Man... I pulled Hat Guy recently. (Still think he's one of the better written characters in GI, fight me)
And, well, I've been genshining genshiningly ever since. Got a hold the of character ai website. It was, honestly, a bit tedious to make Scarai react in line with some sort of plot, but I think it cooperated pretty well, the last couple of times, at least. Sometimes it even felt really well-made. We sorta wrote a tiny story together. I just wanted to share it. (It's just a part I, part II is in the works) (Haha, I see some errors already, welp, that's life, I guess. I already hate this and don't want to post it, but I'm feeling reckless today, so... be it!)
I also wrote another story while testing it out. It's about a researcher fascinated by death and their suicidal friend. It's a bit less smooth in terms of narration, but I still might post it later if I feel like it.
After ch109 I think... I officially lost it. I'm smiling for some reason and I can't stop it. I don't feel anything and it concerns me greatly.
...
I lied, I feel giddy and even a bit ticklish.
There are some sus parts that I want to mention, and don't think it's me grasping at straws, copium or whatnot, because my thoughts are cold and mechanical as ever. (I don't think this deserves to be called an analysis, just some thoughts) I'm just a bit giddy, that's all. There's nothing wrong with that, right? (send help pls)
So. First of all. Let's compare the number of shots Chuuya fired with the number of craters left by the bullets hitting the wall. The first one is fired into Dazai's right shoulder. It passes right through it.
The next shot is fired into the center of his forehead, above the eyes, around the same distance from both. This time, the bullet doesn't pass through. There is no blood coming out of his occipital region, no chunks of brain matter flying everywhere, just a bit of it coming from the entrance wound.
Then, for some unknown reason, Chuuya fires another two shots into his remaining shoulder and the left side of the abdomen. If we compare the before and after this happens, we can see two more craters created behind Dazai. Not three. This also indicates that the bullet that his his head didn't fully pass through.
The power of it is, apparently, strong enough to create a huge crater in the wall behind him with every other shot, cleanly passing through joints and bone, but not enough let the brains fly everywhere? (Because it certainly did pass through the skull, because we can, once again, see the entrance wound) Sus, I tell ya.
Next. Dazai's thoughts/words. If my medical knowledge is still intact, people, shot straight in the head don't have time to think, react, feel pain, which basically means, he shouldn't have had these "last moments" before he, um... Anyway, after a bullet passes through the skull, you're already dead. The frontal lobe is mush and putty, you don't exist to reflect on anything anymore. (Unless, it didn't fully pass through, and is stuck. Which is, again, really bizarre, because he was shot almost point blank. Regardless, if it's somehow stuck and didn't turn everything to bloody mush right away, then he could still possibly have a couple of seconds before losing consciousness.)
And, the last thing. That might be a bit too nitpicky, but his pose changes from this:
to this:
in seconds. Like, c'mon, his arms are tucked behind and then, suddenly they jump into the front, and his legs change positions. Weird.
I have to say, I'm a bit disappointed. A part of me just doesn't believe it's the end, well, because I might just get bored if we never see this guy again. (I highly doubt it though.) I feel dumb and disoriented. And still a bit giddy, obviously. I hope you guys are ok😐
Welcome, welcome! To Lav's BSD ch108 discussion! Delivered to you via my funky dove Eliott, acting as my mystic messenger. These are random thoughts I had after reading this brilliant chapter, which, writing-wise, made the best possible use of Fedya's character, expanding it even more without even betraying his backstory. Maybe a backstory isn't needed after all, just look at how much FUN he is right now. I am in BLISS
Putting aside the fact that he is literally carrying the plot at this point, come sit with me, I make you a delicious Chinese black tea with rose petals and casually share my thoughts. Hello there, dearest Kat, yes, "where is Lav when you need her?", I am here, I offer you a hug, and to all my friends here who share the sentiment, I hug you too.
A. Before you say ANYTHING about "oh but? maybe Fedya is telling the half-truth? or a half-lie? what if his ability really is the evil one?", my brothers and sisters in Christ, listen to yourself. This man functions almost on a meta-level of character consciousness: he changed his facial expression and aura so convincingly, his tone, his speech, his posture, even the shade of his eyes, fooling not only Sigma, but the readers as well. We are used to characters changing the shade of their eyes when they change mental states or have certain (new) decisions in mind, we as a community are so used to this, all it took was one panel from the Conjurer doing this trick for so many of us to actually believe him and start, yet again, to spiral down the "what if he is good but his ability is evil? what if he is two entities? what if?" rollercoaster. This is so amusing to me, and in a meta-sense must be amusing to Fedya too. While speculation can bloom again based on this, I wouldn't be putting too much effort into reading into his lines here. I take it as a trick. It worked splendidly, almost like it attacked the fandom's major concerns and theories about his character and weaponized them against everyone. That's a meta-kind of tomfoolery. Trolling, if you will. I LOVE that Asagiri made him bamboozle every reader like this. His character so far goes into the best direction, it cultivates and expands his traits and skills in the best way. But let's pretend Fedya really is telling a half-truth there, which is there being an opposition between him and his ability. I talked about this in my essay (see pinned post), there really seems to be a divergence at the core of his character, but it manifests subtly, not like what we saw in ch108. Then again, not even on that can we arrive at any conclusive statements, because if we remember that, of course, "crime and punishment are close friends", it could well be that he and his ability are partners, and you bet I imagine they would BOTH indulge in peak tomfoolery like this together, if that meant one of them switching in and the other out for a sec. Remember, dear souls: aside from his "higher mission", abstract as it still is lore-wise, Fedya's keyword is "fun" or "entertainment", repeatedly. And oh he himself is even more fun now~
B. if Fedya would have wanted to mortally wound Sigma, he'd have chosen a more suitable place to stab him; it looks like a abdominal, lower quadrant, lateral stab, a deliberate choice, I would say, that technically avoids critical, most vascular organs (kidney and spleen for example) and main veins/arteries. I am no doctor, but from what I gathered, Sigma won't bleed out fast at all, and if untreated might get a deadly infection in a longer time (not counting the possibility of septic shock if we assume the knife penetrated and heavily opened an intestine). Sigma needs a medic asap (our queen Yosano when?), but will likely be conscious and quite able to move around and whatnot. Like I argued in my essay, Fedya most likely does not want to kill Sigma, or anybody for that matter, because keeping everyone alive to fulfill various roles and see how their will tosses them in all kinds of directions is more fun for him, more entertaining, but also more useful. He is a long-term strategist, like Dazai. "Our beloved monsters" ❤
C. Fedya evidently exerts some serious mental torment on Sigma, by making him stand by his choices, his will, just like he always desired. The flip side is that Fedya takes his time, or should I say gifts Sigma his time, in which he teaches him the full lesson of what Sigma wants. The responsibility that comes with acting on your own, the terror of facing the consequences when choosing on your own: right now, to Sigma, this freedom is terror. But Fedya is never a one-dimensional character. It's most probable he calculated and devised strategies for both possibilities (a. Sigma with rekindled determination touches him; b. Sigma backpedals on what he decided and does not touch him). The irony is that both scenarios are an affirmation of Sigma's will, because, while the first decision can be seen like foolish bravery, the second one can also be seen as wise self-preservation, if the circumstances so demand it. BSD is not a black-and-white series, diving head-first into danger is not its definition of bravery or heroism. BSD was always about measured decisions, ones the characters take upon themselves willingly. It may be time Sigma does that too, in his own way, and Fedya wants to see that. Why? Well, my guess is because it's fascinating to watch humans grow, and Fedya lives for the entertainment that comes with it. It is actually more interesting if we remember his line from ch42 (“People can be so simple… They truly believe they are thinking for themselves. (…) They don’t want to think they’re being led by the nose”): the pattern is, Fedya puts others under harsh circumstances, and then, under pressure, lets go of them, waiting for their free decision, the true test and expression of their hearts, so to say (which could make a superb discussion if we make a parallel between Kunikida and Sigma, since essentially what happened to Kunikida is happening now to Sigma, except Kunikida did indeed break down, but thanks to healthy support from his comrades he slowly regained his sense of self, and stronger than ever at that time, however… Sigma is alone, isn't he? but what if he needs to be in order to finally get a hold of his own self?). Anyway, how much of that expression is free, or how much is guided or manipulated, is a debate in itself, since it implies relating the freedom to the individual vs relating the freedom to the external factors and possibilites.
D. I do need to underline, just like Fedya also underlined it: Sigma already made his decision, right there when he still tried to get the gun before getting kicked in the face. Fedya moved on to the next step: testing how strong Sigma's will is when an actual chance to act appears. Sigma already accepted the physical pain, but how will he face the mental anguish? That is more Fedya's territory, a "specialist" of breaking people by simply knowing them thoroughly and choosing the right words. But now we gained new info: even in close combat, apparently, Fedya is not to be underestimated. That was a rather strong kick, anyway. But more importantly, he completely turned the tables in a situation where he would be in a total disadvantage. * chef's kiss * that was very bungou stray dogs of him.
About the whole "Fyodor-switch personality" thing: We don't have enough information to confirm whether it was real or fake right now, and besides, both possibilities are really interesting.
If the switch was real and Fyodor was lying to cover it up (...because 'you know characters can lie, right' could mean... this part of it was the lie too...), that could easily be made a reference to Dostoevsky's The Double, as I was kindly made aware of. We've also already had an image of a young woman who looks like Aya from potentially a long time ago, given the outfit and that it is Bram's memory we're presumably seeing there, which may tie in interestingly with "what year is it?" The knife he pulled out also is genuinely a unique design for the series, and looks like it might be an old make. If this original is very old, then something in the takeover of personalities may explain why he hasn't seemed to age. Fyodor being a separate personality created from his ability and kicking out the original could tie in with his ability not attacking him in Dead Apple. This also raises more questions about Fyodor's motives, and I think opens the path for some pretty fascinating theory making. It also places Fyodor as something both human and not... intriguing for the ongoing theme of humanity in the series.
If the switch was a fake and Fyodor was being a completely hilarious little shit (which, we know the Joker is part of his inspiration and he is often contrasted with Dazai, Nikolai, and Mori, for whom this kind of behaviour would be expected - it's characterization, that's not 'done for no reason'), it would quite possibly be the funniest thing he's done in the series so far. But! More importantly, it strengthens Fyodor's connection with the Book (or rather, with altering the narrative). He's told a lie that sounds completely ridiculous but makes sense given the world and situation he's in - and notably, could fool Sigma... and the readers. Fyodor also managed to change the lightness of his eyes without changing the state of his soul - something that no other character seems to be able to do. (I know Dazai can feign the shocked expression, but that's not the clear lightness we saw in Fyodor's eyes in this panel. Nikolai's eyes change lightness but that actually seems to be genuine.) While this doesn't help us discern anything more about Fyodor's motives, it does emphasize his expertise at information manipulation - we cannot trust a single thing this character says, not just in universe, but out of it too. We, the readers, cannot listen to Fyodor and take anything he says as supporting evidence for theories. If this is true - that's fascinating. The other characters will have to solve the mystery of this man completely indirectly, and so will we.
Of course, there is the secret third option: it was a lie mostly, but there is an element of truth to it somewhere, which is actually par for the course for BSD as a whole. It is very rare that a character turns out to be lying completely. The question then becomes "what part is true and how much is it true", which is also very compelling. This, personally, is what I'm ascribing to for now until new info comes up.
