Theory on the Origin of Ghouls

[Shokkou]

Can't take credit for this idea, that belongs to a guy with the screen name of SpartanElite. I just saw it and thought that it was worth sharing with everyone here. Unfortunately I can't link the original since for reasons that are unknown the site in question's anime discussion section is members only.

Warning; there are some spoilers for the manga.

On Ghoul v Humans, I think RC Cells are some type of parasitic or symbiotic organism or something like that, and that they have the standard impulse to increase their numbers as much as possible and thus prefer higher RC counts. It's stated that if a regular human dopes up on RC cells they'll become "ghoul like" in that they will get ghoul eyes and regular food will taste horrible to them, but it's not explicitly stated they can't eat regular food. We have another statement that humans vary from between 100 - 500 RC cells or about that, that RC cells can form into kagune like appendages on ordinary humans, and that strong ghouls with high RC counts tend to produce strong children, which indicates that RC cells are influenced by genetics. It's also stated that a ghoul-baby needs human flesh consumption to form. I imagine Ghouls are the result of people who had a mutation that pushed them into the range where they couldn't eat normal food without tasting rotted sponges covered in mold, eventually losing it and giving into temptations for human flesh. People who were afflicted with high RC counts would then breed with other people with high RC counts due to similar interests. These children would have the high concentration of RC cells at conception and would continue to receive them from the mother eating more flesh, which could give sufficient RC Cells at birth to manifest in the kagune. A kagune developed at conception doesn't have such negative effect's like those seen whathisface's brother because the body literally formed around it, instead of the kagune forming somewhere on the body. This would also explain possibly why hewhatshisface was chosen for the Qs: he naturally has a high RC count and is nearing the "ghoul like human" threshold. Dr. Kanou just might not have considered base RC counts in his experiments and was giving his test subjects massive amounts of RC cells instead of gradually ramping it up like the Qs are doing. His successful experiments blow the Qs out of the water, though, because of radical changes I guess?

As far as regular humans are concerned the difference between "a ghoul like human" that eats human flesh and an "actual ghoul" is practically nonexistent. It's likely that first generation ghouls themselves aren't aware that their parents are regular humans, and just believe that they just never manifested their kagunes. If we also take into consideration that higher RC counts manifests in increased physical ability it would thus be naturally selected for and thus result in humans as a whole having a rising RC cell count. This could explain how ghouls are seemingly something that was always there, but is becoming more apparent in modern times: RC counts are always on the rise and there's a large human population.

This doesn't explain why kagunes are manifested in ways to fight one another in an incredibly specific fashion, though.

I'm aware that the flow of the words is poor but I'm lazy.

As theories go, this is definately one of the most plausible and it fits with most of what we've learnt for canon. Also, if it's even half accurate then the situation in canon is even more of a tragic mess given that it wouldn't be a case of two species fighting for survival but of one species tearing itself apart.