#Baccano! ~from the 1700s~

[agallimaufryofoddments]

Suddenly I have the ability to screenshot my purchases copies of the Baccano! ~from the 1700s~ manga (I don’t exactly know/have any other copies). I could have sworn I tried this method before without success, so it’s a good thing I tried again anyway.

Question is whether the retailer come after me if I post a few of these screenshots (panels, not pages, with text deleted of course) on the wiki…

[toushindai]

oh. oh that shot of elmer is downright distressing, 10/10 well done 0/10 does not make me smile at all

[pippenpaddlopsicopolisthethird]

There are Baccano novels???

Where do i read them?

They all have official translations now (as of a few months ago, I think!) and they're available through Yenpress! There's 22 novels, and the anime covers the first three and only a tiny portion of the fourth. If you like ebooks, you shouldn't have a problem getting them all from the publisher, but if you like physical books, you should know that some of the earlier books in the series are out of print and might be tougher to get your hands on.

The novels are really good!! Some of my favorite characters and plot lines don't start to show up until book 6, and the 1934 arc that starts in book 8 is still probably my favorite arc out of any book series I've read to this day. A ton of the fandom is also really invested in the 1700's arcs, which don't start showing up until like book 11, so you'll be able to really dive into a lot of incredible fanfic once you meet those novel-only characters.

[drfeelgreed]

alba can you give us a list of ur top ten favorite baccano character lines / pieces of dialogue ?

OKAYYY okay this is not going to be in any particular order. spoilers WILL be present in this because i'm incapable of doing things like this without also yapping for 10 hours. okay here we go!

"You ain't [seen/heard] nothin' yet!"

This is a short but sweet one. Multiple characters say this in Drug & the Dominoes because a minor throughline of that novel is the then-recent development of silent movies into features with sound. The line is a reference to the first line in the movie The Jazz Singer, which features prominently in the backstory of Kate Gandor, who loses her job as an organist for silent films shortly after the release of the movie. It doesn't really carry too much meaning to any of the characters who say it, but I love repeated bits that are snuck into stories and this one is no exception. As far as I remember, Claire, Isaac, and Miria are the ones to say this prominently, and both in the context of a show; Isaac and Miria when they're showing off their dominos to Firo, and Claire when he's putting on a show during a fight!

"You saved the butterfly. Nothing wrong with that."

Isaac Dian said this one. It happens during one of my favorite exchanges in general during Volume 10: 1934 Peter Pan in Chains! The context is that Isaac and the homunculus hivemind Sham are on a train together, and Sham is curious about Isaac, interrogating him with some philosophical questions. He poses a hypothetical to Isaac---wherein a person walking through the forest saves a butterfly from the spider's web, but in doing so causes the spider to go hungry. Isaac says this as rebuttal, then says that both the butterfly and the spider could get lucky or unlucky to get that kind of help at any time, so individual action doesn't matter. It's very insightful on paper but he kind of talks around himself explaining it to try and make it seem less insightful than it is.

"Drat. I went and left my wallet in the storehouse when we were helping them clean this afternoon." "Eek! We're penniless!" "I think it's probably still there. Could you run out real quick and get it for me?" "Okay! Hang on just a minute, Isaac!"

This one is, as you can probably guess, Isaac and Miria, from Volume 8: 1934 Alice in Jails: Prison. It's longer than the rest of these are going to be but I couldn't leave it out! In this scene, Isaac and Miria are at the Alveare when a cop who recognizes them as thieves sits down with them under the guise of taking them both in and tricking them into admitting their crimes. At some point during the conversation, Isaac sends Miria to get his wallet (which he didn't actually lose) because he KNOWS this guy is a cop and is sending her to safety. She leaves, and when she gets back, Isaac is already gone; the cop is taking him in so Victor Talbot can use him as a pawn in Alcatraz. Miria breaks down sobbing. Rough scene. I think about the wallet exchange OFTEN.

"Maiza. Thank you ... for ... not ... eating ... me ..."

This one's also from Drug & the Dominos. It just has some of my personal favorite lines, haha. This is technically said by two characters on two separate occasions, but I'm specifically talking about the epilogue where Begg says it to Maiza. Begg is one of Maiza's old friends from the 1700s---at least, they were both alchemists at the same time in the same city. Begg was a drug addict and manufacturer and was obsessed with creating the perfect, happy world for himself and others by creating a drug with a permanent high. By the 2000s, his use had put him into a near-catatonic state despite his immortality, and he was barely able to move and generally only spoke as though sleep-talking. Maiza enters his hospital room in the epilogue and considers devouring him out of mercy, but when Begg starts talking out loud to indicate he *has* found happiness in reliving his days before 1711 while he was Czes's guardian, Maiza decides not to eat him. Begg says this as he's about to leave the hospital room. Fucks me up.

