Bungo Stray Dogs 4 ep. 45 – Masterminds

You know, I really tend to prefer anime to manga. It’s supposedly not a popular opinion. People don’t usually share it on their blogs and stuff. It certainly sounds a bit lowbrow for some reason. But I can’t help it. All the extra elements that anime layers on really bring a story to life for me.

I’m telling you this out of the blue because I have read this arc of Bungo Stray Dogs. In fact, as far as the English version of the manga is concerned, we are still n the middle of this arc. I can’t stress this enough, things are going to get wild. No, they haven’t gotten wild yet… I quite like this arc. It made me sit up and pay a little more attention and I devoured the volumes as soon as I could get my hands on them. But the anime is better. I wish I had gone into this season blind but I just didn’t have the patience.

I have a soft spot for Kunikida. I think he’s one of the most effective foils in the series and can easily work off any other character. On top of that, his recurring conflict between his rigid morality, basic practicality, and the often harsh consequences of the life he’s chosen make for an interesting change of pace. Also, he has a glorious mullet and we all know how I feel about mullets…. wait…

So right off the bat, we have a scene that encapsulates Kunikida’s character. He does something extremely rash because he believes it will save his friends. Protecting others is very much in line with his morality but he’s also well aware that when it comes to his friends, and therefore something he has a personal stake in, he tends to take that protecting others thing way more seriously. In fact, he might even protect them at the expense of others. That’s the thing with morals. If you think about them too hard, they often end up in an ouroboros. So instead of dealing with that, he jumps out of a plane, creates an immediate opportunity but imposes on everyone else severe long-term consequences that are bound to change the course of events. It’s both selfless and selfish at the exact same time.

More importantly, though, it’s an extremely striking scene. As a viewer, it solidifies the change in tone that started with Gogol’s appearance. It tells us in no uncertain terms that things are getting serious. And for the record, they very much stress that Kunikida could have survived. We probably won’t get a good feel for it until an episode or two down the line, but the death of the individual members is not what the stakes are here. It’s not even the worse that could happen.

Oh boy, Atsushi has to think for himself. We’re all in trouble here!

There’s a pretty important bit of foreshadowing that happened at the beginning of the season. The anime doesn’t trust us so they’ve been repeating non-stop just to make sure we got it. We got it! Atsushi and Kunikida were training together and Kunikida laid it out as “The tiger is strong, you’re not”. That’s basically one of the core theses for Atsushi’s character as a whole. And it’s been an important pillar of Bungo Stray Dogs from the beginning. Atsushi’s weakness is a driving force. Well this time around, he can’t afford to be weak anymore. Right now, Atsushi finding a strength that’s not dependent on his ability is the only way to save everyone.

I cannot stress enough how much trouble we are in. It’s a very good thing that Kyouka’s here. I’m pretty sure everything would have already gone down the drain if she wasn’t!

Still, kudos for reaching out to Fitzgerald. It’s a risky move but one with good potential payoff and I am rather surprised that Atsushi could think of that all by himself.

A lot of things happened during this episode. It was a pretty effective bit of varied setup. In quick succession, we learned a whole bunch of very important information. The Mafia will help the scattered Agency members but only so far as it doesn’t inconvenience them and for a very steep price. Dazai got himself thrown in jail but is not out of commission. And Fyodor wanted the Eyes of God out of commission. So being able to track down people is in fact something that could be a problem for the Decay of the Angel.

This may sound self-evident like it’s not new information at all but when you think about it there’s no reason that we know of for Fyodor to go out of his way to neutralize the Guild at this point. Both his face and his current location are public knowledge. Gogol is effectively out of commission. As for Oguri and his perfect crime. We know why Atsushi is looking for him but let’s face it, with Fydir’s history, the likelihood that finding Oguri will lead to anything useful is pretty low. He likely never got the chance to find out anything of value and reactivating his ability is unlikely to override the book’s effects. So really Atsushi is just going off desperation.

There must be a different reason why Fyodor is angling to take out the Guild. One that we haven’t discovered yet…

It’s nice to see Dazai again, isn’t it? It’s good we got a chance to miss him as well. I think he is best used sparingly. But this, this is exactly what his character was built for. A battle of the wits against an equal opponent who also is by no means an ideologue. You can easily see these characters as interchangeable and that is one of the strengths Dazai brings to the table. You can never be sure he’s actually a good guy. In many real ways, he isn’t.

I don’t have much to say about this scene. It speaks for itself and was tons of fun to watch. Even though it’s actually quite short, it took over the episode in my mind and I hope we get a lot more to come.

Fitzgerald, and by extension the Guild in general, has always been personified as a character most driven by greed. But more complex and potentially more insidious greed. Fitzgerald wants money, as much of it as possible but it’s literally power for him. So really, he wants power. So far that’s a pretty standard villain archetype. Yet from, the very start we see that he wants this power to somehow heal his wife from the shattering heartbreak of the loss of their daughter. He’s unreasonably demanding of the member of the guild and often unsympathetic and completely lacking in empathy yet he might be the most protective boss we see in the series. Fitzgerald is not written as a character with bad morals, he is written as one who is simply uninterested in morals as a whole. That’s always been intriguing to me.

In the past, I’m not sure Bungo Stray Dogs has had the chance to really put this good personification to use. Except when he lost all his money. That was an extraordinary episode and still one of my favourites. I hope this season, which seems to be shaping up to have a lot to say about morality, will give Fitzgerald the opportunity to really let this aspect of his character shine. I think it could add a lot of depth to the theme.

I mentioned last week that I really like Yosano and I wanted to see more of her. Of course, that was tongue-in-cheek. I do know what’s coming up. Provided they stick to the source material of course. I was hoping to get the readers on the same page you see. Because unless I’m mistaken, what is coming up is a fantastic bit of character study for the Agency’s medic and one of the most heart-wrenching stories the series has to offer. At least it was for me.

If you are not an Akiko fan yet, I’m going to go out on a limb and say you’re going to be after the next (few?) episodes. It would be kind of funny if they chose to cut that entire bit out of the anime. If they do, I’ll tell you about it!

Previous episodes

• Bungo Stray Dogs 4 ep. 38 – In the Begining
• Bungo Stray Dogs 4 ep. 39 – Fools
• Bungo Stray Dogs 4 ep. 40 – Curry Rice
• Bungo Stray Dogs 4 ep. 41 – The Great Detective
• Bungo Stray Dogs 4 ep. 42 – The Rise of the Angels
• Bungo Stray Dogs 4 ep. 43 – The Fall
• Bungo Stray Dogs 4 ep. 44 – Releasing the Hounds