Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Dazai Osamu & Oda Sakunosuke (Bungou Stray Dogs), Akutagawa Ryuunosuke & Oda Sakunosuke (Bungou Stray Dogs)
Characters: Dazai Osamu (Bungou Stray Dogs), Oda Sakunosuke (Bungou Stray Dogs), Akutagawa Ryuunosuke (Bungou Stray Dogs), Sakaguchi Ango (Bungou Stray Dogs)
Additional Tags: POV First Person, Unreliable Narrator, (?) kind of, Gin Is There In Spirit, Character Study, Relationship Study, The Long Goodbye is Required Reading, Beast Dazai & Oda Bar Scene: Electric boogaloo, Officially With More References To Philip and Terry, Alternate Universe - BEAST Light Novel (Bungou Stray Dogs), The Day I Picked Up Dazai Light Novel References (Bungou Stray Dogs), Book: The Long Goodbye (Philip Marlowe), Osamu Dazai and the Dark Era Light Novel References (Bungou Stray Dogs)
Me, knowing nothing about chess, probably overthinking the significance of referencing akutagawa in this scene, but is going to look it up later anyways
I think you're right that it's significant, and I think Mori is clever to recognize that Akutagawa is a rook.
Like a rook, Akutagawa is powerful, but generally contained and often undercut by his predictability. However, because he's keenly aware of his own constraints, and because others often aren't (especially regarding variables they've internalized as known), he's able to play into and against his own predictability to paradoxically surprise them.
He moves within the confines of his rigidity to shape outcomes, sometimes more effectively than his more dynamic opponents and peers. Rooks do that too, if you let them.
Sorry, I just read the notes—it's not true that rooks aren't valuable enough to protect?????
They're considerably influential even from the edges of the board, but they're most valuable towards the ends of games. Rooks are also the only pieces other than queens that can checkmate an enemy king with only itself and its king.
So, it's common to keep them from the middle of the board until the board settles such that they won't become trapped, and to retreat a rook before allowing it to be taken by an enemy pawn, knight, or bishop. It's also common to keep your rooks close to each other early on, explicitly so they can protect each other.
In other words, you very much want to protect your rooks; they often decide games.
Chess Strategy Online:
Rooks are more valuable than bishops and knights, so you should keep them in reserve in the early part of the game. Moving rooks out into the middle of the board too early can be a big mistake, as the enemy bishops and knights can attack your rooks and chase them about. A rook that goes on an adventure too early can easily become surrounded and trapped.
...
Rooks are strongest when they protect each other - this is known uniting or doubling rooks. You should try to unite your rooks along the back rank as early as possible.... Uniting rooks reduces the possibility of an unprotected rook being picked off by the enemy queen and also helps to guard your back rank. Another reason to unite your rooks is so that they can compete with the enemy rooks for open files.
Chess for Dummies
The rook and queen are sometimes referred to as heavy or major pieces because the rook and its own king, or the queen and its own king, can checkmate an enemy king by themselves. Minor pieces — the knight and the bishop — cannot, by themselves, checkmate an enemy king with only their own king for assistance. The real heavies in chess are the rooks and queens.
...
When new players discover the power of the rook, they sometimes decide to move the pawns that are in front of the rooks forward. (These pawns are known as the rook pawns.) This action has the advantage of increasing the space available to the rook, but it is usually a poor way to open the game. The rook must retreat when attacked by an enemy pawn, knight, or bishop because it is too valuable to be lost in exchange for one of them. Time is then lost shuffling the rook to and fro while the enemy pieces come out in force. The best strategy is to move a minimum number of pawns, get the minor pieces (knights and bishops) out, and only then move on to the rooks.
(Also, while we can't see the entire board in above-referenced scene (at least not clearly), the black rook isn't as vulnerable as the notes assume— it's well positioned to be flanked by a black bishop, so the white queen isn't likely to take it. The white knight could, but doing so would expose the white queen early in the game, which would certainly be a choice.
(There's risk, but it's calculated. Mori doesn't take Akutagawa for granted, as is evidenced by his framing of Akutagawa as a rook.)
Lately I've been thinking about the current progression of the story, obviously we are nowhere near the ending, however, what are your thoughts towards how the main story is going to end?
Based on what we know so far how do you think what do you think the climax and the resolution the story is going to be? Because so far it seems like it's going to be something related to the book, but there's so many plot points and characters that we haven't even really touched on yet and I'm wondering if we ever will (for example the order of the clock tower was this just a one and done thing or are we getting more on that Asagiri????)
I am SO sorry. I got sick on the weekend I was thinking of answering this. Then I got completely stuck on what I wanted to say because honestly I have no idea where this series is going besides a few things I know Kafka Asagiri wouldn't leave behind. I have faith in him and I feel like him pulling along Nathaniel Hawthorn for this long into the story and knowing when Fitzgerald would have involvement proves he doesn't forget about his previous storylines.
I see complaints sometimes about how Steinback’s side plot with the Guild is never touched on again and it's like?? Because there's already so much going on already?? I'm personally impressed with how Asagiri handles this bunch of characters and that's why I'm not impressed with complaints about the female characters getting “no” screentime. I think some of you really need to reread the manga because, of course, it would feel that way if you needed to split it between all these characters and have a smaller amount of female characters compared to guys.
It's an ongoing story so treat it like an ongoing story. Some criticisms I see of BSD really feel like they're in bad faith and don't give it any grace. To me, that's really depressing. I don't know what some of you even want from him. I'll move on now to your actual question.
This is a character-driven story with hmm, well I shouldn't say it doesn’t have a clear plotline because the antagonists have a clear goal for The Book, but it's not a story where the protagonist is driven to do anything besides overcome himself. I have ideas on what future plotlines would look like, but not all of them.
There are things that are absolutely going to be followed up on. Like how 55 Minutes’s story was left on a mystery to be explored in a future arc. 55 Minutes was very involved in the Great War and Europe, so I’m guessing some of that will be explored in due time. I’m not very good at guessing so I’m not the best to be asked on theorizing that far into the future.
How about I just speak on the present arc? I think that will be easier and it's good to work with the pieces we have. The ending is much too far into the future for me to come up with anything, really. This series is much too technical with its reference and motivations to say anything other than, “We should expect this stuff in the light novels to play into the story later.”
