#Shhhhh dont look too closely youll realize this is all meaningless

[anti-dazai-blog]

The three generations of Double Black and their purpose, or lack thereof

In honor of my birthday, I was planning on making an analysis of whichever character has a birthday closest to mine. However, it seems like my birthday falls directly in between Natsume’s and Mori’s birthday (February 9th and 17th respectively, with my birthday being February 13th).

Which means I gotta combine the two and turn this into a closer look at the three generations of Double Black.

[for the sake of clarity I’ve decided to use “double black” here instead of soukoku, since soukoku is used more in reference to the ship than the duo]

Please note that I’m getting a lot of information from the bsd wiki, which I know isn’t always so accurate, but going through every chapter and light novel with Natsume or mention of the original framework he set up would not be a doable amount of work for me to complete today.

Natsume is still a figure of mystery in the BSD universe. We don’t know much about him—although he’s seen as some ultimate “good” in the sense that anything he says or does is considered “correct” by the characters he has interacted with. Although it may sound extreme, he’s practically deified. Both Fukuzawa and Mori, two characters who are strong leaders and do not often take orders from others, would readily abide by Natusme’s wishes. 

The framework he created—the tripartite framework—is something that they both agree MUST be abided by. The framework itself is questionable—the basis of it was to handle the issue of the extreme rise in criminal activity post-war. Rather than working towards curbing crime in any more standard way, his solution is having a guy working for him in the criminal underworld, and attempt to put a stop to the worst kinds of crimes through him. 

Fukuzawa, being a former assassin himself, most likely is familiar with and agrees with the concept of some crimes being worse than others, and some people being enough of an evil in the world and enough of a threat that they need to be killed. Remember, he didn’t quit his job as an assassin due to feeling it’s morally wrong to kill; he quit because it’s morally wrong to kill just for the sake of killing. So it’s reasonable enough that he’d find the tripartite framework to be a valid way of handling things, and have no problem with Mori working from the criminal underworld to keep things under control from there. 

Regardless of how unheard of this method of crime-stopping is, and how Fukuzawa and Mori’s blind faith in him could be dangerous if he were to be misguided or more morally grey, this method seems to be effective in the bsd world. We see that the mafia has the criminal underground under control, while the agency deals with crime that comes up to the surface, and the government dealing with civilian issues. And regardless of what conflict Mori and Fukuzawa have currently, the tripartite framework is something that they’re both equally invested in and consider necessary. 

Out of the (so-called) “three generations,” they are the most successful. They have been working together and fulfilling their shared goal for many, many years. No matter what conflict may come up, the framework is their top priority. They will ensure Yokohama is safe, and they will oversee their respective segments of it. They are both aware of their own roles and have a mutual respect for the other’s role.

Which brings us onto the duo Mori created—double black. As Mori said, he’s forcing them to work together in an attempt to duplicate something Natsume explained to him. Double Black is, at first, Mori’s pet-project or side hobby. It’s formed for nothing more than curiosity at first, but with Chuuya and Dazai’s individual skillsets and abilities, they ended up working together as the feared mafia duo we know them as. This duo works as an extension of Mori’s role in the framework, and because of that it’s certainly not the next part of the tripartite framework. Or rather, it wasn’t when Mori made it, and it wasn’t made with that intention. 

After Dazai left the mafia, double black changed. Now it’s no longer a mafia subgroup, because half of it is no longer in the mafia. From an external view, it acts as a dangerous last resort—a final defense against major threats. The people of Yokohama can rest easy, since if everything were to go very wrong, all hope is not lost unless double black is defeated—something that will probably never happen. 

But Dazai and Chuuya themselves don’t share the same sentiment. Unlike the original heads of the framework, these two aren’t on the same page about what they’re doing or their duo’s current status. To each of them, it’s just a job. They both want to protect Yokohama, and recognize that Yokohama’s safety is a byproduct of their work—but they don’t see “protecting Yokohama” as their job. It seems like they see each job as a one-off commission work. Their job isn’t “protect Yokohama,” it’s “defeat this one specific enemy and then go home.” 