"See you around, puppet. I'm going to become 'human' soon."

It's not really a secret that Melvi Dormentaire is one of my favorite characters in all of Baccano!, so a lot of my enjoyment of this line from Volume 21 comes from the intense overanalyzing of it that I've done. It's interesting, because normally when Melvi talks about his fate, he very decisively says he's going to become the next Szilard Quates. And he does say that after this line and a break in dialogue, but... It's just interesting to me, combined with some other characters' estimations of Melvi's character, to look deeper into the thought that his real desire might just be to experience feeling the way a human would, since he wouldn't have ever gotten that opportunity before ...

"I'd like to request a more logical conversation." "Denied. I'm pretty sure I couldn't beat you at logical conversation."

This one's from Volume 8 again. It's an exchange between Huey Laforet and Victor Talbot, and I mostly picked it to represent the entire conversation because it's a particularly funny exchange. Mostly, it's just Huey reminiscing about why Victor had locked him up below Alcatraz in the first place and Victor taking the most swear words possible to say the fewest logical things. These lines sum the whole dynamic up pretty well. I think they should kiss tbh but that's off topic.

"You don't have to keep your promise, either."

Ouch. This one is from Drug & The Dominos too. Two of my favorite characters who got removed entirely from the anime cut of this arc are Edith and her drug-addicted boyfriend Roy Maddock. Roy has a strange hypersensitivity to drugs, and he's tried and failed multiple times to get clean, and because of that his relationship with Edith is hanging by a thread. During the climax of the story after being separated throughout, Roy has resolved to himself to quit for real this time when he's approached by Begg, who's been secretly using Roy to test out his drugs unbeknownst to both of them. When Roy refuses to take his latest prototype, he holds Edith at gunpoint so Roy will shoot up, which has the potential to kill him because of his sensitivity.

Edith is big on promises, and had previously promised Roy that if he got off drugs, she'd stick with him. Roy declares he can't keep his promise as he takes the drug and tells Edith she doesn't have to keep hers either. Begg loosens his grip on Edith... And then Roy uses some shattered glass on the ground to slit both of his wrists to get the drug out of his system or die trying. Thankfully, he does survive and is fully clean as of early 1935.

"Wonderful. You've put on a very interesting show here."

It's a pretty innocuous line by itself but like most of these I'm generally referring to the scenes they take place as part of. This one was also Melvi, from Volume 18, and it's the start of the absolute most BM shit anyone has ever done in all of Baccano!, and I think about it every single day. Melvi, having walked into Firo's casino on one of the most batshit fights of all time, comments on it. Ladd makes a snide comment back that he should pay to watch, and Melvi goes "hm? oh, like this?" and then proceeds to rig 7 straight slot machines in the casino to hit the jackpot. It's the one time Melvi manages to look cool across the whole 1935 arc but damn does he pull it off.

"What's the difference? Even I lived in the usual way---and when I'm dying, I don't want to die... Somebody tell me... What is it? What's the difference?"

This one is Christopher Shaldred, in Volume 7. He's bleeding out on the floor when he says it, having been hit by an attack from someone he hadn't killed at the beginning of this novel. Christopher in general has a strange relationship with humanity at large, considering himself separate from it and therefore having no issue killing people, really. This line marks a change in him, where he begins to question whether he and humanity are really so far apart, and after this he actually struggles to kill people unprovoked because he's finally experienced what dying like an ordinary person feels like. It's important to me. Ok? Ok.

"My gun---is in my heart!"

A classic from Volume 2. It would be a crime not to put this on here. I'd even go as far as calling this the best one of the list! You've seen the anime so you probably remember, but this was said during the fight between Jacuzzi and Goose! Earlier in the story, Isaac and Miria had inspired Jacuzzi to take initiative by telling him a REAL cowboy keeps a gun in his heart ... And Jacuzzi points it at Goose, who mocks him for trying to stop him with literally nothing but a single small cherry bomb from Nice. It's amazing, spectacular, perfect, no notes. Jacuzzi is an icon and the moment.

I love you for asking me to do this. Never ask me to do it again.

[boundlss]

10, 13, and 17 for the Baccano! fandom meme!

