#daatsu

Maybe Dazai saw part of himself in Aku?

Anyway, being nice in the Port Mafia doesn’t fucking fly. But he does give Akutagawa the chance to turn him down, and even warns him that there will be days where Aku will wish he was back in the slums. Akutagawa agrees in the weirdest but most fitting way (apparently he howls? Akutagawa didn’t see himself as human until he felt hatred).

A tip-top executive takes the time, goes out of his way, kills people meant to be under the Port Mafia’s protection, just to please Akutagawa. That and of itself from Dazai is a feat. (You might usually just buy a gotdamn gift or some food for a normal person? Murder would not be necessary??).

Akutagawa was called The Silent Rabid Dog for a reason. Coddling him wouldn’t have worked, speaking to him in niceties for training would have been futile, and Akutagawa wouldn’t have respected him.

In A Heartless Dog, Aku says Dazai gives him his second feeling that he’s ever had, and it’s respect. You can see that Akutagawa uses some of the same words to describe Dazai that have been used to describe himself: bottomless eyes, demonic, heartless, ruthless. Dazai is the embodiment of what Akutagawa wants to be.

Dazai is promoted the same day he goes looking for Akutagawa because as an executive he can take on any subordinate he chooses. He chooses Akutagawa as his first. So, of course, there are many experimental mistakes (as we see it) Dazai makes.

Dazai was only about a year or two older than Akutagawa, Aku describes him as a boy when he sees him. He says Dazai is thin and calls him a youth. Don’t forget that Akutagawa was going to kill Dazai, if not for the nullification ability he has.

Give a young boy who’s ready to die without blinking a reason to live, he’ll see nothing else but the person who saved him. He sees Dazai has some sort of demonic holiness, not even a god would cross his path.

Fast-forward to training. Dazai shoots, kicks, and punches Akutagawa, like really does the kid in. Akutagawa has been warned. I’m sure Dazai has done so more than just that first time they met. But! Dazai does all these things to strengthen Akutagawa because, as Dazai says in one scene, the enemy won’t wait for Akutagawa to get up or recover. He has to learn how to take some really fucking hard hits.

Dazai had to have undergone the same training, seeing that his ability can’t be used to attack. He’s using what he’s learned and what he knows is best. Dazai has a strange knack for knowing what will and won’t work.

When Akutagawa gets back up from every attack Dazai lays on him, you can see that he’s pleased, and he might even tell him “good.” Praise wasn’t a spoken factor, which probably wasn’t a part of Dazai’s training either.

Praise is reflected in the amount of fear inflicted upon enemies and the reputation given to you throughout Yokohama. When you look at it, Dazai broke and shaped Akutagawa into someone who could disobey Mori’s orders and get away with it because it benefited the Port Mafia in the end, even though most of Akutagawa’s motives were for himself.

Akutagawa becomes a mirror of Dazai, maybe stronger. The most feared man in Yokohama, even the Agency likes to steer clear of him.

For all the pain Dazai inflicts on him, it’s for good reason. He wants his first subordinate to survive, so he grinds Akutagawa into dust and builds him back up from the ashes. If it’s going to be anyone, it’ll be him doing it so no one else will be able to. The Port Mafia is a dog-eat-dog world and Dazai intends for his dog to prevail (and he does).

For dogs the most vital aspect of their lives is the person who takes them in, gives them reason to live. Dazai is that person to Akutagawa, the Port Mafia’s dog. Without all that ruthless training and showcasing of violence, Akutagawa wouldn’t have respected (loved) Dazai at all. He wouldn’t be at the height he is.

Atsushi  

The Agency is about giving, helping out those in need. They don’t use violence unless it’s needed. The complete opposite of the Port Mafia.

Here, Dazai does a complete 360. In the sense that he isn’t as serious and savage. He does have his times when people notice that look in his eye.

I like to assume that Dazai knew that Atsushi was the tiger way before he physically encountered him. Dazai has had to track people down before, for sure, and he has that strange knack for knowing things.

Dazai lures Atsushi in with the promise of food (like normal people). He’s eccentrically goofy in front of Atsushi, giving the boy a sense of security to let his guard down completely.

Dazai probably had it in the works to take on the tiger before he even said it aloud after nullifying Atsushi’s ability.