Since I gave myself some time to think this over, there are some things I am completely sure of having a critical role in the present and future of this story—besides the obvious lasting effects of the Great War and the storm Verlaine mentioned waiting for very much having to do with the Clock Tower’s eventual involvement.
I’ve been thinking about them a lot and I hadn’t realized this was my chance until now! So exciting! I mean these two tend to cross over for me.
55 Minutes is the 4th light novel in this series. Anyone who has read it loves it because of the focus on world building and getting to follow Atsushi for once in novel form. I went into it thinking that it was going to be a quick, self-contained story that happens a bit after the guild arc, but I was shocked to see that there were so many questions unanswered! On purpose obviously to set up a plot line for the future, but man.
While I am excited for many things from the light novels to be answered in the main story, I want to bring attention to the main antagonist. The living ability of Jules Gabriel Verne AKA Gab. Verne was a part of The Seven Traitors, a group that committed itself to stopping the war by any means necessary. They were what the Armed Detective Agency is to Atsushi for him. His ability (The Mysterious Island) absorbed other users’ abilities, so long as they were on an island he claimed as his domain.
By the time the war had ended, he was alone again and the rest of the members were either dead and disappeared. Verne decided to stay and maintain the Standard Island so his friends had a place to come back to. Fourteen years pass and a deadly weapon called Annihilation and it's maker, H.G. Wells, came onto the island. Annihilation had been stolen from her and Verne agreed to help her get it back from the terrorists under the name “Gab”. The terrorist in question being the colonel, not to be confused with the character of the same title who was an executive to the Port Mafia.
This colonel had actually been the former leader of the group who had called themselves Mimic after being abandoned by their country and had heard his men drifted to Yokohama, only to die there in vain. I wonder if that connects to anything that happened in another light novel, wink wink.
It wasn’t hard for Verne to find where it was hidden, but next he had to come up with a way to get it back without using his ability. He decided to join the thieves that had snuck onto the island by turning himself into a teenager and asking to be the pupil of the boss so he could borrow his ability to go through walls. It had worked as planned, until Wells was hit by a stray bullet and died. He was devastated that he couldn't save this one woman.
His solution to save her was to absorb her ability (Time Machine) to go back 55 minutes in time to reverse what had happened. That worked, but then he thought of another thing: if he absorbed her ability again, couldn't he go further back in time to get a better result? Wells’s ability has the condition that it could only send a person back in time once, but by absorbing it again, he can ignore it as if he were using it for the first time. He regretted how many of the colonel's soldiers had died and he never learned his motivations in the end.
He was right, but creating the perfect future is almost impossible because of how someone always gets hurt in the process. Every time he succeeded, there was only the “what if?” hanging over him that this wasn't enough. The more he used the ability, the further he could go into the past. Even larger ideas had come into his head. What if he could reunite with his friends? What if he could prevent the entire war from happening? He hadn't realized just as Wells's ability evolved, something else would too: Gab, the island and the boy he posed as.
It overtook him and left to reside inside his own flesh as an echo of his own self, at the very corner of his mind. He died and Gab had been birthed from it. Gab is an unstable creation and even so, his humanity still urges him to keep living no matter what. So instead of being motivated to repeat time to save others, he keeps living to save himself so he doesn't fall back into the darkness of an unknown waiting for him.
I could keep going and talk about how he's pretty much the embodiment of the themes present in BSD, his resemblance to Atsushi that the narrative points out so graciously, and the nature of what he is supposed to be in the grand scheme of BSD, but this isn't why I brought him up.
55 Minutes has aspects that have appeared in the main story ever since the Decay of Angels have taken their place in the manga as antagonists. Dazai’s ability to control his heartbeat, time travel, Akutagawa calling Atsushi his “trial” and fighting out at sea, and the Great War being the source of the conflict. Now what if I propose my idea of what had happened to Fukuchi to be similar to what had happened to Verne when he had used Wells’s ability?
This is Fukuchi’s corpse reanimated, I think we all know it. While it’s possible Fyodor must've put a safeguard to put the condition for this to have happened or that this is a Fukuchi from another universe, I think what had happened altogether, in the end, was the consequence of using Amenogozen so freely to the point he was messing with the state of the timeline and creating paradoxes. The backlash of this divine blade had either created a divine being or let one reside in him.
It's not only 55 Minutes that has parallels/foreshadows what's to come, but Untold Origins as well. I do like noticing how Kafka Asagiri adds things so they fit more snuggly into what's to come later in the season or make the connection more obvious, like Fukuchi having a feature when Fukuzawa is visiting Oda behind bars and Fyodor appearing on the roof when Fukuzawa monologues about “V”.
I think I've been seeing some people notice this too, but I think the play featured is incredibly important. Like really, really important. I mean beyond any resemblance people saw in the visuals used in the anime background that looked like Fyodor being crucified. I feel unprepared to talk about it, so I hope I make some sort of sense.
“The Living World Is a Dream. The Nocturnal Dream is Reality” is a real quote from Ranpo Edogawa and is used as the name for this play. Twelve fallen angels gather in an old theater to earn god’s forgiveness. They had disobeyed god in the past by wanting to coexist with human beings and were shunned after the fact. During this, they are killed off one by one without the killer ever being seen. The killer, as the script follows, is a supposed angel of judgment, but it's hard to tell for the others if it really was an angel imparting their judgment or a serial killer because of how common the methods seemed to be. That is their mystery to be solved.
One of the fallen angels claims that an angel would use a divine blade to purge them and not methods like these, while another begs the question of why a fellow sinner would go after them and that an angel would have a real motive to have them killed. Their reason to going to this old theater is because they were searching for an ability user. In this fictionalized story, ability users are angels who had fallen but were able to atone and given a portion of their power back. Their hope is that when they encounter the ability user, they will gain atonement as well.
Suddenly, Murakami (the lead performer) is stabbed by a blade that came from nowhere. Completing the promised threat of an organization named “V”:
“An angel shall bring death, in the truest sense of the word, to the performer.”
So, what happened?
