Ken Kaneki

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Ken Kaneki is a male anime and manga character who features in Tokyo Ghoul.

Contents

Biography

Ken Kaneki (Japanese: 金木 研, Hepburn: Kaneki Ken) was a Japanese male born on a December where he lived in the modern age in Japan. He knew that his father was an avid reader of books that led to Ken eventually developing a hobby for reading books and literature. His father was noted to had passed away when he was 4 years old and he was cared for by his mother. Some of his memories indicated that though she was kind and generous to him that she was sometimes physically abusive to him. When he was a child, his mother struggled to provide for them. All the work that she had to deal with was too overwhelming and the one who put the most stress on her was his mother's sister. Kaneki's aunt was noted to had always hounded his mother for money which contributed to their financial woes. Due to overworking, his mother came to pass away when Ken was only 10 years old and he had to stay with his maternal aunt with her family where it was noted that she was abusive to him. However, Kaneki's life with his adopted family was no less hostile. His aunt always compared him to her son, Yuuichi, who did not do well at school, which greatly angered her. When comparing her son with Kaneki, she also likened Kaneki with his late mother noting about their similarities. Her feelings of inferiority regarding Kaneki's mother were turned on him as spite. As time passed, the family became a place that did not give Kaneki any comfort for long because nobody in the family would look after or care for him. Kaneki also barely had any friends during elementary school. During that time, Hide approached Kaneki, most likely because he noticed that Kaneki had trouble dealing with his classmates. Since then, Hide and Kaneki have been best friends. Hide was his only support during the time the Asaokas ostracized him, which really saved him from loneliness. During this time, he came to notice a young woman named Rize Kamishiro where he developed a crush on the woman who read similar books as himself.

One day, Kaneki and Hide listened to the news about ghoul attacks in the 20th ward while in Anteiku. Hide then wondered if Touka was Kaneki's new crush that he wanted to show, which Kaneki denied. Instead, he pointed to Rize as she entered the café. After Hide left, Kaneki was able to arrange a date with Rize after they were able to talk when she bumped into his book. However, Rize later revealed herself to be a ghoul targeting Kaneki after tricking him into entering a isolated alley. During her attack, Kaneki was pierced through the abdomen by her kagune, but before she could finish him off and feed, steel beams fell and crushed her. To save his life, the staff of the Kanou General Hospital under the direction of Dr. Kanou decided to transplant Rize's organs into him. From then on, Kaneki became a half-human, half-ghoul. After the accident, Kaneki hid the fact that Rize was a ghoul. He found that everything he ate tasted disgusting and he was hardly able to eat normal food, so he started to live on little more than water for days. Around that time he realized ghouls were also unable to eat normal food, his hunger struck him. Unable to find anything to satisfy his hunger, he wandered the streets. At that time, he found out that the waitress, Touka, from Anteiku was also a ghoul when she killed a human in front of him. In terror, he ran away. Moments later, he saw that he could barely keep himself in check, salivating profusely. Since he thought the organ transplant was the reason for his transformation, he tried to get rid of the transplanted organs, but was unsuccessful. Desperate, he turned to Touka for help. Touka refused to give assistance to the former human, but Anteiku's manager Yoshimura kindly gave Kaneki human meat to satisfy his hunger.

Overview

Personality and attributes

In appearance, Ken Kaneki was a male human who had appeared to be a scrawny young man with no athletic background where originally he wore casual clothes.

Upon becoming a ghoul, he came to join Anteiku and was given the alias of Eyepatch (眼帯, Gantai). The appearance of his distinct kakuja led to him gaining the alias of Centipede (ムカデ, Mukade). Following his period of amnesia, he came to operate as a ghoul investigator in the Quinx's where he was given the name of Haise Sasaki (佐々木 琲世, Sasaki Haise). After the Tsukiyama Family Extermination Operation, ghouls came to know him under the moniker of the Black Reaper (黒い死神, Kuroi Shinigami). He later gained the title of the One-Eyed King (隻眼の王, Sekigan no Ō) that was the prophecised leader of all ghouls.

It was shown that originally he was a shy boy with Hide being his only close friend. Kaneki had a preference for reading books and showed no athletic talent. As such, he usually spent most of his time reading books that mostly consisted of novels. He was extremely gentle and appeared to be optimistic most of the time. Influenced by his mother and a true testament of modesty, he willingly took blame and punishment from others so that he could be someone who did not hurt people but rather became the person who got hurt instead. However, this lack of assertiveness normally got him bullied and taken advantage of by other people.

Kaneki was always trying to protect others as he was essentially trying to protect himself from becoming alone again. To escape that scenario, he would shoulder the task of protecting others onto himself without looking for others to help him. This was also the reason why Kaneki seemed to reject the notion of 'living' because to him watching others die before him was the beginning of returning to those lonely days without anyone behind him.

