#ranpo analysis

1) socialization

a) bluntness and literal thinking

Ranpo communicates in a very frank manner. He is always straight to the point in the way he talks and comes off as rude to the people around him. He’s self-aware of the fact that he does not act according to the social expectations of others and verbalizes this himself many times in the series. He does put others down for not being on his intellectual level, very frequently I will say, but that is not always his intention when pointing out the obvious to other people, and subsequently coming off as unintentionally rude. Along with this, he is a very chatty individual who goes on about his own findings in such a way that gives the impression that he always regards others with a flippant attitude, and while this is true to some degree due to his self pride, Ranpo does not always intend this to be the effect. Ranpo is not always aware of social cues relating to this, either. For example, there are many times when another character's words go straight over his head because he takes it at face value. Literal thinking is another autistic trait that he exhibits heavily in the series, and this goes beyond his ability to discern logical facts. Another point of his seeming social unawareness is his lack of understanding of other people. This is shown heavily within the Untold Origins light novel, Ranpo expresses throughout the novel that there is something everyone else gets that he does not, and that he is isolated from the rest of the world.

b) low empathy

Ranpo also has very low empathy. This is another common autistic trait, though it is just as probable for an autistic to be on the extreme opposite. One of Ranpo's most outwardly identifying traits is the flippant attitude he carries for others. Even his own personal motto is about himself, after all. So it's natural to assume he is just self-centered, but he isn't. Ranpo struggles to identify with other people's emotions. That is to say, his way of thinking is very literal, as I stated earlier. He struggles to conceptualize other people's emotions, but he expresses compassionate and cognitive empathy (desire to help and the desire to understand rather than what people typically think of “empathy” as, emotional empathy or feeling other people’s emotions). He voices himself that he isn't that great at sympathizing with people in the manga. At one point, before Atsushi joins the Agency, Ranpo weighs him as less important compared to the Agency because of his focus on protecting the Agency and his comrades, to which he does not recognize Atsushi as at this time. He does care about helping people, but Ranpo is more concerned with those close to him.

c) personal boundary issues

Ranpo struggles with recognizing boundaries with other people, both with personal space and his inability to conceptualize with others a lot of the time. In the Perfect Crime arc, he bluntly demands a lot from Mushitaro, something that he does often. Ranpo doesn't think about if he inconveniences others a lot. It isn't something that is a priority in his mind, or it goes over his head that he even is an inconvenience to people. It's another example of his not picking up on social cues.

He overall does not behave or think in a conventional way according to other people, and this is something that excludes him from the adult world in Untold Origins. He says how he isn't taken seriously by adults in the novel as well, something that is, like the rest of his experiences, is pretty common for autistic people for us not to be taken seriously. His friends and family at the Agency never demean Ranpo for any of his traits, though, and this support is extremely important.

2) sensory related issues and behaviors

Throughout the series, in the main manga and in the spinoffs, Ranpo expresses a struggle with bland food. He refuses to eat anything that does not have an intense flavor. Many autistic people will have restrictive eating habits, whether it is because of sensory reasons or otherwise. Some gravitate towards a bland palette because it offers a consistent expectation of an eating experience. Many others, like in what I speculate to be Ranpo's case, instead go for flavorful foods as a means of sensory seeking. I believe this is also a form of stimming for Ranpo, but I will go over that later on. He has some admittedly odd eating habits as well, such as weird pairings like Tecchou, and while it is likely meant to be a joke, it can be related to his other food habits.

Ranpo also seems to struggle with form-fitting clothes. He chooses baggier items for his everyday wear, which includes not wearing his tie or shirt correctly (he tucks it in the sides), and his big shorts. In this specific BSD:TOTL card he can also be interpreted as struggling with formal attire, too, because of his compliance only after being distracted with a sensory input, which in this case is food as per usual with him.

Stimming is essentially repetitive, sensory self soothing behavior. Every person seeks sensory stimuli to calm themself, but it's especially observable in many autistic folks and most commonly associated with neurodivergent people in general. Ranpo seems to be attracted to marbles from his ramune bottle, staring at them and rolling or holding them between his fingers. This could be taken as an example of visual and tactile stimming. Ranpo is almost always pictured eating some type of snack foods, or he opts for flavorful foods in his palette. This relates to his sensory issues, as I pointed out earlier, but it is also another way that many people seek out sensory stimulation, through oral fixations or for the taste. He is also shown with suckers a lot throughout the series, and I take this as Ranpo going for either the smooth texture of suckers or for that ease to have something to stimulate himself on hand. There are moments when Ranpo flaps his hands or arms when excited, or yet another example of possible tactile stimming.