10. Character you think is used too much?

i've said this before on other blogs, but i really think niki is used a little too much in the 1700's. i might be biased because i really don't like her very much, but because my enjoyment of the 1700s comes from the fact that we get to see tangible reasons for the characters behaving the way they do in modern times, she ended up feeling a little useless narratively; she didn't really have a lasting emotional or narrative impact on any characters who lived.

13. Least favorite canon pairing? Least favorite non-canon pairing?

haha. my least favorite canon pairing is maria and tick. i don't dislike it in theory, but i think maria didn't really need the implication of romance in her arc... plus, i definitely think she's a lesbian, so there's also that, but i just think it was a product of narita wanting to introduce romance wherever possible. i like most ships in baccano, but that one missed the mark for me!

i think my least favorite non-canon pairing aside from the ones that are genuinely deeply immoral is luck/eve, which i'm sure you know. even aside from their age difference, it feels really weird to me to shove them together considering narita actively went out of his way to not do that. idk. the dynamic is just bad to me.

17. How would you go about structuring a hypothetical season 2 or reboot of Baccano?

well, this is something i've said many times, but i would completely redo the drug and the dominos part of season 1; in an ideal world, that is. i'd really like to see a back-and-forth story of drug and the dominos and man in the killer, since they're both in the same year and pair together really nicely as stories, but i'd also accept a standalone couple episodes for drug and the dominos.

if i was rebooting the series entirely, i think i'd cover a lot of what the anime did, but i'd completely cut out the half-baked volume 4 adaptation attempt to give more room for development for the major players and plots in 1-3.

baccano questions! / accepting.

[corporalsnark]

hi! i was wondering where you read baccano? i watched it way back when but i’m interested in the books if you know where to find them :)

Back in the day I used to read them on untuned-strings translation blog which seems to be invite only/private now. (I don't know who ran it but I owe them a debt that I could never begin to repay. That one translator gave us SO MUCH. And I have never been more flattered than when they asked to use my home-done scans of chapter dividers from a Japanese copy of the light novel for Crack Flag that I owned but couldn't even read on the blog.)

But, regardless they took down their unofficial Baccano! translations when the LNs got officially translated to English. So I read the more recent novels (anything past the 1700's arc) when one of my friends was quitting a job at Barnes & Nobel and wanted to make the most of her employee discount. There might be people out there transcribing/translating the books , but I haven't sought them out in a decade and a half.

Sorry I couldn't be more helpful. & good luck.

[gunmeister]

i do have really constructive things to say about baccano but i constantly hold back from saying them because i feel like they must be a little discounted by my genuine hatred for anything 1700s related and also the laz thing

[empiriical]

new to baccano! && need a quick run-down? look no further!

i try my best to make writing with my muses accessible, regardless of your knowledge && interest in their source material, but sometimes the bigger picture isn't super clear from their bios, so i'm going to hit on the important worldbuilding points that are relevant here! there will be a lot left out — this is what i will primarily reference in threads while not explaining in full elsewhere. anything not included here will have explanations in individual muse pages.

A SUMMARY

baccano! is a story that follows alchemists fleeing their home && becoming immortal, rival mafia familes && various other criminal organizations, a trainjacking, && strange players from all walks of life coming together in a ruckus that spans three hundred years.

TERMINOLOGY

IMMORTALITY. a state of being affecting certain humans, rendering them, in some way, unable to be killed. this comes in two different flavors: complete immortality (does not age, all wounds instantly heal themselves, && immediate revival upon death), imperfect immortality (instant healing && revival but will age && eventually die). immortality is achieved by consuming a liquid called the liquor/elixir of immortality, or by some, the grand panacea. there is both a complete version && an incomplete version, which will give the two different results. the only way an immortal can be killed is by being devoured by another, a process that involves placing the right hand upon the other's head && thinking "i want to eat"; the immortal's body is absorbed into the hand, && all knowledge && memories are transferred to the surviving immortal. all immortals can be devoured, but only complete immortals can devour others.

THE MAFIA. pretty self explanatory, but for our purposes, there are three factions to know about: the gandor family, based in little italy in nyc, the russo family, based in chicago, && the runorata family, based in new jersey. the mafia originated in sicily, && prioritizes firearms as their primary weaponry.

THE CAMORRA. an organization similar to the mafia, that originated in naples. the martillo family is based between little italy && chinatown in nyc, && primarily use knives as their weapon of choice. they don't take kindly to being called the mafia.

