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aspoonofsugar · 5 years

Note

Kunikida was inflicted by Q’s ability?! That wasn’t in the anime! Is that woman he’s hallucinating about supposed to be Sasaki from the Azure King arc? You said that Q’s ability causes people to confront “the thing they refuse to accept about themselves.” In Kunikida’s case, would that be his inability to save everyone?—BSD Chat Anon

Hello BSD Chat anon! Incidentally I like many of your thoughts!

Yes, Kunikida is one of the victims of the Guild’s plan to destroy Yokohama and the woman he sees is indeed Sasaki!

Nothing happens to him because Dazai and the others restrain him, so that he won’t become dangerous, but it is clearly significant that he has hallucinations of her among all people.

Unluckily I have yet to read the novel (even if I saw the anime episodes which adapted it), so my thoughts on this can’t be very elaborated.

You have probably already seen this post because you follow @hamliet’s blog, but I have tagged it just in case and for people who might be interested in an analysis of her character.

When it comes to Kunikida, I think Sasaki’s death is something which hit him for several reasons and especially because it is a challenge to his own ideals.

As a matter of fact both Sasaki’s crimes and her death are a result of strong ideals. She committed crimes in order to live up to and to avenge his dead partner AKA the Azure King.

According to Sasaki, he was a man moved by strong and positive ideals, but society prevented him from realizing them in all their beauty and so Sasaki helped him break the law in order to turn them into reality.

However, their scheme resulted in both him and innocent policemen losing their lives. What is more, Sasaki herself ends up killed by one of the victims’ son.

It is important to highlight that by the time the novel is set Kunikida is close to become like the AK. As a matter of fact he too has lost some faith in institutions and this is why he has chosen to join an organization which operates in a gray area like the ADA. If Kunikida keeps pursuing his ideals without ever questioning them he might end up both hurting others and himself.

At the same time, the novel makes clear that his ideals are what prevents him from developing strong bonds with others especially when it comes to romantic relationships:

He has spent so much energy to create the image of a perfect partner, that he can’t accept anything different and this of course ends up working against him.

Interestingly, this is the opposite problem Dazai has:

As a matter of fact Dazai is implied to be a lady killer, but it is clear that he has superficial relationships with all his partners and he is probably just using them to feel less lonely.

In short, both Kunikida and Dazai end up lonely because they can’t approach others earnestly. Kunikida expects his potential relationships to be ideal, while Dazai expects them to be casual ones.

Going back to Sasaki, the story makes clear that Kunikida feels strongly attracted by her and that the attraction is mutual. However, Sasaki has started a path of self-destruction she can’t stop and Kunikida is not able to help her nor to understand her until it is too late. Maybe if he had tried to grow closer to her before he might have been able to figure out which kind of person she was and this could have led to a different outcome.

In other words, Sasaki embodies the darkest aspect of Kunikida’s ideals. Let us underline that Kunikida is painfully aware of this side of his idealism. For example, he knows he might have to compromise on it and to embrace ruthless methods:

This is something he probably realized after the police’s failure to capture the AK alive. In that operation some agents lost their lives and Kunikida ended up searching a new path by joining the ADA. After he joins he tries to follow in Fukuzawa’s footsteps and this means that it might be necessary to take extreme measures sometimes (for example, Fukuzawa tells him to kill Dazai if Dazai were to turn out to be a threath).

However, Sasaki’s death adds a new layer to his self-awareness because it shows him that not only idealism is complicated to put into practice, but also that it can be damaging.

It is not sure, but his experience with Sasaki might very well be why Kunikida, despite his strong beliefs in what is wrong and what is right, ends up hesitating when it counts the most:

Interestingly, in both the scenes above Atsushi is the one who does what Kunikida would really want to do and Kunikida ends up following Atsushi’s lead.

This might very well be because Kunikida finds himself stuck between two generations and two developmental stages.

On one hand there is Fukuzawa who has found a good equilibrium between ideals and pragmatism. Fukuzawa will act both for the greater good and to protect his loved ones and he has no hesitation in understanding when it is the case to do one thing or the other. For example, he immediately acts to save Atsushi, while Kunikida himself would like to do so, but hesitates because of the ADA’s general situation. Similarly he won’t let Mori take advantage on a traumatized girl, but is ready to work with him to save Yokohama.

On the other hand there is Atsushi who is willing to put his life at risk to save others. By following this strong instinct he has managed to save people and to pursue Kunikida’s ideals in an earnest way. However, he has still to realize how self-destructive his pursue may be and how this behaviour is rooted in trauma.

Kunikida gives me the impression of being in the middle. He is still far from sharing Fukuzawa’s self-trust and he can’t ignore how self destructive idealism and selflessness can be. Interestingly, differently from the other two characters, he doesn’t really seem to have a particular violent side/past to reconcile. Maybe it is exactly because of this that his struggle lies elsewhere and that he has much more doubts than the other two characters. This may also be why Kunikida might appear more rigid than the other members of the ADA.

That said, the series makes clear that Kunikida’s path doesn’t lie in leaving his idealism behind, but rather in him finding a better way to apply it. This is because idealism like everything else is a weapon and it can be used positively or negatively.