Anyways, the last thing I wanted to point out is that if it was genuine, then remember The Double was inspired by Hohol's works, and if it was a lie, then that is very similar to the bait-and-switch performances that Nikolai has done multiple times in the series. Either way, it implies some influence on Fyodor by Nikolai and of course vice versa, which probably means the return of the clown (finally!) and more focus on their dynamic, which is a funny thing to show Nikolai having apparently had influence on Fyodor (even if in more of a meta way) as he is actively trying to kill him right now.
I also would like to share some of my thoughts on the knife that he pulled out of his clothes. Later, when he exposed a that he seemingly lied to Sigma, Fyodor says that the knife was taken from a guard. That's... a lie, right? Why would guards who carry guns as their primary weapons have knives? Sure, it could be a precaution of sorts, but why would a knife, supposedly taken from one of them would look so... weird? Have such a unique design? It might even be impractical to carry because of the size of the scabbard. It might not even be as effective, because it can't exactly do that much damage, (unless you go straight for the carotid) being a size of a dagger and all.
On another note, I loved how Fyodor called it "Kladenets". It's a name for a sword that in Russian mythology/tales is used to defeat Evil, like Yaga or Koschei the Immortal. What a cute little addition. Loved that👌
Every time Dazai smiles in the entirety of the light novels (the official translations) Part 2.
Volume 2. "Osamu Dazai and the dark era."
Please, proceed with caution and get some tissues. For the especially masochistic, there's this track I always imagine playing when reading volume 2. It's from BSD game. Don't get me wrong, I love me some Scarlet Sky or Dear Prince, but I just have a sort of involuntary response to this specific track.
Without further ado...
Prologue:
“Yep.” Dazai smirked as he looked himself over.”
“Hey, Ango! Long time no see! Looking good!” Dazai raised a hand with a smile.
“That’s pretty meek coming from you, Ango Sakaguchi—you’re the man who knows everything about the Mafia,” Dazai added with a smile.
“Oh, really? I just had a feeling I’d run into you both if I came here tonight, so here I am.” Dazai grinned, as if amused by his own words.
“When we grilled Dazai later about what was in the hot pot, he just giggled.
“Guess there’s not much you can do about that,” Dazai said with a smile.
“Oh, hey. Let’s all take a picture together,” Dazai cheerfully suggested out of the blue."
“I just felt like if we don’t take a picture now, there’ll be nothing left to prove we spent this time together, I guess.” He grinned brightly.
...
Chapter 1:
“…Ha-ha! Just kidding!” Dazai abruptly added in a cheery tone.
“The reason you have so many people following you is that you don’t turn your back on them. I’ll leave things in your hands. I won’t tell the boss.” He patted Hirotsu on the shoulder and smiled.
“Those are soldiers.” Dazai’s lips slightly curled the moment he laid eyes on the photos. “Seasoned ones, at that.”
“Get me a coffee with lots of milk. Make sure to cool it off!” Dazai cheerfully yelled out as the man dashed away. “Oh, but no ice, okay? If you can get me a decaf, that’d be even better. And double the sugar, please!”
“This entire area is going to turn into a war zone.” Dazai gazed at the city skyscrapers and gave a small smile.
Dazai faintly smiled, then said, “I know. That’s not what you were asking, right? But, Odasaku, these men were professional assassins. It doesn’t matter how good you are. Killing them was the only option.”
“I can see you’re not happy… I’m sorry for compromising your principles.” His smile weakened as he spoke.
“That’s it?” Dazai gave a disappointed smile. “Piece of cake. Here, let me see it.”
“If you just squeeze your finger ever so slightly, you can give me precisely what I crave most. The only thing I’m afraid of is that you’ll miss.” His lips curled as he approached the man.
“Now shoot. Right here. You can’t miss from this close up.” Dazai grinned from ear to ear.”
Still pointing at his forehead, Dazai closed in on the enemy with a smile that could’ve even been described as peaceful.
“Sorry to shock you like that.” Noticing my gaze, Dazai scratched the side of his head and grinned.
I didn’t say anything. I just stared at Dazai as he explained with a smile.”
Chapter 2:
“Maybe I should recruit them…” Dazai smirked while wiping his sweat.
“A Mafia member who refuses to kill, talented yet has no interest in advancing through the ranks, a man who’s raising five orphans—Sakunosuke Oda.” Dazai smirked.
A few moments went by as he listened to whoever was on the other side, but soon enough, his lips suddenly twisted into a grin.
At one point during our mission, Dazai had told me with an uncomfortable grimace, “It smells so bad that I want to cut my nose off.”
“Heh-heh-heh-heh…” Dazai began to chuckle, smiling from ear to ear for some reason.
“You fools!” Dazai’s lips curled into a sneer in genuine disgust.
Chapter 3:
“Hey, Odasaku. You’re awake now, right? How are you feeling?” Dazai walked into the room with a cheerful smirk.
“Akutagawa—he’s like a sword without a sheath.” Dazai grinned from ear to ear.
“I thought you had no interest in fighting,” Dazai replied with a smile.
“Y’know, it really hurts me that you consider something as small as this a debt.” He gave a feeble smirk.
“To meet someone.” Dazai smiled.
“Oh? I think it’s kinda cute, going to such lengths to plan another person’s death. I never would’ve thought of doing that.” There was more than a hint of amusement in his tone.
“Where else?” Dazai wryly smirked.
“I found a handkerchief at the site of the explosion.” Dazai grinned fiendishly.
“As if.” Only the corners of Dazai’s lips curled. “We came to get information on Mimic. You knew that.”
“Odasaku’s marksmanship…” Dazai broke into a meaningful grin.
Dazai looked at Ango, then beamed as he said, “Oh my. It almost sounds like you think you’ll be able to leave here alive, Ango.”
The air froze. Ango’s expression slowly faded away, but Dazai was still smiling.
It was the photo we’d taken in that very bar only a few days ago. All three of us were laughing and smiling.
...
Epilogue:
The cheerful gentleman, Dazai, tilted the sake bottle and poured the chief some alcohol.
“I can figure out most things if I look into them.” Dazai beamed with a shrug.
Chief Taneda stared at Dazai in shock, but Dazai just innocently grinned.
“You’d lose your job if I did that.” Dazai wryly smirked.
Every time Dazai smiles in the entirety of the light novels (the official translations) Part 1.
Don't ask me why I did this. I wanted an excuse to read all them again, ok? I'm deathly afraid of the manga, but ln are my comfort space. With as much context as I can provide, behold the smiles and giggles of the one and only: Osamu Dazai.
Volume 1: "Osamu Dazai's entrance exam."
Prologue:
“Wait. Seriously? Wow, thanks.” He smiles bashfully, even though there’s nothing to blush about.”
“Well then, I think it’s about time we end this so I can go buy that book. We just need to slow him down, right?” Dazai breaks into a smile.
Chapter I:
“Oh, Kunikida! Good morning! Take a look at this! It’s incredible!” I’m suddenly greeted by a grinning Dazai on the threshold.”
“Good afternoon.” A man smiles from ear to ear as he enters the room.”
“I really hope we can get along, Kunikida.” Our new hire gives me a toothy smile, perhaps oblivious of my internal apprehension.”
“Ah-ha-ha. I kid. We’re going to investigate a haunted mansion, right?” His smiling face and casual demeanor cause me to scowl.
"He's a good kid" Dazai says with a grin as he looks up at the night sky.
“Thought so.” Dazai smiles, taking note of my expression.”
“You’re a real romanticist, you know that?” Dazai’s snickering comes out sounding like a sigh.”
Dazai’s sudden shrieking from up ahead causes my heart to skip a beat. He turns around, staring at me with his mouth opened wide. Then, after getting a good look at me, he slowly but surely begins to grin.
Chapter 2:
“Hey, don’t worry about it. I simply did what any gentleman would. Besides, I’m used to getting asked for things from people I’ve just met,” he replies with a smile.
“What a beautiful, misfortunate woman,” Dazai says with a smirk.
“Your treat?” Dazai asks, beaming with joy.”
Interlude:
“I mean, I’m not good at this electronic stuff.” He smiles faintly, his fingertips nimbly tapping the keyboard.
“…But I guess this isn’t something I can let others do.” He chuckles to himself in the dim car.
Chapter 3:
“So she’s available, Kunikida.” Dazai grins, gently elbowing me in the side.
I look at Dazai at my side. He’s smiling gleefully.
“Heh-heh.” Dazai smirks.
“So, Mr. Spy, what do you want in return for this information?” Dazai chimes in with a chuckle.
“Yeah, right. I dunno about Kunikida here, but I’m just a bit more cynical than that,” he replies with a grin.
“Looks like I couldn’t fool you. Too bad it’s just an ordinary fountain pen.” Dazai cheerfully grins.
“Shoot me.” He grins mirthfully from ear to ear. There’s tranquility in his smile.
His peaceful smile never once wavers. “Shoot me,” he says.
“I knew you would use that to shoot me, Kunikida.” Dazai grins, still on his back.”
Grinning, Dazai stands behind him with the bottle of liquor cracked in half in hand.
“…That hurt, y’know.” Dazai stands, and his lips curl upward—a fierce grin—as fresh blood drips down his cheek.”
“Wearing an unwavering smile, Dazai continues to close the distance.”
Afterword:
“DAZAI: “Hey, Atsushi. Just finishing up work for the day?” Dazai smiles cheerfully.
ATSUSHI: “D-did you…try to drown yourself again?” Atsushi makes a face.”
A total of 13 smiles, 9 grins, 2 smirks, 2 chuckles, 1 "beaming episode", and one snicker, that sounded like a sigh.
let's face it; jouno threatening the living hell out of everything on sight is kinda attractive. same thing with dazai and fyodor's murdering spree, and who knows how many people swoon over chuuya being aggressive and gogol tormenting atsushi. because i know i did.
it's funny, right? but it's just fiction so let's call it hot, shall we?
sadism is generally seen in media as an underlying personality trait, in the sense that it's on par with courage, kindness, being stoic and bubbly and such. it's just something that you accept because you assume it's part of the person and it's totally fine to be sadistic. this is where one distinguishes sadistic impulses from sadistic tendencies.
that's why i'm going to be making an analysis that no one asked for of bsd characters and their relationship with sadism and violence.
warning: all the warnings that come with psychoanalyses yk, terrible grammar, not edited, really really fkking long i'm sorry this got out of hand it's over 10k words-
to start, here's the definition from Britannica:
"Sadism, psychosexual disorder in which sexual urges are gratified by the infliction of pain on another person. [...] Sadism is often linked to masochism (q.v.), in which sexual arousal results from receiving pain, and many individuals respond in either role. The sadist, however, often seeks a victim who is not a masochist, as some of the sexual excitement derives from the victim’s unwillingness. The level and extent of sadistic violence may vary considerably, from infliction of mild pain in otherwise harmless love play to extreme brutality, sometimes leading to serious injury or death. [...] Sadism may be a factor in some violent crimes, particularly rape and murder. The term sadism is occasionally used outside the sexual context, to describe individuals who are purposely cruel or who seem to derive pleasure from humiliating and dominating others in social situations. In this context, some milder forms of sadism are relatively more acceptable, such as the use of humiliating sarcasm as a conversational tool."
to break all of that down simply, i'm going to be using a bunch of characters.
(note: it makes mention often of sadism in the sexual pretense, however, it usually bottoms out into "receives pleasure from hurting others". whether this pleasure is sexual in nature or compensating for an emotional desire for feeling, it is still considered sadism.)