As he takes his newfound identity as an “ability user” in pride on stage and claims himself to be the savior of all, Ranpo explains that the angel that the play refers to is the audience watching it. A metaphor to how the audience is invisible to the characters on stage and knew almost every that had happened, but Ranpo also says that because the audience couldn't have laid a finger on the them, it means the angel couldn't have been the killer.
The “angel” was more the victim than anything and the so-called judgment imposed was the show of what was originally regarded as another victim. The switching of roles. The same thing has also applied to this murder. While Murakami was regarded the victim, the accused killer the police suspected was a man under a fake name who has randomly disappeared. Tied up behind the currents, the man had been here all along. The true victim of this case.
Which makes Murakami the real culprit of his own “murder”, but he's only a piece of the picture. After getting arrested, he speaks about how he had planned with the playwright about this but has no clue what capturing the older man was for. Not even after saying this, a detective rushes in saying that the playwright had been impaled with no weapon to be found.
Again, after an officer who had worked for the mysterious group “V” and tried to kill Ranpo after refusing to join them had been arrested, he was also killed the same way as the playwright. I feel like I don't even need to say that this “V” group is obviously the Decay of Angels after laying that out. The same motivations as Fyodor (”rid all evil of this world”) and the sword business is Fukuchi silencing people.
What was the purpose of the play though?
Besides capturing Natsume Soseki (if you haven't read it), it was foreshadowing for what was to come. Let's abandon the idea that skill users are redeemed angels for a second. Just a second, I promise. Have you ever looked up what Kaumi (神威) even means?
While one of the first results you get will refer you to gods themselves, you should be focusing on a more literal translation. That being “God’s Authority” or greater divine power, making Fukuchi function basically as Fyodor’s own angel of judgment. Let's say that ability users are the sinners and Fukuchi (or Fyodor) is the one imposing their judgment, even if they should've been in the same boat.
Just like the play, they swap the victim (Armed Detective Agency) and the killer (The Decay of Angels) for the public‘s unknowing view. This play is filled with Fyodor’s personal bias and I think the irony of their searching for the “ability user” in the play is that to Fyodor, there's no such thing as a redeemed ability user. There is only salvation of death for this great evil and that is exactly what happens to the characters from the play.
Ranpo filps this narrative on its head and forcefully changes the ending of the fallen angel. He wasn't a part of the story, he forcefully shoved through its bullcrap to create something much more ideal. Something much less miserable. It's a little fun that two people he goes out of his way to help out (Yosano & Mushitaro) both have the title of “angel of death/murder” as that's how the angel of the play is also referred to. Save the killer that was actually a victim…
With that, I really shouldn't abandon how ability users get referred to with titles like angel and demon right? Chuuya had an angelic allusion in Storm Bringer when he activated corruption for the first time, and hell, look at my buddy Gab and his mechanical wings. The further they transcend themselves of their humanity, the more angelic or demonic they become. There really is no true difference between them though.
This should've been about the trajectory of bsd…. Then it became me wanting to talk about DOA crap….
Well, I really don't know much. I connected dots that were there for me, but nothing to say for the future of BSD. I understand what is happening, but not enough to be psychic haha. I mostly went on about that because I didn't want our conversation about what is currently happening to be pushed aside because there's always more to say. Maybe if I read more of the authors involved, maybe I'd know.
If this is disappointing, oh well! It has taken me so long to think of something to say that the new chapter has already come out. Kafka Assgiri always leaves me with more questions than answers.
I suffered last night. I was saddened. I was so depressed. I could hardly stand it. I cried in bed. I thought that anything and everything was stupid, infuriating, and unbearable. Two problems were entangled in a bizarre way and I could not even begin to deal with them.
Dazai and Odasaku have a fascinating connection I never noticed before, their views on killing for justice.
Dazai Osamu's entrance exam
He looked far off into the distance. “The phrase ‘seeking justice’ is a weapon. Once it hurts the weak, it can no longer be a force of good. This justice the Azure King sought was what killed Sasaki.”
The untold origins of the armed detective agency
“Justice,” said the hit man. “I can understand killing for money or because you hated someone, but they’re killing for justice.
I don’t want to get involved with a group like that. After they’re done killing for their justice, they’ll only continue to kill. They’ll just stop caring who they’re killing.”
It's very interesting that two characters who both have no issue with killing people and have killed hundreds themselves see the incredible danger of "killing for justice"
Killing for greed, killing for revenge, killing for boredom... all of these are personal things, they stay focused on the person who's doing the killing, but if you kill because you think it's right, then you will seek out more people to kill unendingly "Their religion is heresy", "Their whole country is evil", "They don't respect my authority" and soon even people who have done nothing wrong are killed because "they could be a threat later"
The moment you justify killing, you can never stop, there will always be more criminals who deserve to die, and soon it won't matter if they deserved it or not.
So so tired sending this because it’s late, but I did want to send that ask about what you think of Mori and Dazai’s relationship and how it parallels anything related to their real counterparts! So here it is! Type to your heart’s content.
Oh my god never type out long posts without saving drafts, your dog will bark and startle you and the window will close and
The literature is just a springboard for discussing the characters, so it's just a discussion of the inspirations and then how it's handled in canon, as evenhandedly as I can.
Anyways, I'll just start out with what little exists of the author Dazai's opinions of the author Mori Ougai. Mori died in 1922 when Dazai was 13 years old, so they never had a professional relationship as fellow writers, of course. But it's funny how casual Dazai is when he discusses this august literary figure, which he himself comments on later.
There are at least three specific stories with mentions of Mori Ougai (he calls him Ougai so I'll use that I suppose) in Dazai's writing that I can think of (paraphrased; please correct me if I'm wrong):
Hanafubuki, where he mentions visiting Ougai's grave and how he wished to be buried next to him. This wish of his is well-known because he really was buried across from Ougai after his suicide, so that portion of the story has been translated many times. But the first part of the story is kind of hilarious too.
To paraphrase it, in his opinion the greatest literary figure of the Meiji and Taisho eras (1868 - 1925) was certainly Ougai, Professor Mori Rintarou, especially because he threw hands with rude people even at the age of 50. "No way!" someone might say, but he swears it's all true! Dazai himself has neglected his martial arts training for the past 30 years, so he admires how writers of old weren't weaklings. If more writers had judo belts, critics wouldn't talk shit. Ougai was a military man and the Surgeon General, so his physical training and discipline (at least compared to modern writers) added a certain dignity or composure to his writing.
