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aspoonofsugar · 5 years

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Yosano: The Decay of the Angel of Death

Yosano is introduced as a funny twist of the classical healer character:

Her power lets her cure others, but in order for it to work she needs to almost kill her patients and she exhibits sadistic tendencies (played for fun) while doing so.

However, once her past is revealed it becomes obvious that she is really a deconstruction of such a character and her story is extremely interesting because of that and because of the themes it explores.

This meta will try to analyze these things and will explore two major themes linked to the doctor of the Detective Agency.

THE ANGEL OF DEATH: THE STRONG LINK BETWEEN LIFE AND DEATH

“After all to die isn’t the opposite of living. It’s merely a component of the process of life.”

In a sense Yosano is a character created to explore exactly what Dazai says here aka the link between life and death.

This is made clear since her battle against Kaji:

Kaji is a researcher who wants to investigate the world and to find answers to his questions. To be more specific he is interested in concepts like death, faith and God. In short, he is interested in things which are usually considered out of the scientific domain. Here, however, he makes a mistake in the way he approaches his subject of interest. As a matter of fact he wants to know what “death” is, but one can’t understand death without considering life. Kaji fails to discover the truth and sees death as mysterious and complicated simply because he refuses to aknowledge the importance of life. If one does, one can easily see that death is connected to life.

However, the definition proposed by Yosano is different from the one given by Dazai because it is one which gives much more importance to life rather than death. After all, according to her, death is not something which exists by itself, but simply the lack of something else.

This is because Yosano is a person who strongly loves life:

The reason why she followed Mori and became a war medic was not because she wanted her country to win the war, but because she wanted to save lives.

This is shown also by her ability which is said many times to be extremely rare among ability users. Why is that so?

The story has made clear that abilities are linked to people’s interiority. They are often representative of violent tendencies or complexes. Alternatively they are weapons who can be used against others. In short, they are indicative of one’s coping mechanisms. However, Yosano’s ability is different because it simply expresses a strong love for the act of living which is not very common among ability users.

This can be used to compare her to Mori in two ways.

1) First of all, Mori is a doctor like Yosano, but the way his ability reflects this is completely different from hers:

It has been shown that Elise can act as a nurse and an assistant to Mori, but she hasn’t any healing powers.

In other words, when it comes to healing, Elise is nothing special despite Mori being a doctor himself. This is interesting when one considers that Mori created Elise’s current personality, so that it resembles Yosano’s. This can be easily seen as Mori wishing that his powers were like Yosano’s.

However, it is obvious why they are not:

Mori doesn’t value individual lives, but thinks about “life” in an abstract way and talks about a regiment of “immortal beings” rather than patients he can help. This is why his ability could never become like Yosano’s. It is because deep down Mori doesn’t like life:

Dazai: “Who is this person I remind you of?”

Mori: “Me. Dazai-kun, why do you wish to die?”

Dazai: “Let me ask you, then. Do you really think there is any value in the act of living?”

2) Secondly, it is worth considering that, despite not having healing powers, Elise shows superhuman abilities when fighting. What is more, her preferred weapons are medical tools:

In short, her nurse motif is something that comes up while she fights and so while she hurts others.

This is something which is true for Mori as well:

Fukuzawa has commented about the immorality of a doctor who uses a scalpel to kill a person. This becomes even more evident if we remember that a scalpel is what Mori used to kill the former mafia boss who was his patient at the time.

So, Mori is a character who chose a profession which should save people’s lives, but he is strongly linked to death instead:

The same is true for Yosano as well:

However, she is so in a completely different way than Mori is.

As a matter of fact Mori uses medical tools to kill, while Yosano uses weapons to cure:

In both cases there seems to be a contradiction between their roles as doctors and the violence they use. However, Mori’s violence is born by his indifference towards life, while Yosano’s by her love for it. This is symbolized by Mori using things which should save people’s lives to kill them and by Yosano using things which should kill people to cure them.

This will be elaborated later on, but for now it is important to highlight that Yosano’s experiences in the war made her realize something important aka what she herself told Kaji about life and death being connected. This means not only that one can’t really understand death without considering life, but also that one can’t really understand life without considering death.

If Kaji doesn’t care enough about life when he meets Yosano and this is why he can’t understand what death is, then Yosano’s mistake as a child is the exact opposite. She only thought about life in simple terms without worrying about its link to death. However, as the war progresses she starts thinking more and more about this:

Until she realizes how much the two concepts are connected:

She is initially said to be an angel because of her being able to save lives, but later it becomes clear that her powers are simply making the deaths of the soldiers longer and more painful other than impossible to avoid.