Talking about weapons which can be used both well and badly we go back to Q’s ability and what it represents:

On Moby Dick Atsushi hallucinates and sees the headmaster. he wonders if it is an after-effect of Q’s ability, but imo it is left ambiguous because in the end this is not the only time Atsushi has this kind of experience. The headmaster talks about how Atsushi has left himself be tricked by illusions and ended up giving others fake kindness. This is a reference both to his previous experience with Q, but also to a deeper trait of Atsushi’s personality.

However, once he confronts Lucy in her room Atsushi says this:

He repeats the headmaster’s words, but shows how “imagination” and the ability to be flessible has not only negative effects, but also positive ones because it lets a person do things they would not have considered possible up until that point.

In this meta, I mentioned how this is something true for Lucy and her power as well:

In the end, the true value of her power did not lie in Anne’s strength or in using it to kidnap people, but rather in letting people escape boundaries (the ability is used to overcome the effects of time, to let Atsushi escape a room and to let both him and Kyouka move around despite being wanted). This is something which fits the idea of Lucy’s ability representing “an escape into one’s imagination”. After all, what does imagination do if not letting people escape boundaries? Lucy used it to isolate herself, but once she starts sharing her power with others, she becomes more powerful to the point that she is considered Dazai’s queen in the current arc.

However, this is not something which is true only for Lucy and Atsushi, but for every character and this makes sense in a series which explores fiction and literature and their effects on one’s life. These activities which are rooted in imagination can both help a person bond and grow, but can also lead them to isolate themselves in a non-existent world.

I want to suggest now that the same is true for ideals and so it can be applied to Kunikida as well. Ideals are rooted in one’s imagination as well and they can make a person single-minded and rigid, but they can also make one’s perspective wider.

Thank you for the ask!

#bsd #bsd meta #kunikida doppo #bungou stray dogs #asksfullofsugar #bsd chat anon #anonymous

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dazais-guardian-angel · 6 years

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Oda and Dazai!

So this got…… kinda long… and probably strayed from the ask meme and is more of like a character study lmao whoOPS I’m so sorry. But thank you for the ask xD

Character Writing Meme

Oda

So in canon, Oda never smiles, like ever; he definitely has a broad array of emotions, for sure, but he doesn’t let either positive or negative ones outwardly show very much except in extreme situations ahaha. But it’s natural instinct for me to describe characters as smiling softly/a little bit, or frowning or whatnot, so I can’t help but write Oda like that as well, because I feel like writing him would get boring quickly if his expressions were never described like I do for others and if he wasn’t the pov character where you had his inner thoughts/emotions to make up for that (the original Dark Era novel is in his point of view, and it really helps you to get into his thoughts/emotions, some of which the anime carried over, so that makes his rarely-changing expression not as bothersome). I try to remind myself to keep it as lowkey as possible though (again, talking about fics not in his pov); he probably realistically has to smile sometimes, but I make sure never to overdo it and to keep that sort of amusingly nonchalant/unfazed outward personality Oda has at the same time.

When around Dazai, Oda is pretty much the only person who will let him go off on one of his crazy, dramatic, depressing tangents about life/death and wanting to die and all that, deal with that loopiness that is Dazai. In other words, he won’t ignore him or admonish him for acting like that, which nearly everyone else in the series who Dazai interacts with does. The only time Oda will interfere is if Dazai is directly putting himself in a harmful situation, but when he’s just talking, he’ll let him get it all out. I haven’t actually written much involving this aspect of him, but this is important about Oda when he and Dazai are together, that Oda lets Dazai be himself and lets him get out all his extremely negative emotions instead of forcing him to bottle them up even more, which is a good thing for Dazai to have. In this way, Oda understands Dazai better than anyone else in the entire series, but the key is that he isn’t aware how much he does (because Oda is so damn humble), and so Oda never takes further steps to help out Dazai, as good as letting him talk things out is. In short, Oda cares about Dazai (most likely his fatherly instincts showing through) and worries about him unconsciously, and is content to let Dazai be his strange self when he’s with him, letting him do his thing as long as he’s not actually harming himself, which is why they get along so well… but at the same time Oda will never try to actively play counselor/therapist with Dazai to attempt to help him more permanently, because he doesn’t think he can/isn’t brave enough to/just doesn’t really think to do so. Which leads me to…