Dazai himself had been skeptical about this story about Ougai getting into fistfights, but when he read through all of Ougai's collected works, he found a story called Social Gathering (懇親会) in volume 3 where Ougai got into a brawl with a rude drunk newspaper reporter and they fought so hard that they fell off of the veranda and had to be pulled apart by the other partygoers. Afterwards everyone toasted Ougai's health, and Dazai imagines the bloodied Ougai (who was not a big drinker) drinking all of these celebratory cups with a grimace. This story delighted Dazai when he calculated that Ougai had been 48 years old and Surgeon General for 2 years at the time of this scrap, but also depressed him because it proved that Ougai really could fight and Dazai's the sort of coward who shakes in his geta when drunken university students insult him. He then quotes the relevant passage from the story, but it's not in Aozora Bunko I think, and Dazai's collected edition is probably the 1924 one (more on that below).
After reflecting upon his weakness he goes to the graveyard behind Zenrinji Temple where Ougai was buried. This is when the most famous passage about Dazai and Mori comes in, which was discussed in this post by dazaiarchives on twitter (the translation below is from their post)
I'll just add in my own photos of their graves which I took in 2019; they're slightly diagonal and facing each other.
2. The "Digressions" in his story もの思う葦, where he mentions Ougai and Natsume but it's only two sentences so there isn't much to get out of that.
3. Finally, there's the preface of his 1940 story 女の決闘 (A Duel Between Women) which was a playful adaptation or riff on Ougai's 1912 translation of German playwright Herbert Eulenberg's Ein Frauenzweikampf, which is the story of a strange duel between a man's wife and mistress.
Dazai explains that this is a story from volume 16 of the collected works of Mori Ougai (1924 edition) - which are borrowed from a friend, since he doesn't have a home library and despises showy displays of learning. He has noticed that when poorly-read people want to seem smart about a subject they know nothing about, they'll just blithely say, "Professor Mori has said..." If Ougai knew how many "students" of this sort he has now, he surely would be confused and blush.
He particularly dislikes how people associate Ougai with reading something difficult and esoteric and lofty, so simply "studying" Ougai is enough to make you wise, and you "study" him rather than read him. Dazai doesn't think Ougai's writing is difficult at all; his writing is always graceful (as opposed to Natsume, who he finds tedious). But people like certain university professors have made it seem taboo for ordinary folk to read Ougai for pleasure and he should only be appreciated by wanky graduate students who 'study' him and write long papers. He thinks that's a sign of shameless ignorance but society thinks that's wisdom.
At any rate, ignorant normie Dazai is going to read Mori Ougai, so Dazai encourages the reader to make themselves comfortable, as he is the sort of person who lounges comfortably to read, not sitting up straight and proper. The reader shouldn't feel intimidated by Ougai; Dazai himself is no scholar (he says modestly).
***
So now Dazai's comments on Mori Ougai are out of the way, what can we perhaps take from that? Dazai greatly admired Ougai's writing, but thought people were too intimidated by his reputation and should just read him for pleasure. When he writes about Ougai, he both enjoys the writing and imagines the man behind the words. It's both playful and genuinely respectful. He thought Ougai's writing had a grace and discipline that his own lacked.
Even though their writing styles are different, both Ougai and Dazai are authors who carefully curate what they reveal about themselves, even when they are writing stories that seem autobiographical or confessional. You're tempted to think you know the author far more than you actually do, because they weave in enough personal experience to give the stories realism.
Regarding their relationship in BSD, I also like to think about how the authors write about childrearing. If you read other works by Dazai and Ougai, and compare how they talk about children....yeah Ougai's a way better choice for raising a kid. If you want a sad, slightly disturbing perspective on Dazai and his own children, you can read Cherries, where he frets about his (actual) son with Down Syndrome and semi-seriously fantasizes about committing murder-suicide with his own disabled son. (Translation at link)
Now, the kids. The seven-year-old and the little one born this spring are a trifle prone to colds, but, well, they’re no worse than anybody else’s kids. But the four-year-old boy is as skinny as a scarecrow, and he can’t even stand up yet. He’s unable to speak. All he does is make a funny noise or two. He doesn’t understand what people say to him. He just crawls about the place and won’t be toilet trained. Even so, he eats like a horse. And yet, he doesn’t put on weight, is really small, has thin hair and refuses to grow.
Mummy and daddy avoid getting into deep discussions about their son. The reason is that it’s all too distressing to admit to each other that they’ve given birth, in a word, to a boy who’s severely handicapped. Sometimes mummy grabs him and holds him tight. And daddy often thinks of getting hold of him and, in a fit, jumping into the river with him and ending it all.
‘Man Murders Mute Son. In the afternoon of such-and-such a day, Mr. So-and-so, age 53, dealer in x at number y, z street, split open the skull of his 18-year-old son with an axe, then shoved scissors into his own throat but was transported to a nearby hospital where he is in critical condition, and recently his 22-year-old daughter was married to a live-in husband, and his motive was to get rid of the son, who was not only unable to speak or hear but was also not very clever, out of love for the daughter’.
It’s newspaper articles like this that plunge me in a drunken stupor.
In contrast, this is how Mori describes a baby in his story Konpira, where a doctor's two children get critically ill with whooping cough and the son dies and the daughter lives:
'The professor suddenly recalled his home in Tokyo. At about that time of the day his wife, who had probably left their baby son with the maid, would most likely be coming home from the public bath with their daughter, who was almost six. His wife had been hoping for a boy and now he was six months old. Already the baby had learned to recognize his father's face, and whenever the professor took the baby's small, still uncoordinated hand and said something, the child's round eyes would close into little half moons and he would stick out his tongue slightly and laugh. In the professor's eyes rose up the sight of his son's face."
In that story he talks fondly about his daughter who loves German fairytales and was obedient even when ravaged with illness, and his sad attempt at making a death mask of his baby son, and his horrible struggle whether to euthanize his critically ill daughter or let her suffer a painful death from suffocation. Historically Mori Ougai lost a baby son and nearly lost his daughter Mari to pertussis, so here is another example of both authors using their real lives in a very careful, calculated way to tell a story, but the way they talk about their children, even as part of a persona for a story, is quite different.
