So he can still make that sort of expression, huh?
Impression
Is Arima blind in one eye? I don’t think it was ever in doubt that Arima would defeat Shachi – rather, the question was exactly how far Shachi would be able to push him, and exactly what would happen to him after he was defeated. Although he appeared to lose fairly easily, Shachi may have noticed something about Arima that his past opponents have not – if he really is one-eyed, then that has not only huge symbolic implications but will also be a glaring weakness that Kaneki could use to his advantage.
Pity Shachi is now too dead to tell everyone else about it. I think some people have pointed out that it’s been foreshadowed in the past (one of his eyes has sometimes been depicted as darker, and when we saw him look at Haise through his eyes at the end of the auction arc, the entire background apart from Haise himself was hazy and dim) but I’m really not sure how much of a stab in the dark this is. When Shachi talks of Arima’s weakness being his ‘blind spot’ this chapter though, it’s notable that the very next page has Arima slice through one of Shachi’s eyes before stabbing him in the neck and frying him with Narukami.
It’s very possible that he’s blind. If he is though, I really do think he’s still human and that it’s nothing to do with artificial alterations or ghoul kakuhou implants or anything like that. I want Arima to have some sort of natural flaw instead of his blindness being the price he has to pay for some shounen-type increase in power level. I’m also glad we got to see a post-Aogiri Rize in that flashback. She’s sitting up in bed! Hooray!
Banjou somehow keeps managing to lead wards despite having hardly any strength. At least he’s back! All we’re waiting for now is a proper Rize appearance, Amon and Hide. I guess he’s not Scarecrow if he’s busy elsewhere – he only ‘heard’ of the events on Rue Island after all. I wonder if Ayato is essentially asking for Banjou’s help in breaking into Cochlea again. Has he not thought of the possibility that the CCG might keep a last line of defence behind at Cochlea, in the knowledge that Aogiri might think it’d be the best time to try to break in? I feel like it’s heavily foreshadowing another meeting between Ayato and Kaneki – what I’d like is for the Arima Squad to spread themselves out over several floors of Cochlea. Arima will of course be on the bottom floor, and they’ll put Kaneki (and maybe someone useless like Ui) on the S-rate floor where Eto and maybe Hinami are. Ayato will turn up and Kaneki will let him waltz past him while pretending to put up a struggle so that Hinami will be freed and Aogiri will take the blame. It’s the best case scenario, anyway. What’s more likely in reality is that Arima is put on the S-rate floor and he ends up fighting Ayato and a rouge Kaneki as they try to keep Hinami safe.
I didn’t even know the current Kaneki could show positive emotions. He reminded me an awful lot of pre-Aogiri Kaneki – the innocent, naive one who didn’t want to eat humans and had pacifistic desires. Ironically, it’s only now that things like ghoul rights movements have started spreading amongst human society – I felt this was pretty over the top though, especially since all this emerged from one best-selling author (who is still just a cultural figure in the end, no matter how famous they might be) outing herself as a ghoul on TV. I can understand if that led to increased divisiveness over how society treats ghouls, but having entire segments of society turn pro-ghoul just because of this is too far-fetched for me. Not that it’ll have any major impact on the story as of yet – enough is going on between the CCG, Aogiri and V.
Also, Furuta is pretty much confirmed for Souta now, right?
