One Great Duo: Soukoku, from Bungo Stray Dogs
The ultimate rivalry partnership.
There is nothing I love more than a rivals-turned-partners-turned-enemies-turned-reluctant-partners-again dynamic. Two individuals who can’t stand being in the same room as each other, forced to partner-up to save the world? Bring it on! Bungo Stray Dogs is one of my favourite manga partly because it is made of these kinds of partnerships, the best of which is between Dazai and Chuuya, otherwise known as Soukoku.
Context: Bungo Stray Dogs is a dark fantasy manga by Kafka Asagiri, about the Armed Detective Agency. The agency is made up of individuals who have unique powers and they solve cases that the usual government agencies can’t handle. This means that they often clash with the only other official supernatural organisation in Yokohama, the Port Mafia. Every gifted character in the series, and their ability, is named after a real life author and one of their works.
Who are our One Great Duo?
Osamu Dazai works for the ADA. His ability, No Longer Human, allows him to nullify all other abilities through a single touch. This also means that all other abilities are unable to physically affect him.
Chuuya Nakahara is an executive in the Port Mafia, and his gift, Upon The Tainted Sorrow, allows him to control the gravity of anything he touches—an ability with an impressively diverse application. Chuuya’s ability also has a second level to it, called ‘Corruption’, which enables him to create blackholes.
Dazai and Chuuya have a complicated history that I won’t spoil for you, but the key thing you need to know is that Dazai used to be an executive in the Port Mafia—the youngest executive in the history of the organisation, in fact, known as the ‘Demon Prodigy’. He was Chuuya’s partner and they were infamously known as Soukoku (‘Double Black’ or ‘Twin Dark’, depending on which translation you prefer), the ‘devastating rivals’ who annihilated an enemy organisation in one night.
As I’ve already mentioned, Bungo Stray Dogs has many examples of this type of relationship. It’s a trope used frequently in manga and there are plenty of compelling examples: Naruto and Sasuke, Midoriya and Bakugou, Asta and Yuno, Yugi and Kaiba, Hinata and Kageyama, Isagi and Rin… Isagi and every single other character in Blue Lock. All of these pairs are great examples of the purpose rivalry can serve in a narrative—such as enabling character growth, and teaching valuable lessons about teamwork and embracing our differences.
So, Soukoku: what makes them a One Great Duo?
One Soul, Two Bodies:
‘Chuuya and Dazai stood side by side. There was something surprisingly perfect about it.’ —Stormbringer
As is typical of most partnerships, Dazai and Chuuya are opposites. Dazai is a genius-level strategist: crafty, manipulative, unpredictable and difficult to read. Chuuya is a fearless powerhouse, who relishes a fight and is straight-forward and honest to a fault. Their skills naturally complement each other, but, more than that, and in a way I don’t think other rivalries necessarily demonstrate, these two contrasting individuals are made for each other.
Chuuya’s Corruption has one single limitation: it can kill him. Once it’s activated, he loses all lucidity, relinquishing control to a power that begins to destroy his body. The only thing that can save him from dying at the hands of his own ability is Dazai’s No Longer Human. Dazai, therefore, is the only partner who can allow Chuuya to realise his full potential.
And whilst Dazai is somewhat of an enigma to the other characters, Chuuya intuitively understands him, his motivations, and his schemes—even when he isn’t in on all the details. The Dead Apple film is the perfect example of this (minor spoilers to follow). Chuuya is asked by the government’s Special Division for Unusual Powers to use Corruption to take out an extremely large singularity dragon. He’s advised that this mission will certainly kill him, since Dazai is likely dead, inside the dragon. But that doesn’t stop Chuuya. For a start, he never backs down from a fight, but, more importantly, he’s confident that Dazai is still alive.
When he does, indeed, defeat the dragon and give Dazai a smack, his faith is rewarded by Dazai nullifying Corruption to save him in return. It’s a rare, touching moment between the characters, a bromance of sorts considering that Dazai is literally positioned as Snow White and Chuuya as the prince who wakes him up from his slumber. We get this typical exchange in that moment which shows how in sync they are and epitomises how their partnership works:
Dazai: You used Corruption believing that I would save you? How beautiful.
Chuuya: What I believed in was your disgusting craftiness and stubborn refusal to ever die.
