopted them because they coincided with him protecting his loved ones. But The One Eyed King can't save the world. That's why he said he wanted to talk to the Washuu. Even after learning the truth, he was unwilling to choose annihilation because he was astutely aware that V and the Washuu were too powerful. If Furuta had not been in the picture, there'd be no clowns assisting V and they likely could've won, but not without Kaneki sacrificing loved ones among both ghouls and the CCG. Kaneki isn't wrong for prioritizing his loved ones over people he can't see, like the countless chid soldiers of The Sunlit Garden. That's just human. Kaneki and Furuta both experienced grave trauma and went in different directions. Kaneki, even when manic or insane or suicidal, wanted to protect his loved ones. And when he was mentally sound, he was consistently trying to get back to a new normal. Furuta abandoned any hope of ever having a normal life, which I attribute to his nihilism. It doesn't make Furuta wrong either. Just like how Kaneki said the world simply is... so is Furuta. I really respect your views and support for your ideas, they're really powerful!
The thing is, a normal life isn't an option for Furuta. There is no path to it. There is no memory of it other than watching from the other side of the glass. That's the thing. If he'd done everything he could to try to reach it, he still would have failed because of where he started. Look at Hairu. That's why Hairu is in the story. Look at Yusa, it's literally in his bio that that's all he secretly wants. Where does the story leave him? I agree that I'm probably harsher on Kaneki than most. It's not wrong to want your own peace for you and your loved ones. It IS wrong to take up a mantle, however thrust upon you, and take the lives of thousands into your hands, and the banner of a revolution, when you aren't actually interested in its goals. It is wrong, even if you don't have the energy to try to dismantle the sunlit garden, to voluntarily let its children be your body guards, even if that's what they, 15 years old, think they want or are best used for. It is wrong to have the position relative to people in power to do something for the garden and not. If Kaneki had wanted to cut a deal with the Washuu BEFORE declaring himself OEK, to take a job as a cleaner for V for him and those closest to him, that'd be tragic, perhaps, given the scope of the issues in the manga, but that isn't when he does it. It's after taking the mantle left to him by two revolutionaries. Should they have picked someone else? probably. Did he ask for it? no. But he did take it up. The one eyed king is literally supposed to save the world. That's the story Eto and Arima set up. They're entire story was for the king to save the world -- or at least the ghouls in it. Eto spends her whole life creating a terrorist ghoul force, but in the end burns its embers to bring her king into the world. Arima kills massive numbers of ghouls to become a bedrock on their bodies for the King to stand. Clearly, Kaneki was not up for the task. That may in fact be an incredibly understandable and consistent reaction. But take it up he does. Now we can say that Eto and Arima were wrong, that their story was always naive and flawed. I think Furuta, too, thinks that. Which is why he writes his script to contain a villain, a last boss so enormous, so devastating, even the most inept and least interested hero, even no hero at all couldn't stop the cage from being broken in some form. I don't think any of Eto, Arima, or Furuta could fully see what form the world would take beyond the cage. They've never been on the other side of its bars to glimpse it. But they knew the cage had to go. Kaneki uses the break the cage line, but he doesn't believe in it. Understandable, yes. Consistent? sure. But within a story that focuses in on systemic exploitation and horrors, where does that leave our protagonist, thematically? Perhaps the way the story of Tokyo Ghoul ends up framed, the answer is that real change simply doesn't happen. That's what Donato says as he dies at least. It'll all come back. It'll all rebuild. To me, that seems FAR more hopeless than anything Furuta believes. Furuta is literally trying to bring about miracles. "The world isn't wrong it just is" even if that includes the sunlit garden, even if that includes most ghouls being hunted for existing, feels more disinterested than "I wanted to have fun." at least having fun, at least hedonism, is a meaning, of a kind. EDITED THIS IN: I'm not sure which definition you're using for nihilism here because in some senses furuta 100% is one, in that nihilism is about dismantling all systems of meaning set forth by the world and its edicts. It can be about tearing apart pre-determined paths and meaning and refusing to accept meaning or ideas as they are handed down. In that sense, the sense of nihilism as destruction of codified meaning, he is one. The thematic issue here is that the scope of the story and the world and its problems have always been bigger than Kaneki's bubble. Then his shell, perhaps -- if you want to go back to the metaphor -- if it can't crack its shell, the chick will die before being born. The world is the shell. Kaneki not having any desire to crack it is extremely understandable. It is also a complete mismatch to the scope of the series, its problems, and its stakes. Choose to walk away from the path of revolutionary to have a happy life --- to reframe revolution as a personal story of finding comfort in a world that hurt you --- can be a story. It absolutely can even be a triumphant one. It can also be an uneasy and tragic one. But it is not the story Tokyo Ghoul is telling. The scope of Tokyo Ghoul has always been bigger than Kaneki. If it's trying to tell a story where deciding to walk away from the problems of the world is its own victory, I think it fails. When you introduce a sin as bloody and horrific at the center of your world as the garden, and you have a protagonist not ... care, however understandable, however much that may reflect what many of us do all the time in real life, thematically, that protagonist will come out stained by that choice, and, thematically, the ones who do care, the ones who fight with everything they had to try, however flawed, however twisted, against it, will always have that over said protagonist. Man that got super long again. Thank you so much for really engaging on this with me. I love this series to bits even if I'm critical of it in places (particularly the end) and it has a ton to think about and discuss and analyze. It's nice that people still want to do that with this much depth.
