Would you ever do a Fukuchi meta? I'd love to read your thoughts on him and his role in the story.
Fukuchi is an interesting character in the fact that he is not what anyone expects him to be, and he never does what's expected of him. I feel like he doesn't get discussed a lot, for many reasons, one being he's the reason this arc is dragging, the second he's an antagonist who's not a pretty anime boy, he's also kind of soaked up screentime from DOS who all indications point to is the longterm more important antagonist. However there's still a lot going on with his character, the hunting dogs may be late additions to the story and their arc may have like cannibalized the whole narrative but they're still fantastic characters in their own right.
1. The Two Fukus
So Fukuichi's character really starts when he is revealed to be Kamui, turning him from what was a pretty shallow foil for Fukuzawa, an old buddy and wise mentor type just on the hunting dogs not the detective agency into the prime antagonist of the arc. I call this plot twist, the surprise twist that is not really a surprise. After all despite Dos being effectively billed as the main villain of the decay of angels, and Sigma and Goggol being his instruments he has been effectively in prison the whole arc. It is the hunting dogs who have dogged the detective agency every step of the way.
A lot of what makes Fukuichi's character and the hound dogs as a whole so meta-textually interesting is the way he plays with all of these expectations. After all, why would we expect anyone other than Fukuichi to be the main villain of the arc? The antagonist has always been the hunting dogs. They've been shown to be both brutal and relentless. They have amoral members like Jouno and Teruko who are perfectly willing to employ torture both psychological and physical to their enemies. Jouno even admits that he enjoys it, and he doesn't even particularly care if the person he's hunting is innocent or not because it's not his job to sort out who is innocent and guilty it's his job to just hunt down whoever he's pointed at to the best of his ability.
Yet it's surprising as a reader that the leader of the Hunting Dogs is the main antagonist of the arc, and the one responsible for framing the detective agency in the first place? And why is that?
Perhaps, because the natural assumption is that because the Hunting Dogs are working with the government, instead of say outright criminals like the Port Mafia that they must have some honorable reason for what they are doing. They are recognized by the government and given that position of privilege and power so therefore their government approved justice must be the right justice.
In the way we ignore basically every sign that the Hunting Dogs are corrupt and a perversion of justice because they have government backing, we also tend to just assume governments themselves are by default good because they create and maintain laws.
We assume because the government is just, that the framing of the Detective Agency is just a misunderstanding, or a malicious manipulation by Fyodor to hurt our heroes. That once the framing of the detective agency is cleared up then of course everything will go back to normal, because the problem is not how the Hunting Dog relentlessly pursue their targets and their perverted wielding of justice, it's just they've got the wrong guys. If they were to pursue actually guilty people with those same methods than that's totally okay. Which is why for the vast majority of this arc, the Detective Agency only cares about clearing their names assuming naturally this will solve all problems.
This all comes to a head of course when it's revealed, not only does Fukuichi already know that the detective agency is innocent, he is the one who framed them to move his agenda forward. Fukuichi is in an instant changed from what looked to be the most honorable and reasonable of the hunting dogs, to traitor despite being close friend and personal foil of Fukuzawa himself the moral backbone fo the detective agency.
And I think a lot about what is interesting about Fukuichi's character is the subversion of what he represents. Fukuzawa is a trustworthy authority figure, he's also a character who is steeped in traditionalism, and a character of the older generation. We trust him because we are told to trust our elders and believe the previous gen has our best interests in mind. Despite the fact that children are pretty regularly exploited in Bungou Stray Dogs, and we have tales of horrible poverty and abuse in many of the younger generations backstories we still believe that older generation and organizations like the government are keeping the peace and doing the best they can.
The world of BSD as shown to us if anything is one that has the thin veneer of peace and order, and yet is clearly ravaged not only by a terrible war in recent history, but also suffers from extreme proverty and unrest in areas, not to mention crime so bad it requires leaving an organization that deals in human trafficking, organ harvesting, drug trading on the regular like the port mafia in power because it acts like a crime deterrent. Fukuichi convinces the world's assembled governing bodies that the world itself teetering on the brink of chaos is this way because of "terrorists" of a few bad eggs like dostoevsky and his ilk, and not just a natural result of what seems to be a really shoddy governmental system that's bad at keeping the peace.
