#nobuko

[lovelycomplexlovelovelove]

[cinema0]

Nobuko 1940, dir. Hiroshi Shimizu

[goldtheostrich]

>:3

[momochimchim]

Mooooooore OCs! (∩´∀`∩)💕

[lordicusyay]

Eloso, Zeph, Nobuko, and Sakurashi art dump<33

My demon babies:)

[mazojo]

Risa has two hands and one one she holds hands with Otani and in the other she holds hands with Nobuko

[chromateclipse]

TAKADAA CHAAAANNN

[orixelacitedesmorts]

[sorcerersandskillusers]

I want to talk about one of the most terrifying and interesting bsd characters who almost no fan remembers.

This character nearly tore down the ADA without ever getting involved herself, yet the entire fandom has ignored her because of her terrible anime adaptation.

Who am I talking about?

Nobuko Sasaki

If you haven't read Dazai Osamu's Entrance Exam, then you probably don't even know who this character is, in the anime she is watered down to the lovesick girlfriend of an actual villain, and you probably dismissed her immediately. But in the light novel, we get to see how dangerous and cunning she really is, to the point she nearly gets the better of Dazai and almost causes the ADA to be shut down. (Fukuzawa says he would have closed the agency if they hadn't caught her)

In terms of intelligence I'd put her on the same level as Mori, just slightly below the super human genius characters i.e. Dazai, Fyodor and Ranpo

The Azure Apostle

For those who don't remember, Sasaki was the Azure Apostle, a mysterious figure who challenged the agency with several horrifying cases, which would all lead to mass casualties if the agency failed to stop them. These were; uncovering an underground organ smuggling operation (which the agency failed to stop and which massively hurt their reputation) stopping a bombing of Yokohama port which could have killed hundreds of people, and preventing a commercial aeroplane from crashing into the city (this was not included in the anime)

Each of the people, who committed these crimes, had no Idea they were being manipulated and thought it was their own idea the whole time. There was no evidence that anyone else had been involved at all, and the agency had no way to connect her to any of the crimes. And she even makes the genius move of framing Dazai, the mysterious new member with suspicious knowledge of the underworld and a hidden past, as the true culprit.

In fact, she only made one mistake, challenging Dazai. If Dazai had been basically anyone else, they would have been cornered and arrested, but since Dazai's mind works on a level even master strategists can't imagine, he was able to turn the tables on her.

But even after Dazai sees through her plans, the ADA still has to act exactly the way she wants them too and stop the plane crash. Even when they know they're being manipulated, they still have to do exactly what she wanted.

Finally, after Dazai and Kunikida confront her and get her to admit to being behind all those crimes, even then they are powerless to stop her.

Even after being involved with so many massive crimes, Sasaki herself hadn't done anything illegal, so within the law the ADA is completely powerless to stop her.

They can't arrest her, and if they try then the agency will be put in even more danger as will many innocent lives. She has completely trapped the ADA, and even Dazai in a choice to follow the law and let her go or take justice into their own hands and prove they will stoop as low as she did.

In the end, there she has them in a perfect deadlock, let her continue her mission, or kill her themselves. Both are bad outcomes for the ADA.

In the end, Dazai has her killed by using a third party (Rokuzo) to shoot her, so the agency can't be blamed for her murder, though this ends her plans it deeply scars Kunikida and shakes his resolve in his ideals.

The trauma from this event still haunts Kunikida to this day, we see that when he is affected by Q's curse, Sasaki is who he sees.

So thats the Azure Apostle, a terrifying master mind who nearly brought down the Armed Detective Agency, but now lets look at the other side of this character.

Nobuko Sasaki Herself

We know several things about Sasaki as a character and her history from the light novel. That she was a brilliant criminal psychologist and was internationally recognised despite being so young

,that she was the ex-lover of the Azure King and the real mastermind behind his plans, and that she had very little motivation of her own.

That's not meant to be an insult to the character, she says herself that she never really had much direction in life, even with her incredible intelligence she never really had anything she wanted to achieve.

But the Azure King was the opposite, he had powerful drive and strong ideals, he wanted to punish criminals who couldn't be touched by the law and when he failed to change the law as a bureaucrat, she offered him an alternative.

A very important thing here is that neither of them were manipulating or forcing the other into this path, as far as we see they genuinely loved each other, each providing something the other couldn't, Sasaki her mind and the Azure King his drive.