HOMUNCULUS. a man-made being created through alchemy. perfect homunculi are confined to the flask they're created in, && are fully omniscient && omnipotent, as well as immortal. they can choose to trade either vision of space or vision of the future in exchange for physical freedom. imperfect homunculi are not born with knowledge, && though they can be killed, they do not age or die of natural causes. immortal homunculi, made from the cell of an immortal, are like the imperfect kind, but possessing the full abilities of a complete immortal. water-consciousness homunculi operate as a hivemind; their true form is a liquid, && they possess "vessels" that are linked within their mental network.

THE TIMELINE

the story of baccano! takes place in three time periods, although the bulk of the narrative is in the 1930s, with the 1700s && 2000s acting as a prequel && sequel.

1705-1711 taking place in lotto valentino, italty, this part of the story follows the original group of alchemists who eventually travel to north america on the advena avis && became immortal.

1930-1935 takes place mostly in new york city, with some of the action occurring in chicago && some on the flying pussyfoot, a transcontinential express train running from chicago to nyc. follows members of the mafia, the camorra, && a number of independent players && gangs who come together across various events, as well as some of the alchemists from the 1700s. many new immortals are created during this time.

2001-2003 takes place in other parts of the world, primarily in a northern european village && on two cruise ships traveling between nyc && japan. primarily follows the immortal alchemists && as well as a few of the immortals from the 1930s, && some new players as well.

THE SOURCE MATERIAL

baccano! is a series of light novels by ryohgo narita, first debuting in 2003. the first three novels were adapted into an anime that aired in 2007. the series is close to completion, with the 23rd && final novel indefinitely postponed. if you're interested in getting into the series, the anime is a good place to start — it's not legally available to stream anymore, but it's out there if you look (feel free to ask me about it). alternately, you can jump right into the novels, as outlined below...

volume 1 — 1930 the rolling bootlegs

volume 2 — 1931 the grand punk railroad: local

volume 3 — 1931 the grand punk railroad: express

volume 4 — 1932 drug and the dominos

volume 5 — 2001 the children of bottle

volume 6 — 1933 (first) the slash — cloudy to rainy

volume 7 — 1933 (last) the slash — bloody to fair

volume 8 — 1934 alice in jails: prison

volume 9 — 1934 alice in jails: streets

volume 10 — 1934 peter pan in chains: finale

volume 11 — 1705 the ironic light orchestra

volume 12 — 2002 (side a) bullet garden

volume 13 — 2002 (side b) blood sabbath

volume 14 — 1931 another junk railroad: special express

volume 15 — 1710 crack flag

volume 16 — 1932 summer: man in the killer

volume 17 — 1711 whitesmile

volume 18 — 1935-A deep marble

volume 19 — 1935-B dr. feelgreed

volume 20 — 1932 winter: the time of the oasis

volume 21 — 1935-C the grateful bet

volume 22 — 1935-D luckstreet boys

[abyssalplein]

@vilatile — it’s your tumblr sexyman

[rookswarlock]

Its winter season which means a children of bottle reread, two of my faves from the volume and the strange lab

[closedcoffins]

@ruenoirs likes this post for an assigned baccano fave!

i'm going to be honest when i say that i definitely did have a character who popped into my head as an active first choice, but she requires some explaining before i tell you about her.

since the one muse i know you write is poe, this recommendation is based largely on that. she's not a character featured in the anime and because she's not in many of the books i've come prepared with a backup recommendation that IS featured in more relevant plotlines.

that said, my initial recommendation for you is monica campanella. both she and poe focus heavily on their relationships with and feeling towards others in their respective narratives, and as a result the people who consume those narratives tend to reduce their characters down to just the love interest for the more popular character.

monica herself is a nervous wreck. she's also a calculating and cold killer. both of these things are true depending on who she's around. she's someone who grew up hating the world and faking all of her smiles until someone came into her life who interested her enough for her to feel something for them. i won't spoil her story as it spoils most of the plot of the 1700s novels, but she gains notoriety initially as a serial killer called the "mask maker".

that said, i mentioned a backup choice, and that backup choice is luck gandor.

aside from the fact that luck is a canon fan of poe's works, which maybe influenced my decision-making here a little, luck is also the sort of person who seems a little more amiable than he actually is at first glance. he's the youngest brother of three and one of the leaders of a mafia family, and though his general demeanor suggests ruthlessness and a determination to do whatever is necessary for his family, one of his biggest weaknesses is his tendency to give people fair chances when he shouldn't.

runner-ups: roy maddock, begg garrott, mark wilmens, huey laforet.

[agallimaufryofoddments]

For those of you who are also slow on the uptake, Chapter(?) 3 of the Baccano! ~from the 1700s~ manga released on January 25. The best time for us to buy it was release day, but buying it is better late than never. As always, (the prospect of) new Baccano! media depends on consumer support.

