#bsd 104

[yurislava]

chapter 104 fukuchi you will always be famous for your ambiguous lines to fukuzawa

[linkspooky]

Bungo Stray Dogs 104 Thoughts

This latest chapter has shown that despite all of Atsushi’s efforts to be some kind of “hero of justice” he is at heart a scared little child. Atsushi despite aspiring to save people, only sees the world in incredibly strict categories of black and white. Whenever he is presented with a situation that is slightly gray he has no idea what to do. 

1. Black and White 

This entire arc is about challenging the notion of heroes or simple black and whites. After all, the main villain of the arc is a war hero and old friend of Fukuzawa, teamed up with the “Demon” Fyodor to achieve the same objective. The heroes the detective agency, are framed for murder and then are easily turned into villains in everyone else’s eyes no matter how many good deeds they had done in the past. 

The arc itself starts with someone Atsushi refers to as a villain, immediately showing him that he’s capable of feeling remorse for his actions and chooses to murder anyway in pursuit of an ideology. 

This reseponse totally throws Atsushi, and if I had to list a reason why it would be precisely because Atsushi has no ideology whatsoever. His ideals are “Save people”, but even that is something he only believes because it was beaten into him. It’s important to remember Atsushi didn’t form his own morals identity and sense of right and wrong like a healthy individual, he had his current ideas of good and evil beaten into him by his abuser. 

His entire personality is built around trying to please Teacher and be the kind of student he would be proud of, a dead man, who beat into the him the lesson if he is not able to protect others he is worthless, and that evil people are one dimmensional monsters who uses violence to hurt other people. Even the idea that Gogol can have any kind of ideology confuses him because all his teacher taught him was that evil people are one dimmensional villains that only think of hurting others. 

When presented with any kind of situation that’s difficult or requires thinking Atusshi has a hard time coping, because Atsushi’s own sense of self is underdeveloped. 

Atsushi has extremely negative amounts of self esteem and self confidence, if he’s not leaping into danger, or being told what to do he basically has an incredibly hard time making a decision. What he hates worst of all is to have to make a decision entirely on his own as an individual because Atsushi has no trust in himself to make the right choice. That’s basically what having a low-self worth means, Atsushi is continually anxious and indecisive because he lives to please other people and does almost nothing for himself. 

He is etnerally a little boy and while he may have grown stronger he hasn’t really grown up, not really, Beast Au is once again incredibly telling of Atsushi’s mental state. When Atsushi imagines the person he would have liked to become, he imagines himself as a crayon drawing of a superhero being patted on the head by his abusive sensei. He imagines all the happy orphans giving him an applause. It’s a child’s dream and what Atsushi desperately wanted the orphanage to have been instead of the horrifying place he grew up. 

Beast even says it outright. Atsushi is incredibly emotionally undedeveloped, because he is in a much healthier environment now he hasn’t really healed from his initial trauma. He is still essentially trying to earn a dead man’s praise and live the way that man taught him rather than trying to deveop a sense of self or his own identity or figure out how he wants to live. 

If anything, this arc has made it harder and harder for Atsushi to grow in this way, because the detective agency has been scattered to the wind, and he has spent basically the whole time continually running away and in distress. 

So returning to the beginning, this entire time Atsushi has been facing moral greys. They had to make a deal with the Mafia in order to survive and even surrender one of their members. Atsushi had to cooperate with Fitzgerald, the villain he defeated in his great act of saving the city. They are being hunted by war heroes, the hunting dogs, people who are known for obsessively hunting and destroying their enemies no matter what. A team that features people like Tecchou, who take sadistic pleasure in torturing the people they take down. 

People who don’t really care if the Detective Agency are guilty or not, because they are Just Following Orders TM. One of them even engineered the framing of the detective agency in the first place. 

It makes sense that Atushi cannot make decisions, because making your own decisions requires a strong sense of self, independence and even the basic ability to be confident in the decisions you make. Atsushi’s greatest fear however is being alone. The whole arc itself is Atsushi having his allies chipped away one by one until he is finally alone, and he freezes up. 