3) comfort objects

Ranpo exhibits a dependency on Fukuzawa's glasses. Comfort objects are something common with autistic people, as the emotional attachment to an item could be related to security or other factors. He gets extremely upset when he is without his glasses, both because he needs them for his “ability”, but they also serve as an important reminder of Fukuzawa himself, who Ranpo values greatly. Ranpo doesn't care that it is a cheap pair of glasses. He values it because of its connection to his father figure. He has a meltdown whenever he is without it, or someone insists he doesn't need his glasses, like in Poe's Murder Mansion, when he gets upset towards Yosano.

4) meltdowns

His strong emotional reactions in moments like this are akin to that of autistic meltdowns, which outwardly appear to be oversized tantrums, but they aren't. Autistic meltdowns are an extreme involuntary physical response to stressors. One of the pivotal moments for Ranpo's character in the Untold Origins novel is his meltdown in the theater, which resulted from his ongoing frustration and isolation from the world around him, and this is a large part of many autistic experiences. This is one scene that personally got to me, as I have very similar feelings towards the world. It is one of the moments that was lost in the anime adaptation, as it shows the culmination of Ranpo's frustration and the moment where he finally breaks down. It does not have the same effect of conveying Ranpo's isolation and struggles. It is one of his biggest character moments, I would say, as it is the final precursor to Fukuzawa fully stepping in to guide Ranpo.

5) "childish nature"

Ranpo is dubbed as childish due to his stubborn behavior, his inability to do seemingly basic things, and his “self centered” attitude which is really his low empathy. He refuses to do anything that does not interest him, or that is outside of his comfort zone. He doesn't conduct his detective work in a traditional manner because it bores him, he negates the idea of having to handle things that don't interest him on his cases. Ranpo has a large lack of independence alongside this, in refusing to learn to do basic tasks, like his inability to navigate himself. He can't do basic tasks such as cooking or laundry either and relies on others to do them. Ranpo struggles to function independently, and relies heavily on others around him for support. His friends and family in the ADA never treat any of his traits as negative, they both indulge him and treat him as a normal person. He is allowed to exist as he is without judgment, at least in the Agency, just as the other members are.

6) aversion to change

Ranpo refuses to go outside of his comfort zone, as I stated before. There is rarely a point in the series where Ranpo goes out of his way to differ from his regular. He is insistent on the fact that he is a gifted detective despite being aware of reality. This is both in part due to his attachment to the idea and his inability to let go of the image he has resulting from his self expectations. He doesn't want anything to change in the way his comrades view him. Of course, this also connects to how he is so attached to the idea because it was the first way he was able to make sense of the world. He lashes out towards Yosano during a meltdown in Poe's Mansion, as mentioned earlier, due to her potentially challenging this idea.

7) restrictive and unconventional interests

While not every autistic person has a narrowed focus of interests, niche or ultimately odd interests are highly associated with autistic people. Ranpo fits into this very well, as evident by how he works. As established before, Ranpo has a tendency to reject anything outside of his scope of interest. He only handles the most gruesome of cases at the Agency or when he is needed specially for a case. His interest falls under an umbrella of the grotesque and weird. He only puts his full brain power on the main thing that matters to him, his detective work. While this is because of his position as the heart of the Agency with his abilities, Ranpo cannot apply himself to the same level on other things outside of this bubble, similar to how a lot of autsitic people have restricted interest expertise, it can take a lot of energy.

I’ll go over some points that I can think of right now to prove my point.

Both are from highly intelligent families, Sherlock had at least his brother, so Mycroft, that is astonishingly smart too, and Rampo had his parents that were absolute geniuses (information given by Fukuzawa in Untold Origins)

SO they both grew up in a very special environment where their brain developed amazingly so now they can use to it’s max capacity. They were constantly stimulated by someone even smarter than them throughout their whole life, making them the big brains they are today.

BUT ! This created an uneasiness towards society, people are dumb in their eyes and they take interest only in what is special and exceptional, and like they like to call it, in things that « deserve their attention » as intellectually superior people.