Onto training and how Dazai treats Atsushi. He doesn’t get physical the same way he did with Akutagawa because the Agency isn’t that type of organization.

He does let Atsushi go on that, seemingly, small mission with Naomi and Tanizaki. Dazai knows Higuchi isn’t who she says she is, knows who she works for, and knows Akutagawa would be out to get Atsushi. Dazai knows how violent it could get, is going to get, but let’s Atsushi get a taste of what it’s like out there.

Letting him see his new companions possibly die (like Aku did) and having to fight off someone like Akutagawa is a warning within itself, unsaid. There will be days when you wish you were back in the slums. Even though the Agency is unlike the Port Mafia, Atsushi will encounter gruesome fights (his leg gets torn off) and barbaric people.

Dazai’s training for Atsushi is to let him waddle off into the the world and experience it for himself, while keeping an eye on him, or someone else from the Agency to do so. (In the Port Mafia he had to keep Akutagawa in check all on his own for various reasons).

He is gentler with Atsushi because the tactics he used with Akutagawa won’t fly, not only because that’s not how it works in the Agency, but because it won’t work correctly. Atsushi is an anxious mess already because the people in the orphanage belittled him at every turn, Dazai can’t use that.

He might also be learning from his mistakes with Akutagawa (he’s dependent and his loyalty to Dazai is a weakness, as seen when he jumped for the earpiece just to speak to him). Dazai doesn’t want Atsushi to become entangled so deeply with him like that and become a liability.

Dazai does throw Atsushi’s limp body away in the first episode (as Dazai also leaves Chuuya behind after using Corruption because maybe after Oda, anything akin to a dead male body? He doesn’t want to hold it). And he slaps Atsushi to knock him out of his self-pity trance after Q uses his ability on him.

Dazai isn’t one to show affection to his subordinates and the slap he delivers to Atsushi is one of the first traces of like…his past self in a way? He’s never laid a hand on Atsushi that way before and his demeanor in that moment reminds me of his Dark Era days. If Akutagawa had broken down like that, Dazai might have punched him. But, once again, he takes a different route that both suits Atsushi’s soft nature and gets his point across.

Dazai lets Atsushi take baby steps and the community in the Agency also “raises” him.

With Akutagawa, Dazai was young with other troubling responsibilities and had to quickly teach his subordinate for use, all at the same time. Also, the Port Mafia is about being ruthless, so he had to keep nurturing that part within Akutagawa.

Overall, Akutagawa was taken in by Dazai at a crucial time in his youth, and formed an attachment to Dazai because of it. They were both too young for what they were going through, and Dazai could have gone lighter on Akutagawa, but Akutagawa wouldn’t have wanted him to, Dazai’s brutality is one of the reasons Akutagawa looks up to him.

All he wants is recognition, not a lighter kick to the gut, and Dazai knew this. If he had been gentle with Akutagawa, he wouldn’t have survived in the Port Mafia, probably would have been killed. Dazai knew what he was doing and knew it needed to be done if he wanted Akutagawa to survive and hone his skill.

I’d say Dazai approved of Akutagawa before he met him. He just wanted to sharpen his skills and being gentle wasn’t the way to do that, or to earn Akutagawa’s respect. Dazai was impressed with Akutagawa from the first time they met, a second too late and Akutagawa might have just killed, or maimed, Dazai. Atsushi tells him that his mentor recognized Akutagawa a long time ago. Dazai would have killed him otherwise.

But Dazai being Dazai, he doesn’t know how to be affectionate. He didn’t grow up around affectionate people. Reading A Heartless Dog,  it seems to be heavily implied that Akutagawa is a younger, mirror image of Dazai. I mean, how cute (and sad) is that?

Atsushi lived his life in a cold home, berated each day. He’s timid because he had structure and rules, but grew without seeing his own worth. Dazai adapts to this, and I don’t think Fukuzawa (or Oda because he loved orphans) would approve of him training Atsushi the way he did Aku (which Oda probably told him to go easy on the kid at some point), and because of Fukuzawa, Atsushi can control his abilities. He just needed to believe in himself. Akutagawa had to learn how to hone and control his own ability through himself and Dazai’s rigid structure.