Dazai 🔫🎀

Truly, Dazai's closest friend was Sakunosuke Oda, a low-level mafia grunt whom he affectionately referred to as "Odasaku". Oda has come the closest anyone has come to fully understanding Dazai and the darkness that resides inside him. Because of this, Dazai held a deep loyalty to Oda, even after his death.

Dazai is revealed to have an exceptionally negative, potentially nihilistic, view of reality. He feels lonely and in the dark at all times. This gives him a detached side. Dazai will often switch between his playful, offbeat display and his stoic, pragmatic side. He also has no sense and very little interest in the concepts of good and evil. He only "redeemed" himself because of the wishes of his late friend, Oda, who encouraged him to be on the side that saves people.

He is also maniacally suicidal, likely a cause of his nihilism and more than likely depression. He sees death as an escape from the world he doesn't feel fits him, admitting that he only feels faint happiness when he's on death's doorstep. He's attempted suicide countless times, to the point where no one that knows him takes it seriously. His dream would be to commit double suicide (shinjū) with a beautiful woman.

He is almost maniacally homicidal at times. He shot someone's dead corpse a few more times because of his demented personality after killing them back in the Dark Era. He has also killed countless people and doesn't feel particularly remorseful because of it (at least not apparently). Dazai can also be very brutal, as demonstrated by his past mentorship of Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, where he berated and beat the latter frequently. Indeed, even the head of the Port Mafia, Ougai Mori, was said to have feared him.

His unique outlook results in him being exceptionally hard to understand. His true motives are almost impossible to figure out in any given situation, and he's generally very mysterious. This unreadability has given him an edge over his enemies in intriguing battles.

Despite all of this, Dazai is often the main source of comic relief in the series. His suicidal tendencies are usually played for comedy as is his clownish behavior.

Dazai, for some reason, possibly his hysteria, grew up away from society. He began to make attempts to suicide as far back as age 14, potentially even before that. Ougai Mori, being an underground doctor working for the mafia, had taken him in as a patient after one of his suicide attempts. Coincidentally, Ougai was planning to kill the current leader of the Port Mafia and take the role himself due to the leader's late-life mental illness that was leading to the mafia to ruin. The same night he took him in, Ougai had killed the leader with Dazai as the only witness. Ougai told Dazai to cover his murder by saying the leader had died of natural causes and his final wish was for Ougai to succeed him. Ougai had taken Dazai in as his ward and they developed a casual relationship. Dazai had developed to be much more than Ougai had expected, intimidating Ougai. He had been much more dangerous than Ougai had thought.

Dazai had worked his way to becoming an executive of the Mafia. During his time, he had become a legend for the mafia. He had the most successful missions out of anyone in the mafia at the time. Ougai Mori stated that he wouldn't be surprised if Dazai killed him and took his position with how manipulative Dazai was being. He was also skilled at using torture methods to get information out of anyone.

Dazai had extensive adventures during his reign as an executive. He had become a partner with Chuuya Nakahara and they took out an entire enemy organization overnight. He had participated in the locking up of Yumeno Kyusaku that had resulted in mass casualties for the mafia. He trained Akutagawa Ryuunosuke extremely harshly, making him an exceptionally powerful executive. He had developed a friendship with Ango Sakaguchi and Oda Sakunosuke through the Port Mafia towards the end of his reign.

In a conflict with an enemy organization known as Mimic, Oda was killed and Ango Sakaguchi had been revealed to be a double agent. Oda's dying wish was that Dazai would become a better person. That's what lead him to join the Armed Detective Agency and eventually redeem himself.

Dazai is a mysterious person, his true intentions are never revealed unless he reveals them. The person who got closest to the truth of his personality, as acknowledged by Dazai himself, was his friend Sakunosuke Oda, who recognized that Dazai shall linger in the darkness forever, as there was nearly nothing that can surpass his mind. Regardless whether he is on the side of killing people or saving them, Oda knew that no place in the world could fill Dazai's loneliness, which Oda thought Dazai knew in himself.[11]

Dazai as the youngest executive Dazai as the youngest executive in Mafia history.

In addition, Dazai kept an enigmatic and dark façade, whose endeavors in the Mafia were unrivaled and eventually earned him the status as the youngest leader in the history of the Mafia (歴れき代だい最さい年ねん少しょう幹かん部ぶ, reki daisainenshō kanbu?).[3] Because of his aptitude despite his youth, Dazai contributed to about half the Mafia's profits for at least two years.[11] Eventually, Dazai's ledger became tainted; Ichiyō Higuchi describes his blood to be "dark as the Mafia itself".[1] Even in his adulthood when he becomes an Agency member, when Kyōka Izumi showed remorse over having killed 35 people, Dazai remarked with a sinister face that such number is nothing.[15]

As a saying in the Mafia went, "The greatest misfortune for Dazai's enemies is that they are Dazai's enemies", for Dazai was aptly described to be "practically born to be in the Mafia". He was extremely confident and was a terrific planner, coming up with long-run strategies to subdue his enemies. For instance, he was able to lure Mimic operatives, who were previously trained soldiers, to fall under his trap.[11] Dazai is quite skilled in persuasion notably through his words, which he appeared to utilize in interrogations that broke targets who did not divulge anything under Kōyō Ozaki's torture squad.[16]

Oda's final moments Dazai advised by Oda to save others.

Behind this grim persona, Dazai admitted that he joined the Mafia to be exposed to death, violence, and people giving in to their urges and desires, expecting that—in this way—he would be able to see the inner nature of humankind firsthand in hopes of finding a reason to live.[11] Following Oda's demise, Dazai defected from the Mafia and went underground in order to heed Oda's final request for him to "be on the side that saves people". Admittedly, he reckoned that people change over time[1] where potential surfaces,[15] which apparently seems to apply to himself as well.

While his suicidal tendencies are initially comedic, they reveal a truly dark deep hole that Dazai has. Even as a teenage boy, Dazai questioned whether there was any value in life.[9] Thus, he soon tried to fill this hole and find a reason worth living for, choosing to live a life surrounded by bloodshed and war, but his friend Oda with his dying breath convinced him to choose the good side. He understood that even though good and evil mean little to Dazai, he may become a slightly better person if he were to choose well.

Dazai trains Akutagawa Dazai training Akutagawa.

In the past, while he was still suicidal, it was shown to be far less comedic. He even described the death as a way to free himself from the oxidizing world, but, strangely enough, he could not die no matter how hard he tried. Additionally, he was extremely brutal and methodical, setting up traps to catch captives alive to torture them for information, and he would often beat his then apprentice Ryūnosuke Akutagawa for disobeying orders and to push him to the limits to improve his abilities.[11]

Dazai is also willing to use dirty means to achieve his goals, such as purposely deflating Ango Sakaguchi's car seat airbag when they crashed so Ango would get injured and force him to cooperate with Dazai for pardoning Kyōka in exchange for having his wounds healed.[23]