ATSUSHI'S SELFLESSNESS AND ABILITY EFFECTIVENESS ARE DECIDED BY HOW MUCH FAITH HE HAS IN HIS FUTURE

ATSUSHI'S SELFLESSNESS AND ABILITY EFFECTIVENESS ARE DECIDED BY HOW MUCH FAITH HE HAS IN HIS FUTURE

(An Atsushi character + ability analysis)

TW Death. Long post.

In Chapter 18, Kunikida when saving Atsushi from Kouyou tells him, 'How long will you keep letting others save you?', referring to Kyouka who had been fending off Kouyou till then.

Kunikida has a point - Atsushi was thoroughly injured before Kyouka took over, but after that he didn't heal himself so that he could continue fighting. Now an analysis I read says that Atsushi can only heal if he consciously makes that choice.

Upon being butchered, Atsushi's mind probably blanked out from stress, so he forgot to heal himself. And that is natural, but in his previous fight with Akutagawa, he didn't blank out and managed to win. So why not now ? Did Kouyou just beat him up more severely (she was ordered to kill him whereas Akutagawa wasn't) ?

I believe there's a psychological reason for this - Atsushi's hope for a good life had decreased before Kouyou's attack, reducing his willpower to fight. I'll elaborate on why this happened :

Before his first fight with Akutagawa, Atsushi's 'good deed' of saving Dazai despite starvation gave him the ADA family. So he believed doing good would improve his life, i.e. that he can live a good life. Hence, he was more tough minded and hopeful against Akutagawa.

In BSD, ability power is a manifestation of the person's psyche. A happier, more hopeful Atsushi resulted in better use of his ability, both for logical reasons, and due to the nature of abilities. Therefore he was able to heal himself and defeat Akutagawa.

WHEREAS against Kouyou, Atsushi was already mentally tired due to his previous fights with Akutagawa, Kyouka, Lucy. His good deeds of fighting resolutely against horrid enemies got him almost maimed and killed. In his heart he was viscerally fed up of his misfortune. So he lost some faith in the 'do good receive good' ideology. Therefore when he was incapacitated by Kouyou, his survival instincts kicked in and told him to stay safe by staying put. He lost the will to continue struggling, and so didn't remember or care to heal himself.

Earlier, he had saved Kyouka out of natural empathy AND his desire to prove he's not useless. He underwent extreme danger in doing so. He wasn't ordered to save her, and was discouraged from protecting her. Yet he did it, his hope hadn't been drained yet.

Then in the necessary fight against Lucy, he tries at first, but later considers it futile and tries to escape despite it jeopardising his comrades, thinking the ADA would figure out a way. He lost hope in his ability to help, so he very illogically gave up until Mori rekindled his hope.

He fails to save Kyouka in Chapter 18 and she goes missing. After that scolding by Kunikida, in Chapter 25 (the three - way war involving ADA, PM and the Guild. His mission is to escort Naomi and Haruno to safety) he says, 'I'll protect the agency this time!'. This is both due to not wanting to be useless, and also because on seeing that Kunikida and Tanizaki risked themselves to save the clerks, he got hope that the ADA will help him when he's in danger. His faith in his future is thus renewed, so he is determined to fight once again.

I believe, as @elia-de-silentio says ♧, that Atsushi had saved drowning Dazai because he was scared to steal, and thought a grateful rescued man would give him money. Which is perfectly fine since he would've starved to death otherwise. (That doesn't make Atsushi a bad person. He still never developed the guts and skills to steal - because the Headmaster's teachings and orphanage bullying affected him the most, due to his gentler nature.)

Also note that Atsushi never wanted to join the ADA because he knew it's a dangerous job. He only started considering it a home when they gave him shelter (hence why he felt moved to shield the bomb with his body), and became truly attached only when Kunikida told him that he's not a burden on them.

I believe Atsushi is willing to risk his life in fights ONLY when he has hope in the world- that it's not a bleak place, that he has a support circle in the ADA and others. He will not do such risky good deeds just to be a good person when he has nobody to support him, when there's no way to survive except by prioritising himself over others.

Also, the bomb incident shows that Atsushi's worldview is illogical and contradictory - he realised that his life isn't that unfortunate, since the ADA sheltered him. So he sacrificed himself for them. What ? How will you spend more happy times with your new friends if you're dead or paralysed ?