Buy it despite DMM's "DMN" DRM, for we have no choice.

On the one hand, I hate DRM. On the other, if selling this manga via a DRM-strict retailer/platform succeeds in making people purchase it when they would have otherwise tried reading it for free, then. Fine. FiNe.

Remember to rate each installment. I think it's possible to do it without leaving a review: read the chapter in your browser, click the star on the end page, then click five stars on the review input form that pops up. It seems to save my five star rating even when I navigate away from the form. Leaving reviews themselves wouldn't hurt, unless...they're in English...probably. Do you think we could get away with leaving machine-translated ones? How many strangely-written reviews would it take to sound the 'overseas purchaser' alarm?

Edit: Or maybe not. The ratings I ‘gave’ aren’t reflecting on the listings for 2 and 3. Maybe a review is necessary after all.

Chapter 3 reactions under the cut.

Looks like this depicts parts of LN11 Interlude II and Chapter 4. I did have to manually transcribe some of the dialogue. This took way more time than I can afford.

The opening scene depicts the killing of the 28th victim/witness, an aristocrat named Lord/Sir Alonso. This must be the murder that Larolf reports to Esperanza in the latter half of LN11 Interlude III? Larolf describes the victim as a "boy" who witnessed the Mask Maker right before Niki did in the novel, but this Sir / Lord Alonso is certainly not a child. Hm...

I believe the bit of Niki we see in this chapter is her telling Esperanza the food is delicious from the beginning of Interlude III. However, the manga seems to be omitting the part where Larolf reports [Alonso's] murder? It shows Niki walking away with a maid, whereas Niki runs away when Larolf makes his report...and there's no moment where Esperanza is angered by the bruise on Niki's face per the LN.

Moreover, am I right that the manga also omits Monica and Elmer's encounter with the bald man and Maiza in Chapter 4? There's no marketplace with children singing the MM song, no bald man, no Maiza...

...but the previous chapters also omitted Elmer's first encounter with Maiza, didn't they? So the mangaka's been deliberately holding off on Maiza's introduction from the start. I guess the manga's going to move the bruise reaction, Larolf's report and the bald man/Maiza-Elmer-Monica encounter to another day? How will that account for Elmer's wound, though, since Elmer doesn't show up to class after being stabbed?

I probably need to reread manga chs. 1–2 and actually take note of what was and wasn't adapted. I should do that anyway, since that would be useful for the wiki.

Okay, some positives...

Larolf depicted! (I only know because he was depicted in Chapters 1–2, so this is a belated celebration of a Larolf Hancletia design. Ch.2 gave us Huey's mother, too.)

Warehouse depicted!

Patisserie lady depicted!

Hey, it's Elmer's room at Esperanza's place!

Elmer wounded! Bandages on Mask Maker's arm are neat.

Monica has a lot of fun expressions. Manga is leaning hard into the classic twitterpated teen girl archetype and her 'tells' (big eyes, blushing), and these do serve the purpose.

Denkurou and Zank (albeit seen, not heard)!

Elmer's back scars...

Some mild complaints:

Zank's body should be as dark-skinned as Zank's head. Did the mangaka forget to color the torso? If this is a lighting thing where Zank's head isn't in range of a light source, then Denkurou's body should reflect that too. It's such a weirdly stark difference in hue that it really looks like a coloring error.

Am I allowed to feel lukewarm about Elmer's design? Maybe the fact that I've never seen Elmer with flat (slicked?) hair is throwing me off (aka it's throwing me off a lot), but there's something about his head's shape as well. The big forehead?　The eyebrows floating halfway up the forehead? The flat hair is contibuting to the forehead's largeness.

To be totally fair, this is gawky teen!Elmer, not adult!Elmer, and Elmer on the LN11 cover does have a rounder face (than adult!Elmer) that I guess the manga is honoring.

And...

Elmer's back scars.

I am whelmed. I guess I've built up my mental image of the scars for so long that probably any illustration is doomed not to meet expectations. It might be unfair of me, but I can't help think that a mangaka could go all out on the scars, since they only have to be drawn for 1—3 panels—honestly, why not just devote a full page illustration to it or one panel that fills most of the page?

Ex: Contain Monica's horrified expression + Huey going ??? to one panel. Overlay that (opt. and the next panel) with a small panel of Huey's face to emphasize Huey actively following Monica's gaze. Thus, rather than showing a Huey!POV of Monica looking at Elmer, you could dedicate one big panel exclusively to Elmer's full back and arms. Go all out.

