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aspoonofsugar · 5 years

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What do you think of Mori's role in BSD?

Hello anon!

I have talked a little bit of Mori and his ability here.

As far as his role in the story goes I think he embodies two things.

1) The mafia.

2) The past.

1) As far as the first point is concerned I would like to highlight the symbolic role of the mafia in the story.

I have talked a little bit about it in the post I linked above:

At the same time, on a macro level, the story needs a resolution of some type between the Mafia and the Ada since it is obvious that the two organizations are linked because of the past of many characters in the ADA being linked to the mafia somehow. Dazai, Yosano and Fukuzawa all have a past which involves one or more members of the mafia, for example.

And here:

The mafiosi are who the detectives could become if they were to completely lose themselves in their most violent and darkest parts, while the HD are who the detectives could become if they were to embrace simplicistic ideals over people. This is also why this arc has been particularly hard on Kunikida since among the members of the ADA he is the one who risks to do so the most.

In other words the mafia is nothing more than the societal structure which organizes and takes charge of those people society doesn’t care about. The mafia symbolically represents the part of the city nobody wants to aknowledge and everybody fears. In other words, it is some kind of macro-representation of a collective jungian shadow.

The tripartic alliance perfectly illustrates this point:

The alliance is based on the collaboration among three organizations each one associated to a specific time of the day.

The Military Police and the Ability Secret Service are associated with daytime because they represent the accepted authority and law. They are who the citizens look up to and they must adhere to the rules and the laws.

The ADA is associated to the evening because they are an in-between the day and the night. They want to preserve the law and try not to act outside of it, but also see its limits and use loopholes and bend the rules to help people. They can look both at the government and at the criminal world critically, but they have also been shown to work well with both.

Finally, the mafia represents the night i.e. something which is totally not bent by the rules of the day. They are that part of society which was in chaos after the war and over which Mori seized control.

The members of the mafia are basically people society gave up on and who have no interest into being re-integrated in it:

Let’s highlight that Hirotsu has “society” among his dislikes and he is one of the oldest members. In short, he embodies why a person prefers spending their whole life in a criminal organization rather than in the respectable world. It is because of a dislike for it.

As far as Mori is concerned he says so:

He claims to love Yokohama even with its dark side and it seems that he has taken upon himself the difficult mission to organize this side of the city. However, the interesting thing is that, under his leadership, the mafia and the underworld have basically become nothing more than a mirror of society and the same abusive structures and dynamics if not worse have been established. However, this is also why Mori has been so successful.

Mori is loved and accepted by his subordinates specifically because he gave the mafia members the illusion that they can be a society on their own. He gives rules to the criminal world and organizes it, so that it can be more tolerable. After all, it is not by chance that the people most loyal to Mori are those who have experienced a much more chaotic world:

At the same time, these people are also somehow convinced of this:

They have accepted the world of the night as the only world where they can live and prefer this world to have some kind of law, so that they can feel more like people.

However, here lies the contradiction of the mafia and of Mori. All in all, this regulation of the world of the night is also what lets this world survive and favours specific dynamics from which both the governement and the mafia gain something, but which have negative impacts on the individual.

Kyouka’s case is a perfect example of that.

All in all, Kyouka is a victim of both the government and the mafia. On one hand the government chose to use her as a scapegoat to protect itself. On the other hand the mafia weaponized her ability.

She is also an example of how these two realities which should stay separate have actually built a twisted and beneficial relationship. The government can use the mafia as a scapegoat and a place where they can recycle individuals they don’t really want to take care of, while the mafia takes these individuals and turns them into pawns.

To summarize, the mafia represents that part of society which should remain hidden and is accepted as long as it does. Mori is the one who made this possible by transforming the underworld in a society he administers and in this way he makes it tolerated, but also makes sure that the true problem behind these people who have not a place to belong is never addressed nor solved. So, in a sense, Mori is weaponizing a social problem.

2) I have talked about BSD addressing a generational conflict in the meta on the Guild Arc whose link is above.

One of the reasons why the integration between the two organizations and in general among the different sides of Yokohama is so difficutl is not only because of the characters’ personal problems (unwillingness to cooperate, old grudges etc.), but also because the younger characters who have the best chance to change things find themselves in a flawed system they inherited by older characters.

