I Want To Talk About The Moment That Both Made Me Fall In Love With Atsushi Nakajima As A Character,

i want to talk about the moment that both made me fall in love with atsushi nakajima as a character, and which made me realize that I was probably going to get obsessed with BSD.

specifically, it was this moment.

words can not describe how important this moment was to me, and how vital this is to both atsushi as a character and his relationship with dazai as a whole.

as someone who is currently living with my abusive parents, this was something that resonated with me a lot — oftentimes, media when attempting to portray abuse (specifically parental abuse) and victims of abuse, does 1 out of 2 things:

1. Tries to justify the abuse and protect the parents — having the kids be okay with the treatment they recieved.

2. Has the kids utterly despise their parents with no shred of good feelings.

And whilst, sure, both of these can happen — and I'm sure there are victims who actually feel like this — it's not the most common response.

Speaking from my own experience — I don't know how to feel about my parents. If they died, I wouldn't know what face to make. I hate them more than anyone else, but at the same time, I grew up with them. I hate them, but I also love them. If they died, I don't know how I'd feel about it. And we get to see Atsushi having that exact breakdown — the elation over the person you hate dying, versus the grief and frustration and confusion. Abuse isn't simple, and feelings aren't simply — your abuser dying isn't something that's clean cut, it comes with a million different conflicting confusing emotions.

And the fact that Atsushi is allowed to have these feelings, is allowed to hate the headmaster, is allowed to grieve without forgiveness, is so important. BSD doesn't try to justify his abuse — it's okay to mourn someone that hurt you even if you don't like them. Their death — or their intentions — don't make forgiveness a necessity.

And even moreso, the fact that he gets explicitly told that regardless of the fact that that abuse was what molded him into the person he is today and has helped him survive, and the fact that the headmaster had good intentions, it was bad and unforgivable, is extremely important.

dazai not forcing atsushi to feel a certain way about his abuser, and encouraging him to mourn without forgiveness and to actually feel, is an incredibly important moment — i doubt that i'm only speaking for myself here when i say that when dealing with these subject matters, these are the types of things we'd like to hear.

the fact that dazai is the character telling atsushi this isn't lost on me, either — considering that earlier on this chapter, he sent ryuunosuke to tell atsushi about the headmaster, and they had this interaction:

everything about this is so fascinating and well written — from atsushi having an extremely realistic breakdown over the death of his abuser, to dazai telling him that he has zero obligation for forgiveness — and the implications that he's aware that what he's done to ryuunosuke is wrong regardless of intentions, is fascinating.

to me, atsushi nakajima has always felt human in a way most protagonists don't — his trauma impacts him, he has complex messy feelings that can't be easily resolved. it's his choice what to do with his emotions, and all others can do is give advice, and let him figure out how to deal with them.

atsushi nakajima crying over the man who simultaneously raised him and made his life a living hell is accurate in a way that almost hurts.

(slightly unrelated, but i sure was accurate with this prediction from a month ago, huh!)

he is so silly to me as long as you ignore the war crimes ! just look at that face <3

Aaaaaahhhhhhh

a little collection of Dazai being fascinated by Chuuya fighting

I AM SO EXITED FOR THE MOVIE

I will go with hope.

Hope will go with you.

The miracle that I achieved with you will surely guide us.

How dare you do this to me 👹👹👹

Maybe in another life

YES.

OK correct me if I'm wrong, but I feel like the main 'yin/yang' parallel with Atsushi and Akutagawa is not something like 'this one is bad but secretly has a good side and this one is good but secretly has a bad side'.

I feel like it's more about 'who they are at their core vs who they choose to be'.

At his core Akutagawa is kind and at his core Atsushi is not. But despite this Atsushi tries every day to make the kinder choices and I love him so much for it. He has to work so hard to be good.

He wants to be a bitch SO bad I know he does but he tries his best to help people and be nice (sometimes he fails but that's OK <3)

Atsushi doesn't always WANT to help people, a lot of the time he's selfish and scared, but he does help people anyway. He keeps helping people over and over again. There's still some selfish motivation to it, and his initial motivation for helping people was because the headmaster told him that's all he was worth, but overall he does care about the people he helps and it weighs on him if he fails to save them. And of course, as the series goes on he starts helping people more because he can rather than because he feels like he needs to.

In Akutagawa's case, he's still capable of being kind but his environment led him into being someone who chooses to hurt people. But he's always been a protector at heart. In the start he was bad compared to Atsushi because he was choosing to hurt people and keep the cycle of abuse going. Just like how Atsushi developed in why he saved people, Akutagawa starts to get redeemed when he chooses to not just act on his rage. Not only does he start to spare people, but he speaks more kindly to them (apologising to Higuchi and telling Kyouka he's proud of her). It all culminates into the moment he chooses to help Atsushi and sacrifice himself for him, going back to his core value of being a protector. Even when he's finally revived, he keeps this role in his new position as Aya's Knight.

I kind of see the streaks of white in Akutagawa and the streaks of black in Atsushi not as their 'hidden sides' but as their fundamental selfs. That's who they are at their core, and their main colours (black for Akutagawa and white for Atsushi) are how they're presented to everyone else and how they try to have people see them as.