***
So what can we take from that in BSD? In BSD Mori fills the role of Dazai's father/mentor, which is one of the most influential roles in a person's life in that series. You might assume that this means it's purely abusive or harmful - Dazai was Akutagawa's mentor, the headmaster was Atsushi's mentor - but hell, Fukuzawa is Ranpo's father/mentor too. It's an important role, one that strongly influences a child.
To figure out their canon relationship it's easier for me to look at BEAST, because it's the reflection of the main universe and the circumstances that govern their behavior in the canon universe no longer apply, so you can take the relationship in a situation where Dazai has complete control and see how he chooses to behave. In BEAST universe, Dazai knows about the main universe, but has chosen to throw away Odasaku's dying words in favor of preserving Odasaku's life. He's lived through many many AUs and has pared his entire personality down into a husk that will achieve this goal and then die.
So in BEAST, there's a bunch of ways he could have handled Mori if he seriously hated and resented Mori, and in this universe he could do anything he wanted to without consequences.
He could:
Torture and kill Mori for arranging Odasaku's death - he doesn't this time, the final time.
Spare Mori, but make him one of his executives, so Mori will use his intellect on Dazai's command and have the humiliation of having to submit to Dazai's authority - he doesn't, although that's arguably what he does to Chuuya.
He is given the chance to hurt Mori and the perfect excuse that it's "for Odasaku's happiness" - he's doing everything else in this universe, even hurting SSKK, "for Odasaku's happiness" in a sense. But he doesn't kill Mori, he doesn't hurt him, and he doesn't humiliate him as far as we're told. Dazai does all of these things with ease and pleasure to other people, even to poor Atsushi, so it's not a case of being too lawful good for that shit.
Instead, critically, he spares Mori the responsibility of being the bad-cop Port Mafia Boss which honestly seemed to make Mori unhappy in the main universe. He gives him the role of being the father/mentor to OTHER CHILDREN, which is insane if Dazai felt Mori had been a cruel mentor or a bad dad or that he couldn't be trusted with children even though he'll definitely murder a few orphans for a good enough reason and makes lolicon jokes. He sends Atsushi there to recover from how Dazai had treated him in this universe, and unless he hates Atsushi for some reason, why would Dazai send him to someone he hates who he thinks would hurt him?
To me it seems to indicate that Dazai thinks of Mori as his father or mentor who had tried to help him, he understands logically why Mori did what he did, and he likely would have been completely fine with the plan to deal with Mimic if Odasaku wasn't the unfortunate sacrifice. It was the logical solution, and the Port Mafia Boss is the position where one has to make painful calls like that.
Even in the Dark Era, instead of rushing off willy-nilly with a bunch of armed goons to SAVE ODASAKU, he goes to Mori first and asks for an explanation, because he knows there will be a logical explanation, even if he doesn't like it, and it's important to know that first before interrupting Mori's plans. Dazai is rational instead of impulsive at that moment, and he knows Mori won't hurt him even if he disobeys him, and Mori kind of walks him through articulating that the reason he wants to act irrationally is because Odasaku is his friend. Then Mori lets him go, since Dazai was also a calculated loss in this plan.
So even with that kind of betrayal, it seems clear to me why Dazai thinks Mori is someone who can help abused suicidal young adults like Atsushi, and Mori confirms that that had been his sincere intention towards Dazai (amongst all of his other crueler responsibilities which made him do things like sacrifice Odasaku, which Dazai had taken off of his plate).
Interestingly, BEAST Mori makes the clear point that he disagrees with Dazai's childrearing philosophies that involve violence; he calls it the barbarism of adults. That's why I took note of how the authors talked about their children, lol
Also, what's funny is that in the dialogue of the light novels like 15 and SB, when teenage Dazai is trying to think logically like Mori, he actually starts talking a little like him and quoting his strategies, and I am reminded of the RL Dazai mocking pseudo-intellectuals who say "MORI-SENSEI SAYS" when they don't know the answer. Mori is an inescapable influence on Dazai in BSD, and not purely in a negative way.
Now, BEAST also supports my thought that in the main universe Mori was concerned that Dazai would kill him not because Dazai was SO MUCH SMARTER THAN HIM AND MORI HAD HURT HIM SO MUCH AND MORI DIDN'T WANT TO DIE, but because Dazai's priorities aren't societal stability and putting him in the driver's seat of the Port Mafia would lead to a new reign of terror in service of whatever Dazai prioritizes, and suicidal Dazai prioritizes almost nothing.
Do I think Dazai wants to hang out with Mori or go back to the Port Mafia? Nah. Does he trust that Mori has his back even outside of the Port Mafia? Absolutely. Mori is the fellow strategist, like Ranpo, who will make sure Dazai has what he needs for his (often suicidal) plans and will send Chuuya to extract him. Dazai can make plans knowing that Mori can coordinate with him even if they don't communicate.
This is all just my opinion, man, but it seems like the historical Dazai would have been annoyed if I didn't read the stories myself and have my own thoughts about them, so there you go.
To celebrate Natsume Sōseki’s birthday here are his top three quotes from my blog:
Quote #3:
"You have a fine scholar’s way with words, I must say. You’re good at empty reasoning."
- Natsume Sōseki, Kokoro
Quote #2:
"It is not you in particular that I distrust, but the whole of humanity."
- Natsume Sōseki, Kokoro
Quote #1:
"You seem to be under the impression that there is a special breed of bad humans. There is no such thing as a stereotype bad man in this world. Under normal conditions, everybody is more or less good, or, at least, ordinary. But tempt them, and they may suddenly change. That is what is so frightening about men."
I've started reading The Great Gatsby (I've fallen into the reading classical literature trap 😔. I really need to finish Crime and Punishment.)
Anyhow I think it's really interesting how Asagiri chose to characterize many of the people in BSD. Especially after learning that irl Fitzgerald was more of a cynical person (at least towards the end of his life) than his animated counterpart. And it made me think of all the other characters of the show and how their characterized.
What was Asagiri's purpose as he came together with these characters? Why'd he have some characters act as their irl counterparts while others act more like the characters they wrote or people in their lives?