THE DECAY OF AN ANGEL: “YOU ARE TOO CORRECT”

Another important realization Yosano has is this:

Because of her ability, the army she was a part of lost its right to “lose”.

As Yosano states, the right to lose is something humans have, so taking it away from the soldiers is something which dehumanizes them. Yosano blames herself for it, but she is actually the greatest victim of this dehumanization.

As a matter of fact Yosano is a character who is reduced by others to her ability.

This is not something new for ability users since we have seen this happening over and over. However, Yosano’s case is interesting because her objectification is something which is subtle and is not initially presented as negative:

Both Tachihara’s brother and the other soldiers praise Yosano for her ability and call it a very useful and positive power. After all, as stated above, the power of healing wounds is very different from other kinds of powers which are dangerous and could hurt others. Yosano’s ability is useful and it is perfect to help people. What is more, she herself has a strong wish to share it with others.

In other words Yosano’s situation seems ideal. She is a talented child with a powerful and wonderful gift and has the talent and willingness to use it for the greater good.

However, when things go wrong she is the one blamed for it:

It doesn’t matter that Yosano was motivated by the best intentions when she joined the army or that she is suffering just like everyone else. What matters to the other soldiers is that she is the reason why they are forced to keep fighting and she is also considered special enough not to be forced to fight. Her ability is so great that it can control the battlefield and so Yosano’s life is considered more important than theirs. Because of this, they stop seeing her as a person and simply see her ability.

In other words, the soldiers might have lost their right to lose, but Yosano has lost her right to be human and has become nothing more than an angel.

An angel is considered an existence above humans, but this also means that they can’t have human weaknesses. Yosano is not seen as a human by the soldiers and so her sorrow is neither considered nor accepted.

This idea is well expressed by Tachihara’s brother:

He initially states that Yosano is “correct” and adds that her ability is so that it increases the correctness of the world. However, as time passes the soldier’s mental health deteriorates and his final message is that Yosano is “too correct”. He writes this before killing himself and so making clear that he prefers death over the life Yosano stubbornly keeps saving.

The choice of the word “correct” is interesting and it can be applied both to Yosano as a person and to her ability.

As a person Yosano can barely be blamed for what happened. After all, she did her best to save lives and had no ulterior motives. If anything, she was a vitcim of Mori’s actions just like all the other soldiers.

However, as stated above, people are not interested in her personhood, but only in her ability.

She is either correct or wrong not because of who she is, but only because her ability is considered a blessing or a curse. When the war starts she is said to be indispensable to win, but once this is proven wrong her death is said to be for the sake of the world, as Jouno puts it.

In short, this part of Yosano’s character is linked to two concepts.

1) People should not be reduced to their abilities.

2) Expectations society has about individuals and why they are cruel.

Both ideas are also linked to Tachihara:

This detail is interesting and it can be read in different ways.

First of all, it is obviously something Tachihara does to unnerve Yosano and to make her understand that he is motivated by revenge. However, it is also related to Tachihara’s personal inferiority complex:

The soldier died lamenting that Yosano was “too correct”, but ironically it seems that Tachihara has very similar feelings when it comes to him. The man is implied to have been outstanding and Tachihara has even been told that it would have been better if he had died instead of his brother.

So, one wonders if the words “you are too correct” are really meant for Yosano in that scene or if they are words Tachihara secretely wishes to tell his brother, but can’t because of his death and his complicated feelings about it.

Finally, it is ironic that a Hunting Dog would say these words to a wanted criminal like Yosano and I think it is symbolic of the whole group’s hypocrisy.

The Hunting Dogs are so obsessed by the idea of justice that they forget to balance it with empathy. All in all, if there are characters in the series who are “too correct” that would be them and not Yosano. They have failed to realized it so far, but it is possible they will have to rethink their ways.

After all, as I briefly mentioned here, they are fighting against a group called the Decay of Angels. It has been said that this group wants to destroy the same society the Hunting Dogs want to protect and they are clearly using people’s ideals and biased concepts of right and wrong to manipulate them and turn them into accomplices of their scheme. All in all, they are the perfect enemies for the Hunting Dogs and the arc is clearly hinting at the fact that the Dogs will have to face their shortcomings (after all the current chapters are called Skyfall).

