User blog:Voltairefan/PE Proposal - Akihiro Kanou

My first Pure Evil proposal for the site, from the manga and anime series Tokyo Ghoul. Let's begin!

What's The Work?
Tokyo Ghoul and its direct sequel Tokyo Ghoul :re is a dark fantasy/psychological thriller manga created by Sui Ishida. It follows the story of university student Ken Kaneki, who gets involved in an accident after being attacked by a ghoul. Ghouls are beings that resemble humans in every way, except they have a need to feed on humans and as such, are considered a top threat by the CCG, a human organisation that aims to take out ghouls as they come in order to protect the public.

Ken Kaneki has the ghouls organs transplanted into him, which causes him to become a ghoul himself. Thrown in to the world of ghouls themselves, Kaneki must now balance out his life whilst fighting back every urge to consume flesh possible. In doing so, he becomes involved with Anteiku, a group of pacifist ghouls, and must combat various threats including the human investigators and other, more dangerous ghouls.

Who Is He/What Has He Done?
The villain I am proposing is the very doctor that first transplanted the organs into Kaneki, Dr. Akihiro Kanou, a human who becomes involved with the ghoul supremacist organisation known as Aogiri Tree and spends his time experimenting on people in order to turn them into ghouls out of a twisted fascination with creating the most powerful one.

Dr. Kanou's crimes span throughout the whole series and make one of the primary instigators of Kaneki's difficult life in the present. In-universe, there is controversy over him using the ghoul's organs without consent from her family. He uses Kaneki as nothing more than an experiment rather than trying to save him in particular, and lies to him that the symptoms he is feeling (as a result of being ghoulified) are of a different nature. Kanou's experiments do not stop there. Two formerly human investigators-in-training, Kurona and Nashiro Yasuhisa, were his first subjects. Promising them a better life than at the CCG, he gained their trust and used them for his tests, transplanting ghoul organs into them.

It is later revealed that Kanou had done this to many, MANY more people, and has been using the ghoul that attacked Kaneki, Rize Kamishiro, as their donor. She is seen starved and insane as she is hooked up to his machine, which Kanou takes no concern of. In Tokyo Ghoul :re, we get to see just how he treats his patients in detail. After kidnapping investigator Seidou Takizawa, Kanou transplants organs into HIM next and routinely tortures him, severing his limbs to see if they'd grow back. During Takizawa's time there, Kanou shows very little emotion other than joy at his state, resembling a child showing fascination with playing with an insect. There is even a moment where Kanou comments that he will be collecting samples from Takizawa, including his semen, heavily implying that Takizawa was subjected to sexual assault there. When we first see Takizawa in :re, after being impaled by Kaneki, he claims that it doesn't hurt as he is used to it.

Adding on to Kanou's treatment of him, a flashback shows him feeding Takizawa some flesh, which he eagerly goes for. What seems like a hope spot for him quickly shatters as Kanou reveals that the food is made from Takizawa's parents. Bear in mind as well that there are hundreds of ghoulified humans in Kanou's lab, which means that he'd have tortured every one of them in similar ways.

In the present time, during the Rushima Arc, Kanou is reunited with Kurona, who asks him to save her sister after fusing her decaying body with her own. Whilst Kurona believes that Nashiro is still alive, the doctor simply states matter-of-factly that she is dead, and mocks Kurona over her desperate belief. He isn't even fazed and in fact, appears quite amused, when Kurona calls him what he really is: A psychotic, mad scientist. The final cherry is seen when Dr. Kanou joins up with the Big Bad of the series, Kichimura Washuu. The two have a plan to use a new squad, known as the Oggai, to combat Kaneki and the other ghouls that have rallied against him. The Oggai in question? They are all children to young teens. That's right, Dr. Kanou experimented on people as young as 10 in order to create this new force.

Freudian Excuse/Mitigating Factors
The only, literally, the ONLY bit of humanity Dr. Kanou has is his love for his mother, who died when he was very young. Her death drove him to conduct research on the human and ghoul body, and further darkened his view of the world, which he believes is twisted. However, Kanou's lack of emotion, genuine joy when torturing people, HOW he tortures them, and how he treats the events around him, were definitely too far and didn't have anything to do with his sorrow over his mother. It appears that she is so absent from his life now. He does visit her grave in his final scene, but it doesn't drown out what he has done.

Heinous Standard
Tokyo Ghoul has had a number of incredibly vile characters. It was honestly very hard to think of who to place. Eventually, my thoughts came down to two people: Kichimura Washuu and Akihiro Kanou. Don't get me wrong, as the Big Bad, Kichimura is guilty of the vast majority of the events, especially considering he willingly works with Kanou and uses him. He is a very twisted man. However, Kichimura's Freudian Excuse is focused upon far more than Kanou's, and he expresses genuine sadness over his frankly disturbing past. Dr. Kanou's past is hardly focused on for long, and he never expresses sorrow or regret (In his own words: "I have nothing to atone for, as I do not have anything I regret.") over his mother onscreen. He has become so hardened that it has been dissipated. The doctor indulges in physical, mental, sexual and medical abuse frequently.

Final Verdict
I personally believe that Dr. Kanou definitely qualifies as Pure Evil. If there are any objections or agreements, please write them down below! I'd be happy to hear everyone's thoughts on the matter.