These aren't really questions that I wanted the answers to they were moreso just thoughts that I had. I'd love to have a peek into this man's mind and how it works
I think a lot of us have fallen into that trap LMAO. This is my favorite topic though. I could talk about this forever because Kafka Asagiri is an interesting person who has integrated a lot of literature into this one series. I don't know what goes on in this man’s mind and I know these aren't literal questions, but I am interested in sharing what I know!
As you've pointed out, some characters do act more like the people in these works written by them than the actual people. BSD isn't purely just taking these authors, their relationships, and then implementing them just like that. it also takes these authors’ literary personas, their impact socially, and their works to make them into who they are. Asagiri is doing this because it makes it more interesting, but also imagine writing about this authors where most of them lived depressing lives with qualities that don’t make uh, the type of story you want to tell.
I’m impressed with how creative he is.
I’m trying to limit myself on how much I should talk about this, but I fear that I’ll leave out important bits about how Asagiri incorporates these people into the work. I’m also just jittering and excited. Like I almost forgot to bring up the fact the reason BSD has a war narrative is because it takes Japanese authors from Meiji to Shōwa era, so about the time Western influence kicked in, forcing them to modernize and keep up with the rest of the world during what is a fairly short time for huge development like this, to post-war Japan where, you know, the Occupation of Japan is happening and they have to intake the traumatic repercussions of everything before that.
This would make The Great War functionally WW2. I’m not a historian or anything, but this should come to mind for anyone who’s in the know about some Japanese history. Now that I’m bringing it up though, Mori’s attitude during the flashback with Yosano is put into context because he pretty much says himself that he needs his country to realize that they keep up with the rest of the world and that the battlefield is changing, and real life Japan did not care about how they did that.
With N, Chuuya, and Stormbringer too. I’m almost hesitant to bring this up because it’s so serious, but yes, Japan did do lethal human experimentation for that same purpose to keep up with the rest of the world and prove themselves. I have a feeling this is intentional of Asagiri and I find it almost unlikely that isn’t because the experimentation was for the purpose of creating weapons of war. Please be careful when you look this up though, you will come across Unit 731 and the worst of the worst you think of doing to a human is on their wikipedia page. I cannot stress this enough. Oh Japan and their unmentioned war crimes barley anyone knows about.
Ahh, I went off track. Sorry, we were talking about how Asagiri writes characters, right? There is a lot of crossover between the real authors and their writing, so it’s sorta hard to tell with people like Dazai where the work influence ends and the the real person begins.
For me currently in my classic lit research period, I’m almost upset at myself for barley reading anything by Ryuunosuke Akutagawa because he’s my favorite character. I’ve just been so caught up doing my Oda Sakunosuke essay that I don’t have too much time for other authors. I’ve also picked up “The Similitude of Blossoms: A Critical Biography of Izumi Kyōka” recently (and A New Hamlet by Osamu Dazai, but that’s not important).
Ah, how much should I talk about.… hmm… how about Chuuya as an example of Literary Voice vs Real Person…. Lucy Montgomery and Edgar Allen Poe for Social Impact (for Japan specifically)…. and then.. Oh whatever, I’ll figure it out. One day I’ll talk about Kyouka, but not now. I’d feel ill prepared.
If you’ve ever read a poem by Chuuya Nakahara, taken in the emotion and deep feeling, and then found any fun facts about his interactions with other authors, there’s a huge contrast between those two modes that can be jarring. Im sure you can tell how that carries over to BSD. I’m impressed by how Asagiri is able to balance both the brash attitude of Chuuya and the inner literary voice that voices the emotion and care he has in him.
Edgar Allen Poe is slightly more obvious than Lucy’s influence (or maybe it’s Lucy’s, ah it depends), but both pop out at you when it’s pointed out. He was one of the first American authors to be introduced to Japan and fairly popular, but mainly we would point to Edogawa Ranpo as the most blatantly influenced by him and who his name is quite literally attached to. While Lucy Montgomery isn’t attached to anyone in particular, Anne of The Green Gables was wildly distributed in Japan when there were few english children books and became a hit.
There’s a television series too if you search for it. Any redhead, pigtail-braided girl you see in some Japanese media is because of her! It’s probably why these two have the most presence in the story currently compared to other members of the Guild and work with the Agency at times.
There are times when Asagiri will use influences outside of the author’s own catalog to create them, some literary like Albert Camus’s The Stranger and The Myth of Sisyphus (in writing characters like Dazai or Fyodor, I could make a post about that), and some just of his own anime/manga interests in other series like Jojo, Cowboy Bebop, Black Lagoon, etc. if you’re familiar.
I’d feel bad if I don’t at least show one example of this so, how about an Odasaku example with The Long Goodbye by Reymond Chandler? I was going to avoid talking about him until the essay, but I can’t help myself. Many have pointed out these parallels before, but Asagiri did point it to be his favorite book last year in an interview.
If you’ve noticed that the presentation for Dark Era in the anime comes off like a Noir film just like how Untold Origins came off like a black and white samurai film, good job! The Long Goodbye is a Noir novel about a detective named Phillip Marlowe who is unable to let go of a case involving a friend that was accused of murdering his own wife, but supposedly commits suicide and confesses to it before Marlowe is able to leave custody. By the end of the book, he uncovers the real perpetuator (a past lover of Terry Lennox’s before he was ever called by that name) and finds out where Lennox really is by poking into the story of where the message he got was sent.
He comes in with a new look and identity, and he asks if it’s too early for a gimlet. They say their last few words to each other, Marlowe flipping back and forth from acknowledging him as Terry Lennox and as a person he never knew, and then Marlowe tells him that “he’s not here anymore”. Marlowe had already told him goodbye when it was sad and lonely, so Lennox does the same here. That ends that mutual, long goodbye and he never sees Lennox again.
The immediate response I’ve see about this is how it parallels the relationship between Dazai and Odasaku. In The Day I Picked Up Dazai, just like how Marlowe brings him to his home to clean him up and meet up at the same bar for the next few months of their friendship, Odasaku also does so with Dazai and drinks a Gimlet for reasons he doesn’t know. In reality, Gimlets are a representation of the friendship between Marlowe and Lennox as it’s Lennox’s favorite drink. It makes it a little painful when Marlowe ignores him when he ask to go get a gimlet at that same bar they always went.