There, one and done.

Here's the LN description of Elmer's scars for comparison.

Elmer was stripped to the waist, squeezing his clothes out, and his back…

…was covered in scars.

And it wasn’t only his back; uncountable scars covered the parts of his arms that had been hidden by his sleeves.

Currently, not a single wound was bleeding, but if all those scars became wounds again, he couldn’t even imagine how much they would have bled—

That was how mutilated Elmer was.

He might have had even more scars than Huey’s mother had in his memories of her.

They weren’t just cuts. There were marks as if something had been used to gouge out divots of flesh, and an enormous burn that covered the top half of his back. Not only that, but the burns appeared to be covering countless more scars.

Where's the enormous burn? Those scars are pretty countable. I see plenty of unmamrred skin. Yep, I'm nitpicking now. Please give my apologies to the mangaka; my expectations were simply too high. Ultimately, I am grateful that Elmer's scars have finally been depicted in an official publication.

(Quick! Enami! Draw Elmer shirtless as a 20th anniversary treat!)

Defying Description

Esperanza

[brbarou]

For the color palette thing, could you draw the 1700s design of Sylvie from Baccano! with "you know" ?

i love sylvie a lot and i almost never did her 1700s design...criminal

[a-story-teller]

I recently watched FMA:Brotherhood and it's time to shamelessly recommend another anime with similar vibes - Baccano! I think they're comparable on a lot of levels and you'll probably like one if you enjoyed the other (the only reason I've heard people dislike Baccano! is either "it's too convoluted" or "it's too gory" and I don't think those will be issues if you liked fma).

1 - Strong, well-written ensemble cast

Despite having so many characters, both shows are masterfully written to get you invested in and attached to each character in their own way.

2 - Fast-paced & action-packed

Unlike traditional Shonen, neither show makes me want to skip its fight scenes because they're so visually interesting and figure into the plot! Along with that, the main plot never stops moving, making even the forays into side characters and past events feel worth your time.

3 - Well-balanced and palatable comic relief

With the intensely heavy content they're dealing with, both shows must rely on comic relief - but manage to do so with grace, making it natural and human (Baccano! in a particularly weird way that never ruins the show's serious tone).

4 - Creepy, dark, and morally ambiguous

Alchemy, immortality, homunculi, you want 'em, these shows have got 'em. Asides from that they also both give really fucked-up and interesting horror, have awesome character and "monster" design, and frequently throw you deep ethical and moral questions as though they aren't keeping you up at night already.

5 - Unique, flavorful setting

FMA's setting of Amestris is varied in almost every episode, ranging from the Eastern desert to the Northern wall and anything inbetween - while Baccano!'s setting of 1930's NY seems nicely stable until you're suddenly in the 1700's dealing with 1700's problems. Also Baccano! comes with a train heist AND a train shooting AND a train-roof fight all in one, since several important episodes happen on a train ride. Also they cut away to pan for gold in California for a while. It's a weird show. You'll like it.

Other notes on commonalities: - Beautiful, dynamic animation! - I usually prefer sub over dub, but both shows have A+ dubs! - Weird time skipping/flashback-heavy presentation (very dramatic)! - Disabled and disfigured people present and important in the narrative! - Guilt as a theme... Humanity and self worth as a theme... A complete lack of purity culture and an emphasis on changing and growing as a person... I cry - Pacifist characters who are allowed to be pacifists! - Child peril as a symptom of well-rounded child characters (as well as nice sweet ones who don't get bodily harmed or kill people)! - Tons of strong female characters of all kinds - and pretty low on fanservice! (It's almost nonexistent in Baccano!, and very occasional in fma. Was honestly a little disappointed fma had any at all.) - I had childhood crushes on cute guys from both shows! Roy, my beloved... Firo, also, my beloved... why do you both get girlfriends.

idk where to watch Baccano! nowadays so please hop onto the discussion if you know where it's available for others to find! :)

[beepbeepbobop]

Back again.

I was telling my friend (who isn’t a Baccano! fan, but listens to me ramble) about my take on immortals and Czeslaw, and I don’t know where to put it, so!  It goes here.  As a warning, this is mostly me rambling and probably treads ground that has been talked about a lot in the past, but I hope it’s interesting anyway.

(This and the Infinity Train post is not a sign that I’m going to be more active in the future.  Social media and the prospect of interacting with other people’s posts still make me anxious.  Maybe one day.)