They don’t fit in because their intelligence make them eccentrics, they behave differently because they see things differently, only a few people are able to more or less manage them, and it either takes someone dumber or at least as smart as them (for Sherlock you can think of William or Mycroft vs Watson and Lestrade as for Ranpo I would say Dazai or Fyodor vs anyone in the agency tbh)

Also both of them have a way to put their mind at ease, Ranpo being sweet things and food in general and Sherlock being cigarette and sometimes violin. It probably helps they either distract themselves or on the other hand to concentrate.

Also they’re both very much autistic <3

Like. We know what Dazai thinks of Ranpo. We saw Dazai testing Ranpo's Ability and being impressed by the fact that it wasn't an Ability at all, it was just normal human talent. It's not hard to extrapolate that there is something important there for Dazai, who is so concerned with the experience of being a Normal Person and the ways he has overlooked or missed out on it (partially, most likely, because of his own Ability, and the way he has been treated as superhuman or human-adjacent by the others in the Port Mafia outside that). Dazai in this case is not hard to read.

Ranpo, on the other hand. Not a lot of the series at all is from Ranpo's POV, so we don't really have a lot to go on. He also just very rarely directly interacts with Dazai, except in group settings, so it's hard to get a read on his opinions.

I'm almost finished The Secret Origins of the Detective Agency, and there's a few things that crop up there that have really made me think about this again. First is the short story at the start: it's fun but not like substantial, but there is one thing in it that drew my attention.

There's like two big sections where Asagiri is talking about Ranpo compared to Dazai, he's just gone on for like half a page about Ranpo's deductive ability. Then the perspective switches and there's a few paragraphs about Dazai's manipulation ability. Asagiri makes almost a two-page point about how Ranpo can look at the facts and deduce everything etc. etc. But Dazai can look at a person and make them do almost anything he wants yada yada. Part of this is definitely Dazai being Asagiri's Specialest Little Boy, but it sparked a thing for me.

I'm just up to the point where - spoilers, but it's in the anime adaptation of this section so ... not too spoilers? Ranpo is in the fake cop's car being taken somewhere that isn't the police station. And I think there's something that's worth noting here that I don't really see mentioned a lot in Ranpo discussions (I could just be peripheral though, so I'm not gonna say it's not something people see and think about), which is that Ranpo is actually *good* at reading people.

It's an interesting balance and one that is I think hard to strike sometimes, but Ranpo is BOTH very confused about the people around him AND very canny about how people act. The narrative focuses on the former: he says it several times and a lot of his own reactions speak to his confusion about how to connect inputs with outputs, so to speak.

On the other hand, Ranpo uses people's actions and reactions to judge them both constantly and accurately. His big deductions take behaviour into account, particularly anomalous behaviour (the rows of documents in the room that the secretary lays out at the start of the story, the unusual watch owned by the policeman in the drowned body episode in the anime) but also he's able to manipulate people to a degree. He sets up an irresistible trap for - spoilers again - the actor, Murakami, by letting him monologue his confession to the audience and providing him a stage to give his dramatic entry on. He joins in the mind games that the fake police officer is playing in the car, and legitimately keeps up with him. And of course, he's been around Fukuzawa a matter of hours and he not only deduces that Fukuzawa is *embarrassed* by his past but also that he is *afraid of other people*, which one would absolutely not suspect of a person who is completely at a loss around other people.

All of which brings me to my interpretation of Ranpo: he is good at pattern recognition, and when a pattern is in front of him, he can recognise it. He is *not* good at prediction. He doesn't necessarily grasp the underlying *why* of those patterns, and he's clearly got trauma about being wrong about his guesses, so he's both not great at and probably deeply uncomfortable with being asked to guess at what those patterns might be before he has the information in place. He can come in halfway through a situation and take charge: he doesn't orchestrate.

Which brings us back to the original question: what does Ranpo think of Dazai? I don't really have a good answer for this yet, myself, but I wanna throw out the ideas I have been playing around with.

