#Well yes because that scene is very anti-dazai. It really helps my case here

[anti-dazai-blog]

7 & 8- If only Dazai would stop putting people in danger (and other complaints) 

Dazai doesn’t appear much in these two chapters— he’s only in around 5 panels total in both chapters combined. Most of the things I’d blame him for within chapters 7 and 8 are Akutagawa’s actions that were influenced by/ a result of the trauma Dazai’s training gave him. With that being said, let’s move on to the contents of these two chapters.

Chapter 7 opens with Kyoka capturing Dazai. I unironically found this scene to be the most hilarious scene in the whole anime. (in the manga it’s significantly less funny though). It’s just. The way Dazai has to act like he’s getting captured for real. 

He’s really like “Oh no 😮 an ability user is capturing me 😱 there’s absolutely no way for me to escape this 😰 if only there was some way to shut off her ability 🤔 oh well 🤷 I can't think of a single thing I could do here 😔”. If that’s not peak comedy I don’t know what is. 

Moving on— why did Kyoka even bother using her ability to capture Dazai? It’s fair to say that she didn’t know about Dazai’s ability, but Akutagawa definitely did, and he was the one controlling Demon Snow. So why didn’t Akutagawa tell her? And why did Akutagawa have her use Demon Snow in the first place? The only answer I could possibly think of is that he’s trying to follow in Dazai’s footsteps of “never explain anything ever and let people figure things out on their own, even if it puts their lives in danger”. That was how Akutagawa was taught— and I wouldn’t be surprised if Dazai would send him into battle while withholding crucial information about the enemy, just to see how he’d handle himself. 

As it’s later revealed, Dazai got captured on purpose. He got captured on purpose, meaning he knew that Kyoka specifically would be capturing him. He’s clearly well aware of the mafia’s current members, their assignments, and their abilities (at least in regards to what’s relevant to him). Given that this is the case, why didn’t he warn the other agency members about Kyoka and her involvement as Akutagawa’s subordinate in the mission to capture the weretiger? Even if Dazai doesn’t want to tell the whole agency, he should at least inform Atsushi of some potentially life-saving information. 

As per usual, the answer is most likely along the lines of “he’s not going to give over any information ever, even if lives are in danger”. In this particular case, it may be even worse than that. By this point in time, Atsushi’s already beginning to learn how to use his ability. Dazai neglecting to inform him of the trained assassin who’ll potentially be hunting him down could be for the purpose of throwing him into a real fight (alone this time) with no prior warning, so that he could have some (sudden) real life experience with using and controlling his ability. This is incredibly similar to how he trained Akutagawa (ie by shooting at him before he fully mastered blocking the bullets, as a way of teaching him how to). Often enough, Dazai abides by the “throw them in the water, they’ll either swim or sink” teaching method. And it should go without saying that that teaching method is not very effective at best, and outright harmful or fatal at worst.

Now onto Kyoka herself— I’ll take a moment to acknowledge that her mafia trauma is mostly from Akutagawa, who only treated her so harshly because Dazai treated him even worse, and in comparison he’s probably being a whole lot nicer to her than he was treated in his own training. I’ll only be mentioning this once— I don’t want to bring up that it’s technically Dazai’s fault that Kyoka has a huge pile of mafia trauma every single time Kyoka shows signs of her trauma. 

There isn’t much else to say about Dazai here, but there is one other thing that I wanna say before finishing off chapters 7 & 8. 

At the end of chapter 8, Akutagawa is talking to Dazai in the dungeon, and says “are you a pawn, or…”

Akutagawa. I’m so sorry, but that’s the absolute dumbest question you could possibly ask. Really, Akutagawa. Are you serious. Did you really just ask Dazai if he’s a pawn. Does he look like a pawn to you. Does he look like any chess piece. Akutagawa, look, he’s very obviously not a pawn. He’s not a king either. He’s the chess player. That should be so obvious to you. I get it that the question was rhetorical but still. What was the point. You know he’s manipulating everyone around him for fun, as a hobby. It’s literally what he does in his free time. You know that. Why are you even having this conversation, Akutagawa. He’s not gonna acknowledge you. Please move on. Just punch him in the face and leave. Don’t talk to this guy.

That’s it for this week’s post— join me next week when I talk about. I don’t know yet. I know it’s the dungeon scene and unfortunately no emoji exists that could accurately portray the Deep Sigh Of Annoyance(?) when I realized that that’s what I’m up to here. {Akutagawa and Chuuya in the same chapter? No no that’s too much. There’s too much to unpack here.}