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Rakuen no Kimi Lyrical Interpretation

Rakuen no Kimi (You of Paradise)

Time for more lyrical interpretation, yaaaay! As Osterreich songs are generally extremely vague surrealism based lyrics rather than referring to events in the story with more direct symbolism these interpretations are of course going to be far more personal, however I thought I would give it a shot regardless since I’ve tried to interpret all the other ops and eds for re: so far.

To start with just to list my lens after reading the entire song, and considering the title card for the album is a picture of Rize, while the ending animation itself is clearly Touka and Kaneki on their last walk as depicted in the epilogue chapter “The Goat’s Song”. So my general guess is to what these lyrics are referring to is the parallelism between Touka, Kaneki, but also Rize, Furuta.

These lyrics are from the CD Jacket by the way and translated by @lunaamatista

↓ Somebody traced an amber water tank

↑ Filled with breaths and mourning

With the tip of their finger and called it “paradise”

These are the vaguest lyrics to start with but the action being described here is somebody drawing on a piece of glass using condensation, basically when you breathe on a window and draw a heart.

So from that I gather what this is referring to is a temporary love that somebody drew, and tried to make into a paradise. The song itself is called “You of Paradise” which I interpret to mean an attempt to find paradise in another person as refuge from the world.

“Eden” was also considered to be a paradise that human beings were kicked out of, and Tsukiyama even says that the ghouls in the underground are Adam and Eves run out of paradise.

So, generally interpreting I would say this first verse refers to Kaneki’s attempts to ignore the ghoul war and instead focus on Touka, to find a paradise in the 24th ward instead of taking the position as king seriously.

“Filled with breaths and mourning” because the 24th ward became a boxed in location that they were going to die in, or rather a coffin.

So, whatever paradise is found, whatever love is found, like a heart drawn in condensation it’s only a temporary one because the motives are just to bury your head in another person and try to ignore the world and find paradise using them that way.

Also notice, Furuta and Rize emerged from a garden as well that was once a paradise for them when they were children, and whatever relationship they had was just as temporary.

I would say “You of Paradise” could refer to Kaneki and Furuta in similiar and different ways in the way they view Touka and Rize. The current Kaneki views Touka as a paradise because she’s his reason to live, his proof that there is love in the world and people waiting for him even if the world is meaningless and painful. Whereas Furuta’s only happy memories, his only good deed, his only humanity are all tied to his past with Rize. When he was an innocent child playing in a garden before he learned he was tainted with original sin from his parents and was born to die as a child soldier. So then, RIze to him is a symbol of that time in the garden of eden before he became corrupted.

That too, being just as temporary because the original Rize can’t exist in his memories forever, she’s a person that grew up and grew up without him because he stayed behind in the garden.

A blimp caught on fire by the seashore

And as you fell, you seemed to be laughing

These lyrics too are really vague but, a blimp caught on fire seems to just be a general disaster that occurred.

“And as you fell you seemed to be laughing” lyrics seem to refer to Furuta more, since Furuta is the one who laughs in response to the trauma and the absurdity the world has inflicted on him. When dragon strikes and starts devouring everything, Furuta laughs and bids the dragon to come eat him too.

“A clown was laughing” is also a line tied to Furuta.

He’s laughing and ecstatic. It also reminds me of a line from the Rize poem.

Carrying that out until it becomes vivid.

And only in that moment where blood spills, you softly laugh.

You then will no longer be able to stop laughing.

I think that the last person standing at the end of the world will certainly be the villain. [x]

By the seashore can also refer to the watery nature of dragon, it looks like a monster out of the sea, it emerged while it was raining, it’s also a clear nod to the dragon of revelations which emerges out of the sea.

Hey, isn’t that right?

The last page has already been written!

“Love can’t be fulfilled”

This is a pretty common theme in Tokyo Ghoul. Children who were not loved sufficiently in their formative years or shown love by the world cannot learn how to love.

It’s referenced in the early Haise poem for his birthday.

Someone said this: “Even if you have no memories of being loved, for as long as you have memories of loving someone, you can continue to live.”

…But how is someone who has never been loved be capable of loving someone else?

A child who wasn’t able to receive the minimal love they required at the time they needed it the most will continue to gaze at the illusion of affection and never know how to love until the day they die. [x]

It’s referenced by Karren’s arc, which also again ties to the ideas of eve, adam, paradise and the garden of eden. Karren seeing herself as eve in that story, and eating the apple simply because she wants to be loved, and then Eto telling her she’s unworthy of love.

Or the passage of the Black Goat’s Egg that’s revealed in this scene.

The heads whispered in Mother’s voice

“you” “you” “you”

“you” “how did you fool yourself into thinking you would be loved” “when you’re so ugly” [x]

While this passage might seem to apply to Touka and Kaneki, it also applies to Furuta and Rize, as Furuta is a parallel of Karren.

If Karren had been taken into her household normally and raised as a normal family member, if she had been loved normally then her obsession with Tsukiyama would never have developed. The same is with Furuta, he wasn’t born to be a normal child to be loved, he was literally bred and intentionally bred to be incomplete.