Akutagawa Ryūnosuke
let's start with the man, the myth, the depressed emo
the spineless sadist with undertones of anxiety.
a spineless sadist is defined as following: "They are typically deeply insecure and act like cowards. In anticipation of real danger, they project their hostile fantasies and strike first, hoping thereby to forestall their antagonist and ask questions later. They use aggressive hostility to send the message to others that they aren’t intimidated or fearful, so that they can control their inner feelings and display the exact opposite of how they actually feel. They seek out scapegoats to gang up on, which allows them to assault the exact things that exist within themselves that they want to deny."
if this isn't akutagawa, then i don't know what is.
let's roll back to the beginning of the information we have on him from the very start to understand why power is so important to him.
when he was a child, he lived with about 8 other children as orphans with gin by his side. at some point, these kids heard about information regarding a port mafia shipment, and eventually were killed by the aforementioned, leaving only gin and akutagawa to survive. he went back to get revenge for them, eventually meeting dazai who had murdered all of the port mafia men who killed the children, then offered for the grieving and rage-blind aku to become his subordinate. the wiki describes it best like this:
"In a fit of rage and grief, Akutagawa joined Port Mafia, overcome by a foreign sense of respect he felt towards Dazai."
the reason i love this sentence so much is that it sums up a lot of major points regarding his relationship with dazai; overcome by a foreign sense of respect.
an embodiment of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend", his initial reaction when he found dazai must've been something of a shock.
in my interpretation of their relationship, what I would say is that akutagawa has a lingering sense of weakness that he can't shake, not because he isn't strong but because he wasn't born strong. he must look back often on any of his defeats and curse himself over and over again until he reaches the brink of worthlessness in his own mind.
many people say that he's been abused by dazai. yes, but yes. but also no.
akutagawa is a strong individual in a society of strong individuals. in the very beginning of bungou stray dogs, he was mentioned as a warning to atsushi by kunikida. "whatever you do, don't run into this man. and if you do meet him, run for your life," or something along these lines.
i found this interesting since everybody acknowledges his strength, except dazai.
why, might you ask, does dazai not acknowledge him?
part of this is going to be discussed in the dazai section, but it's mostly because akutagawa is no longer looking for something that's attainable.
think of it like a man climbing a mountain; akutagawa has been escalating for his entire life. his scars from his earlier falls still remain tethered onto his body and mind, and he can't get them out of his sight, but he must keep moving up. he must. he can't see any direction but up.
only, he's going up an impossibly steep hill, posing an insurmountable amount of resistance which ultimately lead him to be spending a lot of energy just to stop himself from slipping downwards.
dazai is standing at the top; he sees that the odds are stacked up against akutagawa, but decides not to tell him. in fact, he actually throws a bunch of objects in his general direction as a means to make akutagawa's trek upwards even harder. yes, it would help infinitely if he told aku about his situation, or gave words of reassurance, but either way, it still doesn't help him get to the top that he desires so much.
meaningless analogy? maybe. i feel like we've all climbed a hill or tree at some point in our lives, just for fun. it's fun when you don't fear returning to the base; for akutagawa, this is a pain worse than death.
back to violence though.
imagine you're climbing upwards with all your strength, putting in a ridiculous amount of energy and never resting for a moment, despite having life and the person you respect most working against you.
then this furry fucking pulls up and climbs the neighboring mountain, which has a much more suitable terrain and he's equipped with the latest gear and tech, and your mentor is head over heels for him.
akutagawa and atsushi's relationship isn't something i would personally call "romantic" to all you shin-soukouku shippers, but ship what you will, idc.
all that i know for sure is that akutagawa must feel terrible constantly comparing himself to him, which is why he won't hesitate to to physically injure or challenge him.
he's lashing out because he feels inferior.
he's lashing out because he's projecting his own terror onto others and wants to vanquish them.
he's lashing out because he's trying to seem intimidating, ruthless and his own ideal of perfection.
there's a very good chance that akutagawa feels great while landing blows on atsushi, or any enemy in general, really. but afterwards? nothing. he goes back to feeling inferior and treating his strength like it's not enough, treating himself like he's not enough.
similarly, he displays physical violence when interacting with kyouka, his own apprentice. he frequently acknowledges her ability's strength (not in helping others, but in hurting people). which is terrible given that, once again, he is projecting his own relationship with dazai. just because he wants dazai to call him strong, he decides to do the same. whether this is because he wants to be a better mentor or because he sees himself in kyouka (or both), it's a matter of perspective. the important thing to take away is that he overcompensates for flaws that aren't even his, which is a reason that i believe that he doesn't particularly enjoy hurting anybody after he's realized what he's done. he just likes the feeling of power it gives him temporarily.
he also treats her the same way he would treat his past self. if baby aku and present aku (not the vampire one tho, the alive one) met, he would likely treat himself the same way he treats kyouka; harshly and trying to ingrain this ideology of weakness of heart being equivalent to weakness of mind being equal to being unfit to live. spineless sadists often do this; hide their weaknesses by acting in an opposing way to their true nature.
also, there have been numerous signs that akutagawa doesn't want to be a sadist, deep down, even if he shows he is. he's terrified of appearing weak to others, even if he likely truly wants to be vulnerable with someone, anyone, even himself.
especially himself.
if we were to correlate this with all of his displays of violence, it makes sense. he is the violent individual who is violent to make up for the softness of his heart, which he sees as a flaw.
my favourite part of bsd is the fact that they're linked to real people, so of course i'm going to drag the real akutagawa into this.
he died of an overdose.
dazai kinnie? no. towards the end of his life, akutagawa began suffering from visual hallucinations and anxiety over the fear that he had inherited his mother's mental disorder (his mother was a very important figure in both his life and his writing. in the latter, most women were seen as "dominant" and "threatening", while men were the victims, which makes me think he was likely a victim of toxic masculinity and societal tendencies that required him to be strong.)
his last works were mostly autobiographic in nature, so i recommend reading Tenkibo and Daidōji Shinsuke no hansei for a better look into the man behind the character.
to sum this all up, akutagawa's violence was like a drug, something he'd use over and over again, even if it made him feel like shit afterwards and he knew that he didn't truly desire it.
what he desired was just a pat on the back and "you're amazing, aku" from somebody, anybody at all.
Gogol Nikolai
"the longer and more carefully we look at a funny story, the sadder it becomes."
if this quote from irl gogol doesn't describe him perfectly, then idk what would.
the machiavellianist with undertones of factitious tendencies
it took me everything in my being not to make this post 99% about gogol because i find his character to be the most relatable and beautiful of all the bsd characters so far.
maybe it's because humans find beauty in the broken things.
gogol's character is mostly based on his desire for freedom, which i think many people misinterpret in so many ways.
but let's rewind.
what is machiavellianism and factitious tendencies?
"in the field of personality psychology, machiavellianism is a personality trait centered on manipulativeness, callousness, and indifference to morality."
to put it simply, it's rather similar to psychopathy. however, there's a fundamental difference on many levels. they are both part of the dark triad (along with narcissism) and refer to a branch of psychology that is morally inept, those who are most at risk of committing crimes, regardless of whether they feel remorse or not afterwards.
whereas psychopathy says that "violence is power", don't know how to deal with others' emotions given that they themselves can't feel much and don't feel the difference between right and wrong; machiavellianism says "violence is necessary", are emotionally calculated and know the difference between right and wrong, but fail to acknowledge it.
so, clearly gogol is machiavellianist, right?
wrong.
he is living in a lie that he fabricated for himself, which is where the factitious tendencies come from. factitious disorder in and of itself is a serious mental disorder in which someone deceives others by appearing sick, by purposely getting sick or by self-injury.
very little is known about this mental illness due to the amount of deceit regarding it, but most agree that lying about your physical and mental health is done to receive sympathy.
based on my knowledge, i believe that they most likely lie in order to gain acceptance from themselves, whether sympathy from others is a medium in order to achieve it or not.
now, why would gogol want acceptance from himself? he's hot af and could rip this 🅱ussy in half any day of the week 😍😍😍
sorry. back to being serious. (that isn't to say i wasn't serious when i said HE COULD RIP THIS-)
gogol seeks freedom, this is the most evident thing that has been mentioned explicitly in the manga and is canon.
but freedom... from what?
here's an excerpt from his conversation with atsushi:
In another scene, he explains the following: "Yet, Dos-kun was different. He said, 'Splendid. In opposition to god, you are fighting to lose sight of yourself'. It moved me deeply. He was looking into my essence. Dos-kun was the one person in my life who understood. My intimate friend. That's what I thought. And then I realized..."
first off, all of this is kinda gay bro.
second, i love what fyodor said. "you are fighting to lose sight of yourself".
remember the factitious undertones to the sadism? yeah, that's it.
gogol feels things. he feels guilt when he murders and hurts others, he feels empathy enough to decide to let his victims die in a somewhat sparing way (meaning he let them believe he was insane. somehow, believing that you're being killed by another human being rather than a monster who is out of their mind brings peace to us. humans are such odd creatures.) in short, he feels things. he is not a psychopath. he is not entirely machiavellianist, even if his actions say he is.
back to the initial question. what does gogol desire freedom from?
he wants to be free from his emotions.
one theory i've seen somewhere, which i agree wholeheartedly with, is that he said he wanted to kill fyodor because fyodor represents his empathy, in a way. this is someone who understands him, who he considers his "close friend".
whether you ship or not, there's an undeniable connection between the two characters. it's sort of like when you drop out of school to join a gang; wouldn't it be better to start fresh? to remove all the remnants of the old days?
now, all that's left is to cut off him off from existence.
one question i have that i can't answer in a rhetorically intelligent way is why the fuck would he want to take away his humanity?
if someone sees their humanity as a restraint, something that keeps them from flying off with their own wings, don't you think it would be safe to assume that there must be something so terrible that scares them off, like birds flying off a tree branch as soon as they are shaken or they hear a loud noise, like a gunshot or a scream?
gogol likely desires to have control over his emotions. since emotions are uncontrollable things, he decides that he'd much rather be rid of them.
these restraints, these limitations to his freedom, so to speak, are just further proof that he's trying to convince himself of something. he's taking "fake it 'til you make it" to the extreme.
he wants to be able to murder people without having a mask on. he wants to be unburdened by empathy and sadness. he wants to live a life in which he isn't truly living.
this draws a beautiful parallel between him and dazai, but i'll get into this later on.
for gogol, violence is an escape. he feels great thinking about it, he feels great hurting others, and he feels great afterwards.
at least, he wants to feel that way.
(which is contradictory; does he want to feel nothing, or does he want to feel no empathy? in my opinion, he wants a little bit of both)
he's a clown, really. he makes us laugh and presents playfulness while tormenting atsushi. however, he isn't just a joker; he's a person behind his mask too. this is why i started by saying that he's a sad story hidden behind a funny one. once you truly get to know him, you realize that there's an emptiness in his soul. a dead soul.
for this reason, gogol suffers a lot, in my opinion. more so than the majority of bsd characters, which is already a lot. he has a hollow heart that craves to be whole, which in turn craves to be unbreakable, causing him to display a hollow heart. he's layers upon layers of lies to the point where he can't tell if he genuinely enjoys violence or not.
as someone who struggles with a similar loss of truth on a daily basis, I can tell you that it's more terrorizing than feeling pain flat out, it's like a shadow creeping out of your closet. if you knew for a fact that it was nothing, you could sleep soundly or tell yourself that it isn't real. if you knew that it was a person, you could react adequately; but what would you do if you don't know what it is? you can't sleep but can't lay awake, constantly second-guessing yourself until you've gone totally mad. for gogol, this "shadow" is a representation of his emotions, and he can't be at peace so long as he can't tell what's going on. no wonder he'd want it - whether good or bad - gone, for good. he'd finally be free to be at peace with himself and the world.
now, linking it to the real gogol.