Yosano’s story perfectly fits this narrative thematically. After all, her past is basically the story of the decay of an angel whose blessings (a healing ability and a good heart) were used against her.

BUTTERFLY WINGS VS ANGEL WINGS

As we saw above, Yosano’s character is linked to two major themes.

1) The link between life and death.

2) The objectification of people which happens in society.

The symbolism of the butterfly can be used to represent both ideas.

On one hand the butterfly is a symbol of both death and resurrection which perfectly fits her ability to the point that You Shall not Die is represented by butterflies.

On the other hand the butterfly is also a symbol linked to Yosano’s status as an angel since she receives her butterfly pin when she is called an angel for the first time and she loses it when she loses her status as one and becomes an angel of death instead. Moreover, the chapters which talk about her past are called Dreaming of Buterflies, while the ones where she meets Tachihara are called The Sorrow of Those without Wings. So the story makes clear that the butterflies symbolize both an ideal and perfect reality which got lost when Yosano lost her innocence and her status as an existence above others.

I will now try to offer a conclusion to both these topics which have been explored in the two previous sections.

1) I have written previously that Dazai and Yosano’s definitions of life and death are different, but I think I should slightly correct this stance.

I think it is better to say that both arrive to the same conclusion, but they do so through almost opposite journeys because their starting points are completely different.

On one hand Dazai is a person who can’t find any value in the act of living. This is why he wants to die painlessly. However, throughout the events of Fifteen, he comes up with the idea that by experiencing death closely he might be able to understand life better and to find some kind of meaning. Even later on, when he chooses to protect the weak, he is inspired to do so because of the death of a close friend. In short, Dazai’s journey to give meaning to his own life seems to be paradoxically linked to death:

“People live to save themselves. You will understand that at the moment of your own death”.

On the other hand Yosano is a person in love with life, but she has to accept even its more painful parts. She has to accept that things are not black and white and that death can’t be avoided. Let’s also highlight that Yosano too loses a person dear to her because of Mori and that she is utterly crushed by it.

The result of Yosano’s journey sheds some light on the true nature of her ability:

Let’s underline that her backstory doesn’t put much emphasis on the fact that her patients need to be half-dead to be cured by her. This could simply be because it is something which is implied, but I would not be surprised if it were a condition which developed as a result of Yosano’s trauma:

If Yosano sees her ability as something which cheapens life, then it makes sense for her to use it only when a person is almost dead because it would mean that there is really no other chance to save them.

Ranpo even suggested her to stop using her ability altogether:

And let’s not forget that Fukuzawa’s ability lets the members of the agency gain more control over their powers. Moreover, this control is not something they develop consciously, but it is the result of Fukuzawa giving them what they need. In short, It is some kind of unconscious security net. We have seen that Kyouka was given independency and Atsushi more control. It would be interesting if Yosano were given a condition which would limit the use of her powers to when the situation is desperate.

This is just a headcanon, but even if her powers have always been the way they are now, there is no doubt that her sadistic behaviour is an aspect which has been highlighted much more in the series compared to when she was a child.

This could very well be Yosano’s attempt to make her comrades care for their life:

The risk of having an ability which lets you come back from death’s door is to become reckless and to stop treasuring your own life. This might be especially true for the members of the agency many of whom have self-sacrificial tendencies. However, the fear of being healed by Yosano makes so that they have to try their best to preserve themselves.

2) Yosano has been given her butterfly pin twice:

The first time, Tachihara’s brother calls her an angel and tells her her ability is much better than his despite how much enchanted she is by the butterfly flying elegantly:

The second time, Ranpo tells her that her ability is nothing special when compared to his and adds this:

In other words, Ranpo treats her like a person. He doesn’t care about Yosano’s ability, but about Yosano herself.

Once Ranpo gives her the pin she stops being an angel and becomes a person and the pin becomes the symbol of her humanity and of her grief which, like Ranpo said, has value.

All in all, abilities don’t matter.

-Yosano was just as amazed by the soldier’s ability to make beautiful things out of metal as he was by her healing powers.

-Tachihara’s control of metal is said to be stronger than his brother’s, but he still feels inferior to him and misses him.

-Finally Ranpo can be amazing even without an ability.

These are the messages conveyed by Yosano’s character so far and I can’t wait to see how her story will end. She was able to find a safe place with the agency, but she has now been asked to face her past and some unresolved issues have come back.

For example, despite how much she cares about life, it is obvious that she considers her own expendable to an extent:

And she still hates others sacrificing for her sake because she dislikes being considered special:

We will see how these issues will be solved.

