#tanizaki might actually be the most batshit insane character in the series

[tachiguin]

The thing with Tanizaki Junichirou is that he isn’t boring, we just know next to nothing about him and why he’s the way he is. We know that he doesn’t consider himself brave, and that he claims that his ability isn’t suited for combat, which is actually severely underplaying his talents, if not an outright lie, because Light Snow absolutely is useful in combat, though we’re rarely shown this in practice, because Tanizaki tends to avoid direct combat. Unless Naomi is threatened, in which case he’d literally burn the world down to keep her safe.

credit to easygoingscans

Disregarding the squicky nature of their implicit relationship for a moment, Tanizaki’s devotion towards Naomi borders on obsessive, surpassing the extent of that which could be normal between either siblings or lovers. We can only speculate what kind of upbringing would have caused this.

We only really see glimpses of Tanizaki’s true capacity a few times. But it’s not just his ability that’s downright terrifying (crashing a civilian truck into Steinbeck, almost assassinating Mori during cannibalism), but his personality too. Tanizaki is always teetering on the edge of morality; he makes the conscious choice to be on the side of good, but he canonically offered to join the Port Mafia in Yosano’s place, which says a lot about what kind of person Tanizaki is. That’s not the kind of offer anyone could make if they were truly opposed to committing atrocities. Rather, Tanizaki making this offer is telling of the idea that although he understands where the line between right and wrong lies, he wouldn’t have second thoughts about crossing it, given a half decent reason.

I could argue than Tanizaki has roughly the same amount of ethical integrity as Dazai, that is to say, none at all. Their employment at the Armed Detective Agency happens to be a result of their conscious choice to be morally upright, in contrast to someone like Kunikida, who could probably never offer to join the Port Mafia, even if it were for the sake of an friend, due to his strict moral code.

Despite all of this, we know nothing about what made Tanizaki this way. We know that he used to be a student alongside Naomi, but that’s about it. Tanizaki’s innocuous previous profession tends to misdirect our thoughts away from reading deeply into Tanizaki. It creates an illusion of normalcy, you could say. But, upon second glance, it’s bizarre that Tanizaki could get written off as boring or simple, by both the characters in the story, and by us, the readers.

I think there is a lot of shots in the dark I could make at what kind of tragic backstory Tanizaki has been keeping secret, but I am going to conclude this post on an open ended note: What is Tanizaki hiding?

#tanizaki junichirou #junichirou tanizaki #bsd tanizaki #bsd #bungou stray dogs #bsd meta #bsd analysis #tanizaki might actually be the most batshit insane character in the series #I mean this in the nicest way possible #my shot in the dark for his backstory is that it might end up one of the most horrifying origin stories yet