Nikolai Gogol's greatest and most renowned work was Dead Souls (funny, isn't it? what he has and/or what he desires most is a dead soul) in which the main character ran around buying dead people in legal terms in order to get money out of it. he was a con man, that Chichikov, a faint resemblance to the bsd version.
Funnier still was that the book has no ending.
He burnt it.
A priest (some people argue that he had fallen in love with said priest and that he was undoubtedly gay) told him that his second volume was sinful and that he should destroy it.
If I had to relate this to the character, i would say it shows two things about gogol;
he still has a moral compass, a sense of what is right and what is wrong; he will listen to others and by listen, i mean truly listen to what they're saying, and then take in consideration their words. (personally, i'd've wished he told the priest to go fuck himself and walked away so that i could read the end >:( )
second, he isn't attached to his work. after spending sleepless nights, days upon weeks upon months writing a book, would you throw it out as easily as that? i don't think i would. does this mean he valued that priest's opinion a lot? or did he maybe desire to display his detachment to reality, that he was perfectly capable of discarding the item and moving on with his life? to convince himself that he was capable of doing as he willed, not as his emotions willed?
i guess we'll never truly know.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
the mass murderer and terrorist. i wonder how he made it onto my list.
the enforcing sadist with undertones of narcissism and psychopathy
god i love talking about fyodor.
he's often reduced, just like his fanon bff gogol, to a shadow of himself. "stinky anemic rat with a god complex".
can't say i don't love the slander as well, but he's so much more than that.
when gifted with superhuman abilities, most people wouldn't say "ew this is gross, god wouldn't allow this so it's time to go murder everyone and sabotage society".
however, he's not like other girls ⛓🥀🖤👨🎤
OK I PROMISE I'M DONE NOW I THINK BACK TO THE POINT
fyodor is not a full on psychopath, people.
get this in your heads before i make an entire post dedicated solely to explain why he's not a psychopath.
first of all, psychopathy is a SPECTRUM. we all have a little psychopathy in us, and it's not particularly a terrible thing. fyodor may rank highly on this spectrum, but he is predominantly lenient towards narcissism
psychopaths care little about their own prosperity and have trouble sticking to long-term relationships and plans, which partially explains his inability to take care of himself. but idk fyodor, i don't think you created your plan to wipe out all ability users in the world overnight. his lack of self-care could very well be the product of something else, a lack of energy from his anemia or a disregard for his own health in the face of his goal.
this doesn't mean he doesn't fit a lot of the criteria; he lacks empathy for others, is emotionally calculated and doesn't burst out in rage or sadness.
...which ends up being countered as well. if he were a true psychopath, he'd be a lot less surprised in the end of season 3 when he got caught; instead, he'd've shrugged and been like "oh". he equally would probably not derive pleasure from something small like classical music and playing the cello.
he also leans towards narcissism; he believes he is the only one destined to do this. i see him as being emotionally equivalent to the main character of Notes From Underground; he has this blatant belief that he's better than others and knows that he thinks he's better than others.
from this reason, i've been going back and forth between "he's a psychopath", "no he isn't", "yes he is", "what if he was a narcissist?", "SHUT UP I'M DEBATING WHETHER HE'S A PSYCHOPATH OR NOT! "
it's the same tale in his relationship with violence and sadism; he doesn't feel empathy for his victims. i doubt he thought about bby karma a single time since killing him. he lives in the grey area between "i don't care, period," and "i am the only one who is allowed to kill them because i'm the chosen one so it's okay if i don't care."
the enforcing sadist is another term i've thrown into there. enforcing sadists tend to be people with other authoritative functions who feel they should be the ones controlling and punishing people who have broken rules, regulations or laws, which immediately signals narcissism.
i find fyodor's religious view important as well, actually. you might've overlooked it, as has most of the fandom, but he often says "sin" and mentions god when discussing his virtues and motives.
you'd think a religious man would be just a TAD bit less murderous.
fyodor believes his violence is justified, though, which dehumanizes the victim for him.
he sees the crime, he inflicts the punishment.
everything he does is for god, or his beliefs, so why wouldn't he enjoy it?
in current society, religion is being given less and less importance. back in the time and location of irl fyodor, however, it must've been big, explaining why he mentions it.
he is actually the only one who mentions his devotion to god frequently out of all the bsd characters.
why, why? that is the question, why the devotion?
some people stick to religion because of culture; others because they were forced to by their family; a select few because of instances of inexplicable moments occurring in their lives that drive them to seek answers in the skies; not to forget the majority that stick to it because they believe.
fyodor believes. boil it down to "communism" if you will, but he likely believes in the equality of all men. or maybe, he just sees power as untrustworthy in the hands of "mere mortals" (i agree, and so do tons of past philosophers. even socrates criticized democracy because it gave power to idiots and educated people alike, which is why i think fyodor might believe this as well)
unpopular opinion: fyodor is incapable of genuine happiness.
i believe he might experience brief schadenfreude (enjoyment obtained from the troubles of others), but accomplishing things just go through his head.
everything goes according to plan, and then he makes another plan.
it's a way of surviving, but not of living.
he has a deep character that is dumbed down to a genius, but where's the beauty in being a genius?
geniuses lack this fundamental connection to other people because they're often considered beneath them. this is the same with dazai, who can't emotionally connect because he knows he won't be understood, which in turn makes him belittle their value.
so, does fyodor fit the bill for a sadist? does he enjoy hurting others?
i don't particularly think so.
he just hurts others because he "has to", and doesn't feel much during, before or after it. perhaps to say he doesn't feel much is going too far; i'm sure watching others squeal and squirm under his grip inflates his sense of self-worth and self-importance, but very limitedly.
a particular point i'd like to make was when fyodor "removed feeling from Ivan's brain". sir, how the fuck did you do that. part of his ability? perhaps. in that case, it's very plausible he used it on himself.
now, onto irl Fyodor.
he was a philosopher on top of writer, and is no stranger to death. if i recall correctly, his wife and children died during his lifetime (he remarried though, partially to get out of his financial debt), and was arrested in 1849 for belonging to a literary group that discussed banned books critical of Tsarist Russia, he was sentenced to death but the sentence was commuted at the last moment. he spent four years in a Siberian prison camp, followed by six years of compulsory military service in exile. yikes. that's bound to expose you to a nasty part of humanity, which was evident in his writing and books.
The House of the Dead has a lot of information on this. In the first few chapters especially, MC discusses how terrible it is to be in isolation and how it can drive a man mad. if you want to read a dostoy book, check out Crime and Punishment, but if you're going for a closer look at his life, that is the book to read.
so, prone to violence? no, not necessarily. but he's been around it and has seen what it does to people, all the terrible things that exist. (read his books btw they're so nicely written, dark but there's trickling beauty in his darkness)
tl;dr: he's a stinky anemic rat with a god complex
Teruko Ōkura
child with anger issues.
jkjk i love her she's so pretty like pls step on me
the explosive sadist with severe mood swings, potential borderline personality disorder (?)
the question mark next to bpd was very much intentional.
now, it's pretty obvious why i included this, given her apparent mood swings. she goes from threatening everyone in the vicinity to sucking up to fukuchi in a split second.
(very small side note: i believe her attitude towards fukuchi needs more attention. why would she be so obedient towards him in contrast with every single person she meets? i have a small theory that she might have some kind of a past with him that mirrors yosano's with mori, that she was recruited for her ability/talent by fukuchi and it actually went well. eerily so. @ asagiri, gimme answers ho 👹)
back to her violent nature.
an explosive sadist is described as "those who are prone to losing control, known for being unpredictably violent. this manifests through tantrums, fearsome attacks on others, especially family members, and uncontrollable rage."
there's a but.
1) let's not kid ourselves, she's a queen and she deserves praise. when you put aside her personality and attitude, she clearly has some strong ideals under that terrorizing expression. what needs to be emphasized is that she doesn't hide her ideals under her sadism, like nikolai, nor does she use this mask to protect her true thoughts, like dazai.
her sadism is directly linked to her belief in the goodness of society.
it's really amazing how well this was displayed in the manga, and frankly i'd like to see more of it, but she had a moment, right before kicking the shit out of sigma, where she was being genuine in her explanation of the hunting dogs and her belief.
"Without order, people 'built for violence' would end up standing above the population. A world like that would be garbage. Therefore, if the Hunting Dogs exercise the strongest power as society's servants… We are searing the flames of order into our own selves."
she explains that she and the hunting dogs go through monthly surgeries to maintain their superhuman bodies.
why is she explaining this?
to make it perfectly clear how strong she is
part of her sadism comes from a domineering sense of superiority that she displays frequently. she is allowed to threaten jouno and get away with it because she is strong and could very easily kill any of them, or damn well torture them out of their minds with a flick of the pinky.
most strong bsd characters either don't think they are strong (akutagawa), overestimate their strength (fitzgerald, sigma) or are perfectly content letting their actions prove their strength to others (most of them, such as dazai, fyodor, mori, chuuya).
what makes teruko different is that she constantly reminds everyone of her wrath.
if you're so pissed all the time, just kill someone? wouldn't that be easier than constantly threatening everyone around?
clearly, it's not all bark and no bite. she does bite, and she bites rather hard. no, the reason she threatens everyone is because she has a faint trace of superiority that she enjoys.
sadists typically enjoy being in control. for teruko, she likes to see other people cower before her, once they've gotten over the initial shock of her age/personality. afterwards, she makes it painstakingly clear that she could kill them at any moment; that's what she loves the most about violence. yes, she may enjoy it during the moment, or perhaps afterwards looking back, but she loves the foreplay of the violence, if you will. she likes riling them up and asserting dominance over this person before physically destroying them.
i believe this is the reason she explained herself as a hunting dog to sigma. she didn't have to give her mini speech, but she does anyways. she shows him that he's severely overestimating himself, that the "desperation" he regards as his biggest strength is in fact just a daily part of life out in the real world.
after gouging out her ear to avoid his attack in chapter 76, this is what happens:
Sigma: "Do you see, hunting dog? This is it! Everything I've attained here, the strength of my feelings!"
Teruko: "...'The strength of my feelings', you said? Then, I'll ask... Why do you feel? When the one carrying that strength of feeling is you alone?
(yet another side note: i won't be analyzing sigma, but i would like to insert a small remark here. contrary to fanon sigma where he's baby and anxious all the time and we should protecc, he's actually so much more violent in canon. he tried to get innocent civilians to fight against the hunting dogs, a very dangerous unit, basically jeopardizing their lives just to save himself and his casino. he pulled teruko down with him in order to save the casion, basically trying to kill her (he did try to straight up kill her multiple times tho). desperation and anxiety makes people a lot more violent than we give them credit for, so no, sigma is NOT baby. more like a temperamental toddler that could very well ruin your life.)
this brings us to our second point:
2) she believes her violence is motivated. notice how she singled out Sigma because of the fact that he operates alone?
evidently she takes great pride in her cause with the hunting dogs, despite all of the sacrifices she's made to reach her current level, i.e. physical endurance and alterations.
so, the satisfaction from violence, for her, stems from the feeling of accomplishment and duty, not the actual pain. when she explodes and threatens people, it's more likely a side effect of living in the kind of dangerous environment that the hunting dogs operate in (if i were a child battling with some of the strongest adults in the world, i'd make sure i make my mark, too. in a competitive world like this one, you have to fight for your spot and maintain it, which is also a reason she gave that speech to Sigma, she's known desperation too and finds it insulting that he believes he can reach her strength with that alone).
here i'm supposed to talk about irl Teruko but it's criminal how little information there is about her.
if someone finds something, let me know please!
