akai-koutei replied to your post “(1) If Mori dies, does Elise also vanish? Is it possible for an...”
Hmm, I feel like there are some misconceptions being caused by a negative opinion of Mori's character. He did very much save Dazai, no quotation marks on the matter, as he has saved others. And he has never targeted Oda's orphans at all, that was Mimic's work. He has indeed done evil deeds, but I feel this is overlooking that he is not 100% about that and putting more blame on him than his actual deeds.
Elise, on the other hand, is basically Mori's RP character, as her personality and looks are tailored by him. If she were in any way transferred out of him and into a new owner, she'd become physically and mentally different, suited to that new person's desire - so she wouldn't be the blonde child named Elise anymore, nor keep her personality. I feel it's important to clarify that due to her nature, it's impossible to say she is being abused or mistreated by her creator.
There are some ideas here that I like, such as considering how the previous soukoku will end, but those points felt very strange and I had to comment on them, my apologies
Hey! No worries about your comment; I love discussing things from different perspectives, so feel free to comment whatever/whenever you’d like.
To clarify, I actually don’t have a negative opinion of Mori in terms of the character related to his specific role within the story (even if I dislike what he does). I think he’s a very well written antagonist with well-crafted build up and genuine complexity. I also think Beast AU casts a tragic light to his character (as he seems far healthier of a human being and key to that is how Elise is portrayed). In some ways I see Elise as symbolic of how Mori doesn’t want to grow past his childish utilitarian way of seeing the world, and that will not end well for him.
That said, the reason I said what I did is that I personally think what he does to Elise is framed as morally condemnable (Fukuzawa’s comment comes to mind), and to what extent she is human is something I think the story invites us to debate--admittedly, without an easy answer. BSD explores rather than preaches; Elise’s humanity is certainly... less obvious and far more debatable than Sigma’s, as it’s not as if she has an arc, but Mori did program her to have her own desires, so to what extent are those her own? I do think the story invites us to ask questions of this, but I also get people landing on a “she’s not a person” perspective (differently than with Sigma) and also not wanting to use the term abuse in that case, so that’s fair.
The one part I do disagree on, though, is regarding Mimic--unless it’s different in the novel! But at least in the anime (all I have to go on until the translated novel comes out next month #bless), Mori did tell Mimic where to find them and knew that something happening to them would spur Oda to act.
I never questioned this as being canon (but maybe I should have) because it’s another habit of Mori’s that we’ve seen in the main story, a habit that isn’t inherently bad but can be used as such: avoiding getting his hands dirty in whatever ways he can, but orchestrating events to fall as he wants them (he foils Dazai and Fyodor in that). But in my point of view, even if Mimic was ultimately the ones who killed Oda’s orphans, Mori is still morally responsible, unless this is not the case in the novel (please tell me if so!) It’s not that I think he was gleeful about having kids die or had that as a goal of his--more that he deemed it a necessary sacrifice--but it still has the same end result (dead kids to get what he wants) whether or not he was gleefully crowing about it or reticent (Gogol’s character explores this very conundrum but I’m getting off topic, so I’ll stop here).
Anyways, that was the rationale behind why I said as much, if that helps. Hope you don’t mind the discussion, but since you commented I figured you wouldn’t! :)