Ranpo has probably guessed or found out way more about Dazai's background than he's telling the rest of the Agency except perhaps Fukuzawa. Which means a) he has context for Dazai that the other main cast members don't (not counting Fukuzawa as a main cast member because he has relatively little screen time and isn't super active in the plots usually), and b) he certainly knows some stuff about the Port Mafia in specific that the others only know in general (like Dazai's time as an interrogator, and the true numbers behind all those murder counts that the police have). I'm not saying Ranpo would be scared of Dazai in any way, they do act pretty friendly when they're together, but I think that's important context to note.

In many ways, too, Ranpo and Dazai are very similar. They are both mask using childlike (or even childish) behaviour, even though they are masking different things and for different reasons. Given how Ranpo sees through people I don't think it's reasonable to suggest that he wouldn't see Dazai's mask for what it is. I actually think there might be an odd tension there: both knowing that the mask is up, both being very aware of each other's mask and their purposes, but also both letting the other keep it up not because they aren't close, but because each sees the value in their behaviour: how being childish is freeing in a way for both of them. Ranpo because his childishness is at its core based on not forcing himself to be hypervigilant about social cues, and Dazai because his irritating habits are his way of vibe checking the Agency members. Do you still love me enough to put up with me? Yes? OK, how about now?

But yeah, can't help but think of that space that neither of them talk about, the secrets they keep on behalf of each other that they both know they know because they know each other and respect each other's deductive abilities, but haven't confirmed that they know. Ranpo is hinted to know that his glasses aren't actually magical, f'ex, but is keeping up the illusion partly out of embarrassment and partially, I think, because they are a token of the time Fukuzawa had no reason to want to help him but did anyway, for the first time since his parents died. So ... if he knows that Dazai knows that, and knows Dazai is keeping that secret, is Ranpo 100% comfortable with that? He seemed a bit put out when he had to confess to Yosano about it. Even if they're friendly and Ranpo sees Dazai as an ally and a good person, does it still not sit at least a little off with him that Dazai, who he knows is capable of being the Port Mafia person again if he has to be, and whose list of crimes he knows in detail, knows something so uncomfortable about him?

And like, there's that whole question, right: Dazai is good at everything Ranpo feels his deficiencies in most keenly. Ranpo's greatest feelings of inadequacy about himself are his inability to understand others' motives/social cues, and his feeling that everyone around him is working to a script he never got to read. And here's Dazai, who not only understands what drives people extremely deeply (not necessarily intuitively, I think Dazai is probably neurodivergent and did rote learn/learn by experiment just like Ranpo, but certainly deeply), but acts like he *wrote* the script? And about 50% of the time, he might as well have? And not only that, is famous for doing so and using it in service of murder and torture, among the more mundane uses? Yeah, I can't see that not giving Ranpo pause on some level. As I said, I don't think Ranpo is scared of Dazai or thinks Dazai is smarter than him. I think that would be a simplistic interpretation. But I can't see this *not* factoring into how Ranpo feels about and approaches Dazai on some level.

Jumping back a point, Dazai and Ranpo seem to have a bit of a truce going over this whole thing. They don't reveal each other's secrets. Dazai seems not to mess with Ranpo as much as the others, if at all. I feel they'd be a tough match for each other if they had some sort of prank war, and neither of them are really averse to that concept (Dazai's pranks vs Ranpo's deduction would be enrichment in both their enclosures tbh) but they just don't go there. There's a part of me that wants to wonder if they both just don't want to know the answer to the question of who is smarter/better at intellectual games (Dazai says it's Ranpo, and I'm inclined to agree, but 1, Dazai says a *lot* of things, and 2, Dazai still probably has tactics that Ranpo would be hard pressed to match)? Do they both know that the optimal strategy is Dazai lets Ranpo win, because in order to beat him, Dazai would have to play by a level of bastardry that neither of them want to instigate, so it's not an interesting question to them?

And final thing: I also get the sense that Dazai in many ways admires Ranpo. Dazai tends to admire, seek out, and grow attached to people with strong moral compasses, and people with strongly developed senses of integrity. Ranpo is absolutely in that category, though in a different way to Kunikida or Oda. Dazai sees in Ranpo a person who was mistreated by the world and could have been so resentful but instead considers it his moral duty to protect people who don't have his deductive powers. And I think that compels Dazai. What I don't know is exactly how Ranpo feels about that. Is that just under the category of his "of course everyone should admire me!" posturing, or does it hit different knowing who he's being compared to and what it means to Dazai, specifically, to admire someone?