#bsd fyodor dostoevsky

Étude- t a b l e a u 8 / t o   y o u r … .

Soft domestic DoA for the soul

Dear Anon,
It is not a weird question at all, as this scene demands careful inspection indeed, given that the differences between the manga and the anime are significant, especially in pretty much everything related to Fedya. Besides a bunch of other differences I already wrote out in my essay (to be published, hopefully, in June!), it is true that Fedya never breaks his cello in the manga’s ch47, whereas in the anime’s S3ep9we see him looking down to his broken cello at his feet, at the end of the episode. Here is a quick comparison of the last scenes in which the cello is visible in the manga and the anime:

We can see how the anime decided to include an entirely new scene, with a different message. In my opinion, this adds mischaracterization to anime!Fedya, but I shall talk more about that in my essay as well. 

RegardingVolume 19’s omake, which you reference, it is important to note that the scenes from both pages happen in Sigma’s dream, thus they never happened in the main timeline’s “reality”. The assumption that Fedya shipped his cello to Japan is plausible on its own, nonetheless, while the “for a mission” part remains debatable, as the manga never explained the purpose of the cello recital so far. In my essay, I offer an interpretation in which what I deduced was its purpose becomes clear, so I am rather eager to share it in the future essay post. Either way, I find it very interesting that Sigma dreamed of his co-workers and that this included a reference to Fedya’s cello being transported, because, according to Fedya in ch75, Sigma was born from the Book 3 years prior to the moment he and Dazai ended up in Meursault. That points us to a timeline where both Sigma and Kolya were already working with Fedya during the Cannibalism plan (since its very start), and even before. I think the fandom would be blessed if someone were to make a chronology of the main events and verify this. Also, since Fedya in Sigma’s dream explains to him that his cello was already shipped to Japan, we may ask ourselves where were they? – in Russia? or somewhere else in Europe? – given how it sounds that his cello was shipped to an external place, internationally. Imagine Kolya and Sigma together with Fedya in Russia, then sneaking into the Japanese territory together. Who knows? But then again, speculating on this “info” is like walking on thin ice, because:

As for why exactly Fedya captured Katsura, that too is never addressed directly in the manga, except for Fedya’s own words to Katsura (“I simply wished to ask about our mutual acquaintance. The Detective Agency, that is”), which tell us it’s all about gaining information again (Fedya is an information “trader” after all, besides a million other things). What is more, we as the readers are conveyed the following message by the simple fact that Katsura ended up in Fedya’s basement (yes, basement, not a luxurious room full of stained glass, but this I can forgive because the scene was gorgeous animated in that room): Fedya can easily capture even those freshly arrested by the government (Katsura was arrested in ch40). Does this imply he got his own pawns in the government? An open possibility, I’d say. Or a given fact, at this point, but, until the theories are confirmed kjdsfgnjkf​

Thank you for sending me this lovely question, I greatly enjoyed answering it and I hope you don’t mind me answering here, on my main blog! I write my own thoughts / analysis stuff on main.

Bonus info I share again because my love is infinite: Fedya’s song is called “Bird of Death” in the BSD Season 3 OST, and there are two variants of it, which you can find both on youtube and spotify searching by their Japanese titles: 

• チェロとピアノの為の「死の鳥」 (”Bird of Death” for Cello and Piano)
• 弦楽オーケストラとハープの為の「死の鳥」 (”Bird of Death" for String Orchestra and Harp) (((please note I sadly do not speak Japanese, and these title translations are from the BSD wiki)))

/// Anon’s full question is transcribed below the cut:

Anon to @kaus-fangirlis​​ (my sideblog):“Weird question: does Fedya break his cello in the manga? I saw that scene in the anime but I can’t find it in the manga :( I mean,, yeah, Fedya sent it to Japan for the sake of a ‘mission’ (if the omake can be taken as canon) and it’d hella funny if he played it once and smashed it to pieces (why did he even kidnap that guy lmao) But I think he must attach a lot of importance to it and sent it on before he left for Japan,,, so he must have kept it somewhere safe before he went off to prison, broken or not….

tl;dr, if the cello-breaking scene is in manga please tell me in which chapter,,, it’s very /important/ information I need to know ＞﹏＜”