▶ PLAYER
HANDLE: Vee
CONTACT: lycanthropic / sharisper#0002
OVER 18? Yes
CHARACTERS IN-GAME: N/A

▶ CHARACTER
NAME: Kaneki Ken (金木 研)
CANON: Tokyo Ghoul :re
CANON POINT: Post-Chapter 99
AGE: 23 years
BACKGROUND: Link. (Discounting anything from the anime adaptation.)

PERSONALITY:“What cannot change can only be broken. This is so to me, who left everything necessary behind in the womb.” — Dear Kafka, Takatsuki Sen
Kaneki Ken can be seen as a paradox of personality. Once a young man so pacifistic and passive that he would take his mother’s advice of “[being] the person who is hurt [rather] than a person who hurts others” to heart at personal expense, a whirlwind of tumultuous circumstances would transform him into an individual willing to go to lengths of casual cruelty to accomplish what he feels is necessary or deserved. By the point Kaneki is willing to accept the crown of the One-Eyed King, he is a synthesis of these polar extremes of his personality—he is willing to accept the heavy mantle of a world-changing goal that was left to him, and though he has tempered a lot of the excessive violence he once relied on, he is now willing to uproot the status quo of society in order to achieve it.

The title, responsibilities, and goal of the One-Eyed King were left for him to accept by Eto and Arima—having seen the suffering of both ghouls and humans in this broken world of theirs, he sets aside whatever doubts or misgivings he might have about himself behind the reins of such an insurmountable task and throws himself into gathering and leading a group and trying to find solutions. But if those are the motivations that he has accepted on the behalf of others, what motivates Kaneki personally? Throughout the series, the answer is always the same: the individuals he grows close to. Despite being naturally introverted, Kaneki would waste away in solitude; two of Kaneki’s greatest fears are abandonment and isolation. Having lost his family at a young age, Kaneki creates families from all the groups he is a part of, whether it was his best friend Hide throughout childhood or the ghouls of Anteiku, to the Quinx Squad he led at the CCG as Haise Sasaki and the revolutionary group “Goat,” which he formed to try to reshape society. Though it is clear that Kaneki cares about Goat’s cause, he is not a person that loses himself in the nobility of an overarching goal. It is important to him because he knows it ensures the future and happiness of the people he loves, and, as always, he is willing to sacrifice nearly anything for it.

His personal philosophy had to go through several configurations to reach a point where he could take that role. When Kaneki first came to terms with his transformation into a half-ghoul, he rejected it outright. At that time, for someone such as himself, to live at the expense of others in such an visceral way was impossible, unbearable. But in befriending the ghouls of Anteiku and sympathizing with their lives—and in seeing the cruelty that humans could perpetrate against their perceived predators, regardless of how peaceable the individual may be—he began to see that the world was not so simple as he had imagined. After delving deep into the ghoul underworld in the second half of Tokyo Ghoul and living in human society as ghoul investigator Sasaki Haise in Tokyo Ghoul :re, Kaneki adopts a philosophy similar to that of other characters in the series: it is not ghouls or humans that are intrinsically evil. Instead it is the world itself that is like a “warped birdcage.” If they want to attempt to try to begin to bridge the fundamental rift between humans and ghouls, they will first need to break free from its confines.

Kaneki’s transformation from soft-spoken college student to revolutionary leader is just as (if not more) drastic than his change from human to half-ghoul. But despite how much he has changed, there are major flaws that are stubbornly persistent in him throughout the series. They largely manifest interpersonally—with the martyr complex that he often has, Kaneki has always struggled to accept or allow others to enter danger on his behalf, even if they do so willingly. This has time and again caused him to hold people who care about him at arm’s-length, damaging or hindering his relationship with them. Kaneki also struggles to articulate how he feels in these situations, and that break-down of communication also regularly causes misunderstandings, confusion, and sometimes anger between himself and those he is close to. This demonstrates that he still has a long way to go in refusing his natural instinct to take on the weight of a problem alone and, instead, share it with those who are willing to shoulder it with him.