Mori Ōgai
his description should include child abuser.
the tyrannical sadist with undertones of psychopathy.
before i start, i need to clarify a very important detail.
i don't endorse mori's actions, he is a pedophile and that is disgusting. however, his entire personality isn't just that, and for that reason i'm going to be analyzing him objectively. if mentions of pedophilia trigger you, skip this section because i will be mentioning it often.
out of all the bsd cast, he's the most likely to be a psychopath.
i'd absolutely love to see more Mori content. not where he's traumatizing children though, more like his backstory.
the abuse that affected dazai, akutagawa and kyouka, as well as most port mafia members and yosano all started with him. he's ground 0, yet there isn't a reason for his behavior.
since we can't see the past, let's work with what we have
mori is greatly detached from emotions, both his own and others'
he's ruthless. he treats death like a game. he hasn't shown any specific scenes in which he demonstrated raw emotion, which is where my conclusion that he ranks very highly on the psychopathic spectrum stems from.
his calmness is eerie. in his first appearance, he was trapped in Anne's Room and did not once panic. he remained calm when he discovered tachihara was a double agent, when akutagawa failed in capturing atsushi he said that "effort is what matters, results come second".
which is crazy, when you think about it. after all, he'd killed and manipulated such a large amount of people, yet he doesn't take failure of his subordinates to heart? why could that be?
easy.
he doesn't have a heart.
I don't often like decreeing that, since there's usually a story behind the heartlessness, and eventually some kind of soul under all those layers of trauma, but plain as day, Mori sees violence as nothing more than violence.
it hurts people. when hurting people is advantageous for him, he hurts them. when hurting people is not advantageous for him, he doesn't hurt them.
it's simple; the epitome of reasoning and logic without emotions clouding your judgement.
he prefers manipulating children because they're simply easier to control than adults whose ideals and personalities have, for the most part, already matured.
he is a tyrannical sadist, where forcing his victims to cower and submit gives him satisfaction. but he's not even that sadistic; sadism is, as i said before, deriving pleasure from other people's pain. Mori's pleasure is indirect; he doesn't necessarily like inflicting the pain (nor does he dislike it), he likes seeing the aftermath.
The aftermath being; brainwashed people and children who do everything he says; getting held in either high respect or high fear (sometimes a mix of both) by those around him; achieving his goals, as he did for yosano's arc where he forced her to heal soldiers and eventually mentally broke her, and being able to get the port mafia to thrive.
Another thing i want to mention when it comes to his tendency towards violence is that he rarely implements it directly himself, likely because this is logically the least advantageous of many options. he prefers, such as in the case where he leaked naomi and haruno's hideout to the guild. he didn't even have to fight anybody, and lessened the port mafia's workload by having the ADA and guild fight each other.
and in the end all he had to do was say the right words to the right person in order to ruin everybody else's lives.
the few times where his implication is direct is, unfortunately, when dealing with children. as seen with elise, his literal ability who conforms to what he wants her to be (meaning that he makes her bratty because it legit gives him sexual satisfaction what the actual fuck-) aka a bratty child who rebels against his orders.
just like dazai and yosano
in yosano's case, he did in fact break her, but this was in a different environment than dazai. they were in war. his goal was to demonstrate how useful ability users are to warfare, and she just happened to be a slightly bratty, naive girl who had a strong ability and no sense of what awaited her. he quite literally picked her up from the bakery or wtv where she worked and said "you have to heal all these dying people, who will be sent into battle and then come back to be healed once again". she was set up for failure, and i'm certain mori was aware of this. but did he care much? partially, for he doesn't like failure, but mori doesn't dread failure too much. if it happens, he moves on, just as how he came back for her after a while when she'd gotten taken in custody and said "get in loser we're going shopping" and invited her into the port mafia. she would've, had fukuzawa not came in and intervened, which makes her in a way somewhat lucky.
for dazai, this is a bit more complicated. he is very similar to mori in his actions and thinking, but is emotionally a fundamentally different person. mori knew that they were similar, and that's what scared him the most; fyodor had a similar approach, saying that dazai was the only person whose mind he "couldn't read", aka that he was unstable and unpredictable, which is what essentially caused controlling him becoming very difficult for mori, especially as someone who has trouble understanding emotions. he prompted oda to go take down mimic by leaking the information about the orphans, knowing fully well that oda would likely die. what he didn't expect was that dazai would react to his death by defecting, not delving further into the darkness. mori knew that dazai's intellect could very well one day be his undoing, and for that reason paid him special attention. however, it's still very difficult to deal with dazai, for reasons i'll get to later on.
i think his attraction towards children stems from a pleasure in seeing them raw. adults and older individuals are usually more self-conscious, constantly trying to prove to themselves and others that they're strong. mori knows how to deal with them because their emotions, their thoughts, their actions are so painfully predictable and easy to manipulate.
children, on the other hand, are much more brash and often think themselves the center of the universe. they have character, they have more unpredictable emotions, and when they get emotional, they get mf emotional. he sees this as both a challenge and a convenience; they're easy to manipulate, much more desirable to change the essence of a person when they're young, yet they still provide that futile bit of resistance, a characteristic shown often in the young girls which he preys on (yosano, elise)
however, he isn't 100% psychopathic.
he has goals. he respects certain people (natsume soseki). he is still capable of somewhat understanding other people's emotions.
therefore, mori's relationship with violence is complex, but down to the basics? he thinks it is power and uses it when needed, not excessively or anything though. he's a remarkable man, that i have to admit, and gets shit done, at the expense of everyone else around him's mental stability.
now, onto his irl.
his relationship with elise is, obviously, a demonstration of Mori's relationship with his daughter, Mari, who was also an author. he died when she was only 19, but afterwards she wrote extensively about her relationship with her father. Starting with her 1961 novella, A Lovers' Forest, she wrote tragic stories about love affairs between older men and boys in their late teens which influenced the creation of the Yaoi genre, stories about male-male relationships, written by women for women.
that last bit had little relevance lmao i just wanted to share that with someone.
he had to suffer through the war, which might be the reason why the bsd character is so prone to strategic intellect, but he was in fact also very talented, being an army surgeon, translator, multilingual and a writer. i respect the irl counterpart for his hard work, but clearly he had a questionable relationship with his daughter so NVM-
Jouno Saigiku
the literal canon sadist.
the presumed psychopath who is in fact just your everyday sadist.
i won't be spending too long on jouno because his psyche isn't actually as complex as one can believe.
he's the product of his upbringing; sort of the same way as when, as a kid, you slowly learn over time certain things. for example, if you want candy, you have to ask an adult nicely for it, say please and thank you, and that you have to be polite about it, if you cry and throw a tantrum you won't get the candy.
jouno was trained to figure out that if he wants candy, he can just take it.
it is mentioned that, before becoming a hunting dog, he used to be a criminal executive, which is where his belief in doing wrong stems from. as he explained it himself,
"I just want to hurt people in the name of the law, corner them, and hear the sound of their destruction. […] I am a public evil. No matter how many criminals I torment, society will only give me praise and success for it."
this is 1) proof that his sadism stems not from a lack of emotions or a desire for certain emotions, but it's simply the way he was brought up. if a strong individual finds out they can take everything they want by force, who's to tell them that they can't? 2) he doesn't gain particular satisfaction from hurting others, he's simply indifferent to it. it's what he knows how to do.
for example, when interrogating the civilians, he didn't hesitate to showcase his strength and, most importantly, how unregulated it is. he could beat them up or kill them if he wanted to, the only reason he didn't was that tecchou was there.
i don't believe that he sees anything inherently wrong in his behavior; he knows his actions are wrong morally, but they're praised in society, so does that truly make them wrong? nevertheless, he still has a moral compass, as was demonstrated when he declined fukuchi's offer to join the decay of angels.
so, a bad boy? not really. jouno was just bred to value ruthless actions and keeps it as his modus operandi due to habit. he's a good man, though, and I would very much trust him with my life.
for his irl counterpart, once again there isn't much info on him.
from what i know, he was a gesaku writer, which is a school of Japanese literature that is basically playful, mocking, joking, silly, or frivolous, all alluding to his personality. like i said; nothing exceptional about his sadism. it's just fun and games, and it's harmless. in this case, i would classify it as sadistic tendencies rather than sadistic impulses.
Dazai Osamu
the one and only suicidal maniac
(whose relationship with death is rather intriguing, but i'll get to that later)
the machiavellianist who just wants to feel something.
first of all i need people to STOP saying they kin dazai as if it's their only personality trait. i'm going to repeat this a thousand times because i physically cannot keep reiterating this to everyone who claims to be a dazai kinnie
he is more complex than simply being suicidal
in fact, i would go so far as to say that he isn't truly suicidal. but i'll leave that for last, because isn't death the epitome of violence?
there's also a significant difference between the three "phases" of dazai, if you will; dazai before he met chuuya, dazai before odasaku's death, dazai after odasaku's death
as you can notice, the three segments of his life are not revolving around an important event, but around people.
that is the first sign that dazai has empathy and emotions, thus is not a psychopath.
similarly to gogol, he is a machiavellianist: (recap for those who don't remember, machiavelleniasm says "violence is necessary", are emotionally calculated and know the difference between right and wrong, but fail to acknowledge it.)
where he and gogol differ is their desire for emotions.
dazai wants to feel something. gogol wants to feel nothing.
dazai welcomes pain. gogol wants to be rid of it.
dazai is fighting against his past to become a better person. gogol is fighting against his past to become a worse person.
now, for that last segment, dazai isn't necessarily trying to become a better person, per se; and gogol isn't trying to become worse. the former is simply attempting to embrace his emotions more often, while the latter is trying everything in his power to get rid of his.
now, how does this play into his relationship with violence?
notice how the machiavellianist says "violence is necessary"? that's a key point; dazai doesn't feel good about his violence. pre-chuuya, he obviously felt nothing about hurting others, nothing with a hint of catharsis. as shown in the gif above, he's shooting that man over and over again, even if it's not necessary, which is where the slight catharsis comes into play.
however, it doesn't truly let his emotions out. it's a bit like self-hypnosis, you get into a groove and cannot stop because there's something trance-like in the way that he keeps shooting, over and over again. it's something he has control over. it's something that is simple. it's something that doesn't require emotional strain.
dark era dazai, on the other hand, doesn't have that erraticism of his younger counterpart. if you will, his relationship with violence matured; he doesn't use it excessively.
it is during this phase of his life that he most resembles mori.
after odasaku's death, everything changes (a large amount of analyses about why this is have been written. I recommend going to check those out because I won't be talking about why his view of the world changed, but what impact it had on his sadistic tendencies).
dazai no longer sees violence as the only way.
but it's still an option.
something that can be pointed out as a factor of how much importance he attributes violence is how often he puts on his mask of being a goofy, laid back individual.
you see it around 15 when he teases chuuya; yes, he's broken. yes, he commits a lot of murder. but he doesn't hurt the children. he doesn't have this cloud of darkness that follows him everywhere he goes, unlike dark era dazai, for whom silly moments are much less frequent. then, there's ada dazai, who is simply always in the mood to annoy kunikida.
it's a pretty accurate rep of how sadistic he is because dazai is unable to feign happiness.
