Talk:Ken Kaneki/@comment-66.215.62.59-20150420020656/@comment-25047329-20150420150719

Mmmmm...

/wades in/

It's morning and all I'm running on is a cup of coffee so forgive me if I'm not coherent enough, but I'll try to give my two cents on the Kaneki/Shironeki thing.

Kaneki is a person who has always been good and compartmentalizing as a defense mechanizm. Hide himself says that Kaneki is a really good "actor" who can play the part he feels is necessary and Ishida has also called him "The King of Fakes" (someone can correct me on the Ishida remark if that's wrong, that's just what I heard but I don't know the source).

"Shironeki" is a persona, but one that's not so far removed from regular Kaneki that they can be seen as two different people. He's a "character". A ghoul comprised of the more cruel and cold parts of ghoul mentality that Kaneki is aware of. Mainly, he takes notes from Rize and Yamori as a "how to" because those two left the biggest imprint in a negative manner. It's a role Kaneki takes on because he feels he needs to, but is fully aware of the consequences because the more he tries to be "Shironeki" the less he becomes "Kuroneki".

If we were to look at them as two totally different people, no, "Kuroneki" never killed anyone. The thing is though, "Kuroneki" purposly made "Shironeki" and is fully aware of what he does. They're not so seperate that they're two individuals within the same body as if he had multiple personalities, it's always been Kaneki who made a "ghoul character" to enact certain things. That's why he's so mournful later in the series when he realized how off the wall he had been behaving. Kaneki regrets "throwing away this weakness (humanity)" and Yoshimura tells him it's not too late to retrieve it. No matter how hard he tries, Kaneki just can't be his "ghoul character" and deep down, doesn't want to be.

TL;DR it's always been Kaneki. Shironeki was always Kaneki in an acted role that he tried to force himself into but it didn't work out.

Does any of this make sense, or do I need more coffee?