Koutarou Amon

**Koutarou Amon** (亜門 鋼太朗, *Amon Kōtarō*) is a former First Class Ghoul Investigator. He was Kureo Mado's last partner and his last partner was Akira Mado and Tohru Kobayashi's presumed mentor. He was subsequently declared dead by the

CCG, though his body was never recovered, and was posthumously promoted to Special Class for his distinguished service. During the Rushima Landing Operation, he reappeared alive as an artificial one-eyed ghoul.

## Appearance

Amon is a very tall, handsome young man with black hair and teal eyes. His distinctive eyebrows are curved at the end. Due to his constant, vigorous training, he has an extremely athletic and muscular build.

He wears a black cloak with a hoodie to cover his appearance to avoid being recognized by ghouls or dire ghouls. He also wears an outfit with a high collar underneath. He possesses a kakugan in his right eye. His right forearm and hand is made from a kagune, the hand itself deformed with only three fingers and a blade-like extension growing alongside the finger on the right side of his hand. After his right hand is destroyed in battle, it regenerates with four fingers, sans blade-like extension. One month after the Rushima operation, his right hand regenerates with five fingers.

## Personality

Due to a personal experience as an orphan during his childhood, Amon came to the conclusion that the world was wrong, therefore he made it his task to change it. Because he believes it is ghouls who are twisting the world, he views their eradication as a way to mend it. After being spared by Ken Kaneki, Amon started to question the righteousness of his crusade and showed interest and curiosity, wanting to understand the ghoul. At heart, Amon is a likable, sympathetic young man with a great sense of justice, dedicated to his cause. So much so that he views his morality as anything done in the name of justice, demonstrated when he dug into a grave, something other investigators saw as immoral. Due to the connection between ghouls and his childhood and being raised by one, the fuel for his actions lie in his soft spot for children. One of the biggest justifications for his hatred of ghouls is the loss of the precious ones for these children. This was best conveyed when he sees an orphaned child taken in by the CCG and is motivated to work instead of rest.

Despite being well set in his mentality of his duties, he is quite apprehensive and insecure about losing people around him. He has lost many people throughout the course of his life and is fearful of losing more, he admits this to himself while fighting Kaneki, who incidentally feels the same. From this propensity, Amon reacted strongly to Kureo Mado's death. While investigating the ghouls responsible, he becomes near obsessed with it while feeling guilty for not arriving in time. Another incidence is when he intends to bring Seidou Takizawa, a former comrade, with him despite being transformed into a murderous one-eyed ghoul like himself which can also be used as evidence of his loyalty.

After Amon was transformed into a one-eyed ghoul, his worldview underwent a gradual transformation. Since he had become the very thing he scorned and vowed to destroy, Amon could no longer hold onto the rage and hatred that once fueled his life's purpose. As a result, Amon became consumed by feelings of emptiness, feeling that the time he spent in the CCG to be a waste and could not see a place for himself in the world any longer. It was only after embracing emptiness as a "feeling" in and of itself did Amon regain a sense of direction in his life.

Accompanying Amon's transformation came greater introspection about himself, his past, and lifelong beliefs about the world. Since becoming a ghoul, Amon could no longer see ghouls as abominations who prey on humans but rather individuals who exhibit human qualities such as benevolence and hatred; emotions that had once fueled Amon's life. This change is best exemplified by Amon's neutral even friendly stance with Touka Kirishima despite her being the person who killed his mentor. As Amon lives and fights as a ghoul, he comes to the realization that while ghouls are one of the causes creating a "wrong" world, he himself was a contributing factor to this distortion. This was caused by the fact that he refused to acknowledge that the simmering hatred he had felt for ghouls was really his own manipulation of his parental feelings for his ghoul foster father, Donato Porpora. Once Amon was able to accept this fact, he was able to make peace with himself and his depraved foster father.

## Relationships

### Kureo Mado

Mado was Amon's first partner and a mentor in Amon's eyes. He respected him greatly and learned a lot from him. When Mado was killed, he underwent a phase of great sorrow and promised to catch Rabbit, the ghoul who killed him. Amon still feels responsible for arriving too late to save his mentor, as he reveals to Akira when she is drunk.

