That Post About Mob Psycho Having A Title That Makes It Sound Like A Hyperviolent Edgy Anime In English

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Made this as quick as possible. Luckily my soccer game got canceled so I don’t have to delay posting this

Ritsu week 2023: Day 1 childhood/trauma

Really wish I could have made this digitally but that takes way longer. Anyway here’s the little emo kid struggling to eat tomato soup

like falling asleep

I LOVE the smell of grass. It’s so nice outside. In the real world it’s almost like none of this matters

You’re an unfunny cunt

I’m a dazai fan????? I’ve drawn him multiple times because I like his character so much???? I made a clay figure of him???? He’s also my girlfriend’s favorite character?????

Even if I did actually hate him he’s literally not real at all, he is a fictional character. I fear it was never that deep

Ideals (2024)

Yo mob and teru swap. Making these is so fun.

They should kiss or whatever

I shouldn’t have to work on account of my big brown eyes and general sweetiepieness

One of the most heartbreaking scenes in The Dark Era is seeing Dazai trying so desperately to convince Oda to live. Seeing Dazai clutching at straws, repeating back the advice he must have heard a thousand times at him, just to try and get through to Oda even though he knows already that it would never work.

And the worst part is, how through this whole scene Oda is acting just like Dazai, he has the same emptiness that Dazai normally only sees in himself. So now Dazai has to go through the impossible task of convincing HIMSELF to live, something he has been unable to do all these years.

I looked at Dazai. “There isn’t anything, Dazai. It’s all over. Everything. Whatever else happens now is meaningless—just like what I’m about to do. Am I wrong?” “Odasaku…,” Dazai said softly. “Forgive me for the absurd wording, but—don’t go. Find something to rely on. Expect good things to happen from here on out. There’s gotta be something…

And then him telling Oda why he joined the mafia, even though it was clearly something he never wanted to tell anyone, in the vague hope that it just might convince Oda to stop.

Hey, Odasaku, do you know why I joined the Mafia?” I stared at him. We had known each other for a long time, but he’d never even attempted to talk about that. “I joined the Mafia because of an expectation I had. I thought if I was close to death and violence—close to people giving in to their urges and desires, then I would be able to see the inner nature of humankind up close. I thought if I did that…” Dazai paused before continuing, “…I would be able to find something—a reason to live.”

But he can't do it, Oda is too far gone at this point, he lost not only the children, but his dream. He was in unimaginable grief and suffering and just wanted things to end.

I looked at him; he looked back at me. “I wanted to be a novelist,” I said. “I thought I wouldn’t deserve such a life if I killed someone during a mission. That’s why I never killed anyone. But that’s all in the past. There’s only one thing I want now.” “Odasaku!” I began to walk away. Dazai yelled out, but I didn’t turn around. Heading west, I started my journey.

Oda's listlessness is almost a perfect mirror of Dazai in the bar after Ango has betrayed them.

“I’m not sad. I knew from the very beginning,” Dazai said. His face was a blank mask now. “It didn’t matter whether you were with the Special Division for Unusual Powers. I always lose the things I don’t want to lose the most. That’s why I don’t feel anything anymore. The moment you get your hands on something worth going after, you lose it. That’s just how things are. There is nothing worth pursuing at the cost of prolonging a life of suffering.” I stared at Dazai. We had known each other for a while, but this was the first time he’d ever opened up about himself. I could see a thorn the size of a harpoon wedged deeply into his life.

This is why I say Oda is the only character to ever truly understand Dazai, because he saw the part of Dazai that he kept most hidden from the world, he knew Dazai's unending loneliness and emptiness. And in the end, he was consumed by the very same thing. But before he died, he did what only he could do, and gave Dazai a way to escape that emptiness.

Akutagawa and the Spider’s Thread

Ryunosuke Akutagawa as early on as chapter four is introduced to us as a brutal dog of the mafia with seemingly no regard for life. His first action is to slaughter an entire police station and then blow up the witnesses without any remorse. He’s the oe responsible for instructing Kyouka to kill 35 people, and tries to prevent her from escaping a life of killing. 

However, as the manga unfolds there is far more to Akutagawa’s character than what meets the eye, and rather than someone who has no value for life and therefore can kill without feeling anything, his views on life and death are far more complex. As contradictory as it is, by stepping over corpses and sinking himself into the blood soaked world of the mafia, Ryunosuke is actually seeking a meaning to life. Rather than seeing life as worth nothing, all of his actions are his own struggle to make life worth something. 

Despite being a cold blooded killer, Akutagawa’s character thematically revolves around life, and saving lives just as Atsushi’s does, as shown in the connection to the real life author’s short stories(Rashomon, The Spider’s Thread) as explained under the cut. This meta will explain that Akutagawa’s path to eventual redemption lies on something as thin and as weak as a Spider’s Thread. 

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