#bsd 104

1. Black and White 

This entire arc is about challenging the notion of heroes or simple black and whites. After all, the main villain of the arc is a war hero and old friend of Fukuzawa, teamed up with the “Demon” Fyodor to achieve the same objective. The heroes the detective agency, are framed for murder and then are easily turned into villains in everyone else’s eyes no matter how many good deeds they had done in the past. 

The arc itself starts with someone Atsushi refers to as a villain, immediately showing him that he’s capable of feeling remorse for his actions and chooses to murder anyway in pursuit of an ideology. 

This reseponse totally throws Atsushi, and if I had to list a reason why it would be precisely because Atsushi has no ideology whatsoever. His ideals are “Save people”, but even that is something he only believes because it was beaten into him. It’s important to remember Atsushi didn’t form his own morals identity and sense of right and wrong like a healthy individual, he had his current ideas of good and evil beaten into him by his abuser. 

His entire personality is built around trying to please Teacher and be the kind of student he would be proud of, a dead man, who beat into the him the lesson if he is not able to protect others he is worthless, and that evil people are one dimmensional monsters who uses violence to hurt other people. Even the idea that Gogol can have any kind of ideology confuses him because all his teacher taught him was that evil people are one dimmensional villains that only think of hurting others. 

When presented with any kind of situation that’s difficult or requires thinking Atusshi has a hard time coping, because Atsushi’s own sense of self is underdeveloped. 

Atsushi has extremely negative amounts of self esteem and self confidence, if he’s not leaping into danger, or being told what to do he basically has an incredibly hard time making a decision. What he hates worst of all is to have to make a decision entirely on his own as an individual because Atsushi has no trust in himself to make the right choice. That’s basically what having a low-self worth means, Atsushi is continually anxious and indecisive because he lives to please other people and does almost nothing for himself. 

He is etnerally a little boy and while he may have grown stronger he hasn’t really grown up, not really, Beast Au is once again incredibly telling of Atsushi’s mental state. When Atsushi imagines the person he would have liked to become, he imagines himself as a crayon drawing of a superhero being patted on the head by his abusive sensei. He imagines all the happy orphans giving him an applause. It’s a child’s dream and what Atsushi desperately wanted the orphanage to have been instead of the horrifying place he grew up. 

Beast even says it outright. Atsushi is incredibly emotionally undedeveloped, because he is in a much healthier environment now he hasn’t really healed from his initial trauma. He is still essentially trying to earn a dead man’s praise and live the way that man taught him rather than trying to deveop a sense of self or his own identity or figure out how he wants to live. 

If anything, this arc has made it harder and harder for Atsushi to grow in this way, because the detective agency has been scattered to the wind, and he has spent basically the whole time continually running away and in distress. 

So returning to the beginning, this entire time Atsushi has been facing moral greys. They had to make a deal with the Mafia in order to survive and even surrender one of their members. Atsushi had to cooperate with Fitzgerald, the villain he defeated in his great act of saving the city. They are being hunted by war heroes, the hunting dogs, people who are known for obsessively hunting and destroying their enemies no matter what. A team that features people like Tecchou, who take sadistic pleasure in torturing the people they take down. 

People who don’t really care if the Detective Agency are guilty or not, because they are Just Following Orders TM. One of them even engineered the framing of the detective agency in the first place. 

It makes sense that Atushi cannot make decisions, because making your own decisions requires a strong sense of self, independence and even the basic ability to be confident in the decisions you make. Atsushi’s greatest fear however is being alone. The whole arc itself is Atsushi having his allies chipped away one by one until he is finally alone, and he freezes up. 

This is what hapepsn when you live to pelase other people you become unable to think for yourself. Atsushi is so paralyzed by the idea of being alone, because suddenly then all the responsibility falls on him. Atsushi had the idea that if he’s not able to save everyone then he’s not even allowed to live beat into his head. This is not a mentally healthy person who can handle making mistakes. If Atsushi is not the hero he’s no one. He’s destroyed by both the weight of responsibility and the fear of losing everyone and that will mean reverting to his orphanage days. 

Which is where we get to the latest chapter. Atsushi once again is asked to make a decision on his own, and freezes up because he has no idea what to do. Remember as I established above, Atsushi has no idea of morality outside of imagining himself as a comic book hero. His idea of what a good person is is a crayon drawing. His morals are given to him by other people. He mainly follows Dazai’s and the Agency’s plans rather than thinking for hismelf because he is afraid to be alone. Atsushi himself is a caring and compassionate person, but when he tries to talk about ideals to others he has no idea what he’s talking about. 

Which is what the Hunting Dog calls him out on, Atsushi has no idea what he’s talking about he’s only spouting words. The Hunting Dog knowing the full truth decided of her own free will to side with the commander making a moral judgement, so Atsushi who has like no moral reasoning behind his own actions besides “heroes good, villains bad” can’t convince her to take his side. 

The Battle the Hunting Dog challenges him too is an ideological one not a physical one, which is his exact weakness because Atsushi has no ideals besides (save people otherwise you’re a completely worthless person). All Atsushi has to do to leave the room and help others is once again, make a moral decision, decide what is right for himself. 

But Atsushi cannot decide for himself, because he still revolves himself around pleasing everyone else and gaining their praise instead of thinking for himself. WHen presented with a morally gray situation and called upon to do these things for himself Atsushi once again struggles under the pressure. 

On top of that Atsushi’s pose even mirrors the name of the defense secretary who cannot believe Fukuichi’s actions, and begs him to return to being the selfless hero who saved people multiple times. 

TERUKO FREED HIM, fuck yeah!!!

She makes me sad sometimes, I wanna know what’s happening

The Hunting Dogs continue to have zero chill, like holy shit Teruko, what did that cot do to you?? Did Atsushi say something to piss her off??

Back to the fukufuku divorce fight!!

Well that’s not absolutely terrifying, I can see where Tecchou learned that from

DAD NO!!!

OH MY GOD LITTLE BABY THEM!!!