And we're given a pretty obvious reason as to why the government as depicted in Bungou Stray Dogs is so poorly constructed to begin with, and it's because rather than using you know, social programs, taxes, services for the public good like governments are supposed to do the government instead focuses on fighting enemies and maintaining order not only through an iron fist but also through the empowerment of a select few powerful individuals. This is something really made worse by ability users, of cousre in a world where superpowered individuals exist one of the government's main way of enforcing its power is by supersoldiers. It seems obvious if you think about it.
So Fukuichi's character if anything reads to me as a criticism not only of the blind faith the citizens and even the good guys like the detective agency have in a government that has so clearly failed its population as an institution, but also the readers as well and our tendency to trust governments and institutions like the police and the military even when they've pretty obviously failed or abused their position. And why? Well, one of the biggest reasons is because people are tempted to simplify what is a messy reality into a black and white conflict between heroes and villains. It all starts with a character we naturally assume to be a good person, a war hero, a person who wields justice in the name of law and order turning out to be a selfish manipulator.
The subversion around Fukuichi's character only builds from there. First, Atsushi having main character privilege and plot armor there's never really been a character that's able to stand up to the tiger before. Atsushi won the super power lottery, he has super healing, on top of one of the naturally strongest abilities even though he's not actually that good of a fighter. The first thing we're shown is Atsushi is absolutely useless in a fight against Fukuichi.Main character privilege doesn't apply anymore. Atsushi's not the hero anymore, in fact in one perspective he is fighting a hero who has saved the world several times on a scale Atsushi as a teenage boy doesn't really udnerstand.
The first thing Fukuichi does is cut Atsushi's leg off and order him to stand, because the pain he's facing right now is absolutely nothing compared to what Fukuichi has been through. Atsushi's not facing off against someone with a powerful ability, but a seasoned hero who far outstrips his combat experience in every step of the word. After which point he imediately paralyzes Atsushi with fear and cuts off his plucky hero attitude.
Fukuichi is unique among all of Bungou Stray Dogs antagonist in how genuine a threat he is. Nothing the heroes throw at him works. Dazai's near omniscient planning ability fails. The Shin Soukoku combination which has always beaten any enemy that it was up against before not only doesn't win the fight, but all they can manage to do is flee in shame after sacrificing Akutagawa's life.
Fukuichi doesn't really conform to any narrative expectation of him at all. After all he was the antaagonist who showed up at the end of the arc, he was supposed to be put down by the Soukoku combination like a final boss and after they retrieved the page from him, the detective agency would be proven innocent and then everything would reset to status quo like it did after Fitzgerald and the Cannibalism arc. But... thats not what happened. Not only does he subvert the expectations of the narrative, but the characters themselves keep trying to make Fukuichi conform to a more easy to understand character. After all one of the first thing Atsushi shouts at him is that he must have suffered from a tragic backstory during the war time that is responsible for his fall.
We learn right away he did experience the horrors of war, but he wasn't the victim in that case, he was the crimminal who committed war crimes. He's tormented not by actions done to him, but rather actions he did to others.
Fukuichi makes it clear to Atsushi the much harder to digest idea, that it was the needs of the government itself and the "greater good" that even the detective agency is supposedly fighting for that required him to be a monster. Something that Atsushi immediately rebuffs and simply labels him as an evil to be stopped.
Which is interesting because the Hunting Dogs have always been about doing evil in order to pursue absolute justice. But once again, we as the audience misinterpret this to mean well they're only being cruel and ruthless on people who are crimminals and therefore deserve it. We miss out on the really obvious fact that if they're willing to act this inhumane with crimminals, then really how far away are they from practicing that same cruelty on completely innocent people.
Fukuichi then goes on to express a very budhist idea.
The eight worldly concerns or eight worldly dharmas (Skt. aṣṭalokadharma; P. aṭṭhalokadhamma; T. འཇིག་རྟེན་ཆོས་བརྒྱད་, ‘jig rten chos brgyad) are a set of worldly or mundane concerns that generally motivate the actions of ordinary beings.[1] They are:
hope for pleasure and fear of pain,
hope for gain and fear of loss,
hope for praise and fear of blame,
hope for good reputation and fear of bad reputation.
