BUNGOU STRAY DOGS

DESCRIPTION

CAST

MANGA ActionBungou Stray Dogs
ANIME ActionBungou Stray Dogs 2nd Season
MOVIE ActionBungou Stray Dogs: DEAD APPLE
TV SHORT ComedyBungou Stray Dogs Wan!
NOVEL MysteryBungou Stray Dogs: Dazai Osamu no Nyuusha Shiken

REVIEWS

• 

  xandorito

  71/100
  a bit of a disjointed start, but it flicks a switch half way and becomes quite a satisfying show overall

  "Justice is a weapon. It can be used to cause harm, but it cannot protect or save others."

  Here we are again attempting to review shit, wish me luck lads.
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  Bungou Stray Dogs (BSD) is an adaption of the 2012 manga series of the same name, being written by Kafka Asagiri and illustrated by Sango Harukawa. This 12-episode run is the first season of the current three seasons out at the time of this review, and my review will strictly be on the first season.

  

  BSD is about an 18-year-old orphan named Atsushi Nakajima joining the Armed Detective Agency, basically a bunch of detectives with a bunch of superpowers called gifts. Excepts its more a less a gang war than actual detective work, which isn’t bad, just something to take note of.

  Gifts have a more or less typical concept, similar to My Hero Academia or any other super power based anime, there’s nothing too unique about it, this isn’t really a bad thing, but the concept isn’t really ground-breaking or anything, though the idea of a detective agency with superpowers still sounds interesting enough to get me on board.

  Anyway it’s time to get to my actual opinion. I think Bungou Stray Dogs is interesting, what I mean by that is it has a lot of potential but falls flat a lot in the first half of season 1. Granted they are just getting their footing and they need time to get into the flow of things, but I just felt that the first few episodes felt disjointed. I wasn’t really intrigued and nothing really kept my attention. Even the set up for later episodes felt kind of flat. A clear example is in one episode they hype up a character saying they’re super strong and such, but the MC who can’t even remain conscious while using his gift is able to have a fair fight with him? Granted they did display his power to an extreme before hand on people who either didn’t have gifts, or fighting abilities, but to me its just felt kind of cliché for the MC to just come with the whole I cant die here yet kind of vibe. But once again this episode did build up a lot of lore the following later half. Which I would say turns around at episode 7, this is where I feel like the story picks up, it’s the first episode I felt fully invested in the characters and the stakes were felt, especially one of the key lessons in the episode, you can’t save everyone, or even anyone at some points, they’re detectives not heroes. That theme plays out a few times throughout the season, it gives the series a more realistic feel and I feel like that really works for it.

  This is helped by the characters. The characters are very well done, they have distinct personalities, motives and ideals, when they clash its interesting and when their challenged its even better, I think its well done even in early episodes which is always good, especially since the plot is heavily character driven, and for the second half of the season, the plots very good in my opinion, it all fit well together and the fight in episode 10 particular, felt very satisfying, though I feel like the antagonists motives in that episode came out of nowhere, but that might just be me.

  

  The series is accompanied by an amazing OST in my opinion, especially the OP and ED, the OP having a hype start to the episode and the ED having a more sentimental ending. The art style has a lot of saturated colours and refined line work that really looks nice, I really like what BONES have done, but BONES being BONES of course its going to be good.

  

  Overall it has a bit of a disjointed start which feels pretty mediocre, but it flicks a switch half way and becomes quite a satisfying show

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• 

  IZZYBUST

  30/100
  There is an agency and a mafia. They look for a tiger but the tiger is the friends we made along the way.

  Warning there might be some spoilers in this review

  This show has honestly baffled my mind and I still cannot comprehend what I have witnessed. I do not even know where to begin. Firstly this show has continued to haunt me even after completing season 1. You can't even understand the frustration I feel trying to search up this author's name and my search results are filled with this skinny twink. You cannot even understand me actually listening to the anime community once with everyone saying this shit is good and being severely disappointed but then have everyone saying the good shit happens in season 2. No way I'm watching another season of this fish-eyed plagued episodic show. Never again.

  Okay time to get into the show itself. Let me start with talking about the Port Mafia. They all look so fucking goofy and how they manage to look even goofier than The Guild is beyond me. Their leader is a 40-year-old freak who can't even get over someone that has already move on and summons a loli to fight for him. The fact that I am supposed to take him and his Scooby gang seriously is laughable. Then there's the Agency which let me start with the characters I kind of liked which was only Ranpo and that was because he entertained me even if have to look past the 9000 IQ moments that this man does in the show. Jun'ichirō and Fukuzawa were alright I guess but Osamu is a whole ass different story.

  Osamu is the single most annoying character in this show I don't hate him as much as the 40-year-old freak but he is a close second. I do not even know where to begin with this man. I guess the main thing was that the suicide jokes were not funny the first time and they were definitely not funny when they kept spamming me with them. At this point, I do not care what tragic backstory they come up with to explain his suicidal tendencies or if it is a person he is playing up just please spare me these jokes. I do not even care if he is going to actually commit suicide anything to just get him to stop.

  Okay, now I'm going to talk about some of the lamest abilities in this show. Steinback's ability was that he can grow grapevines because you know the author he's named after wrote that one book The Wrath of the Grapes or something like that. Then we have a guy who can only teleport people inside the book they are currently reading. Another one who can only limit and control the abilities of those who pass his "test". A woman who can think really fast. A guy who needs dolls to shoot accurately. A farmer who can only be super strong on an empty stomach. Amazing.

  In conclusion, there are only a few good things about this show, and I only finished it because I thought the President was kinda cute.

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• 

  Kalladry

  95/100
  Strong characters, depth & humor make this so much more than just a "good vs. bad" turf war

  [Note: this review is for all 3 seasons and the DEAD APPLE movie.]

