Ken Kaneki

In his university days Kaneki was a slight, unathletic young man with black hair who would sooner read than exercise. The transplant left a surgical scar on the right side of his abdomen near his navel, and off duty he favored casual wear such as a turquoise hoodie. At Anteiku he wore the cafe's waiter uniform and a medical eye patch to hide the single kakugan in his left eye, which he could not yet keep under control. His ghoul mask, a leather muzzle of gnashing teeth with bolts jutting from the neck, lent him a Frankenstein-like air.

Yamori's torture transformed him: his hair turned stark white, his nails blackened, and his frame grew more muscular, while his taste shifted to monochrome battle gear and his manner turned cold. As Haise Sasaki he sprouted black streaks through the white and dressed in an investigator's dark shirts, pinstripes, and a knee-length white trench coat, rounded off with reading glasses. Once his memories returned his hair reverted fully to black, and as the Black Reaper he wore an all-black Arima Squad uniform, concealing a right hand covered in reptilian scales beneath red gloves.

Early on Kaneki was shy, gentle, and bookish, with Hide as his one close friend. Shaped by his late mother's example, he chose to absorb blame and pain rather than wound anyone, a meekness that left him easy to bully. Beneath the kindness ran a dread of loneliness sharpened by his mother's death, and he shielded the people he loved largely to spare himself that isolation. Once he became a half-ghoul he clung to his human side, took work at Anteiku, and began training so that he could protect his friends, ready to stake his life for them.

Yamori's captivity shattered that outlook. Kaneki cast aside his refusal to harm others and swore to crush anything that threatened his place of belonging, picking up his tormentor's knuckle-cracking habit along the way. In his mind he devoured the image of Rize, embracing the ghoul within rather than fearing it, and grew ruthless in battle while holding on to his composure. He could still be tender toward those he cared about, yet he turned merciless on his enemies, adopting the harsh conviction that the strong were entitled to consume the weak.

Kaneki's ordinary life ended when Rize Kamishiro's kakuhou was transplanted into him after a steel-beam accident, making him the first artificial one-eyed ghoul. He learned to survive by joining Anteiku, earning the alias Eyepatch. His capture by Aogiri Tree and Yamori's torture triggered a drastic change, after which he escaped, formed his own group to guard those dear to him, and grew feared under the name Centipede. Defeated by Kishou Arima, he spent two years as Haise Sasaki, a Rank 1 investigator mentoring the CCG's Quinx Squad, until his memories resurfaced during the Tsukiyama Family Extermination Operation and he took up the title Black Reaper.

After overcoming Arima and Eto and exposing their scheme to raise a one-eyed ghoul as hope for their kind, he named himself the One-Eyed King and founded Goat. A plot by Kichimura Washuu warped him into the Dragon, a colossal, uncontrollable kakuja that ravaged Tokyo; his allies and the CCG pulled him from the beast, and he descended into its depths to neutralize a spreading toxin after a savage clash. In the wake of the Defense of Tokyo, humans and ghouls began to coexist, and Kaneki settled into life as Touka Kirishima's husband and father to Ichika. His ghoul physiology grants him a potent rinkaku kagune, rapid healing, and superhuman strength, speed, and endurance, later escalating into a fearsome kakuja form.