When the Azure king died, Sasaki had no path of her own to follow, so she simply kept following his, even though she doesn't seem to have really cared about his cause.

All of this creates a very unique character, you can't say she was driven by revenge, because she wasn't really driven at all. It's more like she was running on momentum, she had chosen a path to follow and could not stop even though there was nothing pushing her down it any more.

She's a perfect antithesis of Kunikida and was the best possible villain a light novel about him could have had.

A man who brings his ideals into reality with his own hands against a woman who uses others to enforce ideals that were never hers to begin with.

Anyway, I made this because Sasaki is criminally underrated in this fandom, If you haven't read "Dazai Osamu's Entrance Exam" I highly recommend it, I've only put a tiny fraction of the amazing story here.

[evermorethecrow]

this is the toxic yuri couple asagiri kept from us

[sleepy-sham]

Big Post #6. For the record I really struggled with who should get which post on the first one

more jjk memes

[rosalinesurvived]

I am actually frothing at the mouth rn where the fuck is the interview where Asagiri implies that the Azure King case never occured and thus Kunikida never accidentally caused the deaths of five people and so Rokuzou never lost his father and so Kunikida never met Sasaki OR Rokuzou. Where is it. What the fuck yall. Kunikida wears a blue tie in beast because he never associates blue with death. And he never meets Dazai so there’s nobody to hammer it into his head on how his ideals aren’t trustworthy. And how this implies that Dazai somehow offed the Azure King and Apostole.

[chadlesbianjasontodd]

[translation] "Pear Blossom" by Yoshiya Nobuko

Although the fiction of "Japan's first lesbian author" Yoshiya Nobuko was (and remains) hugely popular, of her entire body of work only one short story has ever been published in English translation, and no (other) fan translations appear to exist --- despite the enormous influence of her work on the predominant aesthetics and themes of shoujo manga. The beautiful flowery style and melodrama so famously attached to shoujo manga are thanks in large part to Yoshiya, and I'm very happy to be able to share one of her stories with you now!

"Pear Blossom" is a sparse and vivid short story from Yoshiya's early collection Hanamonogatari ("Flower tales"), a book noted for its use of beautiful imagery and its emphasis on the importance of romantic relationships between girls.

Read it here!

(nota bene, "Pear Blossom" is in the style of romantic, 'narcissistic' girlhood tragedy for which Yoshiya is most famous; approach accordingly. I've also included a page of notes on Yoshiya and her early lesbian fiction.)

[momochimchim]

I was feeling kinda down, so I drew a bunch of my dead-fish-eyed-crew charas ᕕ( ཀ ʖ̯ ཀ)ᕗ

Babies, (some of them are) really fucked up babies... 🤲🏻

Reminder to drink water!! 🌷🌷🌷

I brushed my teeth and drank water and it really didn't make much of a difference but I felt so proud I did it. And I'm so proud of these drawings too, They look great! So now i'm feeling a itsy bitsy better. ^-^

[neo--queen--serenity]

KUNIKIDA ISN’T THE AZURE KING, RIGHT?? RIGHT!?!?

I let it slide the first time I watched the series, but I subconsciously expected to get some sort of explanation for why the two characters looked so alike, but an explanation never came.

It’s not coincidental. Despite having his face covered, Bones made sure we saw the Azure King’s hair and eye color, and they match Kunikida’s EXACTLY. Even the shape of the eyes are the same.

And like, the whole episode, they kept talking about how the Azure King “lived by his ideals,” saying it numerous times. They talked about him the same way the ADA talks about Kunikida. We also have the similarities over his education and connections in government organizations.

Even down to the fact that Kunikida is drawn to and attracted to Sasaki, who was the Azure King’s lover. Down to the fact that she tells Kunikida, at gunpoint, “you resemble him.”

The Azure King and Kunikida even share the same Japanese voice actor. The irl Nobuko Sasaki was married to the irl Doppo Kunikida, but they divorced early into their marriage.

Was Kunikida the Azure King!?! I told myself he wasn’t, the first time I saw it, because I expected more information later, but like I said, we never got any.

I know I’m not the first person to theorize about this, but I just wish we knew more. The Azure King could just be an elaborate allegory for what Kunikida could have been, if he went down that path. But that’s…such an excessively detailed allegory. Like why go that hard if it’s just a parallel?

[mazojo]

Lovely Complex truly is just Risa and her harem of small people