Touka and Kaneki are unloved children trying to find love in each other they were not shown by the world, but so are Furuta and Rize and by extension all garden children and they are a much more tragic case. So, their book was written from the beginning with “Love can’t be fulfilled”, Furuta literally loks up the old records and realizes everything in his life is going to be temporary he will always live in the shadow of the Washuu and love can’t fix that because the story on him is already written, everything with him is temporary and it was decided before his birth.

This is also the fear that Touka and Kaneki have, that they can’t love people properly, because their parents chose other people over them and they’re constantly living dealing with that wound, that incomplete part of themselves.

We’ve carried our flaws from the moment we were born

We couldn’t even remember the way home

Forevermore

Once again this is doubly able to refer to both Furuta and Rize and Touka and Kaneki. Garden children are born with flaws in their genes and incomplete body and therefore carry the flaws of their parents from the moment they were born and are cursed with shorter lifespans.

We couldn’t even remember the way home, also can refer to Kaneki as that’s what Touka says at the end of the original Tokyo Ghoul, that Kaneki simply lost his place to return to.

However, it can also refer to Rize who ran away from her home in the garden, and then spent the rest of her life running from place to place because she was so damaged from her upbringing in the garden she could never find any security at all, even living with Shachi, as she was born only to be used as breeding fodder and never loved as an individual there was an unbelievable emptiness inside of her that could never be fulfilled and she did not want to confront, so she continued to run away forever, and stayed hungry, trying to distract herself on power and strength to convince herself of her own security. Rize too, despite having Shachi was never able to see herself as a whole person, able to accept her own vulnerability and victimhood, and therefore she felt no security no matter where she was and never had a home to return to.

In a way Rize did grow up and yet she did not. She forever remained the child mumbling “I have to run, I’m hungry”, forever frozen in that moment and eternally running away from V, because she too suffers from the same incompleteness that Furuta does. Neither of them were raised as proper children, neither of them were born to be loved, but rather to serve a purpose as tools, so neither of them really have the chance to develop, or rather are given the chance. Rize threw away her chance with Shachi, but after that she reverts to her childhood self again revealing her basic motivations, have to run, have to feed myself, have never changed really despite the mask of maturity she used to wear. Unlike Kaneki who is given another place to return to, Rize isn’t in the end as her refuge with Shachi and Anteiku are both only temporary, serving as a more tragic foil to Kaneki.

↓ A cradle was rocking

↑ From the edge of Sodom and the magnolias

What if that scene, for instance, were paradise?

A cradle was rocking is a reference to Moses. His cradle is put in the river by his mother and he’s adopted by egyptians and raised by them, only to return to serve as a leader of his people.

The word for “cradle” and the word for “Ark” as in “Ark of the covenant” are the same word in hebrew by the way. The chapter which humans and ghouls ban together is also called “ark” formally under Hide, but for the sake of Kaneki who has disappeared in dragon.

It’s also once again probably a reference to this piece of poetry.

(2)

An ark is being swayed like a coffin.

“It’s fine even if a cute person catches your eye!” And then they went blind.

God resents due to the vision that was lost.

For the sake of your self-righteousness, how many people have shed blood? How many people have suffocated within the sea?

The buildings are gravestones floating in the sea. The strained foundations creak and one day, it just breaks with a snap too quick.

That was when you experienced* those boring numbers with those eyes. That was when you overlap limbs with someone you love. That was when you became tired and fell asleep.

It really did happen so suddenly.

So you sink into the ocean once again.

Mankind will surely lose.

Our gradual burial at sea.

Since everyone I knew will die, I cried until I dried up.

Soon, everyone became a pillar of salt. And of course, that too dissolved into the sea.

[x]

Sodom is a city of sinfulness that gets destroyed, like Tokyo getting devoured by Dragon after the humans had been oppressing and slaughtering the ghouls mercilessly for years.

Sodom is a wicked city. Abraham’s nephew Lot lived there. Lot was his wife who looked back as the city was being destroyed and was turned into a pillar of salt, so at the edge of the city the event that could happen there was Lot’s wife being turned into a pillar of salt. Since it’s the death of a woman then I assume what it’s referring to is the death of Rize, something that happened in story and turned me into a pillar of salt (joke).

Magnolias have an array of meanings, but basically they all boil down to the feminine yin, womanly beauty, marriage, purity, so once again I’m going to assume that the flowers are in reference to Rize, Lot’s wife who dissolves into salt when the wicked city is destroyed, and the presence of flowers can also suggest a memory of the garden. Paradise for him existed in the time that he could simply play amongst the flowers with Rize, and in a way he just wanted to keep playing with Rize forever, without growing up or leaving their garden of eden. That there existed a time for him too when he actually looked forward to growing up, and thought it would be fun as long as they were still together playing like they did in their youth.

Once again this paradise is a temporary thing. it dissolves away like salt when Lot is destroyed, but even in the middle of the evil city, among the flowers they were able to find a temporary paradise. That could also refer once againt o Kaneki and Touka in the 24th ward, as the 24th ward was destroyed in the past (it’s literally the ruins of destroyed ward of tokyo underground that was dragoned in the past) and also is destroyed again when Furuta raids it.

