What are your thoughts on Odasaku?
my insanity button just got SLAPPED. i had an essay about oda and dazai dynamic misconceptions from november that has been rotting in drafts all this time because i intended to reread dark era and tdipud in full before i edited it but! i have not had time and well. this is basically the perfect opportunity to shove that at people!
the main thing i see people talk about on fandom oda opinions is that his importance and bond w dazai is dismissed, but honestly i think the bigger problem is the opposite. theres this odd idealised version of oda where hes a perfect saint, and specifically was perfect to and for dazai. like nooooo dont erase all of someones flaws and deny them their nuance and their humanity.... noooo dont do that while youre reading the humanity manga...
i think a lot of this links back to mischaracterisation of dazai (and its kind of essential to understand him to understand oda, given oda is so narratively tied to dazai). theres a pessimistic view of dazai where people see him as logical first and human somewhere far beneath second or not at all, depending on the person (antithetical to the whole point of his character, but i digress). and because of this, theres an odd trust in his opinions about people? like people think he's not swayed by emotions so his perspective on people can be largely trusted. which is vastly untrue. this means that people dont dissect his opinion of oda because they dont consider that its possible to see someone through dazais eyes in a gentler light than the reality.
so we end up with things like people thinking oda has never made mistakes, and that he was a perfect friend (or god forbid, parental figure) to dazai, or three and a half steps further into what the fuck are you talking about and where did you get this from, this oda exceptionalism thing where its insisted that oda was "the only person" who did this that and the other for dazai. "he was the only one that was really there for dazai because he's the only one that understood him and the only one that sees him as a child and is the only person that's a good friend to him etcetc forever"
and thats just not? true? oda is actually quite careful NOT to get too close to dazai or overstep in any way ever, like a 'not my circus not my monkeys' situation (one that ango, bless him, would have experienced heart problems over if that trio had lasted any longer - really his betrayal was for his own health), despite the fact that dazai leaves the door to knowing him ajar in a way that he wouldnt for Most other people, but oda doesnt push. hes invited in but he avoids the entrance. dazais an uncomfortable person to know deeply, and oda doesnt Look until hes dying and there are zero consequences and he doesnt have to deal with it. its like people just took him saying 'i know my friend better than anyone' while hes on his death bed and trying to set dazai on a path that wont lead to him offing himself and went so true king this is true of you always and forever!
seeing dazai for his age is also not exclusive to oda the way people say it is. most obviously, chuuya and dazai both refer to each other as kid/child in fifteen (which, while derogatory, given both are characters treated as older than they really are, says quite a bit abt their dynamic), and its obvious chuuya recognised he was young in that manga panel from their reunion where he's thinking abt pm dazai. i think odas particular quotes on it are. evocative. and that overshadows the fact that its not unique to him.
dazai clearly finds comfort in him, but thats not necessarily because of anything oda actually Does. a lot of it is because oda isnt covered in 1000 levels of artifice like most everyone else dazai is surrounded with. we know from the dark era ln that dazai talked about that to mori, and mori tells oda what dazai said, and oda is immediately dismissive of it. hes not a 'balm to anyones soul', hes just a 22 year old guy. and i think that quote is kind of. the most important thing we get from him. you could very well interpret it as just him being oblivious and i think it partially is (in which case, you cant also be suggesting he has always had some deep understanding of dazai but hey.). more importantly, he IS just a 22 year old guy. his whole tragedy is that his ability to exercise the moral boundaries hes Built for himself (with no small amount of effort given where he starts out, mind you) gets shattered by one singular event. he's not a saint, he's just a guy and when pushed, that whole no-killing thing implodes and he knowingly gives up on his life in pursuit of justice/revenge
i do also wanna point out that the obsession with oda being someone totally unique to dazai kind of devalues the relationship dazai has with ango. dazais whole 'everything worth wanting is lost the moment i obtain it' thing is about losing ango, and yes by extension the friendship between the three of them, but its About ango. oda and dazai dont need to have a Completely Different And Unique Relationship for it to have value. it has value for what it is!!!!! its very important!!! that doesnt mean every single trait of it cannot be found in other relationships in dazais life???
now. odas imaginary perfect goodness. i would like to gently remind everyone that a big reason he decides he doesnt want to kill people was bc he worried it would interfere with his budding fanfiction career (im exaggerating to up my funny guy meter, and i do actually think the way he talks about this is compelling, esp as a writer myself, but still). oda cares about helping people, but that isnt all he is. he also didnt magically change dazai as a person, he just encourages him to alter his own circumstances to facilitate something dazai already does naturally. dazais promise to oda is not the only thing that propels him, his motivations have Always been centred on protecting people. both dazai and oda are stories of the capability to change, influenced by others yes, but not controlled by them. dazai's good deeds are not tied to oda any more than oda's can be said to be tied to natsume or to fukuzawa. change is an autonomous process, and because of this, oda's goodness isnt infallible. he's not caged to his ways by some advice he got and despite the name of his ability, he is not in fact flawless. hes just a 22 year old guy.
the whole idea of beast is built on this same thing. i think a lot of people who are captivated by the oda dazai dynamic sort of romanticise beast and see what dazai does as an act of love, but like. dazai sees oda as so much more important than himself, as More Deserving of Life than himself (dehumanising them both while doing so), and he fucks over a universe just to keep oda alive. it isnt Supposed to Happen. which is interesting given theres a repeating idea in bsd of the dehumanisation of not dying when you're supposed to. oda is supposed to die. he dies before he can write his damn book in every universe except the one dazai squeezes into shape for him. beast is all wrong because its built on making a man into an ideal instead of just. a man. and beast dazai didn't even know him.
just finishing off by saying that oda is not a father or a brother to dazai, hes not even got a particularly unique understanding of him. the important part of their relationship is that theyre friends. that has value in and of itself, especially given oda uses that word about dazai explicitly when he is dying. it doesnt need to be made into anything else to make it seem more important. it IS important as it is.