#chapter 94.5

Since I have no idea where else to start with this, let’s take a little trip back in time; it’s October 10, 2021, Chapter 95 just recently released, and I’m experiencing it pretty much for the first time with @truedge, posting the scans 3 pages at a time in our private Discord server and chatting about it as we read along.  It’s all fun, laughs, and games until the pages talking about the protective ability placed around One Order come up, and he cracks a simple joke:

At first, I laughed, and then —

All at once, it hits me like a ton of bricks. I — the one who should have been the first to recognize his ability in an instant — embarrassingly did not have this click in my head for a solid three minutes until the joke was made. Holy crap, he was right.

I stopped, looked back over the pages, scanned the manga for any information I could, and the evidence kept building and building, and pretty soon I had a solid, bonafide theory on my hands, worthy of showing to the world.

And so, I present to you my theory — a theory which ties the end of Storm Bringer and the main BSD manga together at last: what I like to call “The Storm.”

“But Linkle! Arthur is dead by current time! There’s no way his ability can be involved with guarding One Order!”  …Just…hear me out.

Physical Appearance

First of all, please take a good look at the ability guarding One Order, which we are shown in Chapter 95, and compare it with the canonical light novel interpretation of Arthur’s very unique ability, Illuminations, as shown in Fifteen and Storm Bringer.

Here is the ability guarding One Order:

And here is Arthur’s ability (bear in mind they are showing many cubes together here, but they are all cubes like the above).

Illuminations is a very unique ability; there are none that look like it, and I have a very hard time believing that this is just a coincidence. 

Facts, Attributes & Powers

However, that is, of course, not at all the sole evidence for my theory. Next, let’s review the basic facts we know about the ability placed around One Order:

1) It was put in place by the European authorities many, many years ago (presumably around the time of the Great War) as a failsafe to prevent misuse.

2) It is a dimension-severing ability — an ability that creates its own dimension and protects that which is inside from being reached by those outside through these means.

3) It cannot be destroyed by force or through any other physical means.

Now what do we know about Arthur’s Illuminations? How does it compare to this description?

Well, for the first point, Arthur is a European ability user employed by the French government as a special agent/spy due to his incredible Transcendental powers; he is said to be the “heresy of heresies” — e.i., the strongest of all Transcendentals/Transcendents (you choose the name, I prefer Transcendental and not Transcendent), whom themselves are the strongest ability users in the world, numbering only in the tens, and all appear to be European in nature. (It is stated that the Hunting Dogs were artificially enhanced to try to rival them in the Great War, as Japan has no natural-born Transcendentals.) I hardly think it impossible to say that the European authorities might have called upon Arthur Rimbaud to protect One Order with Illuminations, placing a hyperspace around it to keep it from harm or misuse. Furthermore, as I said before, to my memory (please correct me if I am wrong), One Order seems to have been implied to have been created, or at least sealed away, roughly around the time of the Great War; many Transcendentals, if not all of them, were made to fight in this war, likely including Arthur, so he almost definitely would have been on-hand to ask, and quite willing, given his hatred of war.

Speaking of which, this may also loosely be seen as connecting to the words the Frenchman spoke to Dazai regarding the subject of war in Fifteen; after all, he seemed to have a very strong opinion then about believing war is truly not necessary for living, but how, despite that, “someone will always try to get ahead of the others”, and that is why the world does not have peace. Given this mindset, I think it would be logical for the European government to want his help, as choosing someone who sees the world this way would be very beneficial when wanting to keep that very thing that could allow someone to “get ahead of others” out of everyone’s reach.

As for the second and third point, that pretty much describes Arthur’s ability exactly, doesn’t it? Illuminations is an ability that creates a subspace (or many subspaces, as Arthur has been shown to be able to create a multitude of them before) which exists in its own dimensions in which all known laws of physics do not apply in the way we would expect them to, and only the things and people which he decides to allow can get in or out of that space, at the time when he decides to allow it. It is even (according to the canon novels at least, and not the ridiculous anime adaption) an impenetrable barrier that cannot truly be destroyed physically, even by Dazai himself, and was well capable of containing him.

Storm Bringer’s End, Paul Verlaine, & the Mysterious ‘Storm’

Now, that all sounds well and good, of course; if Arthur were still completely alive, I’m fairly confident I could have just ended my theory here at “the ability protecting One Order is, in fact, Illuminations” and called it a day, considering all of the overwhelming evidence that they are one and the same gift.

