Theghostinabadbook - Bsd Altered My Brain Chemistry

Okay, what the FUCK was this chapter??

Most normal people playing the most normal game (human puzzles).

And Chopper.

For those of you who may not be too familiar with the manga, during ch39: Portrait of a Father, Akutagawa shows up, as Dazai's informant, to give Atsushi documents about who the orphanage headmaster was and what happened to him.

At that moment, Akutagawa shows an uncharacteristic clemency towards Atsushi, saying that "Atsushi's master died today", and compares this to his own relationship with Dazai.

This was a long time ago now, and a lot has happened since. The Cannibalism arc is right after this, where they are very antagonistic towards each other, and includes this scene:

Akutagawa, despite his bitterness towards Atsushi for who he is to Dazai, has seen how similar they are in this sense. Atsushi hasn't, because his gratefulness towards Dazai prevents him from seeing that Akutagawa's experience was completely different with this same person. (he's also not given any time by the narrative to wonder about it)

but then just came along chapter 122!!!

Atsushi gets to see, 1:1, the relationship between Akutagawa and Dazai. For the first time, Akutagawa is relatable to him.

And of course, at the end, Atsushi calls out the illusion as being the headmaster wearing Dazai's face because we are closing this loop! We are forcing Atsushi to see Akutagawa the same way Akutagawa has been seeing him!

It’s interesting how Punk Hazard, Dressrosa, Zou and Wano all spill into each other with actions in one arc directly leading to motivations and consequences in another. Like all three of those arcs are essentially set up for Wano when you look at the big picture. They’re all explaining how exactly it is that all these characters ended up her fighting these two menaces. And that makes sense given that Wano is kind of the biggest deal we’ve ever gotten in terms of over arching storyline in One Piece and what is revealed there forever changes the story.

But yeah I just thought it was interesting because outside of Sagas like Water seven and we’ve never really gotten that tipping over feeling before. But while water seven feels just like one big arc with individual pieces. All those arcs are distinct from each other and it’s only when you get to Wano and see the bigger picture can you really fit together just how we all ended up here. It also doesn’t help that Wano’s where they’ve been trying to go from the start.

It’s also the first time they Straw hats actually have a plan to go out of their way and antagonize somebody. Like they are actively trying to antagonize Kaido before they got to Wano. They’ve never done that before they’ve always just kind of tripped and fell into trouble trying to help a friend. Which is kind of how the kaido thing starts but it snowballs into much more than that. The closest to anything like it is Vivi and alabasta. It really helps post time skip feel distinct from pre time and really sets you up with out even knowing it to prepare for something big to go down. It’s almost like a visceral shift from One piece as a serialized story to an a connected one.

volatile times

older sibling bonding

not the way