WELCOME TO MY TED TALK:

I don’t talk about Odasaku often, but he’s got one of the most interesting character arcs I’ve seen in any show, ever. His story is geared to drive in the narrative weight behind Bungou’s emotional center, and I’m gonna tell you why:
It’s also important to mention that this is all my own thoughts and my own opinion, and it’s not more or less valid than anyone else’s!

Also: I won’t be addressing the light novels, so bear that in mind while reading.

Anyway, let’s get on with it!
Bungou Stray Dogs is a show I’ve always enjoyed so much for the way in which it uses typical narrative plot devices in unexpected ways, which I assume stems from a love of literature on the part of its creators.

It’s a show with a LOT of emotional layers, and Oda displays that.
By the time the audience makes it to the Dark Era, we already know certain things about this show. We know from the first arc (which traces through season 1) that the show is a slightly disjointed telling of an orphan learning how to take power back after a life of abuse.
Then, in the Dark Era arc, the entire narrative thesis of the story is flipped on its face. Atsushi is revealed to be less of a typical main character, and instead he’s more of a narrative anchor that pins the relevant characters together and provides a central thesis.
What is revealed, is that the beating heart and the emotional core of the show is someone else entirely:

It’s Dazai.

And through the Dark Era arc, we are the bigger questions that the author is asking us: Can you really change the kind of person that you are?
We can see that through the fact that Dark Era isn’t told from Dazai’s POV, which would be the instinctive narrative choice—

It’s told from Odasaku’s.

From a mechanical perspective, POV is one of the most important facets in the way you frame a narrative.
If you told Dark Era from Dazai’s point of view, it would leave you with a vastly different sense of of what kind of person Dazai is, and the story is careful not to put you in Dazai’s head, because what Dazai is thinking and feeling isn’t as important as now ne’s being perceived
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