Warning! Spoilers ahead for Choujin X chapters 18 and 19!
Mangaka Sui Ishida has been trolling the fans of his famous series Tokyo Ghoul by ostensibly reminding them about Ken Kaneki’s torture on purpose only to provide the exact opposite in his new manga Choujin X.
Earlier, Sui introduced a seemingly good guy named Ichiro Sato in Choujin X who employed a form of torture so twisted Sui had to edit the entire scene. This teased fans not only because they know that Sui is more than capable of depicting terrible forms of torture but because the scenes where Tokyo Ghoul villain Yamori experimented on Kaneki were a defining moment in the entire series, mostly due to how it literally contorted Kaneki into a monster, inside and out. Regardless, this undoubtedly made readers hope beyond hope that Yamori could have been reborn in Choujin X, especially since Tokyo Ghoul only revolved around Yamori for a few chapters.
So when Choujin X‘s main protagonist and equivalent to Tokyo Ghoul‘s Ken Kaneki, Tokio Kurohara, got captured in chapter 18, the earlier torture scenes were still fresh in their minds to the point where that aforementioned hope had essentially been realized. It definitely helped that Tokio’s captor Ricardo Teller has the face of an octopus. (It’s also important that Kaneki in Tokyo Ghoul chose to go with Yamori not knowing his true intentions while Tokio was forced.) But Sui dashed the hopes and dreams of his dear readers by making Ricardo the nicest captor there ever was. He even offered Tokio pizza! And in the next and latest 19th installment, Ricardo has already proven to be a rather poor one as well. When Ricardo leaves Tokio behind to help his partner who he senses is under attack, the villain ties him up, but quite ineffectively. Tokio is able to break out easily, and he does so while quite weak.
Although fans can almost definitively say with full certainty that Sui purposefully trolled them, at least they still have this mysterious Ichiro Sato running around torturing who’s clearly his world’s version of Rize known as Nari Tsumiji, the White Snake Choujin. Additionally, the prospect that Ichiro will serve as Choujin X‘s Yamori instead of Ricardo might actually be a good thing. It was clear from the very moment Yamori’s character first appeared in Tokyo Ghoul that he wasn’t a good guy in the slightest. For one thing, he served as an executive to a known ghoul terrorist organization, Aogiri Tree. There’s nothing innovative or shocking about a villain torturing their enemies. But a high-ranking official for the good guys? That feels much more nefarious. And it’s clear that Ichiro is going out of his way to ensure that no one knows what he’s doing. Plus, his Psycho Stare Choujin ability is quite terrifying. Though, it’s also important to note that Sui still hasn’t revealed Ricardo’s powers either.
So, even though Tokio didn’t have his Ken Kaneki moment with Yamori, Choujin X fans can still hold onto the hope that Ichiro will continue terrorizing his victims. And maybe, just maybe, they’ll get treated to something even worse than the atrocities Yamori committed on Ken Kaneki in Tokyo Ghoul. That would be quite a feat indeed.
