One thing I love about bsd is the fact that you can have multiple pairs of the "hate each other but trust each other" trope, and they all feel different.
Fukuzawa and Mori are exes, Dazai and Chuuya have an on-off again relationship, and Atsushi and Akutagawa are in middle of their enemies to lovers arc.
You know what screw Dazai or any other character's backstory I want the next light novel to be entirely dedicated to exactly when and how Motojiro Kajii discovered he was immune to lemon shaped bombs
One thing that always bothers me is when people reduce Chuuya down to "anger issues." Because he's so much more than just an angry little redhead. Yeah, Dazai's ticks him off, but aside from that, whenever he's shown as being angry, it's never because of a stupid reason that had his temper going off. Like in the movie, he was mad because six of his friends were killed due to a government decision. He was angry in season three when he learned he had two days to either kill the leader of the Agency, a group that he knew they had a ceasefire with, or else the boss would die. I'm pretty sure Harukawa even said that Chuuya's actually composed most of the time, it's only when he's with Dazai that he reverts into a five year old with anger issues, as does Dazai. And as a matter of fact, he spent most of his life bottling down anger, taking responsibility for others, never really letting himself experience these emotions for others sake. In Stormbringer, Verlaine wants him to be mad, to use that anger to prove he's just a beast, and for him to go hurt the world that did bad to him. Something which Chuuya doesn't want to do.
I'm not saying that his patience is unlimited or that he doesn't get angry often, but whenever I see him get reduced to Bakugo syndrome, it always gets me annoyed, because it feels like people don't truly understand his character.
Listening to the Thunder Saga, as well as the new and improved Troy and Cyclops Saga, and. . . JAY NEEDS TO BECOME A PROFESSIONAL VOICE ACTOR WHO'S WITH ME ON THIS???? FUNIMATION NEEDS TO HIRE THIS MAN I MEAN REALLY-
Ok so we all just know Chuuya went to see Wicked in theaters and decided to make Defying Gravity his theme song.
He's battling an enemy, and he suddenly disappears. Next thing you know, there's a disembodied voice-
"Something has changed within me..."
The enemy turns around, but he can't find him.
"Something is not the same..."
And this keeps going until Chuuya signals for one of his subordinates to hit the light so the enemy can see him standing on the ceiling as he belts:
"I THINK I'LL TRY DEFYING GRAVITYYYYY"
He's still singing it on the car ride home.
Dead apple really fits in perfectly with bsd, because we know and love this movie, but ask anyone who watched it and they couldn't tell you what the hyuck it was about.
Ok, so we're all talking about Mori seemed to have nothing better do to than to glue in Chuuya's fangs. His organization has crumbled, they've all been turned into actual vampires, a guy is LITERALLY trying to take over the world, and Mori's over here glueing in the fangs to deliberately mess with Chuuya.
But.
I think Mori may have been onto something here. Imagine, will you, that he DIDN'T glue in the fangs. I imagine the scene might have gone something like this (I can't draw for the life of me, so we're gonna have to write this out, though it'd be a funny comic, if anyone's interested in making it).
Ehem.
Chuuya arrives to kill Dazai. The music is suspenseful, the air is tense. Fyodor is watching the whole interaction so he can witness Dazai's death in glorious HD.
"C'mon, Chuuya," taunts Dazai. "Give me one of your flimsy punches."
Chuuya snarls and lunges forwards. And that's when one of his fangs falls out of his mouth and clatters onto the floor.
The music stops. Crickets chirp in the distance. Chuuya stares at the fang. Dazai stares at the fang. They look up and stare at each other. Then, their gazes slowly turn up to the camera, where Fyodor is sitting, watching the whole thing play out. Belatedly, Chuuya goes, "uhhhaaahhhhhhAHHHHHHHH!!!" and clutches his cheek.
"It's the other side," Dazai informs him under his breath.
"Ahhhhhhhhhhhh!" He switches sides. "My tooth fell out??" He glances back up at the camera, where Fyodor is watching, his expression deadpan. "Know any good, uh, vampire dentists in the area? Aha. Ahahah. Hahahahah-"
Fyodor looks done with life. "I'm not buying it."
"Well. Drat."
Let's be real, this season would have gone VERY differently is this happened. That would have been quite a way to reveal the whole vampire fake out, but I think it's for the better that Mori glued them in, even if his intentions were just to mess with Chuuya and it caused some severe annoyance afterwards.
The first episode of bsd is actually so fitting, because it really sets the tone of the show. It goes from a ramble about food to suicide prevention to suicide enablezation to detectives to tigers to "no homo". And it's beautiful
For those of you who may not be too familiar with the manga, during ch39: Portrait of a Father, Akutagawa shows up, as Dazai's informant, to give Atsushi documents about who the orphanage headmaster was and what happened to him.
At that moment, Akutagawa shows an uncharacteristic clemency towards Atsushi, saying that "Atsushi's master died today", and compares this to his own relationship with Dazai.
This was a long time ago now, and a lot has happened since. The Cannibalism arc is right after this, where they are very antagonistic towards each other, and includes this scene:
Akutagawa, despite his bitterness towards Atsushi for who he is to Dazai, has seen how similar they are in this sense. Atsushi hasn't, because his gratefulness towards Dazai prevents him from seeing that Akutagawa's experience was completely different with this same person. (he's also not given any time by the narrative to wonder about it)
but then just came along chapter 122!!!
Atsushi gets to see, 1:1, the relationship between Akutagawa and Dazai. For the first time, Akutagawa is relatable to him.
And of course, at the end, Atsushi calls out the illusion as being the headmaster wearing Dazai's face because we are closing this loop! We are forcing Atsushi to see Akutagawa the same way Akutagawa has been seeing him!
Skk genuinely make me crazy because the more you think into them, the more sad it becomes. Dazai is a bad person who is getting pulled more and more into the light while Chuuya is a good person who gets dragged deeper and deeper into the darkness. Dazai gets to be redeemed when Chuuya lost the one opportunity he had, and by now, he's way too loyal to ever leave; they're his family. And yet, despite Dazai being the "evil" one, he couldn't make the Port Mafia his home, not in the same way the Agency is. Even though Chuuya is by all accounts the better person in this dynamic, he's still the one who was forced to take what he was given and make it his, while Dazai kept searching for something more, even though at their cores, they're the opposite. A demon in the light and an angel in the dark. And that's one of the reasons why 22 skk is really interesting - they both live in that area of gray, they just got there differently. One came from white and came closer to black while one came from black and approached white. And it's over this middleground that they connect more than anyone else - Chuuya, a person who at his core wants to do good, but he's been forced into becoming a murderer and to live in the darkness while Dazai, who at his core is more selfish and doesn't value human life, is brought into the light for a chance at redemption the other will never get to have. It's something I don't see much in skk angst but my god does it hurt.