Unfortunately, Arthur being ‘dead’ in present time makes that a bit…harder.

…Or at least, that’s what you’d think from looking at it from a quick glance. In reality, there’s actually a very simple solution to that ‘problem’:

Namely, Arthur isn’t really, truly, fully ‘dead’.  At the end of Storm Bringer, Arthur rescues a dying Paul, revealing that he is a ghost and has remained in the world with his ability still fully intact and able to be actively used, by also using it on himself at the moment of his initial death at the hands of Chuuya and Dazai, creating a singularity.

As he gives that singularity to Paul by placing a part of his ability in his heart to keep him alive, we watch Arthur fade away, which we presume to be him ‘dying’ a second time, even as a spirit, but…no. It very clearly states that it is a ‘redshift’ — essentially, Arthur’s spirit is shifting away to some unknown place or dimension, out of sight, but not obliterated. Not gone.

Professor N, in this same story, states that an ability cannot keep existing without its owner being alive in some manner, so the very fact that Paul is even still alive through a part of Arthur’s ability in and of itself implies Arthur’s soul is also still alive and out there somewhere.

But let’s take it even a step farther: I’ve seen so many people talking about the end of the book, where Paul is still in the Mafia basement to this day, waiting for his storm. What is “the Storm”? It’s an obvious lead-on that Paul will appear in the manga at some point — as if him being an executive didn’t already make it a given. But what does it mean? What is Paul waiting for?

To me, the answer is obvious.

It is established in Storm Bringer that the only thing, the only person, Paul is interested in seeing — the only thing that could ever motivate him to go outside — is Arthur Rimbaud. Then, we are told about “the Storm”, which apparently is also another reason. Normally, that would seem a contradiction, yet…what if they are one and the same?

Everyone thinks that “the Storm” is referring to some big, cataclysmic event, and maybe to some extent that is also true, but I think it actually may mean something else — something far more personal to Paul, his overall character, and his author namesake.

In real life, Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud’s romantic relationship was referred to again and again, infamously, as one thing: ‘stormy’. They had a “stormy relationship”. 

Dare I say it is hardly unexpected that Asagiri-sensei might just have chosen the term “storm” for a deeper reason than just some allusion to an ominous event in the near future? Yes, I do dare; as someone who knows the life stories of their irl selves incredibly well, I can confidently say that the amount of information and love our BSD creator put into their characters is staggering, as some of this information that is referenced is extremely hard to come by. There is no reason to think that he wasn’t acutely aware of how their relationship was so commonly defined or that it didn’t play a role in that decision. Not to me, at least. I don’t think it’s an accident at all.

That said, it could and probably does simultaneously refer to a cataclysmic event as many theorize, as well — but more specifically, one involving Arthur in some way. One like this.

If things go south with his vampire plan, and Fukuchi’s only remaining option becomes destroying the ability sealing One Order — an ability which cannot itself be destroyed, mind you — his only recourse would be to find the ability user maintaining it and kill them. And if this theory is true, that means finding Arthur’s soul and destroying it — something which Paul would absolutely find a to be worthy reason for him to finally leave the basement and stop it. Or, alternatively, it could mean him finding out Paul has that ability in his heart, mistaking it for belonging to him, and trying to kill him. Perhaps even both.

Either way, the situation plays out the same: Paul would have to go outside to defend the one thing that matters to him. And would he be capable of it? Well, it’s unclear how much energy for his ability Paul has, actually, since his singularity was destroyed and replaced with Arthur’s, but regardless of the answer, I wholly believe he could fight and defeat Fukuchi if it came to it.

With all of his strength and abilities, or even a fraction of it, he’s more than matched against that man, given he was able to take on almost 30 ability users and 500 armed mafiosos at once and still survive in Storm Bringer just using his lowest level powers.

But even in the event he were completely without power, I could still see it happening. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the strongest ability users in the Port Mafia are mostly being picked off and turned into vampires or otherwise removed. After all, what is the continued theme of this arc that Fyodor mentioned many chapters back — with Sigma, with Aya, and I’m sure many more to come?  It isn’t the person with the strongest ability that will come out on top, it is the ordinary, desperate man who has nothing to lose in the fight.

And Paul absolutely has nothing to lose. Everything he wanted has already been lost.