#bsd #bungou stray dogs #bsd meta #bungou stray dogs meta #yosano akiko #akiko yosano #yosano bsd

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gunmaestro · 5 years

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My Problems with Bungou Stray Dogs.

I want to preface this by saying that Bungou Stray Dogs is my favorite animanga. I’m not trying to tell Asagiri how to write the story and I’m not saying these things make it a bad concept--I just wanted to share my criticisms about the show and manga. These things absolutely don’t ruin it for me, and most of them are about the anime only anyway. Note that this list will NOT include the Tanizaki siblings although I do have a problem with their relationship because I’m focusing mostly on storytelling and character analysis. But without further ado, I’ll get into my first criticism. This one, my biggest problem with the series, will be above the cut, but the rest will be under it for length.

Dazai Osamu.

Given that Dazai as an author is a very significant presence in Japan, it’s understandable that he would play a large role in a series based largely upon Japanese authors. The fact that he has a large role is not the reason I dislike him--in fact, he’s been getting a lot less screentime in the manga recently. The reason I view Dazai as a problem with Bungou Stray Dogs is because of his mental prowess which borders on omnipotence.

It shouldn’t come to a surprise that Dazai would play a role in every major arc, given that he’s a main character and all. However, it’s very frustrating and almost boring to have arc after arc resolved because of Dazai. It’s even more frustrating when it’s implied that everything our protagonists do has already been specifically calculated by Dazai, as if their actions are not their own. Having an overpowered character like him makes the narrative seem boring.

At the time of this being written, the manga is in the middle of its arc with the Hunting Dogs and the Decay of Angels. I’m not sure if this is just me, but because of the characters (Ango, Atsushi, Dazai himself) admitting that Dazai had planned for certain events all along, I feel almost no stakes for the arc as a whole. It’s very hard to feel suspense whilst getting constant reminders that everything bad happening is all according to Dazai’s plan. I won’t even bother going into the dick measuring contest between him and Fyodor, either, because I’m sure we all know how that sort of thing can get annoying very quickly in stories.

Dazai being the super genius he is also weakens other characters around him. A striking example of this is Edogawa Ranpo, a character whom I have no problems with at all, speaking in terms of characterization. Ranpo’s entire character hinges on the fact that he is a brilliant detective and the smartest person in the agency--and to people like gifted kids, he’s a very relatable character. It greatly diminishes the quality of Ranpo’s character to introduce the idea that there are characters who know more than him; though Dazai has admitted to not being as smart as Ranpo, the narrative does not reflect this statement. Ranpo as a character works because there is grounds to his bragging--take away his status as the smartest in the series and he becomes nothing.

Similarly, Dazai negatively impacts the characters of Atsushi and Akutagawa. They’re two very interesting characters, but part of the reason they seem to fall flat to me is that they only ever act together when forced into it by Dazai. In fact, it feels like every single character on the side of good in this story would be helpless without Dazai there to guide them--and that makes them far less impactful characters.

Unresolved Plotlines and Bad Math.

Maybe I’m being nitpicky, and I didn’t mind this at first, but there are a lot of cliffhangers and inconsistencies throughout the story. Examples of the latter are easy to come by--Kunikida was initially stated to be a math teacher before joining the ADA, despite being only 22 at the present time in canon. Fitzgerald’s daughter would have been at most 14 at present assuming she was born when Fitzgerald was 18, which is hardly old enough for her to be sent to a boarding school in ANOTHER COUNTRY. These are small, but they somewhat decrease the quality of the story when questioned.

The unresolved plotlines and cliffhangers have a much bigger impact on the story during a time where it is still being released one chapter a month. John Steinbeck’s return has not yet come after two full arcs, despite it being teased by his appearance during Fitzgerald’s return. Going back further, we’ve seen astonishingly little of Agatha Christie--even though she was introduced around the same time as Fyodor.

In smaller cases, there’s the fact that we didn’t get to see what happened with Yosano, we don’t know where Akutagawa is at this point in the narrative, and we weren’t told what happened with the truck containing Margaret. These are small things that won’t be as annoying to read back on once they’re resolved, but having a story set up where everything is left open after every chapter is very disengaging for readers who just want to know what’s going on.

The Anime.