(a quick reminder that happiness and light-heartedness are two distinct things.)
dazai can act carefree, but he cannot act genuinely alright. there's a subtle difference between the two, and for that reason they've been mistaken for each other on many occasions.
when dazai is light-hearted, he somewhat enjoys the violence, meaning that he doesn't mind it. it's simply a part of his day and doesn't affect him.
when dazai is happy, he avoids violence. he will get someone else to do the dirty work, and even then he'll chose the most pacifistic solution.
unlike some of the other characters, dazai's emotions does not rely on his violence, but his violence relies on his emotions.
to put it in another way, how much pain he's willing to inflict is based on his mood, which is the opposite of, for example, akutagawa who attacks in order to repress his fear and feel better about himself (sadly, it doesn't work).
onto akutagawa, who was the victim of his abuse.
aku felt respect for dazai's machiavellanism. he looked up to this man who was (or at least appeared) indifferent towards violence and said, "i want to be like that".
in turn, dazai saw aku as a sort of toy to play with.
it's a power that he wanted over his own emotions, but was unable to get. so, he decided to mimic his desire but over someone else's emotions.
it's a basic sadomasochistic tendency; to project yourself into another person and take control by hurting them.
he dissociates from the world, and views it all as if he himself is no longer a human, and then takes a certain pleasure of tormenting this other person as if he were tormenting himself. it is for that reason that he is violent when light-hearted; light hearted is a façade, a mask he puts on in order to hide the fact that he feels empty.
dazai's emotions are a beautifully complex thing and it just breaks my heart when i tell people about him and they say "oh yeah, that's the guy that's suicidal right??"
if he truly wanted death, he works in a pretty dangerous field and could go out. he has no family holding him back and with the mindset he has, he might believe that all his friends don't care about the real him, just the "dazai show" he puts on. so really, nothing is stopping him.
that's where his boredom comes into play; while in Meursault, he told fyodor that at first it was fun, but now he was getting bored and they should start to think about getting out.
this also applies to his mood swings, and hence his violence.
dazai gets more sadistic when things become dull.
or, inversely, when he himself begins to fall into a mind melding routine. you see, dazai hates the idea of letting his feelings settle among the dust. instead of, as many millennials might opt to do, curl up into a ball and act lethargic and listless in your day to day activities, thus worsening your mental state by doing nothing to stop its decline, dazai actually decides to shake it up. it keeps him alive and allows him to continue to teeter on the thin tightrope he created for himself out of fleeting moments of energy, hovering over a vast expanse of a field of death and despair to which he nearly succumbed several times.
i won't be drawing the comparison between dazai in the anime and irl dazai because there's so much to unpack and he's an emotionally complex character. so, go read No Longer Human and tell me yourself what you think!!
Fukuchi Ōchi
literally everyone hates his guts.
enforcing sadist as well as spineless sadist all mixed up into one cocktail of major dickhead.
woah woah, let's slow down there, did i just classify him as the same type of sadist as.. aku??
give me a second. I'm getting there, sheesh 🙄
i'm going to be putting personal hatred for the man asides, because I think a lot of people immediately label him "dickhead" and forget to understand him first, just as with Mori.
Fukuchi is a war hero. he went to the same academy as fukuzawa and things were great... until he enlisted in the Great War. he saw and was forced by the government to torture women, children, men and all other genders and eventually couldn't take it all, began harboring a hatred for the government for creating this disgusting war.
it was all he ever knew, war. he came to believe he was "born on the battlefield".
here's an extract from the bsd wiki to show what kind of change happened afterwards:
Despite these facts, 12 years ago, he was invited to the opening of the Armed Detective Agency where he drunk himself silly, caused a ruckus, and urinated all over the newly made Agency doorplate which Ranpo saw and was disgusted by. Despite the shameful actions, Fukuzawa interpreted them to be a sign of grief and wailing that he had found his life's purpose one step ahead of him and that he was lonely because of that fact. It was on this day that Fukuzawa told Ranpo that he trusted Fukuchi more than anyone in the world, which reinforced Ranpo's trust in him based solely on blind faith alone, while Fukuzawa was completely oblivious to his friend's hatred and bitterness towards him.
after that, he created the hunting dogs and amped up his battle, fighting all kinds of huge threats and eventually becoming Kamui from the Decay of the Angels.
i don't blame him.
if you look at it from an objective point of view, Fukuchi is, just as Fukuzawa suggested, a grief-stricken man. he saw death, experienced it, caused it; death was all he'd ever known.
there are two ways to react to that, to crave light dearly but still enclose yourself in the darkness, as Kyouka did.
or, you can rebel against it all.
tachihara rebelled against his family, nikolai rebelled against his emotions, akutagawa rebelled against his fears. fukuchi is the same, only he rebelled against the goddamn world, and that isn't an exaggeration.
circling back to violence, fukuchi isn't a particularly violent individual. i wouldn't say he loves it, nor hates it. he himself is a erratic person in terms of hygiene and shame, doing borderline disgusting things such as throwing up from drinking too much, farting, flat out saying that he's still young because his ass cheeks are still fucking peachy.
these are all coping methods
when you start to belittle the value of life of others, your own seems to be less important as well, in certain senses. his pride, his image, they all don't matter in the end; he's still a tool of murder.
now, for someone who is so against war, he seems just a little too eager to start one.
he's been praised all his life for his skill and ability, his ego must be huge at this point. with all this power, why wouldn't he think that he's the only one fit enough to fix the world? the book is a very powerful thing, and he believes himself in charge of it, and thus the entire globe.
he clearly doesn't spend too much time dealing with his doa subordinates (fyodor is about to fight to the death and gogol who orchestrated this is literally waving his hand in the air and asking sigma to get him popcorn). this is a sign that Fukuchi sees them more as tools, and he doesn't even need them all that much.
he's a hypocrite. an enforcing sadist who believes he's the only one who is allowed to kill thousands in order to bring world peace, yet he hates war. a spineless sadist who is lashing out at the universe because, as Fukuzawa pointed out, he's lonely.
The guy is really just lonely.
It's the saddest of all the bungou stray dog characters' stories, in my opinion. Not because it's tragic, or because it speaks to my heart, but because he'll never have a happy ending, nor will he have a happy middle.
He's a sad old man who keeps digging himself deeper in his troubles with the very same violence he hates, and I think he knows it; but he's too deep in, now, to see the sunlight.
and for what is he digging this hole? why does no one tell him that he's not mining for gold, but digging his own grave?
And when he dies eventually, ruler of the world or not?
No one at his funeral would truly know him.
bonus: Tetchō Suehiro
the loml.
the pacifistic soldier who, despite his job, still desires to protect those with a good heart.
I find that tecchou needs to be given more screen time in order to better appreciate and understand his character because I personally believe that there's a fundamentality of strength of beliefs needed in order to achieve the diligence that he exhibits.
first and foremost, we have no information on his backstory, which really makes me mad.
when fukuchi went through war, he decided to dominate the world and kill thousands. when jouno was in a crime organization, he came out believing that violence gets praised in this society. when tachihara suffered the loss of his older brother and constant belittlement from his family, he became extremely erratic and chaotic.
then there's this gorgeous fucker.
i'm certain he's witnessed plenty of death, some of which might've been his fault, due to his line of work. yet he is firm with jouno when it comes to protecting innocents?
i frikkin love him.
but there's something i'm missing.
let's take kunikida as an example. he sticks by his ideals with an almost comedic grip, never ceasing to believe in doing good, even if it costs him his life.
the reason? partially because he's failed before in saving people. (unpopular opinion; kunikida deserves more unconditional love. the guy has a heart of gold, whereas his bratty and murderous partner with a tainted soul gets all the love.)
now, is that the case with tecchou? what could possibly have made him despise violence and cherish good people so much?
i don't have an answer for that and i'm currently writing a 10k word essay to asagiri to demand an explanation/hj
now, my first instinct was to think that it had something to do with his weird habits and tics, especially with food and concentration.
i quickly discovered that i was a clown, not that this was new information.
The name Tetchō means 'Iron Stomach'.
haha, very funny, asagiri.
what i do value the most out of tecchou's character is how simple he is. he fights for what is right, takes down what is wrong, and is efficient. he trains to get stronger, he eats the food, he watches the ants, there's nothing more complex to him, which is where the beauty of his personality stems from.
on top of this, his soldier-like personality is just a clever allusion to irl tecchou's samurai lineage.
perhaps sometimes there truly is nothing to analyze. for this reason, i'm not going to be complicating the character.
he has a wonderful design and i hope to see more from him, perhaps an outburst of emotion (since he's been rather emotionless ever since he was introduced. not like dazai or fyodor, but like he's got nothing going on in his mind and he really just doesn't give a single shit about it) once he discovers that fukuchi was a fraud.
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there are, of course, many more i did not mention, and i could go on and on forever about each individual, but these are the biggest names that have enough information about them up until now and as good of a summary that i can provide. i would've loved to include agatha as well, but she hasn't appeared nearly enough, and verlaine, but i haven't done enough research on SB. would yall want a part 2 with any specific characters??
a quick reminder that all of this is purely my own interpretation of the characters. feel free to discuss this further or point out any mistakes i may have made, i love to hear other people's opinions!! also, this has been done for leisure; i am not a psychologist and cannot diagnose any of these characters with anything.
bungou stray dogs is perhaps the anime that spends the most time talking about the characters' mental state in a somewhat realistic way, and for this reason, i've grown to love the fandom so much that i pulled this unedited rambling out of own ass to try to contribute to yall 😩💗 ly, stay safe and have a nice day :)
"Why is it that everyone who has a supernatural ability has a twisted heart to go with it?.."
A haphazardly put together and incomplete Analysis of Dazai and Mori's differences and similarities in relation to their peculiar obsessions.
So, I recently stumbled across Taxidermia, (a 2006 Hungarian surrealist horror movie) and since everything else occupying the RAM in my brain is BSD right now, I subconsciously and later, consciously related the two together.
At this point we're all aware of the themes such as "cycle of abuse" and "the chain of salvation" that are present throughout the whole of BSD. The story isn't a horror, and is not meant so much as a warning, but a conversation with the reader/viewer. Then how can this film possibly relate to any of this? Well...
“By the way, who’s the person you said I reminded you of?” he asked.
Mori smiled faintly. Then with a hint of melancholy in his expression, he gave his answer:
...
So, in this movie, the story is told by means of three generations of Hungarian men; 3 characters with one specific trait, quirk, obsession, if you will. In simple terms: one is a pervert, the other is a speed-eater, and the third one is a dedicated to his craft taxidermist. I guess, by now, you see where this is going, right?
Now, I'd argue the situation relayed in BSD is quite ambiguous. What is a skill? What does it truly represent? (I wanted to look into the play with Tokio Murakami in the UO to figure this out, but maybe later) There's seems to be no definitive answer to this, but as always, there is an ongoing subtextual debate on the nature of human beings (not just the skill users, because even if they are their own category they still belong to the human race, don't they?) the formation and evolution of their identity throughout the years, what influences them to act a certain way, all to ask a bunch of simple questions: "Is there a correct, right way to live your life?", "If nothing I do can change the past, then should I be defined by said past?", "Why is it that everyone who has a supernatural ability has a twisted heart to go with it?", ad infinitum. That last one, eh? It's introducing a sort of deterministic element to the nature of the ability users. Which is curious, to say the least.
Now, back to Dazai and Mori's exchange. Right out of the gate it could be argued that Mori, in spite of his claim, is admitting to both Dazai and us, the audience, that he doesn't, in fact truly grasp what this teenager's dysthymia was born from.
“Dazai,” Mori began while still pondering that question. “I may not be able to comprehend your answer, but I nonetheless want to know: Why do you want to die?”