Since when had I been sleeping?

I could hear the judgement

That was hatched out beneath the wheel in March!

Kaneki wakes up sleeping within the the dragon itself. This happens during the tarot phase of judgement, which is also tied to the idea of revelations which Furuta says is directly connected to dragon.

Beneath the Wheel is a Herman Hesse book, who also wrote “Demian” which is about the egg cracking in order to break the world, the gnosticism references in Tokyo Ghoul, and also the relationship between Hide and Kaneki. I’m sure it’s more of a reference to gnostic symbolism in general employed by Tokyo Ghoul, of which dragon is definitely tied to as it’s an inversion of apocalyptic symbolism where the black goat, the devil, that Kaneki represents in the 24th ward which is a symbolic hell is on a good side of the fight trying to liberate the world from the oppressive dubs which use white dove symbolism which are typically tied to good christian themes of peace and being peaceful messengers. Gnositicism is about averting what is typical good/bad jesus/devil symbolism.

Of course I can’t say Kaneki being pure white and beating up Furuta with giant cross shaped kagune has to do with gnosticism because that’s pretty traditional christian symbolism, but maybe they were just taking a page out of Eva’s book.

Hey, isn’t that right?

I remembered the first scene

I came to my senses beneath the ether

I keep on looking for you as we go past each other by the window from hell

Since you’ve changed completely

Into a different body

Ether, is a clear sky, the upper regions beyond the clouds in literary terms. It’s probably a reference to the clear sky which appears at the end of the final chapter of Re, and also in the ending credits visuals.

“I keep looking for you” is probably a reference to Kaneki and Touka’s desperation to find one another, even going through the window of help. Kaneki returns to the 24th ward which is a symbolic hell as it’s where ghouls are kicked to when losing their paradise, it’s underground, it’s in wreckage, and also a revelations style devil beast emerges from it. Whereas Touka as well travels on a giant fleshy monster, in a hellscape looking Tokyo in order to dig Kaneki out and find him again. When they find each other Kaneki has a different body biologically.

Rize was also reborn in a different body. Though for Kaneki this was an unequivocally good thing because it fixed his lifespan and gave him new super powers whereas Rize it was not such a good thing. Once again the paralellism, Rize is hit with the tragic end of the foil stick.

Metaphorically you can also read this as Rize and Furuta knowing each other as children, and changing drastically when they were adults to the point where they were basically different people. Rize becomes a reckless mass murderer and not the girl Furuta knew playing in the garden, and Furuta changes from the boy who freed her, to the one who betrayed her and captured her again. By the time they find each other in the adult world after leaving the garden as children both of them have changed so much they’re unrecognizable. To the point that Rize yells “Why was it you…?” when she sees Furuta in the distance dropping the beams on her.

That’s right

The last page has already been written

“Love”

Was none of us forgiven from the moment we were born?

I couldn’t even remember your laughing face

Forevermore?

“Were none of us forgiven from the moment we were born?” is probably also a reference to the concept of original sin since this song is called “paradise” basically the reason humans cannot return to the garden of eden is that all the descendents of the first two humans are born with original sin because Adam and Eve ate the apple. In less metaphorical terms, children are born into a world that is already heavily flawed. The garden children are born to die early, and kill ghouls in the name of the washuu as nameless soldiers, they’re not born to be loved, the same way that Touka and Kaneki’s families did not prioritize or choose raising their kids over their other repsonsiiblities and thus Kaneki and Touka were both abandoned. Furuta and Rize were born into the middle of the conflict between humans and ghouls, Furuta especially was born into the epicenter of this war. Children inherit the conflicts of their parents, they’re already born into a fundamentally flawed world. Eto even says, that original sin and punishing adam and eve for eating the tree of knowledge is cruel.

That god is childish and the world is fundamentally flawed, and still we seek out some kind of paradise in each other. Still the children born without love yearn for love.

Finally the contrast between how Furuta and Rize end the story as opposed to how Touka and Kaneki end it. Touka and Kaneki end in union, the last page has already been written on their stories and it was “love” they love they were seeking in each other, the visuals refer to as much as well showing their silhouettes joined hands.

Whereas, Furuta’s ending is his last reflection of Rize and himself as he wonders if they were not forgiven from the moment they were born. Furuta struggles with believing the fact that nothing he does will amount to anything signfiicant because everything was decided for him before he was born, he was born into this half life meant to die as a child soldier.

In his final moments as he contemplates whether he was doomed from the start, never to be forgiven simply for the crime of being born, never to have a normal life, he remembers that there was a time that he actually looked forward to the future of his story and how it might end, and as he dies his heart lives on within that moment forevermore.

That’s how I interpreted these lyrics, the children who found love after being expelled from paradise, and those who didn’t.

Well those were my lyrical interpretations, remember it’s vague poetry interpretations so all I can do is give reasons why I read it that way feel free to disagree or add your own! Lyrical interpretation is just good fun.

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