#god i was talking abt this w zag yesterday but idk how i feel abt akutagawa's death as a satisfying ending for his own character arc

[starswallowingsea]

give me an essay about uh... kyouka?

Oh man I had this one locked and loaded for months now. I love Kyouka sm and her whole character arc and how that reflects onto Atsushi and Dazai by extension and their own character development, as well as Kouyou's to an extent.

So when we meet Kyouka, we see her trying to blow up a train and basically she doesn't really have a will to live. She's been told since she got pulled into the PM that her only purpose is to kill people, best exemplified by every interaction she has with Akutagawa, ever. Akutagawa, also, doesn't really feel like he has a place in the world outside of killing for the PM and trying to get Dazai's approval but that's neither here nor there for this essay.

She relatively quickly decides she doesn't want to keep killing people, which I mean. She's a 14yo girl, I would imagine she doesn't want to keep killing people because it's fairly traumatizing, and her solution to that in the moment is to sacrifice herself, which we also know Atsushi would have done just a few chapters earlier given the chance. Instead, Atsushi saves her and shows her kindness as they figure out what to do with her, which continues to drive her forward as a character.

Anyway, this scene is the turning point I think, for her character arc. She's admitting that her only roll in the Mafia was to kill people, that was her only purpose for several years, but that little bit of kindness Atsushi showed her on that day out they spent together was all it took to make her believe there was a life for her in the light as Kouyou would put it.

She also has a very complicated relationship with her skill, believing she killed her parents with it, and having used it to kill at least 35 other people. Which is frankly, understandable for her. Her skill has been what people have used her for, having her use her skill for violence, for their own means without a thought about what Kyouka could possibly want, so to her, at least for the first part of her transition process to the ADA, her skill is dirty, bad, something that other people want to control for their own means. And Atsushi even falls into this trap, saying her powers should be used for the ADA, which gives Kouyou a leg up in trying to get Kyouka back.

Even though Kyouka doesn't end up even thinking about going back at first, I think Kouyou knew exactly what buttons to press to manipulate her, and she was able to see through it and ended up using Demon Snow for something she wanted, to protect Atsushi on her own terms. And while Atsushi may have wanted her to use her skill for the agency, she first has to use it on her own terms and dissociate it from her past, and then Kouyou has to go and drop the bomb on her about her parents and yeah. Scene over, Kyouka is back with the mafia, she's upset and traumatized, Kouyou has her protege back, and all of their names are still being underlined in red by my spellchecker.

I kinda lost the thread when I went back to look for all these images oops but anyway, when Kyouka does eventually return and goes through her trial to join the agency in full, she finally has a place that will accept her for her, won't make her use her skill, and will let her just be a kid.

Kyouka best girl I think she deserves all the good things in the world and then some. By the end of the series, she's fully come into herself and her skill, using it for herself, for her wants, for her goals and morals. She's allowed to be selfish, she's allowed to want for herself, and she has a place to call home and people she can call her family. She has something to keep living for, to fight for.

Unlike whatever Akutagawa did at the beginning of this. Like seriously what the hell dude.

I definitely don't think this made sense and I realize I tend to go off on tangents but in conclusion, Kyouka's arc is about learning to live for herself, letting herself feel safe and protected, and just...accepting her past as something that happened and not trying to cope with it on her own.