Dazai: A small critique: that was a rather violent way to wake up Snow White.
Chuuya: Snow White never hid a poison antidote in her mouth. You knew I was going to punch you.
Despite their mutual dislike, and despite all the grievances they have against each other, there is a deeply ingrained trust between them, partly born out of their shared history but also born out of an inherent compatibility. As Takuya Igarashi, the director of Dead Apple, explains: ‘Dazai and Chuuya are one soul in two different bodies’. It’s as if they were fated to come together and become the ultimate, deadly duo.
Humans in the Rough
'There’s no way I could hate a man-made character string this much’—Dazai, about Chuuya, in Stormbringer.
A question that BSD often raises, is ‘what does it mean to be human?’. Dazai is human but he doesn’t feel like it: he struggles to connect with others, to feel empathy, and to understand the human desire to live. Chuuya is the opposite: unlike other gifted individuals, he was created in a lab; there’s a question mark over his humanity—and yet he exhibits extremely human traits by caring deeply for his friends, showing compassion, even to his enemies, and fighting to live.
Separately, it would be easy for Chuuya and Dazai to become one-dimensional caricatures: Chuuya as the fearless and lethal mafioso; Dazai oscillating between either an infuriating, shallow idiot or a devilishly fiendish genius. But when they come together, they become more well-rounded, nuanced characters, showing sides of themselves that we otherwise don’t get to see. Chuuya is arguably the first person Dazai forms a bond with, even if it’s based on mutual dislike, and it’s his forced partnership with Chuuya that begins his journey from someone who only sees other people as tools to manipulate, to someone who begins to trust in others as fellow equals.
As Mori, the head of the Port Mafia, says when asked if he really wants to put Chuuya and Dazai together in the same organisation: “Only a diamond can polish a diamond”. Chuuya softens Dazai’s edges and reconciles both the ridiculous and the devious sides of him into something more human, whilst Dazai confirms Chuuya’s humanity by treating him as merely another lowly being and not a deadly weapon only to be idolised and feared.
Soukoku Shenanigans:
“Day in and day out, I’ve spent every waking and sleeping moment thinking about how I can annoy Chuuya.”—Dazai, Stormbringer.
“What a lovely reaction you gave me. I’m so happy I could strangle you to death.”—Chuuya to Dazai, BSD, Vol 3.
They’re just a lot of fun. Whenever both halves of Soukoku appear in the same scene, you know you’re in for a treat, because there is never a serious moment between them. There’s no actual angst involved, which is unusual for rivals, and, honestly, a breath of fresh air. Even when you think things are getting serious or sincere, one of them always ruins it by saying something dumb.
The first time they meet, at fifteen, Chuuya kicks Dazai into a wall and Dazai then proceeds to ridicule Chuuya’s height, and their dynamic really doesn’t change at all from that moment onwards. They essentially fell in hate at first sight, so their entire relationship is one of conflict and insults, calling each other ‘slug’, ‘hatrack’, ‘mackerel’ and ‘bag of bandages’. They wind each other up constantly: over Chuuya’s height and his taste in hats; Dazai’s obsession with suicide and his bad track-record with women. They trade death threats and wishes for each other’s bad health, and enter into childish pranks and bets which devolve into accusing each other of cheating and bickering over who technically won.
Dazai has several notebooks dedicated to his grievances with Chuuya and admits to spending every waking and sleeping moment thinking of ways to annoy him, whilst Chuuya has a list of a hundred-and-ninety ways to get revenge on Dazai—the second mildest of which is hanging him upside down and spinning him around until he vomits.
They hate having to work together, and they actually don’t interact much at all in the main series, but when you see a Soukoku team-up coming, you know it’s going shift the plot significantly and be a deeply satisfying moment. Their rivalry is both frivolous but also an embodiment of the key themes of BSD. They are, after all, the blueprint for Atsushi and Akutagawa’s Shin Soukoku (New Double Black), and a perfect example of how a partnership between rivals can work and work devastatingly well—both for the purpose of the narrative and for the enjoyment of the reader.
Thanks for letting me gush about my favourite duo. And thanks to Josh for inviting me take over a MangaCraft post! I love this publication and it’s been a huge honour.
PJ
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I really need to get back into BSD. Parts of it were boring, but every time soukoku was on screen it was peak.