I know what I said at the beginning. The truth is, though, that there’s so much about the anime adaptation that bothers me that I have to summarize it by just saying the anime as a whole bothers me. I’m also aware that it’s very uncommon for mangas to get a perfect, spot-on anime adaptation.. but that doesn’t mean I don’t have a problem with it.

Here’s a speedround of things I don’t enjoy about the anime.

The art style. I’m sure we’re all very tired of the fish-eye lenses, and the weird smiles they’ve incorporated from Dead Apple. This being said, there are times when it looks good, but that doesn’t help the fact that I actually physically cringe whenever there’s a character who’s afraid or overly cocky making a facial expression that reflects this emotion.

The focus on certain characters (Dazai). I’m among the group of people that wanted untold stories to be animated this season instead of Fifteen, because it would have fit better with the plot of the season. The fact that the anime chose Fifteen was a good decision for drawing more attention to the show, since the fans of Chuuya and Dazai are in the majority, but it fits very poorly with the rest of the season. In fact, sorry for the spoiler, but Dazai and Chuuya aren’t even shown interacting in the main season, whereas Fukuzawa plays a major role in the cannibalism arc and Ranpo was visibly shown to have an important connection with him.

The tone. There’s not much to say, here. The anime takes everything very seriously, and one of my favorite parts of the manga are its humorous lines.

The humor. Speaking of humorous lines, they’re always said in a very obnovious way in the anime that makes it seem like they’re trying too hard. This is an opinion rather than an analysis.

The left-out details. Though the conversation between Fyodor and Agatha was not very important to the plot and nor was Steinbeck’s removed appearance in season 3, they both served as teasers for future arcs, and removing them shouldn’t have been completely necessary.

The changes to characters. The Guild is a particular victim of this particular point. Whereas the characters in this organization don’t come off as a completely serious group of people in the manga, they sure do in the anime. Logically, I can understand why this would be done--they’re the arc’s antagonists, and they’re more intimidating if they aren’t funny. But it completely changes some of their characters if you remove certain aspects of their personality.

The Fandom.

It goes without saying that no fandom is perfect, and a lot of them aren’t even good. The Bungou Stray Dogs fandom comprises mostly of s/skk fans, which is unsurprising, but what makes me compelled to put the fandom on a list of my problems with the show itself is how much they completely warp the characters of Dazai and Chuuya.

I know I have a whole section explaining why I think Dazai is a major flaw of the series, but despite that I actually do find his character interesting, if a bit annoying with how big his presence is. I dislike the fandom’s interpretation of him, specifically the way he interacts with Chuuya. Did he not blow up Chuuya’s car? Did he not let Chuuya suffer for a few more seconds just because he thought it was funny? Did he not make Chuuya embarrass himself for no reason other than his own enjoyment? It’s very disheartening to see him portrayed as someone who would never betray Chuuya’s trust and who is completely devoted to Chuuya.

Speaking of Chuuya, he’s probably the fandom’s biggest offense in terms of making a character unlikable. In my particular case, the way the fandom treats him has driven me away from his character, which I actually do like. Because of how often I’ve seen the fandom treat him like nothing more than a blushing tsundere whose feelings for Dazai are soooo obvious, I’m impacted by these interpretations when I read the manga.

To Conclude + A List of Things I Don’t Mind

No, I don’t think the series is bad and I don’t think these listed things make it bad, but I’d be lying if I said they didn’t bother me. But since I’ve been nothing but negative, here’s a few things that bother most people but don’t bother me at all.

Mori Ougai. I don’t condone his behavior or “preferences”, but I do not believe he is a problem for the show. He is not supposed to be a good character and, as we see with his behavior towards Yosano, his actions are not portrayed as good. There is nothing wrong with the villain of a series being a p*dophile as long as it is not treated as something positive, which it is not.

Tachihara + The Hunting Dogs. This is a spoiler for the more recent chapters of the manga, but despite the lack of foreshadowing I am not bothered by Tachihara’s reveal as the fifth hunting dog. I also don’t care that the dogs are hunting the agency, because it makes sense, story-wise. The agency are technically international terrorists because of what was written in the book.

Lucy and her supposed crush. Romance is not the focus of the show and, likewise, Lucy’s “crush” on Atsushi is not put at the forefront of the plot. However, I have seen fans get annoyed by the fact that she seems to like him.

I’d like to thank everyone who read this for taking the time to do so. I’m not the most coherent with my thoughts and I’m bad at putting said thoughts into words, but I hope you liked the things I had to say.

#bungou stray dogs #anti dazai #bungo stray dogs #bsd analysis

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