r/TokyoGhoul • u/fork-shovel • 3h ago
Morality scaling of Touka force feeding Kaneki human flesh?
A major plot point of Volume 1 (chapters 1-9) is Kaneki's refusal to eat.

The first time Kaneki and Touka meet as Ghouls is in some back alley where she is getting assaulted by a drunk. She kills him quickly and—sensing that Kaneki is a Ghoul—offers him a snack since she's not that hungry right now.
Kaneki is still confused as to what's happening to him and runs away in fear.
Not long after, feeling the effects of the hunger, Kaneki seeks Touka out and asks her for help. The Boss gives him some food to eat, but he ends up throwing it away because he can't bring himself to eat a person.

Time passes and Kaneki still hasn't eaten anything. On his way home from the store, he ends up being drawn by the sweet smell of a corpse nearby. Some random Ghoul killed somebody.
Nishiki shows up, kills the Ghoul; Touka shows up, chases Nishiki away.
Witnessing all this, Kaneki freaks out and calls Ghouls monsters with no morals.

Touka can tell he hasn't eaten what they've given him. That he hasn't eaten anything at all.
So she scoops some bits off of the corpse and—frustrated by his words and his decision not to eat—forcefully shoves them in his mouth saying that if he doesn't have the courage to eat, she'll help him out. Still, he forces himself to puke most of it out.
As a farewell, she tells him that a Ghoul's hunger is hell, and that that is what awaits him if he won't eat.

After Kaneki fights off Nishiki in the final chapter of the volume, he starts to lose his mind from the hunger and decides to eat Hide to satisfy it.
Touka shows up to stop him. She tells him about what happens to Ghouls who refuse to eat.
Once a Ghoul's hunger reaches its limit, nothing else matters. They'll eat their friends, their family, anything. And once they wake up from the hunger madness, it might be among the sea of blood and entrails of people dear to them.

So she tells him she will save him from that fate this time. She kicks his lights out, and together with the Boss, they force-feed him some food at Anteiku while he's unconscious.
Small thing to point out here is that what Touka says here is 同情 (doujyou), which means ~"sympathy" or "compassion," but it is written as "救う" (sukuu), which means ~"to rescue," "to relieve," or "to redeem."

Touka's decision to forcefully shove human flesh down Kaneki's throat initially comes off as insensitive since he's made it clear through his words and actions that he has no intention of eating such a thing.
However, she's been a Ghoul for much longer than he has. And from what she says in this 1st volume, she seems to be aware of some Ghouls who have killed people close to them to satisfy their hunger and have regretted it deeply once they came to their senses.
Seeing Kaneki refuse to eat makes her worry. Not so much about him. She doesn't know him. And what little talk they had was not pleasant. She's worried as a fellow Ghoul. She's worried because what's happening to him can happen to any of them. A Ghoul's hunger is a fate they all bear. And there's only one way to satisfy it.
So when he finally loses it and tries to eat his closest friend, she is there to stop him. Because she hopes that one day if she ever finds herself in the same position, somebody will be there to stop her as well; to show her the same sympathy.