### Akira Mado

Amon's second partner/first subordinate. They met for the first time in the cemetery where both had gone to pay their respect to her father's grave. At first, their relationship was strained because Akira held Amon responsible for Kureo's death. After several ghoul incidents, and a time wherein Akira had gotten drunk, their bond grew closer and they started to work well together. Before the battle against Anteiku, Amon offered her a cat strap because it reminded him of her cat, and they went together to see Kureo's grave one more time, Amon asking her not to be rash in the future battle against Anteiku. Akira has romantic feelings toward Amon as she tried to kiss him once before, which he stopped. Later, the two are placed in different squads during the battle against Anteiku. After Amon and Takizawa have been reported dead she ends up confessing that she really cared for her superior Amon and her old school rival Takizawa.

Years later, now as a one-eyed ghoul, Amon expresses shame and disgust towards what he has become. Such that he refused to contact Akira, fearing how she might react. He never stopped caring for her, and when the time was right, showed himself to save her from a deranged Takizawa. He even took care of her pet cat during her recovery from her surgery. However, he still had his doubts about seeing her eye to eye again until Touka convinced him to do so. After talking with and explaining his own plights to her, he acted upon his own romantic feelings and kissed her.

### Ken Kaneki

At first, Amon thought Kaneki was just a regular ghoul. However, after being spared by Kaneki after their first confrontation and seeing him crying while begging him not to make him a murderer, Amon begins to gain interest in Kaneki as to why he was spared and what his motivations are. Once Amon concluded that Kaneki and Rabbit were the keys to solving Mado's death, he began pursuing Kaneki in search of answers. Amon was responsible for stopping Kaneki's rampage when he was raiding Kanou's Lab. Kaneki was the only ghoul that Amon does not seem to have any real hatred or scorn for, although he has a lot of questions that he wanted to ask him. After fighting Kaneki during the Owl Suppression Operation, Amon lost his arm. Even after being severely wounded by Kaneki's kakuja, Amon persists to stay alive in order to prevent Kaneki from becoming a murderer. After hearing the death of Kaneki, he urged to seek vengeance on those who caused his death.

### Tohru Kobayashi

As her mentor, Amon is very strict on Tohru. Despite that she wants to be a Ghoul Investigator requested by Mutsuki, he has to train her as hard as he can. Due to her not being able to fight without her powers as a punishment, he gets easily annoyed as he gives up on training her. Days as she is trained by Haise, Amon seemed impressed after seeing her destroying a metal dummy with only a Bōkken.

## Trivia

* Amon likes to train and investigate.
* In the first character popularity poll, Amon was ranked eleventh. In the latest, he came in as ninth.
* Amon likes to eat sweets like donuts, but dislikes spicy food. It is hinted that when he is invited by Tohru for a dinner, he told her not to prepare anything that "sets his tongue on fire".
* Amon is actually the name of the Egyptian god Amon-Ra, the sun god and god of all gods, the name meaning "the hidden one."
* There are several differences between the anime and manga concerning Amon:
	+ During his second fight with Kaneki. In the 11th episode of Tokyo Ghoul √A, Amon just fought with his Doujima. In the manga, Amon used Doujima as well as the Arata Proto II.
	+ In the manga, Amon first used Kura to fight Kaneki, and then used Doujima after Kura was destroyed by Kaneki. But in the anime, Amon fought Kaneki by using Doujima from the start.
	+ Amon loses his left arm in the manga, but in the anime, it remained intact.
	+ In the manga, Amon was defeated by Kaneki when he was forced to use his kakuja form. In the anime, Kaneki defeated Amon without using his kakuja form.
* During the end of the Auction Raid, some CCG investigators noted Takeomi Kuroiwa being the first to kill a ghoul with his bare hands since Koutarou Amon.
* After the Owl Suppression Operation, Amon was posthumously promoted to Special Class.
* In *Tokyo Ghoul Trump*, he is featured as the "Jack of Diamonds."
* Amon is associated with the tarot card The Emperor (IV), as in Re: Chapter 110, he is found in Chamber 4 of the CCG lab inside a container labelled "Re", or "King".
* His visual acuity is 2.0.
* The scene of him biting Mutsuki's shoulder mirrors when he was bitten on the shoulder by Kaneki during their first conflict.

