Talk:Touka Kirishima/@comment-108.28.7.188-20150706133940/@comment-10733658-20150719055330

I think you're misunderstanding what I mean with those two schools of thought, and which Ishida seems to agree more with.

One considers Punishment for the sake of Punishment. Things such as remorse, acknowledgement of wrongdoing, or attempts to make amends are not considered important or relevant.

The other is not a school of thought without Consequences. Rather, it is a school of thought that believes the point of Punishment is to help someone become a better person. Teaching them to realize their mistakes.

Ishida's characters are all mostly handled the same way Touka was, having to learn from their mistakes and attempting to grow after accepting that they were wrong. While there are consequences, more often than not he goes with karmic elements rather than a direct accountability.

Though honestly, it kind of feels like we're......overall not quite understanding each other? I get the impression something isn't quite getting communicated, somewhere because it seems like we're going in circles.

One point I would disagree with is your argument that Touka is solely responsible for the Anteiku Raid. She was not, though her actions were one contributing factor.

I would argue the factors leading up to the raid were the following:


 * The predations by Rize and Tsukiyama
 * The Fueguchi Investigation
 * Touka's actions as Rabbit
 * Yoshimura's re-emergence as "Owl"
 * The investigation into Dr. Kanou and Kaneki
 * The manipulations of V

Blaming her alone for what eventually happened is unfair and honestly, kind of biased. There were multiple events that led to that tragedy.

Beyond that, again I would point that while you argue Touka was never held accountable or punished........in terms of karmic themes and personal acceptance of responsibility, she was. She made a terrible mistake due to being an angry, emotional child and spent the rest of the series accepting that she was wrong, striving to better follow Yoshimura. She clearly states she understood her part in how things went wrong, and how she felt she deserved punishment.

Yomo tells her that she has to learn to live with the guilt, and that is her responsibility to the people that helped her.

Now, I would agree that Touka as Rabbit will come up in the future. I have the sense that eventually, Akira will deal with the two people involved in her father's death and there is where the question of the Cycle of Revenge will come up. It will be a matter of whether Akira will make her father's mistakes, or learn what Touka learned the hard way -- that revenge is pointless and often contributes to further tragedy. I don't think it will be about Touka herself, though. While she will probably state what she's already learned and apologize, I think she's already gone through both accepting her wrongdoing and faced punishment through the loss of Anteiku.

I'm also a little confused in terms of your treatment of Juuzou in comparison to Touka. It seems like you give Juuzou a free pass on things, and see him as having paid for his actions sufficiently because he's changed in :Re, when we see that the CCG was paying people off when he did terrible things. He was sheltered from consequences over and over again, and only learns in the final chapters because of Shinohara. We do see in :Re that he's trying to be better and made amends for stealing Kaneki's wallet. But from your own arguments, it seems like he should be due a lot more since he never directly paid for his various actions.

In comparison, you seem to have ignored Touka's entire character arc from the original series. She ignored Yoshimura's guidance during the Rabbit arc, but then spends the rest of the series regretting her actions and being more mindful of him. She repeatedly and openly expresses that she was wrong, and has clearly devoted herself since then to following in Yoshimura's footsteps. She states she deserves punishment, and wants to go to the raid to face it. Yomo stopped her because what Yoshimura wanted for her wasn't direct punishment, but rather her taking those lessons and continuing to grow.

Because ultimately, Touka's narrative in the series is about hope. She's the person Yoshimura entrusted with his legacy, after taking a screw-up kid off the streets and slowly guiding her. She stumbled early on, but I think Yoshimura saw that she didn't require reprimand since she was already her harshest critic. And to suggest she didn't face fallout for anything, simply because she lost everything but was allowed to live is kind of overly harsh in my opinion. Touka's fallout was all the loss she suffered, something she accepts as a result of her actions.