This is what hapepsn when you live to pelase other people you become unable to think for yourself. Atsushi is so paralyzed by the idea of being alone, because suddenly then all the responsibility falls on him. Atsushi had the idea that if he’s not able to save everyone then he’s not even allowed to live beat into his head. This is not a mentally healthy person who can handle making mistakes. If Atsushi is not the hero he’s no one. He’s destroyed by both the weight of responsibility and the fear of losing everyone and that will mean reverting to his orphanage days. 

Which is where we get to the latest chapter. Atsushi once again is asked to make a decision on his own, and freezes up because he has no idea what to do. Remember as I established above, Atsushi has no idea of morality outside of imagining himself as a comic book hero. His idea of what a good person is is a crayon drawing. His morals are given to him by other people. He mainly follows Dazai’s and the Agency’s plans rather than thinking for hismelf because he is afraid to be alone. Atsushi himself is a caring and compassionate person, but when he tries to talk about ideals to others he has no idea what he’s talking about. 

Which is what the Hunting Dog calls him out on, Atsushi has no idea what he’s talking about he’s only spouting words. The Hunting Dog knowing the full truth decided of her own free will to side with the commander making a moral judgement, so Atsushi who has like no moral reasoning behind his own actions besides “heroes good, villains bad” can’t convince her to take his side. 

The Battle the Hunting Dog challenges him too is an ideological one not a physical one, which is his exact weakness because Atsushi has no ideals besides (save people otherwise you’re a completely worthless person). All Atsushi has to do to leave the room and help others is once again, make a moral decision, decide what is right for himself. 

But Atsushi cannot decide for himself, because he still revolves himself around pleasing everyone else and gaining their praise instead of thinking for himself. WHen presented with a morally gray situation and called upon to do these things for himself Atsushi once again struggles under the pressure. 

On top of that Atsushi’s pose even mirrors the name of the defense secretary who cannot believe Fukuichi’s actions, and begs him to return to being the selfless hero who saved people multiple times. 

The people of this world are begging for these characters to have more simplistic motivations for everything to be about heroes and villains again, but as the story has gone on longer things haev gotten more complex, and it’s up to characters like Atsushi to grow and adapt. To struggle to live in a more complicated way to world even though there is no easy way to live. 

[reneray]

(!!this post includes major manga spoilers!!) the current state of the mafia…

the manga is a mess and im living for it

[amethystroselily]

If Fukuchi actually did play a part in Fukuzawa saving Yosano like I was talking about earlier that could create an insane dynamic between Mori and Fukuchi.

Fukuchi: I may be trying to take over the world but at least I’m not a child abuser.

Mori: I may be a child abuser but at least I’m not trying to take over the world.

And technically their moral qualms with each other would be valid.

[midwinterrmemento]

(**Major BSD manga spoilers below!**)

Okay but like… now I’m really curious what’s going on in Teruko’s mind, and what she’s going to do next.

Let’s talk about her a little bit. 👀

Since the Hunting Dogs were first introduced in the story, I would say she’s been the hardest for me to figure out—but even though she came right out and said in this chapter that she knows the truth about Fukuchi and still sides with him, that only raises more questions for me.

Of course, Teruko has always been obvious about her affection for Fukuchi, but ngl sometimes she was so obvious about it that it made me doubt her sincerity a little bit? Take this panel from Chapter 60, for instance:

I don’t know if it’s just me, but honestly, this panel has always felt a little odd to me? Especially the look on her face on the top left? Jouno doesn’t seem to think she’s lying, or at least he didn’t say so, but if that really is the case, then where exactly does Teruko’s intense devotion to Fukuchi come from?

If she knew that he was the mastermind all along, then what was she thinking when she heard that her comrades in the Hunting Dogs were kinda going off the grid one by one? Would it really make no difference to her if she knew what Fukuchi did to Jouno and Tachihara? Especially Tachi, seeing as they seem to have a particular bond, which we saw from their teamwork during the Sky Casino arc. What must’ve gone through her mind when she watched the video Tachihara made, defending the Agency?

Because obviously, she does care. And I can’t be convinced otherwise.