BEAST is more hyper specific about it by having Dazai ask the same question that Lennox asks when he gets smoked out and Odasaku asking for a gimlet with no bitters, which is specifically how Lennox takes it. Odasaku does not drink the gimlet at all though, showing that there is not friendship to start or accept or say goodbye to, as Lennox does ask Marlowe to drink a Gimlet to say goodbye to him in the letter. Just like TDIPUD is like their beginning, BEAST is their ending without ending because BEAST Dazai is not the same person he was friends with.
Odasaku fulfills being a detective and Dazai is the tragic friend with a past he doesn’t say anything about. Great. Now what I think people are missing when they entirely focus on Odasaku and Dazai when they talk about Lennox and Marlowe is that Lennox is narratively also Andre Gide.
If we were to split Lennox into three people just like his three identities, this is what it would look like:
The Friend: You help him out and don’t judge for his faults, in turn you go out to a bar with each other. It’s uneasy, but it’s worth a lot to the both of you. Eventually you have to part ways in death. (Dazai & Terry Lennox)
The Unknown: Is he someone you know? He acts like it, but he looks nothing like what you’ve encounter before. Maybe in some world you were, but that’s not now and it’s too late for this goodbye to be playing out. You let it happened though and you never see him again when he walks out that door. (BEAST Dazai & “Señor Maioranos”)
The Soldier: The past is right around the corner and its come to bite you in the ass. White hair and war memories haunting him with a scar as a reminder, he’s a reflection of you but maybe not. Who knows? (Andre Gide & “Paul Marston.”)
The initials “P.M.” of both his past name and Phillip Marlowe’s is meant to clue in how Eileen (the past lover) is connected to Lennox by her thinking of Marlowe as her past lover as she attempts to seduce him in some trance. What I’m trying to note here though is that you can take this as Lennox being another reflection of himself. It’s easy to do that reading for both Dazai and Gide as they’re both his foils and are purposely similar, but Gide aligns more with this past identity than Dazai does and retains his white hair.
Uhhh, wasn't planning to make a mini-analysis in the middle of my talking but okay. I'm leaving it off there. I went blank a lot while writing because I didn’t know what I wanted to comment on. There's too much to say about this large cast. I have way more literary fun facts and ideas to say, but nah.
Hello this is my main for @/dazai-on-my-mind I was going through your abuse post (have yet to finish it so forgive me if you've discussed this already) what are your theories for what lies under Dazai's bandages? The main fan theories that I've seen so far is that they're either covering self inflicted injuries or Mori experimented on Dazai at times during his Port Mafia days but again coming from your abuse post this theory seems highly unlikely. So I was wondering if you had any thoughts about that.
Hello! Sorry this took a bit. I saw your other ask, so I'll try to get to that. It's absolutely fine you haven't finished it. I'm personally surprised at how long it is myself. I actually haven't talked about what is under Dazai’s bandages, so sure! I also have some brief thoughts on the bandages itself.
(Edit: that was not brief, it turns out I had a lot of thoughts)
It's an average topic with this fandom, so I don't know how much I can add really!
We do know he has scars from what Oda said in Dark Era:
And we also get this tidbit from Harukawa talking about designing Dazai:
The special thing about this series was that apart from the settings from Asagiri, the characters probably should have certain aspects of the authors they were based on, but I tried to draw them based on the character settings first when doing up the initial drafts. […] For Dazai, I wrapped him up in bandages because of his suicide mania, and took note with other items.
—Harukawa35, Behind The Scenes of The Character Design!
Of course, the intent behind what the bandages are and what is behind them can change over time when they get to know their own characters better! They look like they're implying two different things, but I'd argue it's the exact same thing, even if they come from different places.
Out of all the assumptions, what's under there is probably scars he gained while throwing his life away in the face of danger, even when he doesn't need to. It's no different than the average suicide attempt by him. I wonder if he has a scar from the Old Boss’s scythe, that'd be sick. This is what sounds most likely to me, but I’ll entertain other ideas for the sake of it being too short of a note to end on.
You can obviously tell I don’t dig the idea of Mori committing medical malpractice. Not only is that an insane idea to come by, how does he even benefit from that thought process? The only type of stuff happening is Mori forcing him to take his vaccinations and taking drugs Dazai got from his medicine cabinet out of his young hands. I also think people think this way because of what he said about Mori telling him the shots won't hurt in The Day I Picked Up Dazai Side A.
A doctor is telling a child his shots won't hurt… ??? Sounds pretty normal.
I know people won't like it when I say this, but that was typical teenage Dazai childishness. He does genuinely not like pain of course, so it could be that he's overexaggerating because that's what it felt like to him haha. That scene is meant to be comedic, so this sentiment shouldn't be that serious in context. It's not like this is idk Black Butler.
I remember in Side B that Dazai says pain is what reminds you that you're alive. Maybe that's why he doesn't like it, even if he was a torture specialist. To understand death, you have to understand what it is to be alive because life is both of those things. Dazai prefers the state of being dead rather than the process, but also thinks the attempt is easier than actually committing. Dear god, your commitment issues don't need to go this far.
As for self-harm, it's pretty 50/50 with enough arguments on both sides to make a case. Dazai doesn’t like pain, but people don't usually do it because they like the feeling of the pain itself. They could do it to punish themselves, the feeling of it afterward, etc. I think Dazai putting himself in those situations like I mentioned earlier counts enough as self-harm (you can even count his implicit drinking habits too if you'd like), but this specifically on what I know you mean just depends on whether you think Dazai would do so.
I can't imagine it from Dazai, but if people think so, there's nothing stopping them from it. There's nothing implying he wouldn't, suicidal people don't always resort to this. I’m personally just tired of people using it for their whump narratives, in all fandoms actually.
I don’t care much for it if that’s what they’d like to do because I understand, but it’s not something I like being depicted in weirdly graphic detail for no reason other than the character to suffer. Besides that, there no harm in it. I don’t want to get all “you shouldn’t write this stuff because I said so”, that’s stupid.