And additionally, they’re on different pages regarding double black’s current status. It seems that Dazai views double black’s inactivity as something that happened due to his absence rather than him defecting—and now that he’s back, so is double black—hence, him referring to Chuuya as his partner. On the other hand, Chuuya views double black’s inactivity as something that happened due to Dazai defecting—double black was a mafia subgroup, after all, so it makes sense that if half of the duo isn’t under mafia employment, the duo cannot be currently active. Hence, him declaring Dazai his “ex-partner.”

As things stand, they’re working more closely to the tripartite framework’s successors, since now they’re (1) positioned at opposite ends of the criminal underworld, and (2) working towards a common goal of protecting Yokohama. However, until they both realize that their official job and duty is protecting Yokohama (rather than that just being a biproduct of their work) and until they both mutually agree to work towards that shared goal together—each on their respective sides of things—they won’t be able to truly be the inheritors of the tripartite framework.

Now for Dazai’s “new generation of double black.” Whether or not Dazai’s fully aware of the tripartite framework, its origins and its purpose is up for debate. And whether he views himself and Chuuya as an extension of that is even more unlikely. So since we can assume he’s basing this “new generation of double black” off of an incomplete picture of what double black was and what it currently is, we know right off the bat it’s going to be flawed. 

There’s truly no reason for a “new generation,” especially when the “old” generation is around two years older than them, and significantly more capable and powerful. It’s clear from Dazai’s interactions with them that creating this new generation is both a fun hobby of his, and possibly a way for him to get other people to do jobs he’d be assigned to otherwise. It serves no real greater purpose than that. They’re convenient sometimes, but there are always other ability users who could easily do what they’ve done, but better. 

Only half of this new duo even has any idea of what they’re trying to replicate. Akutagawa has a vague idea of what double black was, and strives to mimic what he thinks they do. He doesn’t have a very complete or thorough understanding of them—as he tries to explain to Atsushi, to his knowledge, double black worked as “Dazai is Smart Guy, Chuuya is Strong Guy, they win by being Brain and Brawn.” We see that this isn’t really the case—both Dazai and Chuuya are well-rounded and each are individually capable of both physical combat and strategy. Yet all the new generation has to work off of is this game of broken telephone passed through mafia rumors, to Akutagawa, to Atsushi. 

And even so, neither of them understand any real greater purpose to what they’re doing—and it’s unclear if there truly is any purpose to it. They too see it as individual fights rather than a grander purpose, but in their case, they’re right. 

And to take it a step further, they aren’t a formal duo in the first place. They never officially formed. They’re just miming the roles that Dazai told them to play with no real understanding of what’d going on. “The new generation of double black” isn’t a title they’ve ever officially been given—sure they’ve been called that by Dazai, but it’s not something that would even go on any paperwork. Their opponents don’t see them as some feared duo, they see them as an unfortunate collaboration they now must deal with. Akutagawa’s outright ditching work to go do these jobs—at least with double black Dazai clearly has some contact through the agency for when he’s assigned to double black/ mafia collaboration missions. 

In short, no one outside of Dazai (and possibly Akutagawa) sees any connect between Akutagawa and Atsushi to any former well-known duos. 

In summary—the three “generations of double black” were formed for vastly different purposes, and even though double black is converging to align with the tripartite framework, the newest variant of it is way off base. 

Natsume will need to step in and sort this out if the newest generation aligns with his wishes, and if not, I think he should step in and sort stuff out anyway—things in the bsd universe have been getting pretty messy for a while now, and it would be nice to have a leader around who both Fukuzawa and Mori would listen to.

#birthday special #For you my dear a 1600 word pile of nonsense #Shhhhh dont look too closely youll realize this is all meaningless #What’s that quote from Merchant of Venice? #“His reasons are as two grains of wheat hid in two bushels of chaff— #—you shall seek all day ere you find them. and when you have them they are not worth the search” #Yeah that’s the general vibe of this one #go ahead and figure out what I’m trying to say ‘cause even I don’t know #Bsd #bungo stray dogs #bungou stray dogs #mori #fukuzawa #dazai #chuuya #akutagawa #atsushi #natsume