i hate time travel.
that’s it. that’s the post.
i’m kidding
i need to rant about why i hate Fukuchi’s sword in bsd so i turned it into an analysis of why it freaking sucks
yes this is an actual analysis post of everything it’s capable of doing/we’ve seen it do in the manga so far. it’s just filled with my own rage at time travel being used in a manga i desperately want to keep liking but it’s testing me a bit here
🔺spoiler warning for the main manga and probably some other scenes i forgot i mentioned i’m just angry ranting here🔻
also general warning for some censored swearing (i’m very angry) also also i did minimal editing so expect a few typos. there’s also no tldr you either suffer through this with me or you don’t
the basics
Amenogozen a 1,500 year old katana that’s imbued with an ability. it was made by a gifted swordsmith for Shinto rituals, but some time later it fell into the hands of Fukuchi who used it in combat because of his own ability’s effect on the sword. it’s made out of basic metal, but imbued with the ability to cut through time and space. under normal circumstances, it can ‘cut’ 12 centimeters of space around itself, and .12 seconds of time into the future or the past. in Fukuchi’s hands using his ability Mirror Lion (enhance any weapon he’s holding in his hands by a hundredfold) this turns into 12 meters and 12 seconds, which is why he uses it as a weapon and major get out of dodge card.
what the actual hell is this. like, seriously. even the likes of Verlaine and Rimbaud were better than this as ability users with “transcendent abilities”. H.G. Wells was better than this and she only appears in a chaotic light novel but at least her time traveling ability makes sense & is used in a non-story-breaking way.
so Fukuchi literally is his own deus ex machina. he can give himself warnings from the “future” of any danger his “current/past” self about to be in, and send his sword up to 12 seconds in the past in order to avoid it. this is how he defeated literally everybody in the story so far. he gets defeated but oH nO My SwOrD cUt ThE pAsT fRoM tHe FuTuRe
can you tell how much i hate this? cuz it’s a lot
Fukuchi relies so heavily on his sword that in every battle we’ve seen with him, he’s lost at first. Aku and Atsushi? they teamed up finally in the end to be the shin soukoku Dazai wanted them to be and defeated Fukuchi. but NO his silly little sword cut into the past and cut Atsushi’s arm off, making it so that he didn’t kill Fukuchi and reversed his future-self’s death. do you see how this doesn’t make a lot of sense story-wise?
theoretically, nobody can defeat Fukuchi because he can just cut the past out of existence and reverse his defeat.
here’s another example for all of you Tachihara fans who are in pain (me too *sobs*). he has the ability to manipulate metal, meaning the ordinary metal-made sword is vulnerable to his ability. Tachihara even uses his gift at first to stop Fukuchi from cutting into the past and stabbing Tachihara, meaning his gift defeats the time and space cutting sword by not allowing it to cut time and space. it’s Fukuchi’s natural enemy, and Fukuchi even recognizes that during the fight. Tachihara quite literally understands the one way to defeat Fukuchi: take the sword away from him. however, Tachihara is still freaking defeated by Fukuchi simply because he can deus ex machina himself messages from the future to his past self in order to warn himself of any danger to come and basically predict the future and act on it on the same level as Dazai or Fyodor. it’s almost as if he has Oda’s ability Flawless, but instead of predicting the future in a fluid way that’s satisfying to the story, he just rewrites the past in order to erase his defeat so that he can continue being an antagonist with literally zero understandable motivations. seriously, am i missing something or is Fukuchi just an antagonist for the sake of being an antagonist? at least with Fyodor we know why he’s evil, and his parts of the story are always extremely satisfying to read. with Fukuchi it’s always just “omg yes an epic battle! character development moments! epic conclusions-! oh, wait, he just rewrote everything with his sword and now it’s 100% less satisfying. oh look another major character de-*gunshots*”
*ahem* anyway
a good portion of the fandom towards Fukuchi
i really don’t like time travel. more accurately, i don’t like time travel when it’s used like this. it is actively ruining the story for me. every fight where the sword is used we as the reader get so excited to see how the character outsmarts Fukuchi, who is a master swordsman and master of martial arts, and we’ve gotten 2 amazing fight scenes that show us ways to outsmart Fukuchi as well as give us character development that’s incredibly important to the story and the characters themselves. Aku keeping his promises and trusting Atsushi in battle, while also understanding that Dazai didn’t abandon him? epic, awesome character development. Atsushi finally trusting Aku in a fight and being able to work together like their predecessors (soukoku) to outsmart their enemy? fantastic, wonderful character development. f*cking thrown in the trash by Fukuchi’s sword of ‘i cannot be defeated because blah blah cut into the past/future to stop my defeat’. we better get another Aku & Atsushi scene soon or else all of that character development will actually be a complete and utter waste of panels and brain space.
