#but i have dudebro shonen brain im so sorry

[lucifermeo]

this thought has been niggling in the back of my head ever since dazai called akutagawa too slow to teach that time in the dungeon (which wasn't really true he was just manipulating aku) and only became more prominent when i read the failed sskk-vs-fukuchi fight but for a fighting(?) shonen(?) manga protagonists/main duo atsushi and akutagawa's talents (beside their innate abilities) are pretty....mid?

obviously i dont think theyre stupid but even if we dont consider the OP protags usually seen in the genre they still come up quite average in-universe? for one they are clearly not the brightest bulbs around. akutagawa's mostly been the brains behind sskk and he's pulled some pretty good saves like waking the tiger in 55 minutes or assisting atsushi throughout the fight against goncharov, so he's capable and can further improve (provided vampirism or death didnt turn his brain to mush rip) but theres no way its in the same dimension of the class of people considered the "brain" of the series (dazai, fyodor, ranpo, even mori). it couldve been somewhat better if their intellect complemented each other (for example ranpo+dazai whose brains become 1+1>2 together) but sskk are pretty similar in how they think? i dont think theres anything akutagawa could come up with and atsushi couldnt (well, i do have to give it to atsushi for the ability to consider strategic retreat, something aku is incapable of).

then there are their abilities & combat capabilities. the abilities are strong, no doubt, and even stronger together (sskk 1+1>2 goes here) but considering how strong the abilities are capable of, their combat power is just ok? and its quite not a problem of experience either because like how dazai and friends above reign over intellect we have seen other ability users with genius control over their abilities at very young, most notably oda and chuuya (no corruption) for me. oda's ability seemed like a cheat because he can see the future, but its really just 5-6 seconds so its still on him to react fast enough. from the day i met dazai we actually found out by 14 years old, he's killed so many people they thought it was an entire organisation behind the assassinations, but nah it was just oda alone. and even when his ability was canceled out in the fight with gide, he was still comparable in speed and marksmanship, and given how gide fought in the great war 10 years before the event of dark era, the man has years of experience over oda. similarly, its chuuya's ability to combine his gravitation manipulation to enhance his fighting with insane accuracy (generating the right momentum for his hits, gathering dust as leverage for midair mobility, etc.) that makes the gravitation control a lot more deadly. and hes done all this by the time we first saw him at 15, where "the sheep" aka basically chuuya alone has enough firepower to compete with port mafia. like oda, chuuya also fought with someone with the same ability and at 16, under normal power condition his hand-to-hand combat skills are comparable to verlaine, a government-trained spy and assassin, or even better as he managed to wound him (of course verlaine still won in the end because his dragon aka energy output is bigger than chuuya's dragon lmao). in comparison to them, sskk's track record doesnt seem as impressive? of course they have their limitations like how atsushi has only been at this for a year at most or akutagawa is simply too frail due to his illness (dazai's physical skills are below average for the mafia per chuuya's assessment and well, we all know how dazai-vs-akutagawa goes). but sskk actually had training and mentors and so far they look to be on an ordinary(?) learning curve, while oda and chuuya seemed to be just genius??

of course, as protagonists we love sskk for their drive and personal growth that us readers are privy to but kinda like how teruko told sigma, in a fight to the death its not like the geniuses like the ones above will have less drive to survive. anyway, its not really a complaint because the appeal of bsd has always been the characters and themes to me, not so much the powerscaling (even if it has been about fighting, having an "average" protag is perfectly fine). i just think its pretty interesting to take this into perspective considering if everyone manages to survive the doa arc future enemies are probably gonna get stronger, and i wonder how will we go from here, assuming asagiri still wants to give sskk the "main fight" of the arc (though who knows with the madlad anymore lmao)

(i wouldnt say no to more ability group fight like how the mafia ganged up on verlaine in stormbringer though that's be rad as hell)