radicalized beyond my years

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blog introduction below the cut

first of all im convinced that bones hates all of my favorite characters. i think im finally gonna start reading the manga from now on, instead of waiting for the anime to catch up (and honestly i should have done this years ago like yall told me to)

akutagawa and atsushi make me SICK. they NEED to kiss. for the PLOT. you don't get it it doesn't make sense that they HAVEN'T ALREADY.

i couldnt care less about dazai

i think the writing has improved a lot but also stays regressive at the same time? it's like the show is actively trying to keep certain characters from developing and it makes me sad because the potential is right there and they refuse to use it

i actually care a lot about sigma and his wellbeing and happiness and i'm not sure if he's actually dead bcs the anime kinda glossed over that but i hope he comes back i'm not done with him yet

also, even i'm pissed at some of the manga panels that were left out. and i haven't even actually read the thing i just saw spoilers all over tumblr. i can't believe they would cut so many good shots. what is their problem?

ranpo is so, so good i love him so much

i kinda don't care about soukoku that much anymore.... i like chuuya as a character but dazai is just so insufferable i want them to be as far away from each other as possible and i want chuuya to have at least one fraction of plot that doesn't reduce him to his bond with dazai. i know there are like novels or side stories about him so im excited to read those (if someone could give me recommendations as to where to start that would be awsome btw)

i know my disdain for dazai is ruining a good chunk of the series for me, because the authors are set on having him in the center of everything even though he's the most boring mf in the whole story, but i can't help it. i hate the guy. he has nothing interesting going on about him and the only reason i could tolerate him in the anime was because i love mamoru miyano's performance so much, safe to say i'm not looking forward to seeing him in the manga

we're slowly getting into hot take area, and i would actually love to hear manga readers' opinions on this so i wanna try to explain why i don't like dazai.

(edit: i now realize i ended up writing a whole essay here so the rest of this post is going to be me complaining about dazai the way i understand him as an anime watcher. if you have any opinions, feel free to share but please be respectful thank you)

apart from how it gets boring to see every other character always hype him up to be this super smart, incredibly capable man without actually seeing him do anything impressive, i just feel like he's single handedly holding this story back from developing. dazai is the first character we get introduced to, and it's clear the author crafted this character with a lot of love and care and wants him to be important in the story. but to me, it seems like bsd has expanded its scale into a much bigger one than what was maybe intended at first, and now we have so many interesting characters and so much of this world to explore but the author's constant push to keep dazai relevant is hurting the story. listen i get it, no matter how big the stakes have gotten and how many new people have been introduced, at its core i think bsd is about three people: atsushi, akutagawa and dazai. and there's a strong foundation for these three (and their individual dynamics) that could evolve into really interesting storylines that I would love to see. HOWEVER, in order for this foundation to amount to anything, we need akutagawa and atsushi (or at least one of them) to move on from dazai. and that's what the author's not allowing. that's my problem with dazai's existence in this series. he's actively holding back two of the most interesting main characters in the series.

i got a little nostalgic and watched the old ending sequences from the anime last night, and something that i noticed way back when i first watched season 4 came back to me. there is this shot of akutagawa, atsushi and dazai just standing like this in ending four

and this immediately reminded me of this shot from ending one

and when i saw this imagery for the first time, even though i knew that this was made by the anime studio and didn't necessarily have the authority to foreshadow anything for the manga's future, i thought it was interesting that they switched places. in the shot from season one, atsushi and akutagawa are facing completely opposite directions, it's like they don't even know about the existence of one another. which makes sense because in season one, they really only had a handful of interactions and in all of them they were just positioned at opposite sides of a fight of rival organizations. they don't have a relationship, and their only connection to each other is dazai. in season one, dazai is mentoring atsushi and we also learn that he has some kind of history with akutagawa. their individual connections to dazai makes atsushi interested in learning about akutagawa (and just dazai's past in general) while akutagawa thinks of atsushi as his rival and replacement. but they don't have a real relationship yet, even a negative one, their feud and rivalry only exists because of each of their own tangible relationships with dazai.

in the season four ending, the dynamics have shifted. akutagawa is facing the opposite direction from dazai. they're not even on the street at the same time, the sun hits from different angles in each shot. it seems like akutagawa has nothing left to want from this man, he's already got his approval, and he's finally changing. he's looking the other way, he's maybe gaining a new purpose in life. dazai is done with akutagawa as well, he mentored (manipulated) him to his heart's content and now akutagawa isn't as useful for him as before, so he has no reason to keep tormenting the kid. he's looking at his own path as well. and in the middle of them, there's atsushi. atsushi who somehow gained akutagawa's respect as a rival and made his way into a weird position in his life that honestly none of us could probably define (friends? colleagues? mutually respected rivals that sometimes work together, are willing to die for each other and understand each other better than anyone ever could?) and the young man who grew stronger and stronger until he was one of dazai's strongest assets. I'm not going to enter atin the idea that dazai actually cares about atsushi, because i don't have it in my heart to be graceful to dazai, but i do think he's at the very least interested in him and finds him endearing. so now, atsushi becomes the new bridge because akutagawa doesn't need dazai's approval and has his own little weird dynamic with atsushi, and the only thing that dazai and akutagawa have left in common is their bond to atsushi. dazai used to be in the center of akutagawa and atsushi'm relationship, but now akutagawa moved on and his only relationship with dazai is the fact that he's mentoring his current partner.

if you're a manga reader you're probably thinking, girl that's reading way too much into something so insignificant. and apparently you're right, because none of this is real. turns out i just expected too much from this show because the author refuses to develop akutagawa as a character. he's stuck being the same old attention-starved self-loathing insecure soldier boy we met in season one. they just never let him grow. they don't allow him to learn lessons from all the shit that they've been through. every single season atsushi gives him the same fuck ass speech about how his worth isnt related to dazai's approval and he doesn't need to keep trying to prove himself, and the show pretends like that's going to change something in akutagawa, but it doesn't. everytime he comes back, he's spewing the same nonsense about how he has to kill atsushi or he'll never prove himself. and apart from how fucking predictable and boring it's gotten, it just seems uncharacteristic and narratively dumb at this point.

i cannot tell you how disappointed I was when akutagawa came on that ship to help atsushi fight fukuchi and delivered the same one liners about how he's only there because dazai ordered him to, and he's only fighting because he wants dazai's approval and the only way he could get it is to kill atsushi etc.

because i don't know about you guys, i don't know, but when THIS

happened, i thought we were supposed to take it seriously. i thought this was the fucking approval. i thought akutagawa was only going to go upwards from here out. my bad. sorry for paying attention to what the characters are saying. i'm the idiot.