Surely Eve ate that apple because she wanted to love a man.
Impression
“For no reason at all, I was overcome by a profound sadness.
And I remembered those of a bloodline I once knew.
‘My dear lost one…'”
Fucking poetic. This was an amazing chapter.
So Kanae is actually a girl? Are you serious, Ishida? I mean, I don’t really mind either way, I was never particularly invested in Kanae, but… wow. Are we supposed to look back for some subtle foreshadowing now? I mean, it does explain a lot of stuff – the jealousy she (wow, that felt weird to type) felt towards Haise, and the now very real possibility that she is in love with Tsukiyama, instead of just having a zealous admiration or adoration towards him like I’d thought before. And her (I really need some time to get used to this) women’s veil during the auction now makes sense. ‘Kanae’ was also a girl’s name from the very beginning. Eto even offered her a bite of her apple, and the title of the chapter was ‘Eve’. Come to think of it, ‘Tooru’ is a gender neutral name too, isn’t it? Ishida strikes again.
I swear, sometimes it feels like this is just one massive game for Ishida, and he’s enjoying the hell out of himself. We have gender disassociation, transgender and cross-dressing over various characters from Kanae and Mutsuki to Big Madam and Nico – at this point, :re is like a gold standard for LGBT+ inclusiveness and diversity. Who’d have thought, huh?
I also feel extremely sorry for every single fujoshi out there, who until this chapter shipped Kanae x Tsukiyama. I offer you my condolences (it’s also really funny that this is how this ship went down, heh). I guess if you were desperate, you’d try to argue she isn’t a girl – but it’s pretty clear, I think, especially after Eto said ‘woman’ at the end of their word association game and Kanae responded with ‘woman’. During the torture sessions she would have to have been stripped for the kagune stabbing, so that’s where she found out I guess. I didn’t really understand that scene with Matsumae (bless her, still with blacked-out eyes even in her flashbacks) finding out – was it a period? If this was a romcom, Tsukiyama would be the oblivious main love interest who is so close yet so far to the main character. And for Kanae, senpai noticed her too late ;_;
I would now like to take the time to call out Ishida on adding to his never-ending list of parallels – Chapter 52 of the original manga was when Kaneki was taken by Aogiri to be tortured. Now, in Chapter 52 of :re, we have Eto come to presumably take Haise away in person, after Kanae failed to do her job properly in dealing with Haise. Why is Eto such a badass? I hate her sometimes, but I also love her – she fell out of the sky quoting her own book in fucking kakuja form. If there really is a torture scene featuring Eto and Haise, I hope some lines from her books are involved. It’ll be as poetic as the final fight with Arima in V14.
Actually, speaking of Arima – what the fuck? I didn’t know he tortured Haise? Is this just his imagination, or did Arima actually tell this to him in a training session? “You must, Haise. Do your job. Kill. Just like I do. You are my quinque. Unless, Haise… would you like to die again?” Is he talking to Kaneki or Haise? It sounds like it’s a fusion of the two or something. And Touka thought he was happy with the CCG, holy shit. What are they doing to him? Are there things he went through with the CCG that they’ve made him forget about?