  Atsushi Nakajima is having a bad week. First, he gets kicked out of the orphanage he called home—home to abusive adults, but still. Then, he seems to be stalked by a bloodthirsty tiger so he has to stay on the move. Also, he’s about to starve. THEN it turns out he is the tiger—specifically a weretiger, but he didn’t know and can’t control it.

  My initial reaction from episode 1, and my current reaction 37 episodes and 1 movie later, are the same: Atsushi is a sweet cinnamon roll who needs a HUG and a THERAPIST and to SLEEP FOR A WEEK and I LOVE HIM

  

  While Atsushi is our entry into the series and one of the main characters, Bungo Stray Dogs follows the supernaturally-gifted members of the “Armed Detective Agency," who accomplish different tasks including running a business, solving mysteries, protecting people and running interference with the local mafia, which also employs a number of supernaturally-gifted people.

  This is a VERY FUN SERIES. It starts out seeming like a straightforward Underdog Good Guys vs. Well-Funded Big Bad Organization, and that’s not necessarily wrong. But as the series progresses, the “bad guys” get their share of the spotlight too.

  Now first, I want to say, because I was confused for the longest time: this takes place in an alternate modern day. They’ve got smartphones and the internet, but there was apparently recently some big sort of war that doesn’t correspond to anything real, and the characters’ outfits are…well:

  

  For several episodes, despite the cell phones and computers I swear I thought this was set in the 1920s, but no. They just all have the fashion sense of a 10-year-old playing with paper dolls.

  I mean, look at the image above. And then look at Mr. Edgy High-School Vampire below:

  

  These people not only inhabit the same city, but no one ever seems to think they look out of place.

  Not a criticism. I admire a series that has devoted itself to such distinctly cosplayable designs and refuses to give an explanation.

  Anyway.

  The general storyline is usually: the Armed Detective Agency receives a job that involves investigating something murderous and/or supernatural, or that involves protection from something murderous and/or supernatural. Sometimes this is straightforward, sometimes this is part of a longer story that means things even more murderous and supernatural are lurking in the shadows.

  The players are often the Agency vs. the Mafia, but these orgs will occasionally team up for the greater good if an outside threat tries to move in. Some members of one org were previously with the other, so there’s a lot of history and emotions between certain factions.

  One such complicated person is this dork: Osamu Dazai. He’s the one getting strangled by his partner.

  

  He’s often found in the middle of a [failed] suicide attempt, or asking a pretty girl to commit a lovely double suicide with him. He’s cheerfully nihilistic, not intimidating, comes off as an airhead and a dork.

  …and then you see this face, which is Universal Anime Face for “character who knows SO MUCH and is excellent at scheming.”

  

  The characters are this show’s strength. If you’d told me during the first handful of episodes that one of my top 2 characters would be a mafia leader, I’d laugh, because why would I like a bad guy that much? When something is set up as clearly good vs. evil, I don’t tend to land on the side of evil regardless of evil’s extremely good character design

  

  But hey, lots of evil gets a backstory and turn out to be super interesting—heck, this guy here is part of the focus of a half-season prequel! (Season 2, for the record–—the first half is a prequel, then the second half picks up after the end of season 1.)

  

  The series is about fighting, and people get hurt, and people have to make tough decisions. But it’s often balanced with humor, and that’s part of why I enjoyed it so much. There’s so much to track—people on both sides with tragic backstories, the city- or world-ending plots that pop up, the many, MANY attempted murders—that if it went straight through, it would be overwhelming.

  

  But in the midst of all that, you have characters making jokes, or being inept, or responding to a hostage situation by playing rock-paper-scissors to see who deals with it, or tripping their enemy in the middle of a Very Serious Battle like Bug Bunny showing up to fight Thanos.

  (None of that really translates to gifs well, but here’s a character, in the middle of a dangerous fight, picking up Mr. Teenage “I Swear I’ll Kill You If You Laugh At Me” Hot Topic Model and carrying him like a sack of potatoes.)

  

  Another fun thing about this series is that the title translates to “Literary Stray Dogs,” and all the main characters are named after famous late writers. This is easy to miss if you’re American like me and have never heard of “Doppo Kunikida” or “Akiko Yosano,” but once international characters show up in season 2, you’re faced with “Louisa Alcott” and “John Steinbeck,” part of a group led by "Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald.”

  The characters’ powers all vary as well. Their names are often weird, until you learn that the names are all lines/titles of the original authors’ works (Chuuya Nakahara’s Upon the Tainted Sorrow gravity manipulation sounds ridiculous, Astushi’s Beast Beneath the Moonlight weretiger ability sounds pretentious until you know the connection). Abilities range from “great fighting ability” to “useful defensive ability” to “Herman Melville creates small flying whales and that’s…cool, I guess?”

  

  Verdict

  English dub? Yes, and I love it! I tried watching both, and I actually prefer the dub’s voices.

  Visuals: This is a show dedicated to its aesthetic, at least as far as fashion is concerned. I don’t know if any of the character designs/outfits are based on their namesakes (although remember my comment that I thought this was set in the 20s for a while? A lot of the namesake authors were active/alive between 1900 and 1930, so…), but maybe? Or maybe they just wanted to have suspenders and hats and long coats. Whatever, it’s cool and looks good, as does the rest of the series. Much of it is bright and/or takes place in the daytime–avoiding the “too dark to see what’s going on” thing.

  Worth watching? YESSSSS. Please watch sweet cinnamon roll too good too pure for this world Atsushi find a place of his own and learn he does get to have nice things. Please watch Dazai act like a total goof before the next scene shows us he’s five steps ahead of everyone else. Please watch Chuuya manipulate gravity so his hat stays on while he flips upside down. Please watch characters snark at each other even as they team up to defeat city-destroying monsters.

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