(-150 points if it’s for white knighting ship content)
Now I hope you don’t mind me rambling off a bit! It’s been on my mind since last week to talk about the bandages.
Symbolically, the bandages can mean a couple things. All very similar things haha. It’s like what Chuuya’s gloves are to him and how personal it is to take them off outside of Corruption, or how he said he used to put his hands in his pockets because he wanted to protect his humanity while fighting.
Core things they can mean are:
A thin barrier to separate and hide himself from others (including from himself)
To minimize skin contact from his ability aka himself (not as literal as it sounds)
Abilities in Bungou Stray Dogs are apart of the user. No matter if you move your ability on to your child (Kyouka and her Mother), have it be mutilated into something unrecognizable (Verlaine, Chuuya), or to naturally be imbedded into you, you cannot separate it from your humanity. It’s still you, as Atsushi had to eventually accept this fact.
You can say a lot about the nature of abilities and 55 Minutes made some worrying discussion points about Abilities that I wish were touched on more by others, but let’s go with first thought process because it’s the one Asagiri let’s us off easy with.
No Longer Human, as Asagiri told us, is based off of the feeling he got when reading Dazai Osamu’s writing. Functionally, his ability is a bit horrifying to me as something born from himself. Maybe I just overreact, but when you translate what his ability mean functionally against every ability user we know, you can come up with interesting conclusions.
It’s not like how Atsushi can cut through abilities as a Tiger as I’m sure that was meant to imply something about his psychological breakthrough and combating other’s soul born abilities with his own. Dazai just straight up takes away other’s abilities. As long as he’s touching you, you have become a victim to his soul’s vacuum of searching for humanity or lack there of.
That’s not to say others who don’t have abilities aren’t human, I think the difference is that ability users are forced to put a part of their humanity up for show and scrutiny, which makes them appear inhuman to the average human being. Dazai is as paradoxical as his own ability. He’s functionally the average human being, but he also lacks something… human when you put him up against another ability user.
Sorta this middle ground in what to think and how he also tends to be. When I read No Longer Human, it popped out to me too often that Yozo Oba was incredibly human while putting himself in this position of inhumanity.
When Dazai’s ability is in effect, he takes away a piece of your humanity, making your less than who you were before. So when Dazai covers skin with his bandages, he’s covering up the metaphorical cavity that is his ability and inhumanity. When the bandages starts going everything when he’s using his ability, he’s swallowing that piece whole and embracing you falling to his level.
Am I overanalyzing a stylistic choice that usually only appears in official art? Yes, but it’s fun.
You can tell I skipped the first one, but that’s because it has to do with an example that’s been the reason I keep thinking about this and it sounded more fun to talk about. In the Onsen CD Drama, there’s two scenes I want to put emphasis one.
The first one being when Dazai says that they’re all getting closer because of them being in the hot spring, but Kunikida calls out the fact he’s still wearing his bandages. I could’ve passed it off as being not that significant because it’s a joke scene if it weren’t for the next one.
Atsushi wanted to wash Dazai’s back since Kunikida had been occupied and he wanted to help them like they did for him, but Dazai had already walked away. Later when they’re still awake while the others had slept, Atsushi tries again and actually gets the opportunity to do it. Only problem, Dazai still has his bandages on. Dazai just tells him it’s okay and to scrub anyway.
This made me feel… how do I say this… speechless? Not because Dazai was entirely insistent on them being apart of his body like the troll he is, but because of the simultaneous intimacy of the act and abruption of it with the bandages. You can pass it off as a running joke, but we both know Dazai absolutely heard Atsushi thank him and avoided that confrontation by playing it off as being sleepy.
I’ve said this a couple times to people I’ve talked to before, but Dazai is the type of guy who you would talk to every day, invite you everywhere, and always go out with a lot of people, but if you were to be asked what you personally know about him, you’d be able to say nothing but surface level stuff everyone knows.
With anyone and everyone, there’s always this level of personal separation between them and Dazai, and they know it. Even if you are closer to him like Oda and Chuuya are and Dazai had willing shared stuff usually wouldn’t (mind you, it took Mimic for Dazai to share more about himself to Oda and Ango), he doesn’t let himself be that vulnerable or let himself go.
I’m arguing that the bandage are a more literal barrier between him and the world. Either to protect himself or to protect others from what they’ll realize about him. He hides himself because of what he is…or something like that at least, I don’t know what goes though his head. Im still trying to figure out his perception on things thoroughly and if he really cares about it.
The eye bandage has been talked to death by now. Yes yes, Dazai left his eye covered for depth perception in the dark and Oda uncovering it for him to see the light as well. We all know it. Still, I think it’s quite meaningful that when he’s finally having an heart-to-heart with Odasaku, he’s the one to open up that bandage. It doesn’t fix everything, but he’s been opened up to that possibility.
For Beast, Dazai having a bandage on the other eye can be seen as a misguided attempt of seeing everything with Oda in mind by seeing it all in the eye he uncovered, but still needing to cover the other to guide himself in the dark. He’s also a mirror image of the original Dazai if you’d like to see it like that.
In Side B, Dazai covers his whole face up. Ironically, while I called the bandages on his body a cover up for his inhumanity, the face bandages cover up his emotions, suppressant of himself. Dazai is not typically that emotional, but Side B Dazai is going through a lot when it comes to Odasaku… so while he’s covering his face to hide it from Oda, he is also hiding the overwhelming feelings he has.
In the ending of Side B where he takes off the dirty bandages, he’s so wracked with emotion he almost fails himself in his plans, and presumably forces himself to cover up his one eye again. When he falls to his death in the ending of Beast, bandages fall when he’s able to let himself go.
In the manga, Hoshikawa was evil and drew the bandages falling into Oda’s hands. Let’s say… they’re a symbol of his protect of Oda and remembrance of the scene where Oda pulls them off. You can even say they where still taken off with Oda’s influence!
OKAY ENOUGH, I’m talking you ears off. It seems I like the sound of my own voice and wanted to share as much as I could.
His goodbye to orphans always got me so emotional he deserved a farewell as well
In another his dream oda’s younger self said “there is no mercy in this world” this comic started from that line i wanna put his guilt, mourning and helplessness on this yeah i enjoy making myself cry