## Quotes

### *Tokyo Ghoul*

* To Kusaba and Nakajima: "Morals...? With that 'morality' you can't crush evil. We are justice, that is our morality."
* To Kaneki: "This world is wrong."
* To himself: "I will change [the world]... I’ll show them. I will be the one to correct this wrong world."
* To Ken Kaneki (mentally): "If you somehow manage to make it out alive. Everyone will be aiming for your head... Even so allow me to make an earnest request... Don't die. I wish to hear your story."
* To himself: "All my life... I have always been losing things. My biological mother and father. The false image of the man who raised me. My friends. My teacher. I'm scared. What will I lose next? this is where I make my last stand. You absolutely won't pass through here. Eyepatch... you can take a small break..."
* To Donato: "Be quiet. I don't think of you as a father."
* To Donato: "... I'm wearing this so that I don't forget the days I spent at the orphanage. At the time I didn't know of your daily slaughter. Its only a symbol to repent for my " Sin of Ignorance". Since then I've felt nothing but hatred towards you. Even now you... It's disgusting that you're still alive."
* To Kaneki: "... But I only want to know one thing. Donato Porpora, the ghoul that eats little children. What was the reason, he left me alone even though I was in front on him... What was the reason he didn't kill me? If it's you... If it's you who once let me escape... I thought you might understand something...!!"
* To Donato: "Father... Why is Kazuki over there...? I thought he left the facility... Yuusuke too and Akie too didn't you say they found foster parents?"

### *Tokyo Ghoul:re*

* To Takizawa: "Ghoul? That's you deceiving yourself. You have sinned... The investigators you've killed... the civilians you've eaten... Unforgivable. But... I know. I know your weakness. And I know your strength. You are no ghoul... You are a ghoul investigator!"
* To Takizawa: "You're right, I'm an idiot, and weak. But I'll still fight."
* To Saiko: "What is right... what is wrong... you can't easily tell the difference. That's why you must keep thinking, whether what you are doing is right or not. That act itself, alone, can be called right."
* To Touka: "Rabbit. Losing Mado made me feel pain, rage... It lit a fire in my chest that will burn till I die. But that fire doesn't burn at you. It burns at this world, the circumstances that gave us no choice but to do what we did. At least, that's what I know now. I came here today to tell you that."
* To Akira: "Hatred, rage.. I understand what it feels like to live supported only by those emotions. When they finally dissolve, it feels like you're left hollow. I... after becoming like this, I too have had to live side-by-side with that emptiness. I thought that all the time I had spent as an investigator was for naught. As was the coming future... But... Everything's not totally gone. If 'emptiness' is another feeling then it, too, exists... Gazing into that emptiness is painful. It's hard. But if you can face it, unfaltering, it will eventually give you the answer you seek... How you want to live your life."
* To himself: "Eyepatch. It's thanks to this body that I finally learned a few things. Most Ghouls will be regarded by humans as creatures to be feared. That fact will not change, even if I use my justice to bring them to light and compare their faults. Yet, the more I learn of this world, the more I realize... far more so than any of them... Donato Porpora is absolute evil. That is an incontrovertible truth."

* To himself: "I've known. I've known, but I've ignored it all this time. This world is twisted... and among those twisting it... among the ones twisting it was me."
* To Donato: "Donuts. The donuts you used to make for us as snacks. They were delicious. You came with blankets on cold nights. And when the dog we took in died, you built it a grave in the hills."
* To Donato: "Yes. I try to forget those days. I try to hate you. But... To me... The days I spent in that orphanage are terribly dear. I am an orphan. An abandoned child. You raised me. I know exactly what sort of person you are. A villain. A ghoul. A mass murderer. An amoral drag of a man."
* To Donato: "Yet... Is it a son's fault for loving his father?"

### *Tokyo Ghoul: Dragon Quinx*

* To Tohru: "Ghoul Investigator? It's gonna take hell of a month or more to do that."
* To Tohru: "I promise you, you may have a hell of a life if you want to be a Ghoul Investigator. I do not make you a Ghoul Investigator just to kill ghouls, but to help him."
* To himself: "These years have passed since the Great Dragon War, it was catastrophic. How can I forget? How can I remember? What world are we living in?"
* To himself: "No one here is the hero or the villain, the future will change if people here do."