#asagiri kafka

[xsommeee]

Asagiri you fucking genius

guys I take back every bad thing I've said about him, he's crazy good

[evermorethecrow]

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[symphonyofsilence]

It's incredibly lucky that Rimbaud and Verlaine argue with each other in Japanese so when Chuuya sees Verlaine's memories 9 years later he'll understand what they're saying, or else in that crucial moment Chuuya would have just been like:

And even luckier that Rimbaud wrote his journal in Japanese years before he even got dispatched for a mission in Japan (or even met Verlaine) so Dazai would understand what he's saying when he reads his notes. (Or maybe the journal is in French and Dazai knows French? 'Cause there were some French words in it....oh, god, does Dazai know French?!)

[dazaistabletop]

Asagiri: damn these spot the difference games are getting harder and harder

[aldebarangel]

bsd makes me so emotional about so many of its character relationships more than any other media has. ranpo calls poe 'ed'. kouyou sees herself in kyouka. atsushi loves dazai so much it makes me want to die. kyouka and atsushi. chuuya called akutagawa "my boy". mushitarou and yokomizo were childhood friends. dazai and chuuya trust each other despite everything. dazai and oda. akutagawa and kenji get along in the beast universe. fukuzawa and ranpo. the cycle of abuse. nikolai sees fyodor as a person. atsushi and akutagawa's development together. teenage ranpo and yosano. tecchou placed jouno above justice. somebody shoot me what the fuck i cant take it.

[soupthatistohot]

BSD 109 Spoilers!!!

I will always always ALWAYS come back to this panel when talking about Asagiri’s storytelling.

At its very core, BSD is an absurdist text, Kafka Asagiri having been inspired by many absurdist authors. Franz Kafka, who he took his pseudonym from is one of them. Albert Camus, basically the most well-known absurdist is referenced with the Mersault prison, the name of which comes from a character in his most famous absurdist work, The Stranger. 

Absurdism is the belief that the world around us is irrational and inherently absurd and that explicitly seeking meaning is pointless. In his essay The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus explains, that there is value in the act of rebellion, though. Sisyphus, who has been doomed to roll a boulder up a mountain only for the boulder to tumble back down each time he reaches the peak, finds meaning in the act of continuing to push the boulder. Even though he will continue this cycle for all of eternity, he doesn’t just lay down and give up, he rebels against the absurdity of his situation by continuing to push the boulder, despite the seemingly futile nature of the act. 

As I said earlier, BSD is an absurdist text. All of the animanga’s main characters are on a journey of discovering their meaning in life, and their place in the world, and they do this by rebelling against its absurdity — especially Dazai. 

Dazai sees the absurd world for what it is, and when he was in the PM, he hated it. Thus, he sought suicide as a solution. I will note here that absurdists generally view suicide as a failure to rebel against the absurd, just giving up and giving into hopelessness. But ever since Dazai left the PM and took Oda’s advice, he’s been rebelling against this, doing good despite his inherent beliefs about morality and the world, and he’s absolutely gotten better for it. 

Other characters embody this idea of rebelling against the absurd, hell, that’s kinda what this whole arc is about. The world is literally ending, and things seem to be at their absolute worst, but someone like Atsushi still has hope that he can change the minds of the hunting dogs and save reality as we know it. He even has hope that he can get through to a vampiric Akutagawa when the guy is literally brainwashed and attacking him. Aya as the “last hope” right now embodies this, too, deciding that she can’t just sit around and do nothing and then trying to remove the sword from Bram even though the effort appears futile. 

But everything is going wrong right now. Fukuzawa is bleeding out, Dazai has just been shot through the forehead and appears to have died, Atsushi’s had his limbs ripped off and is at Akutagawa’s mercy, and Fukuchi is literally going to end the world! How can we have hope?!

Think about BSD. Think about the story that’s been told so far. Surely Asagiri isn’t killing everyone right now, surely the world isn’t gonna actually end. I’m not entirely convinced Aya’s plan is gonna work— but please consider that the point of absurdist storytelling is that even when everything seems to be at its worst, even when life seems completely meaningless, there is inherent meaning in still continuing to fight against this. 

BSD has never been a story where the villains win, and I don’t think it’s gonna start being one. I think, as usual, Asagiri wants to scare us, to make us feel hopeless about the situation, only for someone to pull through and completely turn the tides.

Dazai laying down and accepting his death at Chuuya’s hands is not going to be the end of his story, because it goes against everything Asagiri seems to stand for. Dazai wouldn’t just give up in his fight against Fyodor, because he needs to prove he’s right about what he says in this panel:

"The ones who actually make the world turn are those who scream within the storm of uncertainty and run with flowing blood."

