Juuzou Suzuya
From Tokyo Ghoul
Juuzou Suzuya is a supporting character in Tokyo Ghoul, a stitch-covered CCG investigator who fights ghouls with balletic glee and an oversized scythe. Raised as a ghoul's performing pet, he feels little pain and less fear, and grows slowly into a person under his mentors' care. He is voiced by Rie Kugimiya in Japanese and Maxey Whitehead in English.
About Juuzou Suzuya
Juuzou Suzuya is a stitch-covered investigator who fights ghouls with balletic glee and a scythe quinque bigger than he is. Raised as a performing pet by a ghoul who mutilated him, he feels little pain and less fear, baffling partners and enemies alike. Assigned to mentors who treat him as a person rather than a weapon, Suzuya slowly grows into one of the CCG's most capable, and strangest, leaders.
Appearance
Suzuya is a slender, androgynous young man with white hair clipped with red hairpins in a cross pattern, and stitches decorating his body, across his lips, arms and torso, like embroidery. He dresses in modified CCG wear, often with suspenders and rolled sleeves, and moves with a dancer's looseness even at rest. His quinque, a huge scythe, dwarfs him; his juggling knives and gleeful expression complete the impression of a street performer who wandered into a war.
Personality
Suzuya is cheerful, tactile and socially weightless, delighted by sweets, violence and interesting people in roughly any order, and baffled by grief, guilt and most social rules. The damage underneath shows in absences: he does not feel pain properly, does not fear death, and initially does not understand why killing should trouble anyone. His growth under Shinohara is one of the series' most moving arcs, not becoming normal, but becoming kind on his own strange terms, learning to value his partners' lives even before he values his own.
Background & Story
Suzuya was raised by the ghoul known as Big Madam as a performing pet, trained to kill in an underground arena, rewarded with affection and mutilated as entertainment, until his sense of pain, fear and selfhood were thoroughly scrambled. Rescued by the CCG, he was taken on as an investigator despite, or because of, his total lack of normal reactions, and partnered with the veteran Shinohara, the first adult to treat him as a person rather than a curiosity or a weapon. Under that steady mentorship, the feral arena fighter begins, slowly and unevenly, to become someone.
Powers & Abilities
- Scythe Quinque: Suzuya fights with an oversized scythe quinque and a set of small throwing knives, in an acrobatic, unpredictable style learned in the arena.
- Pain Resistance and Acrobatics: His upbringing left him nearly insensible to pain and utterly fearless, with a contortionist's mobility, he treats injuries that would stop other investigators as inconveniences.
Key Relationships
- Kureo Mado: A senior investigator of the old bureau, part of the CCG world that took Suzuya in and pointed his strangeness at ghouls.
- Akira Mado: A fellow investigator of his generation; her dry steadiness is one of the few normal working relationships he manages.
- Kisho Arima: The Reaper, the standard of CCG strength Suzuya's generation measures itself against, and, in :re, part of the structure that shapes Suzuya's squad.
- Kotaro Amon: A senior investigator whose earnest normality contrasts with everything Suzuya is; the bureau throws them at the same war from opposite directions.
Quick Answers
Why does Suzuya have stitches?
Suzuya was raised by a ghoul called Big Madam as an arena fighter and pet; the stitches are part of how she decorated and modified him, and he keeps adding to them himself.
Who voices Juuzou Suzuya?
Rie Kugimiya voices him in Japanese and Maxey Whitehead voices him in English.
What is Suzuya's weapon called?
Jason 13's, Juuzou's Jason, is his first quinque, a scythe-like weapon he names after his arena days; in :re he wields an even larger scythe and a set of throwing knives.