Beast AU verifies the above inference. Atsushi won't kill unnecessarily, but he doesn't want to die and WILL kill purely to survive when necessary. Beast AU's world is much more harsh for Atsushi, so he becomes more selfish. And that's perfectly understandable.

What do you think? Does this explain Atsushi's actions ?

DON'T DARE TO REPOST / PLAGIARIZE / REUPLOAD MY ORIGINAL ANALYSIS

Citations :

♧ link to @elia-de-silentio 's manga Chapter 1 analysis -

The Chaos Zone

Chapter I: Looking the Gift Tiger in the Mouth

TENTATIVE ANALYSES: BUNGOU STRAY DOGS Fourth installation with the Tentative Analyses: Bungou Stray Dogs. A Seinen manga which began monthly

5 posts!

There's a passage from Untold Origins that is really interesting to me, and it's the part that occurs when Fukuzawa and Ranpo are watching the play.

"What was unique about this play was that it mentioned the existence of skill users. Revealing their existence wasn’t prohibited, but there was a darkness that surrounded it... Not many people knew of their existence outside of rumors and fairy tales; thus, a play that included one of them was an anomaly. Due to these circumstances, the skill user was depicted in good taste but as total fiction.

One skill per person.

Some could freely use their skill, while others were uncontrollable and happened automatically.

While some people were born with skills, others suddenly developed theirs.

Skills do not always make the possessor happy.

The characters in the play were searching for a skill user who fit these rules."

What's interesting is that some of these rules, despite allegedly being total fiction, actually appear to be somewhat true from what we've seen. Abilities definitely do not always make the user happy - they appear to be more neutral unless exploited. Some abilities are wielded with astounding control and others are always active (Dazai), appear to have something of a consciousness (Fyodor), or are controlled by someone else's orders (Kyouka, Tsujimura). (Not including Chuuya because Corruption is the release of a singularity and those follow wildly different rules. Abilities like Gab are also too unusual to include.)

We don't know if people can be born with abilities. Indeed, this one might be false - people seem to be born with a potential to activate an ability (likely a genetic one) but it appears most have to undergo some kind of stressor or trauma to activate it. So, the play is likely incorrect about this.

It's the first one though that gives me pause. We've only seen one ability per person, that's true. ...or have we?

When I was writing all the information up on the Book in this post here, I mentioned how Atsushi's pale crystal was already outside his body the moment he transformed into the tiger for the first time. Can ability crystals even exist in pre-ability users before their ability even activates? Even if they could, Shibusawa, enamoured with the crystal, was totally shocked and terrified when Atsushi started to transform, implying that this wasn't an expected outcome in the slightest. We see another pale crystal, Dazai's, but when it starts to turn red after being removed from him, Shibusawa, suddenly anguished, realizes it wasn't the ability he'd been looking for. It was Atsushi's, which notably didn't change colour. But the tiger's ability crystal was red like everyone else's.

"One ability per person"? Or is it possible that Atsushi has not only the tiger, but also a latent ability we don't know about yet?

Anyways, I'm probably wrong about this and it was just that Atsushi's pure force of anime boy willpower pulled the ability back into himself, but I'm just saying there are reasonable grounds to suspect Atsushi might have two abilities.

In bsd the case for abilities is that they seem to develop as a response to severe psychological/physical stress and trauma as a defense mechanism for people with the capability (ie how types of trauma response are often varied in nature and intensity). In the case of characters who have no known (as of writing) trauma this could be similar to real world cases of people who have traits and habit that could be misconstrued as trauma related but are in fact just a random trait (likely the case for born ability users).

An example of this idea is atsushi in which he was in a situation in which he felt weak and helpless and so he developed an ability that would help him not feel weak and helpless. Atsushis case is also interesting as shibusawa seemed to know he was capable of developing an ability despite one not being present. This could link to atsushis possible parentage, because if we go of of the trauma=ability (in certain people) theory we can assume that people who have parents with abilities are also likely to develop an ability, in parallel with real world cases of disorders that are triggered by stress/trauma having some form of genetic basis.

From all of this it can be assumed that one or both of atsushis birth parents had an ability and that the status of his parents was known by both the headmaster and shibusawa and so they decided to 'force' the ability rather than leave it's development to chance.

This leaves the questions of why atsushi having an ability was so important? Is it possible there have been other cases were an ability has been 'forced'? And is it possible to manipulate what kind of ability someone could develop?

Look who is trending on twitter ( damm chapter 109 really broke all of us huh ).