I think this reflects Asagiri's own beliefs and is also the reason why he is not going to let Dazai die like this, because in a way, that would be proving that Fyodor is right. From a storytelling perspective, it’d be saying “everything I’ve communicated up to this point actually means nothing and life is truly hopeless!” 

Dazai has cheated death before, as has basically everyone else in danger right now. I promise you, something is going to happen and they’re all going to survive, because BSD is not trauma porn, for lack of a better term. It’s a story about how a group of people fight against the absurdity of their reality, even when everything seems completely and utterly hopeless. 

There’s a lot of theories circulating about how things could work out, especially Dazai’s “death,” and I’m not here to repeat all of them, but I will say that a lot of them have credence, especially because Asagiri isn’t the type of author to make mistakes, every single detail has a distinct reason. 

So even though I don't know how things are going to work out, I have full faith that they will, including Dazai's current situation. None of these characters are done just yet, they've got too much fight left in them to just give up.

[original twt thread]

[menheramar]

bungou stray raccoons (ft. ango, karl, dazai, fyodor, poe, ranpo, and asagiri himself)

[sorcerersandskillusers]

Very important message form Asagiri, DO NOT DISMISS THE ANIME! THERE ARE THINGS IN THE ANIME THAT ARE NOT POSSIBLE IN THE MANGA SO DON'T ACT LIKE IT DOESN'T MATTER!

This is from an interview asagiri did here

There is a lot of anime hate going on rn so just a reminder that even though there is stuff from the manga that isn't in the anime, there is also stuff in the anime that you can't find in the manga. DO NOT DISSMISS EITHER OF THEM.

Consume both with an open mind and enjoy them as much as possible! :)

[thegeekcloud]

[marichild]

people: SOUKOKU IS OVER 😭😭

other people: SOUKOKU IS OVER 🥳🥳

me: did asagiri just validate fanfiction of bsd

(genuinely though guys it's not that deep....please learn to read the full thing AND understand subtext before you say anything I'm literally begging you)

[estellarjj]

But really... Where's Nikolai?

[totally-silly-artist-yep-stable]

this chapter is going to be the death of me

it make me want to shove a gun down my mouth

[popopretty]

“The desperation of an ordinary man”

Honestly speaking, Asagiri the author loves Sigma. I am truly happy as a writer to be able to create such an enemy character. I like him so much I ended up putting him in Mersault, which is not my original plan. That I feel a little sorry. Anyway. “If I become desperate, I wonder what I could do?” - is there anyone who has never once thought about that? No one. I’m sure we all have that thought. “Maybe if I put my mind into it, even someone with no talent like me could break through all the walls of this world.” Sigma is the one who took on this statement and faced a huge wall by himself. As a character on the enemy side on top of that.

<Bungou Stray Dogs Chapter 75 - Translation by akai-koutei>

If Sigma had been a protagonist on the side of justice, it would have been a beautiful story that ends with something like, “That’s right. Even an ordinary person can defeat a huge enemy.” However, since Sigma is an enemy character, it is possible to dwell on the question “What is the actual truth?” in the end. The brutal truth. I want you to see what lies at the end of the path he has shown us, and the outcome of his vow to “definitely win” here. And I want you to try and think about the “desperation” that will gush out of you one day and about how it will end.

<Asagiri Kafka’s comment on Sigma’s character in the BSD expo 2023>

[chaos-of-the-abyss]

Listen. LISTEN. “A life in which you have someone to say goodbye to is a good life. If your farewell to that person is very painful, there is nothing more to say.” The fact that it’s Dazai of all people saying this strikes me. Dazai is someone characterized by the fact that he does not see the value in living life. He does not find anything in the world to be worth living for. He’s tried to commit suicide time and time again because, to him, life simply offers nothing substantial enough to justify the experience of living it.

And yet. By saying those words, he implicitly tells Oda that his life was a good one. Not just passable, not just alright, not just tolerable, but good. His life was a good one because Oda is the person that he has to say goodbye to, because saying goodbye to Oda like this is very painful to him. Even though, in this universe, Oda hates him, even though Oda considers him an enemy, even though Oda says he has no right to call him ‘Odasaku’ - Dazai still says his life was a good one, simply because Oda existed in it.

[tulipe-rose]

I won't be surprised if Asagiri revived Oda, or made Dazai start to hallucinate him at one point because Asagiri has the full capacity to do so.

[soupthatistohot]

I wonder if asagiri saw ppl making fun of akutagawa’s character design by saying he looks like a vampire and was like “u know what”