Think about the shadow that falls over her eyes when she’s done watching Tachihara’s video.

And then, not long after, how dull her eyes look when she reports to Fukuchi that she’s lost contact with Tecchou.

As far as I can remember, this is the first time we’ve seen that kind of look on her face? Like… to me, she seems kind of jaded, almost resigned. And that leads me to wonder.

We still don’t know much about Teruko’s past or her motivations, but she clearly takes her role as a Hunting Dog very seriously. Does she show… sadistic tendencies? Sure. But, kind of like Jouno, she seems to find some satisfaction in protecting the innocent—and punishing the villains in order to do so. Just look at her conviction here:

The Teruko we’ve seen in the last few chapters has been very different than the Teruko we see here (at least in my opinion). Part of me wonders whether something happened between then and now—like, if she actually didn’t always know that Fukuchi was the mastermind, but somehow found out later on? What if he approached her at some point and invited her to join the Decay of Angels, like he did with Jouno?

In any case, I really wasn’t expecting things to take this kind of turn with her, and right now I can only think of a few possible explanations.

If she really is loyal to Fukuchi, as she claims…

It’s because of her genuine respect for him (which seems more and more unlikely to me with time idk), or at the very least, because she believes that his plans really will stop the world from becoming the “garbage” that she describes up there in Chapter 76.

It’s because she fears his power, or maybe something has prompted her to come to the conclusion that trying to defeat him—or evil in general—is pointless. Imo, the way she got so upset with Atsushi in this most recent chapter for saying that there was still enough time to stop him kinda supports this.

But I also don’t want to rule out the possibility that she’s lying, and that she really isn’t as devoted to Fukuchi as she has seemed all along. After all, she’s already proven that she’s capable of surprises. If things continue to get worse, and if her teammates continue to get hurt (or… y’know), I wonder if that would be enough to push her to action.

I think the key factor here is how much she knows. Clearly, she understands that something bad has happened to Tachihara and the others, but does she know the extent of it? Would it change her mind if she were to encounter one of them in vampire form, and witness exactly what Fukuchi did to them? Because we all know whose side Tecchou would end up on if he knew the whole truth.

So, then there’s secret option #3, and the one I’m hoping for the most: all of this, such as her open adoration for Fukuchi since her very first introduction, has all been an attempt for her to gain his trust. Because it really doesn’t seem to me that Fukuchi would be expecting her to turn on him at this point, it would be a hell of a twist if she was the one to take him down now.

All in all, Teruko is such an interesting and under-analyzed character, and this chapter has me questioning everything I thought I knew about her. I don’t know about anyone else, but when the BSD manga resumes in the fall, I’m hoping that we’ll finally get a better understanding of who she really is. As it stands right now, she’s in a very unique position, since she’s basically the last Hunting Dog standing, and I’m really excited to see what she’s going to do, knowing that.

[mayday505]

Chuuya and Teruko have similar speech patterns in jp in the manga. And i find that hilarious BC I KNOW ITS AN ARCHETYPE in manga n anime but the fact that the small aggressive characters all speak with similar inflections/dialects is so amusing to me

Now let them interact.

[mr87915]

// BSD 104 Spoilers I find it very interesting that Fukuchi and Mori end up at the same island to fight in Great War I wonder if they met and how that went down - its all very interesting and I can’t wait to see what Asagiri does with it 

[miammey]

BSD Chapter Screaming Time!!

Spoilers for chapter 104 (or 103.5?) ahead!!!

TERUKO FREED HIM, fuck yeah!!!

She makes me sad sometimes, I wanna know what’s happening

The Hunting Dogs continue to have zero chill, like holy shit Teruko, what did that cot do to you?? Did Atsushi say something to piss her off??

Back to the fukufuku divorce fight!!

Well that’s not absolutely terrifying, I can see where Tecchou learned that from

DAD NO!!!

OH MY GOD LITTLE BABY THEM!!!

Overall thoughts, another short chapter, but I’m happy we saw more Teruko and baby fukufuku, and once again we’re gonna need to wait patiently for the next chapter