beta
read this a year ago but was unable to leave a comment back then bcs i fell down into a deep rabbit hole on wth is this all about.
i had my mouth open the whole time i was reading this. just when i thought it couldn't get any worse, it fucking does. all that trauma, addiction, and undiagnosed mental health conditions really caught up to him and made him make the worst decisions imaginable. i had so many questions even after reading until the end, so i did my research and some things finally made sense.
#1. this manga was adapted from a novel by osamu dazai. this is the last novel he wrote before unaliving himself with this lover in an aqueduct, uncannily similar to what yozo did (except yozo lived bcs he hallucinated)
#2. they say this is dazai's semi-autobiography, so yozo's thoughts and experiences were probably actually his
#3. yozo/dazai may have had autism, but we don't know for sure bcs he's dead, undiagnosed, and these things were quite unknown during the time it was written (it was written in 1940s)
so yeah, i hope it helped yall understand yozo's character. he's not just a dick or a coward just bcs he wanted to, he had been through many traumas and a probable neurological and developmental disorder. his brain is literally built different (⊙…⊙ )