All in all the series explores the theme of having to deal with the consequences of one’s parents’ actions (both negative and positive) and the characters all need to make themselves independent from parental and mentor figures, so that they can become their own people.

As that meta makes clear Mori is one of the representative of the old generation. He has contributed to the current peaceful situation Yokohama is in, but at the same time he has also been exploiting other people’s weaknesses.

Simbolically, it is interesting that his ability is the same, but also almost the opposite of Kyouka’s aka the character I used in the already mentioned meta to explore the theme of facing a parent’s legacy.

Both Mori and Kyouka’s abilities consist in guardian entities who protect their host, but who also exhibit specific personalities.

As it has already been stated Demon Snow represents Kyouka’s parents’ legacy which is ambiguous and with which Kyouka has to reconcile.

Elise is instead a child because symbolically she represents Mori’s tendency to manipulate and exploit the weak. She can also represent Mori’s own emotional side which is underdevolped like a child is.

Demon is initially presented as a dangerous and ruthless monster, but turns out to actually have good intentions and to be willing to help Kyouka, while Elise is introduced as a harmless little girl, but she is later revealed to be a violent ability.

This also fits with how Kyouka and Mori themselves are introduced in the series. Kyouka appears as a cold assassin, while Mori as a friendly doctor. However, these appearences are soon subverted.

However, the most interesting thing when it comes to this foiling is this:

Mori has perfect control over Elise to the point that even her current tantrums happen because Mori wants her personality to resemble Yosano’s, while Kyouka can’t influence the Demon’s behaviour and has just recently gained enough control to use her ability without her cellphone.

This perfectly shows where the two characters are in termsof control over their lives and the things around them. Mori is an adult and one of the most influencial people in the city, whereas Kyouka is a child who has been moving from a horrible place to another until she found someone willing to help her.

All in all, Mori is linked to these two concepts and I am expecting for him to be overcome in the end precisely because he embodies them too much. On one hand I think the conflict between the mafia and the ADA should be settled, but it seems difficult as long as Mori is around because his involvement in traumatic episodes concerning Dazai and Yosano’s pasts makes so that him being around makes so that the conflict is always there even if asleep. On the other hand the younger generation should surpass the previous one and do better and this symbolically overlaps with exponents of the old generation leaving the scene either because they die or because they lose power.

Specifically, I think Mori is bound to play a role in Dazai’s arc because of the two of them being obviously foils, as both Fifteen and the Dark Era show.

Mori is who Dazai could have become if Oda’s death had not made him realize something important:

“He’s a friend”

Dazai is as ruthless and as manipulative as Mori is, but he is not ready to give up a genuine and healthy connection he has made and in this way he both learns and shows that he is able to think outside of an utilitaristic mainframe, while Mori is not able to do so. He probably cares about Dazai to an extent, but he won’t develop this emotional attachment into something healthier.

That said, Dazai’s arc in the manga might very well involve him becoming someone completely different from Mori and so overcoming the influence the man has had on Dazai’s life once and for all and solving his personal conflict with the mafia in a positive way.

As a matter of fact, Dazai’s past with the mafia is brought up pretty often and he has left some important relationships unsolved. The one with Akutagawa is probably the most important, but there are also the ones with Chuuya, Koujo and Q who all knew him and have shown different levels of resentment over him leaving the organization.

At the same time, Dazai is trying to recreate a new version of the soukoku partnership he had with Chuuya and in this way he is stepping into Mori’s shoes as the one continuing the “tradition”.

However, I think that shin soukoku will actually answer Mori’s question:

“Only a diamond can polish a diamond. I wanna see for myself if that is true”.

The problem with Mori’s attempt is that it was purely utilitaristic, while I think that Dazai might be willing to make Akutagawa and Atsushi work together both because he needs them to fight against a strong opponent, but also because he might be trying in this way to fix the damage he has made to Akutagawa. It is still a pretty indirect and manipulative attempt, but at least Dazai is recognizing that there is another level to people other than their strengths and weaknesses. And it is probable that Natsume, by talking about diamonds, was referring to people’s interiority rather than to their abilities. In other words, Mori might have attempted to find an answer to Natsume’s words by onlu combining the ability of two people, while Dazai might find a better and more meaningful one by having his mentees develop psychologically thanks to each other.

These are my thoughts so far!

Thank you for the ask!

#bsd #bsd meta #mori ougai #osamu dazai #asksfullofsugar #anonymous

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