So!  The first thing to keep in mind is that change is a major theme in Baccano!.  No one is incapable of changing, but people have different relationships with it depending on who they are.  Czes can't believe that he has changed seventy years after Isaac & Miria stealing him despite clear evidence that he has.  Meanwhile, Nile actively resists change:  His greatest fear after becoming immortal was that he would become desensitized to the loss of human life and begin to devalue it, so he spent decades fighting in active war zones so that he'd never forget the reality of death.  This backfired, and instead left him inured to loss of life...but it's clear that he doesn't want to be this way?  Realizing that he's gotten to the point where his expression doesn't even change if someone dies is devastating for him.  Chane is the opposite:  While it's absolutely for the best that she stops being a hitwoman and killing machine for her father, softening up is terrifying to her because then she can't serve her father the way she wants to.   Czes is on the opposite end of the spectrum, because he wants to be better because he thinks he's a bad person (later on, he decides that he's the only bad person left in the world.  Sir.), but can't recognize it because he doesn't feel different.

And...this is pertinent to the older immortals in particular - I'd argue even moreso than with the younger ones.  Aside from the fact that the Elixir literally stops you from changing in the sense of age or injury...it also has to place inhibitors on your brain.  Your brain is, after all, a physical part of your body!  There are some....weird aspects about immortality that no one is able to figure out (for example, immortals can give birth; someone also pointed out that there are no examples of crying in reverse even though that's also a part of your body), but it's still safe to say that the brain doesn't age either because then...then a lot of the cast would be catatonic from Alzheimer's.  Even without that, the human body can only retain so many memories.  If an immortal's brain had the ability to deteriorate over time or overload based off of the amount of memories it contains....well, I don't think any of the older immortals would be able to function.  Szilard definitely wouldn't be able to function (and neither would Firo after he devours Szilard) because Szilard has the memories of over a dozen people running around in his brain.  Which brings me to my next point:  If an immortal's brain functioned like a human's, devouring would not work as a concept.  One of the hallmarks of being immortal is gaining other people's memories.  Imagine the strain that would cause.  And yet, it doesn't seem to be a problem!  The chief worry of those who have devoured other immortals is worrying that having the memories of the other person might change you consciously or subconsciously.  This is Firo's concern over devouring Szilard.

So...the fact that the brain doesn't physically grow older or change (with some leniency given because real world science sure is iffy here)...feels relevant because, mn...

Many of the older immortals feel stagnant, or stuck in time.  Firstly, if the immortals changed at the same pace as a human being, I don't think most of them would be recognizable from one era to the other.  And yet, they are!  The Victor Talbot of the 1700s is clearly the same person as the Victor Talbot of the 1930s, albeit with alterations (because what kind of person would stay exactly the same after centuries?).  The answer to that question is Elmer, by the way.  Everyone comments on how he acts just like the Elmer they remember back in the day.  But Elmer is a special case, seeing as he's our local empty shell and probable sociopath (not that he has ASPD!  ASPD, sociopathy and psychopathy all present and function entirely differently from each other, which makes it....strange that they're lumped under the same umbrella - but that's another matter).  Secondly, immortals...Uhm, they all handle grief horribly, and seem to feel stuck in the past?  Maiza, for instance, acts starkly different from his past as a rebellious noble-boy gang member, but he's never forgiven himself for giving Gretto the information that led to his death.  (Gretto being his brother.)  Huey's overarching goal is to bring his dead girlfriend back to life, and he's been working towards this goal for centuries.  Sylvie, who admittedly was not an immortal when Gretto died, held off on drinking the Elixir until she was all grown up, then set out to finding Szilard to take revenge on him for killing the boy she had run away with.  This lasted for, you guessed it, centuries.

This isn't to say that immortals don't change, or even that they don't change drastically.  I mentioned Nile, who became inured to death after fighting in war for decades.  Czes went from a trusting, innocent child to someone paranoid and self-centered enough to try and get an entire train car's worth of people killed for his own safety to someone who wants to be a good person, but thinks he never will be and that there's something fundamentally wrong with him.  But changing appears to be very, very difficult, and happens over an extended period of time in response to extreme situations.

