Talk:Touka Kirishima/@comment-27143318-20151031170043/@comment-25047329-20151101044334

For better or for worse, we haven't seen much of Touka in :re. Half the time she has to put on a facade because she's in front of people who don't know her (like the Qs) and the other half we see what she's really like, but those instances are brief. What we do know about her though and how her past applies to her future is that she was someone who led a violent and unpredictable life and spent years trying to unlearn those habits. Like the other employees at Anteiku, Yoshimura saw a lost young person who made a lot of mistakes and was hoping that by giving her a job and a home that she'd become more stable. The Touka we see in :re is an accumulation of the attempts to turn her life around from before, during, and after the course of the original series. She started working at Anteiku at 14 and is now around 20. She spent six years trying to reinvent herself. The Anteiku Raid was her wake up call because that's when it really hit her that she had to grow up, and she had to grow up fast. She spent most of her life already being a confused angry girl who tried punching her problems away, and it was getting her no where. Allowing herself to spiral into depression and continuing to let herself be ruled by her emotions would also get her no where and has caused harm in the past.

I think Touka deciding to protect Kaneki the way she did is to show that she was somewhat wrong too. The bridge scene was a complicated and layed one where I felt that neither Touka nor Kaneki where either fully right or wrong. Kaneki was going to extremes, going as far as to ignore a chunk of his friends and doing dangerous things that only made others worry. Yet, he was severely traumatized and he did need to get away from his old life for a while, make his own mistakes, and try and sort things out. Touka was extremely worried and wanted him to come home, but she lashed out and said some really nasty things even though she knew that Kaneki was in pain and while he was being selfish, it didn't mean he didn't care about his friends any less. She's now in a position of "power" over him and had to make a call: let him live in ignorant bliss or try to make him remember his past, even if it meant remembering all the loneliness, pain, torture, abandonment, fear, confusion, self loathing, loss, and potentially losing his place in human society for the second time and his new family. She took the option she felt was best given the circumstances. This is also her admitting that Kaneki wasn't entirely wrong for wanting to protect his friends and sometimes what that means is complicated.

In this case, Kaneki has a second chance to live as a human and once he remembers, he mostly likely can't go back. Nishiki was right when he said that wherever Kaneki goes he's "helpless". He's a character that no matter how desperately he tries, his life somehow ends up in the hands of other people. Said other people are also burdened with trying to figure out the right thing to do. Even though she hasn't had a big presence, Touka is one of those people juggling with other invisible forces about what to do with Kaneki. All she can do is make the move she thinks won't let the ball fall and hope that someone else doesn't drop it.