It’s ironic, considering Kaneki has even relied on his memories of pivotal figures in his life to help steer him in times of great distress. When fighting Arima in Cochlea on what was supposed to essentially be a suicide mission, he dreams of a scenario in which his best friend Hide appears to undermine his fatalistic perspective and promise him of more to live for. It is after this that Kaneki recalls other times he has imagined others to help him through his breaking points—such as Rize, who had represented the ghoul side of him, or Yamori, who had represented the vicious side of him, and even when Haise had imagined Kaneki in a similar role. He becomes self-aware of his own tendency to manifest these projections to tell him what he believes they would say, all to tell him what he needs to hear. Even aware of this, Kaneki continues to lapse into these self-reflective periods into the end of the series, though usually only in times of extreme duress.

Finally, somewhat set aside of everything else, is the issue of Sasaki Haise. Haise should be considered a different person from Kaneki, and after regaining his memories, he makes this even more conspicuous by creating distance between himself and individuals who were close to Haise (such as the members of the Quinx squad). Though he retains Haise’s memories, he sees them as that of someone else, and therefore separates himself and the subjects of those thoughts and affections.

POWERS/ABILITIES: Kaneki is an artificial half-ghoul; he was originally human, but was physiologically hybridized by the surgical transplant of another ghoul’s “kakuhou” (a ghoul-specific organ which contains Rc cells and can create from them a “kagune”, which is a ghoul’s “hunting organ”) into his body. As a half-ghoul, he manifests one “kakugan” (another ghoul attribute: an eye with black sclera and a bright red iris) on his right side. Though they possess strengths and abilities humans do not, their diet is incredibly limited: they can only subsist off of human (or ghoul) flesh. A ghoul has to consume roughly one adult corpse a month to remain healthy.

• Kagune: Classified as the “rinkaku” type (designating that it emerges from the small of the back), it typically takes the form of scaled tendrils, though Kaneki’s personal skill and creativity allows him to manipulate the size and shape better than other ghouls. At his current canonpoint, Kaneki’s limbs are comprised of kagune material, and he is able to manipulate their shape at whim.


• Kakuja: A “kakuja” is a special type of kagune that is made possible by the cannibalization of ghouls — this gives a ghoul the extremely high Rc count necessary to manifest a kakuja. This type of kagune usually envelops the user (consuming them, in a way), dramatically increasing their strength and speed but at the detriment of their mental state. Kaneki’s is regarded as “half-finished,” making the effects to his psyche even more drastic. Kaneki still has the ability to consciously (or subconsciously) shape it, and his kakuja has taken several different forms, including long centipede-like tails and layered, bladed armor. It should be stated that Kaneki only uses his kakuja in dire situations, when he feels it necessary.


• Strength: Ghouls are, on average, 3 to 5 times stronger than humans, and Kaneki’s hybridization seems to have increased even that — for example, he was shown to be able to tear a lamp post out of the asphalt to use as a makeshift weapon.


• Speed: He has very sharp reflexes and is able to run at ~33mph.


• Constitution: Kaneki has remarkable endurance; he can withstand multiple wounds that would be mortal to humans (and some that would be mortal to ghouls) and continue to fight. He has also developed an incredibly high tolerance to pain, and he uses that to his advantage in fights; he has been known to break a limb to get the upper-hand more than once in combat, all without much reaction.


• Regeneration: Though all ghouls possess a regenerative healing ability fueled by the Rc cells in their bodies, Kaneki’s is regarded as “freakish” even among their number. He can regenerate severed limbs within days, severed digits within hours, and can mend flesh wounds almost instantaneously. This ability will eventually fail if the Rc cell count in his body gets low; when this happens, he must eat to recover.


• Martial Skills: Kaneki is skilled in both close-quarters hand-to-hand combat and combat with sword-like weapons.


• Intellect: Kaneki is described as keenly intelligent, and he uses that skill to assess foes and discern how best to neutralize them as threats. He is also a voracious reader and has the ability to rapidly memorize what he reads.

INVENTORY: Wearing this outfit upon entry, complete with eyepatch.

1. His mask.


2. This (questionable) outfit.


3. The quinque Yukimura 1/3.


4. Dear Kafka, the debut novel of author Takatsuki Sen.


5. King Bileygr, the tenth and final novel of author Takatsuki Sen.


6. A bottle of blood wine.

MOONBLESSING: Sanguis

▶ SAMPLES

▶ link #1
▶ link #2