And...this is particularly relevant to Czes (who keeps coming up as an example because he's the main person I'm thinking about with this tangent) because....it arguably hits him harder than any of the others due to being a child.  Only the best decisions were made aboard the Advenna Avis, which includes letting the eight year old drink the immortality elixir.  But...mn.  It's one thing to be perpetually in your thirties, or twenties, or sixties, and another altogether to perpetually be eight years old.  Czes can't truly 'grow up' even though he has more life experience than most adults combined, and it shows in his extreme emotional reactions, his self-centeredness, ect.  There's a certain misconception about anime-only fans that he's an adult in a child's body, but I think it's easier to tell in the light novels that that's not the case, especially since you see what he's like back before the Advenna Avis.  (He is shy.  Very shy.  Did nothing wrong ever.)  Also, the fact that SAMPLE goes, "Yes!  The perfect sacrifice!" when they specifically take a child to target emphasizes this.  It's not proof - I'm pretty sure that SAMPLE would focus on his physical age as an 'eternal child', and may or may not have the resources to analyze him and go, "This boy is still eight years old in his head," - , but it hammers the point home.

Then...mn.  One thing that's stuck out to me ever since the start is how long Czes was with Fermet.  There's such a thing as learned helplessness, and it's not like Czes had anywhere to go, so that's not what is odd to me...especially when Fermet is known for manipulating people, and could definitely seed the idea that Czes can't go anywhere.  More than physical proximity, I think about how long Czes believed in Fermet.  It's explicitly stated that Czes absorbing Fermet's memories is what made him realize that - oh, Fermet was just sadistic and everything he said was an excuse.  And...I think this is both an example of being controlled in many respects, and....another example of an immortal being stuck in the past - but in a very, very different way.

First off, learning that the people you look up to want to harm you is...difficult at best, especially when you're younger?  But being mentally 'stuck' at a certain age would make things worse, because Czes is perpetually an age where it's natural to depend on a parental figure, and at an age where the brain isn't equipped to make those kinds of calls or realizations.  There's also the matter of cognitive dissonance!  Cognitive dissonance means a lot of things, but essentially, it's the idea that you have two conflicting beliefs, but the actions you take can retroactively alter your beliefs/place emphasis on one more than the other, as the mind is predisposed to reduce dissonance.  I...take issue with how cognitive dissonance is interpreted because many examples don't account for the beliefs or opinions not being equal in the first place, but that's not the point.  The point is that, as a child, the impulse to reduce dissonance is present while also being played against difficulty reading intentions, perceiving the world outside of yourself, and thinking critically.  (For what it's worth, abusers also tend to discourage critical thinking because it damages their narrative, which would also play a part.)   So, for example...

Say that, theoretically, Czes was yelled at every time he questions the idea that Fermet's intentions are right, or that maybe Fermet doesn't have his best interests in mind.  (Czes is insightful, and they lived with each other for a long time, so this probably happened at least once unless the text directly contradicts me.)  This is tame compared to the things we know about his time with Fermet, but ignore that.  The desire to not be yelled at would lead him to hurriedly agree later on, and cognitive dissonance means that you're inclined to try to make your beliefs agree with your actions.  In other words, the more he plays along, the more his brain tells him that he definitely believes this, and it makes perfect sense to!  Fermet has shown that he cares about him, and took him in after his grandfather died, so of course.  It only makes sense.  And it's even harder for him to bridge the gap to a different conclusion because of how difficult it seems to be for immortals to change.  It's only when Czes devours Fermet (or...or at least gets his memories) that everything snaps into place, because he can't reconcile that no matter how hard he tries (coincidentally, this also happens when he gets memories of being an adult, and while I seriously doubt that Czes went through Fermet's memories willingly, it kind of hammers my point about how difficult being eternally young would make things).  So of course he snaps as hard as he does.  It'd be kind of amazing if he didn't, honestly.

TLDR:  Being immortal made it even harder for him to recognize or comprehend his trauma.  Sorry for that.

[boundlss]

@firemourn liked this post for an assigned baccano fave

i'll start off with my regular disclaimer that i generally tend to make these posts based purely on vibes and while i may not be correct in my assignments (only time will potentially tell) i generally am doing my best based on what i've seen on you/your blog.

that said, the very first character that popped into my mind for you was maiza avaro --- an alchemist from the 1700s who bears the burden of knowing how to make the liquor of immortality and the guilt of knowing that he essentially caused the deaths of many of his colleagues BECAUSE of this immortality. for the bulk of the story, which is set in the 1930's, maiza generally tries to put distance between himself and this past, but he's still pretty haunted by it since one of the people who died because of his choices was his somewhat-estranged younger brother (also because the demon he summoned to GET immortality is just kind of, like, sitting there chillin with him). anyway, just based off the fact that you write and enjoy caleb this was my most logical leap of character enjoyment.

i do like to give a few bonus "maybe, maybe not" assignments though that are less based in actual reasoning and more based on just potential vibes. anyway, those are: czeslaw meyer, mark wilmens, nile, and maybe tim.