touka is abusive?
One of the biggest claims against Touken is that they have an abusive relationship, therefore it’s not healthy. Abuse is a strong word, isn’t it? Well, I shall attempt to disscect and analyze their ‘confrontations’ here.
in the beginning
First and foremost, Touka is a typical tsundere character. Growing up without parents has made life tough for both Touka and Ayato, inducing them to act cold and do whatever it takes in order to survive. Ayato is evidently more brutal than Touka.
As I’ve stated before, she and Kaneki doesn’t have a great start in the series. When Kaneki sees her being harrassed by an old man then murdering him afterwards, she was generous enough to offer him the corpse’s hand, but then he runs away in fear. She’s offered help to him many times, but he hurts her feelings by saying unwanted things about ghouls—most notably the I’m different from you monsters!
quotes; and she just decides to act accordingly.
However, Kaneki still puts up with Touka. If he’s really scared of her, he could have avoided interacting with her, but he didn’t. Perhaps it is because he looks up to her, as she is stronger than him (in the beginning, at least).
After she begins to open up to Kaneki, the next time Touka ever hits or kicks him, it is as sparring partners, and to bring out Kaneki’s kagune ability. Touka might not be the best teacher ever, but she tells him everything he needs to know, sees through his weaknesses and points out how to solve them. We also know that Kaneki finds her inspiring enough as he says,
“I’ll… I’ll use a style like the one you use to fight, Touka-chan. Like the time when you overpowered Nishio-senpai… feels like it won’t cause any unnecessary injuries.”
the bridge scene
In Tokyo Ghoul chapter 120, we see Touka running after Kaneki once she hears from Roma that he’s stopped by Anteiku. She is so overwhelmed that she needs some time to think of what she wants to say to her. Touka looks frustrated, and the words that come out of her are the opposite of what she intends to say, which she deeply regrets later on.
I know that they’re not ~lovers~ at this point of the story, but Kaneki has pretty much broken his own promise for months and leaves her hanging. Admit it, any girl would be pissed—he’s got what’s coming to him. Touka launches several attacks to which he dodges, except one, and that is because he’s shocked by her words.
However, her emotion reaches Kaneki who’s able to perceive what she really feels underneath everything she says. He realises he wants to go back to Anteiku.
“can i call you kaneki?”
Some fans critique how Touka hits Kaneki in TG:re chapter 99, when he’s completely regained his memories and comes back to the ghouls’ side. Personally, I am not fond of the scene either, but somehow it also looks like a slapstick joke than a real attack. It may be her way of releasing all the frustration since the last time they face each other as friends, not as strangers (the bridge scene). We see that Touka’s been repressing her emotions in the whole TG:re manga, and this scene is probably the first time she ever lets her feelings out. From another point of view, it can also be seen as an act to fill in the gap and restore their relationship after all these years.
Then, what kind of abuse has she done after this scene, though? Even when Kaneki is wondering if she’s going to hit her again when she says that she wants to talk with him after the Clown siege, she doesn’t. In fact, she’s doing the exact opposite—if you know what I mean.
Regardless of how low the fandom thinks of Touka, Kaneki himself admits to Amon in chapter 119 that he was lucky to have her teach him. You can’t argue about that.
Amon: “As I hid like that, I got used to using kagune on my own.”
Kaneki: “I was fortunate. Touka-chan was the one who taught me all of those things.
comparison to other characters
Touka’s not the only woman who’s ever hit Kaneki. There’s Akira with her “Mado punch”—we see it twice in the manga, and there’s also Hinami who slaps him in the face when he releases her from her cell in Cochlea.
As for the guys, well… trust me, there are guys who are far more abusive than Touka in this series. That’s why, when the fandom claims that Touka is bad for him because she’s abusive, it really sounds like a double standard. Arima, for one, hurts Kaneki more than others. He stabs his eyes, slices him into pieces without even giving him the chance to regenerate. Tsukiyama, too, begins approaching Kaneki with the intention of eating him, and is even well-prepared to have him killed in the Ghoul Restaurant. While it is later shown that they do care about Kaneki, it is simply unfair to nullify their actions while Touka is called out for being ‘abusive’.