The Censorship of Transgender Identity in Tokyo Ghoul:re

Warning: this article attempts to explore the portrayal of violence against transgender individuals within a particular manga/anime series.

The duality and clashing of identities, internal or otherwise, has always been central to Tokyo Ghoul.

In the original Tokyo Ghoul, for instance, Kaneki Ken was neither just a ghoul nor just a human and occupied a special position in-between by being an one-eyed ghoul. In a similar vein, Koutarou Amon was a zealous CCG investigator who grew up loving his foster father (who was actually a ghoul). And in Tokyo Ghoul:re, Sasaki Haise initially struggles with being an amnesiac half-ghoul Kaneki while working as a CCG investigator.

Alas, censorship has also always been prominent regarding the anime adaptations for Tokyo Ghoul and its sequel, as seen by mangled corpses being obscured by darkness and pivotal scenes being cut in order to rush through arcs.

In regards to the latter, which has happened profusely thus far in Tokyo Ghoul:re, the results implies an erasure of non-cisgender identities as instances which confirm these moments are skipped or kept ambiguous. This in turn avoids some of the very problematic moments associated with particular characters but also completely changes the very natures of aforementioned characters.

From this point forward, the author will be assuming the reader is aware of the events which take place in Tokyo Ghoul:re and has watched up to at least episode 6.

Essentially, Mutsuki Tooru is the one who is most affected by this imposed censorship. Initially appearing to be a gentle boy who just happens to look very attractive when dressed up as a girl, Tooru is actually a biological female who requested to be a boy after being scouted by the CCG academy.

This comes to light in chapter 5 as Torso rips open Tooru’s shirt with a sneer, insists that Tooru is a girl after confirming that Tooru has cleavage and a scarred torso, and starts beating on Tooru. This turn of events, however, is more or less edited out in the anime adaptation since Torso is merely shown to be aggressively reaching out to Tooru instead.

The original scene as seen in the manga is simply too similar to unfortunate real life situations regarding transmen or transwomen, so the removal of this moment could be possibly justified since it’s both unsettling and triggering.

But since the aforementioned scene was removed, anime-only viewers are simply left in the dark regarding Torso’s obsession with Tooru. His motivations have been cut out of the narrative and now viewers have to either guess as to why Torso is fixated on Tooru or have to read the original source material. In that sense, as well as in many other similar instances regarding the removal of context, the anime adaptation of Tokyo Ghoul:re has failed as an anime adaptation.

It really could be said that ignorance is bliss and that it might be for the best that anime-only viewers are given nothing to cause them to believe that Tooru is possibly transgender and possibly identifies as being male. If Tooru considers himself to be a man, then what’s wrong with viewers doing so, as well? Tooru’s situation is left ambiguous in the manga, after all.

With that being said, the anime adaptation seems to be unable to make up its own mind since it includes another moment which confirms that Tooru was born as woman. Right after Urie goes on a rampage, loses control of himself, and involuntarily pierces Tooru’s stomach (which is a parallel to what happened between Kaneki and Yomo in Tokyo Ghoul, by the way), Urie notices the scent of blood on Tooru wasn’t from a wound. Urie then deduces that it’s menstrual blood and correctly asks if Tooru was born a woman. The anime adaptation, however, keeps it intentionally vague by just having Urie say, “You are… I see.”

It just seems like the anime adaptation is sending mixed messages or is attempting to not include (possibly) transgender characters by editing very important moments. However, it is indeed ambiguous whether Tooru is a transman or whether Tooru simply wants to avoid being stared at by lecherous males (which occurs in the bar in episode 3 and shows Tooru being incredibly uncomfortable).

A similar situation also happened with Big Madam. A grotesquely obese ghoul, Big Madam was referred to as “Father” by Juuzo, who was raised by Big Madam, right after the ghoul was killed by Juuzo’s squad. Given that Juuzo mentioned the possibility of a ghoul in drag during the original series (which was probably not included in the original anime adaptation; my memory fails me), it’s hard to say whether or not Big Madam was a transwoman or a drag queen. Be that as it may, Juuzo’s parting words to Big Madam were certainly not included in the anime adaptation of Tokyo Ghou:re at all, which just means more censorship.

And then there’s another character who also may or may not have gender issues, but the anime adaptation hasn’t revealed said character’s plight yet so I’ll stop here.

tl;dr – there are several characters which could be considered possibly transgender, or at least likely not cisgender, in Tokyo Ghoul:re but the anime adaptation has altered these characters and changed these pivotal scenes for some reason(s).

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Thank you for reading.