Especially when we trace their relationship to the Dark Era, where he might've used his general understanding of the human nature to force Dazai out of the Mafia, because he knew of his connection to Odasaku, but the way he argued with Dazai, the way the latter had a hard time articulating his irrational feelings and justifying them as beneficial to the Mafia (we all know how concerned Mori is with being rational.) made me question whether Mori ever understood Dazai even just a little bit.
“It’s a win-win situation. So why are you so angry?"
Dazai didn’t say a word. That was just about the first time he’d ever been unable to articulate his feelings.
“I…”
—“There is nothing worth pursuing at the cost of prolonging a life of suffering.”
—“Awaken me from this oxidizing world of a dream.”
“I just…” His voice came out strained. “I just don’t get it.”
Don't worry, Dazai, I don't think Mori gets it either.
“I have just one thing I’d like to ask: What’s wrong with that?” “……”
“My answer is the same, Dazai. I will do anything for the benefit of the organization. Besides, we are the Port Mafia. We have always brought darkness, violence and cruelty to this city. “Why is that a problem now?”
Dazai knew. He knew Ougai’s calculations, his mentality, and the rationale behind the plan. That was just the kind of organization the Port Mafia was. Logically speaking, Ougai was right, and Dazai was wrong. “But…” He turned on his heel, then began walking toward the door.”
Did Mori's plan succeed? Yes.
Did he correctly predict Dazai's actions? That's right.
Did he come to understand Dazai after having him as a subordinate for all these years? No. Not one bit. Because, there is this fascinating thing about humans, where they fear what they can't comprehend. Why again did Mori want Dazai out of the Mafia so badly?
"You were afraid of me, weren't you? Afraid that I would aspire to take your position, that one day, I'd run a knife across your throat. Just like you did to your predecessor."
Then, once again, why the comparison?
Well, there's always a possibility of him just lying to Dazai plain and simple, though I can explain why it can be easily discarded as "not worth the effort". Mori doesn't need to lie to get Dazai to do things for him, he doesn't even need to be particularly discreet about it, like this example from Storm bringer:
“My reasoning is extremely simple.” Mori smiled. “If that monster kills you, nobody will be able to save Chuuya, and he will die as well. In other words, you will finally get the death you have always yearned for but with Chuuya by your side.”
A full ten seconds of silence went by until Dazai broke it.
“Hwaaah.”
“Was that a yawn I just heard?”
“Look, I know what you’re trying to do, and it’s not gonna work. You can’t manipulate me. Good-bye.”
The radio then cut off. Mori held his radio with a faint smirk.”
Hehe, the infamous double suicide argument.
Mori seems to have a general grasp at how Dazai works, but that doesn't seem to be enough. Because there's this:
"No single word or phrase could accurately describe their relationship. The closest approximation would be bound by a common destiny."
And this:
"And yet no one trusted him. Because the darkness lurking within his eyes was deeper than the ink black nights that hung over the dumping ground he inhabited."
And this:
"Miscalculation.
"You misjudged the situation." He told himself. You failed to pick the optimal solution. You shouldn't have chosen this child to help you. Dazai is unpredictable. He can be sharp, but in a dark, twisted way. He's observant. He's cold and calculating with no equivalent even in the Mafia, where the most evil reside."
Honestly, the mention of "darkness" in various descriptions of Dazai by different characters deserves its own fully-fledged analysis. Even if all my examples would consist of excerpts from Oda's internal monologue, it'd still be a treasure trove of information and food for thought.
Back to Mori. I believe this "I'm just like you" moment serves a bunch of purposes all at once. "If you are like me, and I am the head of the Port Mafia, then, by extension, this is the only place that can give you purpose too, because this is where individuals like us thrive." It makes so much more sense to follow somebody else's example, if they really are as similar to you as they claim, and if they truly did find what Dazai is desperately searching for.
The other purpose it might serve can look a bit more sinister: "There is darkness in you, there is something very wrong with you and what I can help you do is put it to good use. I know, because I was the same. I can help you use it for the greater good."
What's funny about BSD is that it's not just that there is the lack of transparently defined right and wrong, (which I believe should be a standard in any media, because otherwise art is reduced to nothing but a slightly subtler version of propaganda) but the lack of a clear winner in these types of existential mental confrontations. Dazai did fail to pick up on Mori's real motives behind the Mimic incident in time, yet his observation of Ougai's lingering fear and paranoia towards him is pretty spot on. Mori did succeed in many aspects of using Dazai as a tool and even going so far as to conduct a plan to dispose of him properly, yet he remains as apprehensive of Dazai as he was from the beginning. To this day, he is still able to predict Dazai's actions, but because of what Mori defines as: "common destiny", "flashes of brilliance" and the "bizarre, meaningless fascination with suicide", he most of the time fails to see him an an autonomous individual, capable of having a purpose different from Mori's own.
Ultimately, does any of it even matter? I'm sure Mori would have been fascinated to know why is Dazai the way he is, just like he would inquire Oda about his guns in the future, but not then, because what he wanted from Dazai when he was in the Mafia is to be a polished diamond scalpel he can use for combating anything threatening the organization. And scalpels aren't known to possess any free will. It didn't matter at all what Dazai went through to reach this point, but what was important from Mori's point of view is that they do, in fact, have similar "steel trap" minds as well as certain obsessions.
"bizarre, meaningless fascination with suicide"
"Are you still lusting after little girls?"
...has a twisted heart to go with it...
I'd argue what Mori expresses here can be described as a very flawed form of cognitive empathy. It isn't full comprehension, by all means, which is why other people in their analyses usually point out the harm it can bring to project onto someone to such a degree, without acknowledging the possibility of even a single difference between the two of you, to force them to be a carbon copy of you for the sake of nothing but blind self-indulgence.
What, in my opinion is a first clear symptom of Mori's pathological misconception... is using the word "meaningless" to describe Dazai's supposed obsession with suicide. For someone of such caliber to be fooled by Dazai's facade so easily is a crazy feat to accomplish. Congratulations on your incomprehensibility once again, Dazai!
Like I mentioned before, BSD takes a more ambiguous approach to all of its themes, characters, et cetera, so it's definitely curious that Odasaku's quiet emotional empathy (as opposed to cognitive, which Oda also expresses, but much later, as a means of deepening his understanding) is, in fact, what reaches him, and in contrast to the narration or Mori's words, Oda doesn't describe him as the "darkness itself", but akin to a person, suffering from a chronic illness.
"I could see a thorn the size of a harpoon wedged deeply into his life."
A child who is surrounded by the darkness and hurt by it, even seemingly bleeds it, yet remains at his core a lonely, abandoned, sobbing child.
“He was too smart for his own good. That was why he was always alone. The reason why Ango and I were able to be by his side was that we understood the solitude that surrounded him, and we never stepped inside it no matter how close we stood.”
Speaking of contradictions and complexity:
“Ougai stared at the scattered reports on his desk. The organization had received an item of great value, something that more than made up for the total pecuniary damage and loss of talented subordinates. That included Dazai’s disappearance as well. Logically speaking, the results couldn’t have been better. Everything was going according to plan.
Ougai folded the document into a misshapen paper airplane. Then, with his chin still resting on his hand, he threw it. The deformed plane almost immediately crashed into the floor.
“Things sure are going to get boring around here…”
First and foremost, was that plane some sort of Guild-related foreshadowing? (that scene with Dazai's brainstorming session with Ranpo came to mind.) I shouldn't be too surprised though. I guess he didn't think Dazai would get involved, because with the only kind of leverage Mori had - gone, the former mafia executive just disappeared into thin air overnight. Little did he know...
What was that, Mori? You've won, you've driven him out of the Mafia for good, then why are you still unsatisfied?
Oh, GOD How I love the Dark era.
How I love Beast AU.
Ok, fine, I admit it. I love everything that comes out of Asagiri's head. I want to pick his brain, dissect it, put it back together and eat it with some soy sau-
...
To be entirely honest, I haven't even watched "Taxidermia" to the end. So, I don't think any of these tidbits of comparison should qualify as a correct interpretation of the themes or the overall message of the movie. What I've seen just sort of inspired me to feed some of the ideas I had to a vast collection of BSD analyses stashed in my notes.
Someday, I really should find patience to organize and post those.
...
Oh, now I remember! Why I wanted to write something related to both Dazai and the embalmer character from the movie.
It's that... (spoilers)
I was just wondering what would Dazai think of this character's method of suicide? There's anesthesia involved, so it's certainly painless, though arguably not "clean" and "beautiful" the way he would have wanted.
What a weird note to end an essay on, huh. Oh, well. I guess the one who had the twisted heart was me all along, eh?
Tonally, the Dark Era is set apart from the main series. It’s, well, darker, exploring themes that the main anime will eventually touch on but hasn’t yet. At this point in the anime, Dazai is still a mostly goofy though intelligent character. While we know he used to be mafia and at certain points some of that peeks through his mask, we’re still used to comedic Dazai using suicide as a gag.
But Dark Era? It’s about a Dazai who has absolutely no moral compass, who genuinely wants to kill himself, and features the first character death in the series. Also, they blow up kids. (Has anyone else noticed how, since all the people in BSD are morally grey at best, the shorthand for “bad guy” is if they murder children?)
So it stands to reason that the Dark Era also has a different color palette than the main anime. Almost the entirety of the arc is spent with a sunset color palette. Every important event happens at golden hour or has a sunset-palette.
Oda @ Ango’s hotel room:
The light from the fires when Oda rescues Ango:
Oda waking up in the hospital:
Oda’s first confrontation with Gide:
Oda’s death:
Hell, even Bar Lupin has a hazy, sunset-color palette, even though it’s night outside.
BSD has a habit of staging important events for sundown. This occurs in the rest of the anime, not just DE. The Moby Dick fight is at sunset, for example, as well as the fight between the ADA and the Azure Messenger.
I just found it interesting that almost all of Dark Era occurs during twilight. I don’t really have any broad conclusions about why. Just something to think about.
Bringing this old post back to note that I completely forgot that twilight is associated with transience. It’s a period of flux, where it’s neither day nor properly night, and a kind of limbo between states. Twilight is a liminal space.
It makes sense that the Bar Lupin would have that kind of timeless atmosphere and color palette. It’s also a liminal space, where three people with wildly different standing can meet as friends, where time doesn’t seem to properly pass.
And it makes sense that Dark Era has that same palette. Dark Era is an in between period where change happens—it introduces an entirely new POV character who dies at the end of the arc, it features Dazai’s heel-face turn, and it doesn’t properly fit at either the start or the end of the series the way Fifteen does. It’s a story that takes place out of time.
So of course most of it occurs during sunset, during that liminal space between day and night. That’s the time that the ADA occupies, the time that the main story spends a lot of screentime in, and where lines between good and evil tend to blur. It’s a damn good design choice for the specific tone and mood of Dark Era.
I’m sure everybody’s heard that a thousand times already, but there’s Dazai’s book titled “The Setting Sun”, so…
It’s elaborated on more in the last scene with Dazai in Beast.
"The red sunset's glow. The red cobblestone. The man who ruled over the darkness of Yokohama and commanded the Port Mafia. The man who developed a large-scale plan to control and manipulate the fate of all people and all nature. That setting sun. He went where he wanted to go. To a place far, far away. The point farthest from any place man could ever go. He had arrived on the other side after stepping across the realm of the living."
Here it's also associated with the other side, the afterlife. Once again, relating to "Unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.”
I'd say the interesting part is how differently Odasaku and Gide seem to interpret this. Gide, who seeks death as a form of salvation, seems to essentially both misunderstand it and use it to force Odasaku to confront him, as he kills his kids - which results in a sort of "ego death", which the proverb seems to initially be about. Gide is proven to believe in the afterlife, so, we can assume he transfers the meaning from a spiritual death to the real one, as it's, in his opinion the only thing that can save both him and his soldiers, since he's looking for an absolution of their original sin as both punishment and a means of a kind of redemption.