He claimed that he was not like the protagonist of a novel and instead said that he was a college student who liked to read who could be found anywhere. However, he did say that if one wrote a story about him where he was in the lead role then such a story would be a tragedy.

The trauma experienced during his life as a ghoul resulted in him suffering from psychological issues as a result. This often manifested as a mental construct that resided in his mind who he interacted with in order to resolve a matter. It first manifested as 'Rize Kamishiro' who taunted him for his weakness and convinced him to abandon his ideology as a human in order to fully embrace his lie as a ghoul. This saw him leave any fear of getting hurt and adopt a more brutal view of the world. Later on, he was badly injured by Arima leading to him suffering from a kind of amnesia where a new persona manifested named 'Haise Saski'. During this time, his mental construct took the form of a young Kaneki that represented his old self. A new mental construct later came to form that was 'Hide'.

Whenever he was near-starvation, he began to loses control of his Kagune or kakuja where he seemed to develop a personality that emulated Rize and Yamori.

As Haise, Kaneki was a self-contained, good-natured individual. He came off as trustworthy, loyal and devoted person. Though serious with his work, Haise was also merciful to some extent as he believed that an Investigator should not annihilate ghouls unnecessarily. Though he was hailed as the mentor of Quinx, he showed apportioned respect and great concern for his colleagues, pledging a protective streak over them. He also complied with the obligations assigned by his seniors without hesitation. Haise habitually reads books, and was very co-operative, as he preferred to work with his group than to single-handedly accomplish the CCG’s goals. He also tended to scratch the back of his head when he was thinking hard or feeling uncomfortable.

He barely remembered his father's face and was awfully curious as to what sort of person he was. He knew that his father was an avid reader and had loads of books.

One person who Kaneki had close ties with was Touka Kirishima (霧嶋 董香 Kirishima Touka) who he met when she was a waitress at Anteiku. After becoming a ghoul, she showed a harsh view towards him as he tried to come to grips wth his new life. This only changed after the death of Hinami's mother and the care he showed to her. The two then developed closer ties with one another where they began to develop feelings for one another.

After the Dragon Incident, he and Touka came to marry where they had a daughter named Ichika Kaneki (金木 一花, Kaneki Ichika).

One of his closest friends was Hideyoshi Nagachika (永近 英良, Nagachika Hideyoshi) who stayed in his company even after he became a ghoul.

Powers and abilities

Originally, Ken Kaneki was an ordinary human being with no special abilities or training. He was shown to had been an extremely intelligent person with much of his knowledge coming from his fixation on reading books.

This changed after his encounter with Rize Kamishiro and he came to inherit her kakuhou following an experiment whereby the organ was implanted in his body. This resulted in him being turned into an artificial ghoul hybrid where he gained the traits of the species such as a unique healing factor, an increased vigor and a rinkaku kagune with it being said that his abilities were more potent than a natural-born ghoul. His skin was hardened to the point that it could not be pierced by an ordinary bladed weapon. A consequence of his transformation meant that he could no longer consume ordinary food with it triggering his gag reflex and he gained no nourishment from it. He developed a different sense of taste whereby ordinary foods were disgusting to him. Instead, he could only gain nourishment from the flesh of human beings that he needed to consume otherwise he would starve to death and die.

He was shown came to possess superhuman where in one instance he knocked out a ghoul unconscious with an elbow kick. In another instance, he was shown to be able to rip a lamp post from asphalt and use it to strike his opponents. Kaneki was shown to be able to smash foes through multiple floors of a building.

Kaneki developed a large resistance to pain ever since his transformation into a ghoul. While he could still be injured, he was able to take injuries that were normally considered fatal, such as having his limbs sliced off, his eyes stabbed out completely and more. It was his ghoul nature that provided him with regenerative abilities allowing him to heal injuries over time. During an intense period of torture, it was shown that he regenerated his fingers and toes over a ten-day period.

At one point, Kaneki came to be morphed into the Dragon (竜, Ryū) that was a huge, uncontrollable kagune which spawned hostile, humanoid creatures from it.

As a ghoul, he had a unique made for him which had been given to Kaneki by Uta. It was used to hide his identity when out in the field and prevent ghoul investigators from determining his real identity. The mask designed with an eyepatch that covered his regular eye whilst his ghoul eye was left exposed.

Kaneki came to be the founder of Goat (黒山羊ゴート, Gōto) that was a ghoul resistance organization which aimed for peaceful co-existence between ghouls and humans.

Notes

  • Ken Kaneki was created by Sui Ishida and featured in the setting of the Tokyo Ghoul universe.

In other media

Television

Films

Appearances

  • Tokyo Ghoul:

External Links

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