as a chuuya defender, i absolutely will take any opportunity to write about him but dazai isnt safe either so i decided to take this topic that a lot of people know the answer to but the new bsd fans + the ones who mischaracterise skk (as their own individuals) probably dont!!
firstly, whats the definition of an alcoholic? its important to clear this up so that the term doesnt get tossed around without knowing the extent of what it is. according to the cambridge dictionary, its used to define a person that has a dependence / addiction to alcohol for a multitude of reasons including but not limited to coping reasons, an uncontrollable urge or environmental issues. its important to note that an alcoholic abuses alcohol and drinks it often for whatever reason they have. it can also be done consciously or subconsciously.
now, lets take a look at some arguments people use to state chuuya is an alcoholic. 1 ; that he drinks wine always. chuuya is a wine collector, but it doesn't mean he constantly drinks. kouyou even states that the bottle chuuya pulls out is a 'prized possession', and chuuya also says that he's saved it for that occasion specifically. the few bottles that we actually get a clear name on to connect to real world brands are nothing short of expensive, with his petrus 1989 vintage being around $5K and his 1964 romanée-conti being $16K.
basically, wine collector. id also like to bring up chuuya being a lightweight. aside from dazai outright saying that chuuya can't handle his liquor, we also get a few points that i think are important to bring up to show just how much of a lightweight he is.
we see chuuya drunk-dialing dazai in volume four's omake which he most probably doesn't do very often considering both their roles in their own jobs along with their relationship as a whole. another scene in wan also gives us a look into how chuuya is when he's drunk , where he collapses in wan after barely drinking any wine. him being a lightweight is due to multiple reasons which probably include his weight and gender, but that's not what i wanted to bring up. more importantly, him being a lightweight also tells us that he's less likely to be an alcoholic due to GABA or gamma-aminobutyric acid which is a protein receptor in our brains that basically affect our reaction to alcohol. GABA receptors can vary in sensitivity, and there's a lot of things involved in the process but all you need to know is that basically, for some people the receptors take longer to be stimulated but for others, the receptors react to even the slightest bit of alcohol, which leads to being a lightweight. I think we were all convinced when dazai said it but I just wanted to say some things I found out while researching for this so it doesn't go down the drain. all in all, chuuya isn't an alcoholic because it's both canonically and medically backed up. so is there any character that has a bad relationship with alcohol? i present, osamu dazai.
lets start with some things we explicitly see. firstly, the earliest age we see dazai start drinking was when he was 15, hanging out in lupin with oda and ango, to which the morality of odango letting dazai, a 15 year old drink with them I will not question. we know they go there often just to drink, but what about other pubs / bars? we know it's not uncommon for dazai to be found at bars because of this line from dazai when he explains to kunikida how he got into the ADA. obviously, he's lying here, but he gives this reason specifically because it's a realistic story for both kunikida and fukuzawa as he's presumably always hanging out at pubs.
which brings me to my next point, dazai's alcohol tolerance. we know it's pretty decent due to the same line from dazai about the drinking contest and some scenes in wan that i know some of you guys are getting sick of at this point but they're the same scenes where chuuya's all passed out. we also get this scene in dazai's room, filled with bottles of alcohol with their caps removed. usually, people drink with their friends or during celebrations, but here we clearly see dazai alone and drinking. its also literally in his official character wiki that he likes alcohol. while im not going to be bold enough to state that dazai is an alcoholic due to him not being dependant on it, i think its safe to say he kinda has a problem.
YOU ARE READING
Joa meine Analysen und Theorien halt woohoo
RastgeleIch overanalysiere immer Zeugs. That's it. Ich hab mich entschieden hauptsächlich in englisch zu schreiben damit das für alle Leser lesbar ist. Außerdem finde ich hat man im englischen es viel einfacher sich auszudrücken