For Oda, however, I'd say this relates more to his fourteen year old self, because it was the period of his life when he met Natsume, was seen reading the Bible (in the UO), and experienced major growth.
There's Ango saying it in live action, it being inscribed on the real-life Dostoyevsky's grave... too much for me not to mention. If I had a nickel for every time I encountered it, I'd have 3 nickels, which isn't a lot, but it's weird it it happened thrice.
Both Odasaku's and Gide's readings can be arguably correct, I guess, (I am NOT at all an expert at anything religion related, so feel absolutely free to correct me on this) but the point is, that this is ambiguous enough to be interpreted differently by different people, heck, even rendering interpretations the complete opposite, one justifying death and the other believing in the importance of transformation, humility and self betterment, all of which can only be applied to living things.
I don't know what got into me there, but, I guess, once again, I don't see many people (if there are any analyses that feature this, I'm sorry I haven't been diligent enough in searching for them.) talking about the significance of this proverb. I was so puzzled when I first heard it, but now, when I know that every little detail: be it words, color, music; everything Dark era has to offer is of great importance to the larger narrative, Dazai, meaning of life, et cetera.
Hello! I'm really curious,is the book that Oda reads in the dark era by Natsume Souseki a real book?
The only clues we have for the book Oda was reading in BSD are that the book is the last in a series of three, the character Souseki says that part 3 is “the worst of the worst,” several pages from the end of the book was the line “People live to save themselves,” and the book is written about a killer who in the end explains why he chose to stop killing (the big explanation for why the killer stopped killing was supposedly in the pages that were torn out by Souseki in BSD). Here is the description Oda gives in the light novel Dazai and the Dark Era:
“The last volume was a very exciting book.” I say.
Before that, I had never read such a fascinating book.
Every line captured my heart, every character felt like myself.
The person who gave me that book’s critique was “a terrible book”, but I felt the exact opposite. I didn’t even eat my food, finishing the book in one go. After I finished reading it, I immediately started reading it a second time.
After finishing that book, I felt like every brain cell in my body had been reborn into something vastly different from before. I even think that the world before and after I had read that book had changed into something completely different.
Before that, I could only kill. Killing for a mission, taking away human life. That book opened my eyes, just like the sun rays of dawn.
However, that book had a flaw.
A few pages near the end had been torn out. Because of that, I had no way of knowing an important part of the plot. Among the characters that appeared, there was a killer. It was the scene where he spoke of his reason to stop killing.
Why did that killer stop killing? There wasn’t enough information to deduce this in the other pages, leaving me feeling irritated. That scene formed a critical turning point of the story and was obviously an important scene to understand the killer. I couldn’t find a trace of that book in secondhand bookstores, making it difficult to ascertain the truth. Even if I wanted to inquire about it, after that, that bearded man never appeared before my eyes ever again.
After feeling irritated, the conclusion I reached is—
—Then, you write it.
The conclusion I reached was “to write it myself”.
I decided to become a novelist, to write the story of the man before he stopped killing into a novel.
To become a novelist, I must sincerely understand how people live.
So I stopped killing.
In the last volume of that book, in the page before those that were ripped out, there was a line. It is a line said by the main character to the killer.
“Humans live to save themselves. They will understand this before they die.”
After I stopped killing, I always thought about its meaning.
Perhaps there is no deeper meaning. It might just be a connecting line between two pieces of information.
(light novel translated by nkhrchy)
Natsume Souseki wrote two trilogies. The books are not written about the same characters or story within each trilogy, but they are related thematically.
First Trilogy:
Sanshirō
Sorekara (translated as “And Then”)
The Gate
Second Trilogy:
Higan sugi made (translated as “To the Spring Equinox and Beyond”)
Kōjin (The Wayfarer)
Kokoro
Ironically, the only two books I have read from these trilogies are The Gate and Kokoro, the last books in each trilogy. Only one of the books has to do with a death, Kokoro, so that is the only book that can fit into the description. However, the line that Oda quotes in BSD does not exist in any Natsume Souseki novel, let alone Kokoro.
So really there is no book that could be the exact book Oda is reading in Bungou Stray Dogs. Kokoro is the closest existing book, and it could have inspired the book in the series.
Oh, yeah. So I was also independently researching some stuff about Natsume and what could fit into that book's definition. It was just surface level stuff, but from what I've gathered, as they said, the closest to themes of isolation that might be somewhat related to bsd in general is Kokoro.
There's also the interpretation by Doi Takeo of the Sensei character's suicide at the end as "loyally following his beloved into death", which is, in fact, implying double suicide.
I'm kind of upset nobody's talking about the parallels of Dazai and Oda's relationship with Ranpo and Fukuzawa.
Albeit, not perfect, considering Oda specifically isn't a father figure to Dazai like many people have pointed out before, but there's a very strong correlation being drawn in Oda/Fukuzawa's inner monologue towards the issue of the other person's lack of healthily defined identity resulting in the lingering sense of alienation.
They way they describe the "darkness" in their eyes, the way they see themselves unfit to guide them, at least, at first. Fukuzawa taking the initiative much earlier, because he's far more confident in his own skin, unlike Oda. (And he's older and more experienced as well, while Oda is still in the process of "saving" and defining himself.)
However, I'd also like to point out where (imho) the difference between these relationships actually lies. Unlike Dazai, Ranpo's issue is much easier to both empathize with and understand.
(I'm specifically not saying it's easier to deal with, because I don't think a comparison like that is even fair. It's like comparing trauma in real life. It's not particularly healthy or helpful)
It's not a matter of morality or a coherent, but nihilistic worldview with no real way of disproving it clashing against other people's beliefs and attitudes, but a matter of a simple misunderstanding. The issue is the lack of knowledge, the lack of inside information, rather than the abundance of it. Ranpo thinks of others as monsters, and of himself as weird/doing something wrong, because doesn't realize how different he is, and that's what's so alienating, right? You can fix the issue by giving him worth, a reassurance of the positive in that difference. "People are stupid, they need your guidance." There really is a reason for your pain.
In Dazai's case, however, it's not going to help at all. He knows people are stupid, he possesses that awareness. There is no misunderstanding, there is no problem to fix. The problem is the humans, the problem is the realization, the knowledge itself. Everyone is truly a monster made of flesh and bone, a predictable machine. And on top of that he himself is a different kind of monster, an alien, made aware, a puppet that gained sentience in the middle of a play conducted by the unknown and uncaring forces. There isn't a reason for your pain. You weren't supposed to know that. You're a mistake.
I don't think even Oda can tackle this kind of issue. There really is no fix. Because the problem is existence itself. (It's not like s*icide's going to fix it either. It's like trying to cure cancer by chowing down on painkillers. You're just alleviating the symptoms.)
It's almost like Dazai's outlook on life is being elaborated on bit by bit by Asagiri using all theses different character examples.
So... for the past couple of weeks my Lock Screen has been this.
...
While not a very faithful recreation of what Dazai was staring at while falling off the roof of the Mafia headquarters in Beast (because it happens during sunset), but a frighteningly close one indeed.
The thing is... I just chose it by impulse, because it looked good. (I liked that turquoise sky, I think) And what a funny freudian slip it turned out to be!
"I want to see the Port Mafia burn."
Well, buddy, you certainly will see it bathe in glow of the setting sun while you fall to your death.
I feel like rambling about Odazai so buckle in fuckos, I'm about to attempt to put my thoughts and feelings into words. This is going to be a mess.
Keep in mind all this is just my headcanons and how I view them with a big ol queer eyes.
Okay so I ship Odazai in the sense that I believe that Dazai loved Oda, but Oda loved Dazai in a different way. Like I don't think they would've ever had any sort of romantic relationship in the time they knew each other.
Like, maybe if Oda had lived, something could've happened years down the line- But we unfortunately can't have nice things here.
Now I don't think Dazai's love for Oda was strictly romantic, I think it falls more into queer platonic. He wouldn't actively seek out a romantic relationship with Oda, but he would definitely enjoy doing things with him and being intimate in a way an outsider would deem romantic. Oda was just... Dazai's person. He would marry Oda in a heartbeat if he had the chance not because he was in love, but because "It's Odasaku."
Meanwhile, I think Oda's love for Dazai was more strictly platonic. I get the impression that Oda does see Dazai as his age (16 - 18) and that's why he's kinda indulgent in Dazai being... well, Dazai. Like, yeah he's drinking at a bar and he's a genius Port Mafia executive, and Oda respects him for the unfortunate amount of maturity (for lack of a better word) he has, but he's also a sad kid who barely gets a glimpse of a normal childhood.
He wouldn't initiate any affection, but he would give it to Dazai if he expressed wanting it or initated it himself. If it meant Dazai would get a bit of happiness, Oda would be willing to give Dazai almost anything.
I got distracted by other things so I ran out of thoughts even though I'm pretty sure I had more but it is what it is.
I really don't know how anyone interprets Oda as any kind of father figure to anyone. Sure he's kind, patient and understanding and he has a few kids under his care but that's not what makes a parent.
A parent must be prepared to do anything and everything. Even the not fun bits. In regards to the orphans I would say Pops carries more of that responsibility. The kids live at his restaurant. I'm assuming Pops also lives at the restaurant so he is in charge 99% of the time.
From the nature of their care the kids would be quite self sufficient and rely on one another a lot but Pops is the one there day in day out making sure they clean their teeth, wash their hands, do the laundry, eat their fruit and veg etc. Pops is the one that would be there in the middle of the night if there were any issues, he'd wipe tears, patch cuts and grazes, he'd also be the one to tell the kids off/keep them in line.
This really puts Odasaku in the role of a cool big brother to the orphans. He stops by when he can, helps out with money, going by Beast he'd help them with school and stuff but he doesn't fill the majority of parental duties. He relies heavily on Pops who probably considers Odasaku as much one of his kids as the orphans.
And this isn't a criticism at all. I think it's a testament to Odasaku's character that he wanted to help these kids but knew he wasn't best suited so sought out someone who was that could support him and the kids in the right way.
I would say in part that's why he insists on providing the financial support. He knows he can only do so much and the money is one thing he knows he can do consistently and reliably without messing up.
In regards to Dazai, again Oda demonstrates absolutely zero parental qualities towards him, unless you are default associating all acts of care as equalling parenting. In fact the first thing Ango does is call Odasaku out on his lack of reprimanding Dazai for his behaviour.
"Odasaku ... You should've spoken up right there."
"... Odasaku, that's exactly the problem right there. You're enabling Dazai. You don't speak up, and that's why he goes off the rails."
And Oda even acknowledges there's times when he should confront/speak out to Dazai but he choose not to and that act puts him on brother/friend footing. A parent who just wants to be their kid's friend and won't do anything to jeopardise that is a bad parent. The difference in a parental role Vs any other is taking the responsibility to correct action, to teach and be the bad guy when necessary.
Also Oda is so young. Not that young people can't be parents but it's natural at his age to have no desire for that kind of responsibility. I just think a lot of his mischaracterisation comes from some fans need to force him into this fatherly/parental role that he simply doesn't demonstrate.
The “just a crying child, who’s been left alone in the darkness, a world of nothingness far emptier than the world we can see” is a projection of Oda’s younger 14-year-old self onto Dazai. Their descriptions of that said world are also quite similar: “oxidizing world of a dream” and “world itself felt like an apparition”.
