Warning! Spoilers ahead for Choujin X chapter 16!

The suffering and hallucinations that Ken Kaneki endured in Tokyo Ghoul by mangaka Sui Ishida could live on in Ishida's new manga Choujin X.

Fans are speculating at the possibility based on a terrifying nightmare Choujin X's Tokio Kurohara has in chapter 16 of a character who shares a likeness to Tokyo Ghoul's Rize. Much earlier, Tokio crosses paths with a beautiful girl who helps him sneak into a zoo. Tokio had wanted to get inside to see a vulture since he just learned his Choujin form resembles the predatory bird and hoped that meeting it would help him learn more about his powers. But the girl who helps him turns out to be a Choujin and transforms into a massive white snake and attempts to devour him.

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This confrontation evokes Ken Kaneki's date-gone-wrong with a woman named Rize who ends up being a ghoul and tries to devour him. When she later dies, Rize's organs are later transplanted into Kaneki, ostensibly to save his life but actually to ensure the transformation that later occurs when he becomes a ghoul hybrid. However, that isn't the last of Rize. Throughout the original and spin-off manga, she would come to the tortured Ken Kaneki through severe hallucinations, mocking his failures and celebrating whenever he embraces his inner ghoul over his humanity. She essentially represents the part of him that is ghoul, which fuels his bloodlust and other inhuman desires. This hallucinated version of Rize would only be replaced by Ken Kaneki when an injury causes him to assume the identity of Haise Sasaki. She would only return after Sasaki becomes Kaneki again to mock all of the deaths that he causes as his original ego.

In Choujin X, the White Snake Choujin that appears in Tokio's dreams serves a similar purpose. She just says two words, but they encompass everything that Rize represents in Tokyo Ghoul: "You failed." In this case, the figment of Tokio's imagination might be referring to how his failure to fully transform immediately during his confrontation with the Sinker Choujin resulted in more suffering. There's also the fact that Tokio has been unable to identify his dream unlike most shonen heroes ever since he became a Choujin, which he also views as a major failing. Or the White Snake Choujin could be referring to how he couldn't protect himself on his own and needed help from a much younger fellow Choujin Ely. Regardless of what it might be, readers who want more Rize-like hauntings in Choujin X are undoubtedly rejoicing that later on in chapter 16, Tokio worries about how Ely is continuing to leave him behind by participating in additional training while he hasn't. That's because more suffering means more nightmares or hallucinations.

Although just speculation, Tokio's nightmare of the White Snake Choujin who mocks him for failing some undisclosed test creates the impression that she could continue haunting him the more he fails, just like how Rize came to Ken Kaneki in Tokyo Ghoul to ridicule his own failures. Even though this is a one-time occurrence so far in Choujin X, readers are just satisfied to see the White Snake Choujin again who has been absent for quite some time. Luckily, she's still alive, too - unlike Rize who died just as soon as she was introduced.

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