Preoccupation with these worldly concerns is said to be an obstacle to genuine spiritual practice.
Basically budhism elaborates on the concept that the reason evil or misfortune exists in the world on such a grand scale is because it is perpetuated by everyone, normal, average people are so preoccupied by normal every day concerns that they don't spend their lives living in pursuit of justice or the right thing.
Which is essentially the concept that Fukuichi's entire character revolves around, because most normal people don't pursue justice, because the vast majority of people are weak, because they do what is easy rather than what's right they force the burden on heroes like Fukuichi. People rely on narratives of heroes, of good and evil, because they don't want to face the very mundane corruption of the world around them. Fukuchi is a monster and a tyrant but he's also someone who has been forced into that role, because both he, and everyone around him had to sacrifice their humanity for the sake of the so called "Common Good". Fukuichi's suffering is extremely profound, even as he freely hurts others and betrays close friends and allies. He mentions to himself that his own existence is so painful, he'd rather have been nothing and not have been born in the first place. He doesn't even seem to want to be doing the things he is doing, but continues on out of necessity.
Fukuichi's methods are selfish manipulation and cruel betrayal of his own allies the moment they call his actions into question and stand up against him, and yet he seems to carry it out for entirely selfless reasons. Fukuichi himself remarks on his actions not like they're enjoyable, but they are necessary suffering he must inflict on others and the world, like they are karma, fate, like justice isn't just an idea but rather an inevitable force like gravity.
He is not only made into a human greater than all of humanity by the needs of both government and the common man, he also makes himself into a superior human being in order to strike back against those things.
The subversion of expectations continues and continues. Fukuichi claims he does everything for the sake of his own allies, and then procees to butcher said allies as he seizes control. He claims to be anti-government, but his goals from what Ranpo can suss out from them are sheer world domination. He acts like an anarachist, but his method seems to be making himself dictator of the world.
The main draw of Fukuichi's character is that he is pretty impossible to pin down, which is exactly why his motivation despite being the focus of chapters upon chapters worth of scrutiny also hasn't been revealed to us yet. He gets even more screentime and focus then Dotsoevsky as of late, and yet he's just as mysterious to the audience. He doesn't conform to the shallow ideas of heroism and justice carried by characters like Atsushi who like to play hero, hence why Teruko gets extremely angry when Atsushi tries to convince her the one hunting dog who remained loyal without being manipulated to change sides with mere pretty words.
In the most recent chapters we are shown again two people desperately trying to fit Fukuichi into a narrative, the first being the government official who wants an easy solution, that Fukuichi is still a hero and his extreme actions are secretly a way of saving the world. The second being Fukuzawa who believes his old friend only wants selfish revenge for him and his comrades. Only for both of them to turn out to be wrong with their very black and white answers.
It's the desire for easy narratives in the first place, that create people like Fukuichi and allow him to manipulate people so easily. Interesting when you consider the origin of Fukuichi's name and his connection to Fukuzawa, an author whose main goal in life was to educate the masses and make the common people able to read and understand the current events in the newspaper.
It's the weakness of the common man that has created someone like Fukuichi by requiring him to be superhuman, and yet at the same time that seems to be his greatest weakness as well.
Fukuichi was created out on the battlefield, he was no one before that point, and he's also so self loathing he desires to just not exist. So, the perspective he's completely seperated from is that of an average, ordinary person, which is why even up until now he hasn't been able to find one simple girl running away with Dracula's head. That is what is likely going to be his undoing as well, not a defeat handed to him by a hero, but rather an ordinary and average human stopping him.
Which I believe will fulfill Fukuichi's goals and wishes in a way, even if it's not the extreme reforms of the world he wished for, he is still someone who desperately wants the burden of heroism to be lifted from him. It's not just politicians who send soldiers to war, but also the average people who live far away from that conflict and yet support the jingoistic and nationalist attitudes of the country they inhabit. So what can better prevent those same wars, then average people stepping up in gerater numbers in the place of heroes.