…Oda is selfish to a degree, because he’s human, and selfishness is human nature. I’m only really talking about the situation with the kids, though. Canonically, after the kids were killed, Oda went on a suicide mission for the sake of revenge for the kids, abandoning Dazai, who still desperately needed and wanted him, and throwing aside any small chance of building a happy life back up for himself and eventually getting away from the mafia and fulfilling his dream of becoming a writer, and possibly taking Dazai with him and making him happier than he is now at the ADA. In that moment, all logic shut down inside of him, and he acted on his instincts, knowing he was going to die, all because he felt like he didn’t care about anything anymore, for revenge that was more for himself than the kids who didn’t even know they were being avenged, obviously. Of course I’m not entirely blaming Oda or trying to intentionally shit on him (I love him lmao), and his mental state then is completely understandable, but it still stands that he acted on selfish motives when he did what he did and got himself killed from it. He made a huge mistake leaving Dazai behind, breaking his heart and taking his best friend in the world away from him, and I’m sure Oda realized that once Dazai showed up, realized that there was so much he still needed to do for Dazai that he never had done and never could anymore then, and realized how much it hurt him too because of how much he truly cared about Dazai. When I wrote his death scene from his own pov, that’s what I wanted to show, him realizing how selfish he had been by doing this to Dazai. Because as much as Oda loves Dazai, he loves those kids more, not only because of just him loving kids in general, but also because taking care of those kids in particular he associates directly with his own “redemption” from his previous life as an assassin, so once they’re killed, he decides that everything is over, gives up, because their deaths mean that he failed in trying to turn over a new leaf, so he goes back to killing and decides to end it all, forgetting Dazai completely. Again, I’m not blaming his mentality, not blaming Oda for being so human, but that’s basically what happened, and it was selfish. So writing anything post-bombing, I think about this a lot; Oda is a genuinely kind and loving person, there’s no doubt about it, and he wants only the best for Dazai and the kids for their own sakes, but at the same time, if he feels like his morals/beliefs are trampled on/destroyed in any way so that he can’t uphold them anymore, he’s just done, and nothing else and no one else matters in his mind anymore. Dazai never would have been “saved” by his last words if he hadn’t approached Oda himself, and as good as the ADA is for him, he would be much better there with his best friend who understands him the most, if Oda hadn’t decided to get himself offed instead.

Dazai

First and most obviously, Dazai rarely ever lets himself show any part of his emotional side. If anyone tries to question his behavior or things he says worryingly/shows concern for him, he’ll try to brush it off with some lie about him daydreaming about a creative suicide or something. He’s worse about this overdramatic goofiness in ADA-era, despite being in a better setting, because he was more inclined to get gloomier/more depressing/deeper into his bleak mind with Oda, who didn’t mind any of his behavior. Imo Dazai is of the opinion that no one in the ADA really cares about what’s going on in his mind/his emotions like Oda did, which unfortunately most of them give the impression of (even if they don’t mean it, they really need to get better about it… looking at u, Kunikida), so he acts even more over-the-top in order to annoy them even more, so there’s even less of a chance for them to worry about him, ever. He’s not comfortable sharing how he really feels with anyone anymore, so he makes sure no one ever wants to ask or wonder (”oh it’s just Dazai being Dazai, as usual”). That being said…

I’m sure there are days when he’s worse, and it’s a lot harder for him to hide it in the ADA. Atsushi obviously is most likely the only person he will ever let himself be somewhat vulnerable around now, and Atsushi will try to help him but not push him too much. So Dazai might share some things, but not too much; probably not until he and Atsushi have been with each other for a long time. Obviously, anything to do with Oda will make it hard for Dazai to retain his goofy facade, particularly Oda’s birthday and the anniversary of his death, among other, random days.

Realted to the above, Dazai never cries imo; the most he will ever allow himself is for his eyes to get barely heated or watery, and of course only when he’s alone. The only time I believe he ever full-on cried was after Oda’s death.

To Dazai, Atsushi represents Oda’s legacy, and in some ways he tries to guide Atsushi in the way that he felt like Oda guided his kids, although I’m sure that he knows he isn’t nearly as good enough for that as Oda was. But Atsushi is definitely extremely important to Dazai for so many reasons, and I’m sure he would definitely do anything to keep him safe, and genuinely be terrified if he was in serious danger.

I believe that Dazai respects Kunikida highly despite how much he trolls him, because Kunikida is basically a mix of Oda and Ango, personality-wise and morals-wise. Behind Atsushi, he’s the person Dazai cares about the most in the present time, as much as he doesn’t show it.

Similarly, imo Dazai highly respects Fukuzawa for how he runs the ADA, and for his morals and how welcoming he is to new members, which, surprise surprise, probably also reminds Dazai of Oda. But there’s another component to it, and that is how Fukuzawa is versus how Dazai’s old boss, Mori, was. It’s obvious that Mori was emotionally and mentally abusive and very unhealthy for Dazai, but I don’t think Dazai himself really felt that horror until Mori “betrayed” him by setting things up so that Oda would be led into death, and then refused to help save his life; Fukuzawa, on the other hand, values every single life of his subordinates, whereas Mori would gladly sacrifice anyone for the sake of the entire organization (and himself), and I think that difference is something that was foreign to Dazai and hard for him to trust at first, but is now something he wholeheartedly appreciates and respects about Fukuzawa. That’s my headcanon, at least, and something I think about with those two (and thinking in general about other major differences in how the ADA operates versus what Dazai just took for granted in the mafia, and how little things might still take him off-guard in the ADA even now).

#ask meme #bungou stray dogs spoilers #this got too long a;lskjdfjdlkdd DANA THIS IS JUST AN ASK MEME PROMPT NOT AN ESSAY PROMPT #typical me #bitch u trying to sound all intelligent and stuff #most of these bullets aren't even obvious in the few fics you have #smh #nighttime-sabbatical

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