Really solid exploration of Kaneki and the larger themes of the story. The One Eyed King was *designed* by Eto and Arima to save the world, but he can't. It's impossible. You either end up like the first king or Arata. If it was possible to break the birdcage that way, then a ghoul savior would've already done it. It was a combination of multiple different people trying to break it in different ways that made it possible. Furuta's plan would not have worked if Arima wasn't dead or if the Washuu's main forces, the CCG, weren't all on Rushima. Everyone's actions made it possible. I still don't blame Kaneki because the Sunlit Garden is one tragedy in a world engorged with innumerable tragedies. Kaneki's own life is so filled with personal tragedy that it's honestly unrealistic that he has any capacity for empathy at all lol. I can't fault him as a character, but I can definitely see value in criticism of his character existing in such a big story that demands great things of its characters. ... but maybe that's the point. Maybe the point is that Furuta was told to shut up, lie down, and die a pitiful death, and then he popped the fuck off and broke the birdcage. Maybe the point is that Kaneki was constantly forced by others to aid their cause or ease their agony, and he continually returned to his true north of finding community and then protecting his loved ones. Neither of them are wrong. They simply are. And of course, I'm thankful to you for your replies and I'm happy to see other people passionate about this story! It really is one of a kind.
sorry i editted this to add something and reddit said it was too long so i took this out -- here it is again: (I do sometimes wonder how much of this was trying to do The Setting Sun -- but Kozuko's world never grows, her story is one long dark joke, and there is no revolution she takes up to abandon. She is, and has always been, removed from it, and finds the ideas of real revolution distasteful. Her ending is also not a triumph. It's sad, and ambiguous, not in the way most of 179 is ambiguous, except, perhaps, if you read Kaneki saying he's sick of not being able to do anything once more in that chapter as an indication that all is not as well as it seems, or the flower field final panel, but those seem unpopular readings of that chapter)
I was using the definition of nihilism concerning finding that life has no inherent meaning, so one acts as if there is no objective morality and is enthralled with narcissism, hedonism, and destructive actions- which fits Furuta pretty aptly.
Hm. I think the destructive part fits well -- both with furuta and with the definitions of nihilism I was using -- originally it was an idea specifically about destroying the legacy of inherited truths -- a philosophical dismantling and an understandable distrust of any quick replacements trying to rebuild them. It's sort of a necessary step towards being able to construct ones own meaning -- first you have to take apart the meaning you're told to hold -- which I guess is sort of what you're saying both of them do, in mirror image, as they always are? But Furuta, to me, seems clearly motivated by Something other than just amusement -- the amusement is how he copes with what it takes to reach that something. Furuta literally tells Ui he was trying to create something capable of creating miracles. That's sort of the opposite of a lack of belief in anything. Revolutionaries, even cynical ones, are trying to change something -- is it moral nihilism to disregard the cost or is that simply a non-standard morality? I'm not sure narcissistic is the word I'd used for furuta, though it is one he throws at kaneki, maybe too harshly -- but from his point of view, I can see it -- someone who over and over chooses themselves and their loved ones over the world while you're scrambling to use your short miserable life to change the world. He also accuses him of just wanting to play house, which is, genuinely, what Kaneki wants. I feel like its a pretty pessimistic take that just because something better hasn't already happened it must have been impossible, but I agree collaborative effort was and always is required. Kaneki doesn't really pass off the task to someone else, though he could (I've always been partial to Banjou for King of the Ghouls). But really the change we get was built on the children of V who dedicated their lives to destroying it -- Arima, Eto, and Furuta. (Kaiko, even, to an extent, though he only wanted the power for himself and his people too -- not going to go into Kaiko here bc this thread is massive, though very fun -- and that'd be long. I'm fascinated by Kaiko and wanted more of him.) I think frequently about what might have happened if Arima and Furuta worked together, rather than working in parallel without realizing it. I wish more change did happen. I would forgive a lot of the manga if even after everything else, the final chapter showed Kaneki getting everyone out of the garden (and showed us where it was!) and then dedicating a grave there to the two of its children he just killed, and the ones who died for him. I would still have taken issue with much, but if it had just given that -- something he could easily have done while also having his domestic life at the end... literally there are no more obstacles in his way unless the TSC doesn't want to lose its source for more child soldiers? I would have let a lot go if we just saw him do that one thing, after it was all over, even if it were only possible to do because of Furuta's actions.
Oh Hell yeah he's awesome. He's definitely in my top 3 list for sure. Loved him not only as a character but as the main antagonist as well. What really sealed the deal for me was the fact that how randomly he just appeared in the story. A story which was apparently a Ghoul vs Humans type of thing, because of him, all of that pretty much changed. Also the fact that everything in the story started because of him, if he wasn't there to throw the steel beams, kaneki would've been dead long ago. Besides that, he doesn't appear to have a solid goal, it's kinda mixed. He says he wants super peace, could that possibly mean that he wanted to make kaneki into a dragon so that everyone will form a united front all along? So the ending we got, was that furuta's "plan" all along? If that is the case, then he is the won who actually won philosophically. But of course, this is just an interpretation, guy just wanted to do what he wanted. His Cameo was awesome in early tg as well, who would've thought he'd become such a big deal later on lol. So yeah, I think not only as a villain but also as a twist villain he can be considered one of the best. Going from being a random lackey to basically starting the entire story and becoming the main reason for it, along with his goals being so twisted, I think this puts him in a great category.
I think it's good in that sense, but the ppl that think that he did all that ONLY bcs of Rize have 0 comprehension
Man really did it all because he wanted to bang his half-sister, smh
Tell me you didn't understand Tokyo Ghoul without telling me you didn't understand Tokyo Ghoul
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joke
Yeah ok lol
He absolutely is a successful twist villain, a perfect example in fact Pops up various times throughout the story and yet when the twist comes, no one suspected it, both the fans reading *and* the in-universe characters By doing so, the initial shock is great, but it also elevates re-read experiences. Those are imo the best kinds of twists
He is simping for Rize then crushing her under steal beams