Tachihara’s character development is amazing. he’s manipulated against his will and unbeknownst to himself by the page from the Book, but because he’s a mafioso he’s able to realize he’s being tricked. he even understands the importance of his connections in the Mafia despite being a Hunting Dog! he feels remorse for hurting his friends and betraying them! that. is. amazing. character development. his fight with Fukuchi proves that he knows where his loyalties are, which is with the Port Mafia because Fukuchi is the enemy behind it all. Tachihara even recognized that there was a bigger evil at play, but the page and his ties to the Hunting Dogs blinded him to the truth. he rejects being a Hunting Dog in order to realize his identity as a mafioso, and knows that it’s Fukuchi’s fault for being the villain that he wasn’t able to stay a Hunting Dog with that small group of close friends. he’s even able to defeat Fukuchi at first by taking his sword away, and he’s powerful enough that Fukuchi sees Tachihara as his natural enemy because of his ability. Tachihara has the possibility to single handedly defeat Fukuchi! but his FREAKING SWORD OF F*CK YOU erases ALL OF IT
*sigh*
**i can recognize him as an antagonist who wants to get rid of politicians who mindlessly create war just because they can and whatever heavenly comparison to angels that Fukuchi makes but honestly it just sounds like a different version of attack on titan’s final season plot or whatever (i’ve only seen season 1 & seen some memes and heard my friends complain so i’m just guessing).
**yeah i know like a paragraph ago i just said i didn’t understand his motivations but i remembered this when i reread Tachihara’s fight scene & he has a villain monologue moment explaining his motivation so yeah.
also in chapter 102.5:
what. what the f*ck.
so his future self went and searched all the areas of the huge ass airport so that his past & current self didn’t have to? how the hell does that make sense?
let me tell you how i believe time works
the future only exists because of the current, meaning his current self creates the future that his future self exists in. this makes sense since he’s able to alter the current by changing the past. with this scenario, it literally is just pure laziness to me. the future where the Kunikida and Tanizaki potentially saved Aya isn’t even shown because somehow his future, current and past selves are literally 3 different things in this story. his future self went and did this outside of our view, and his current self (in this scene) receives the messages & saves hours of time and can immediately find the ADA members in the airport thanks to his future self. what. the hell. are we not allowed to have anything anymore? is Fukuchi just God in this story now? we couldn’t get an escape scene or a fight scene with vampire Aku versus Kunikida and Tanizaki, or a horde of vampires even?
it would’ve been 100% more epic to have Tanizaki have to use his ability to hide the group and create illusions in order to escape the airport. the suspense would be palpable in that situation. plus we could also have Fukuchi searching for them as well but being confused by the illusions & unable to use his god mode powers to send himself messages as to where they are because he just doesn’t know. that would’ve been way better tbh.
plus this just muddles the basic understanding of time to me. it got a little iffy in the Tachihara fight since Fukuchi stabs into the future in order to defeat Tachihara, but it kind of made sense at least. in chapter 102.5 it really just doesn’t to me, it seems like his future self is able to just do stuff and allow his current self to save time by not existing in that future. i guess if i look at it as he’s technically altering the past but we’re just not seeing it it still makes sense, but this is what i mean when time travel is confusing and should be kept out of media where it’s used to just cut things out of the story or make an excuse for events to be rewritten.
ok i just had to get that out of my system. but seriously, if Fukuchi doesn’t end up dying soon & continues to use his deus ex machina sword to ruin the story i might just stop reading until this arc is over. it’s that bad to me.
mini theory: Dogra Magra needs to come back for a chapter so he can die and this arc can end
Q’s ability should theoretically make it so that he’s unable to warn his past self of danger, since his current self will be hallucinating and handicapped by Q’s mind control. this would leave him vulnerable to attacks and able to be defeated by literally anyone basically. the only issue is Dogra Magra will need to be used similarly to how it’s used in tandem with Steinbeck’s ability so that Fukuchi doesn’t see it coming and is unknowingly put under its control. as far as we know, there’s no counter to Dogra Magra other than Dazai’s ability so Fukuchi will be weak to it. plus if he isn’t able to detect when he falls under the ability’s spell then he won’t be able to warn himself, especially if it’s longer than 12 seconds in the past. and that’s the other thing, if literally any attack happens that’s time-based and happens even 13 seconds in the past, Fukuchi won’t be able to avoid it. this is similar to how Oda’s ability was weak to time-based attacks as well where he picked up the poison-coated ball and then realized the danger only after picking it up because it took 7 or 8 seconds for the danger to arrive, which is longer than Flawless allows him to see into the future.