Bungou Stray Dogs

For weeks, Atsushi Nakajima's orphanage has been plagued by a mystical tiger that only he seems to be unaware of. Suspected to be behind the strange incidents, the 18-year-old is abruptly kicked out of the orphanage and left hungry, homeless, and wandering through the city.

While starving on a riverbank, Atsushi saves a rather eccentric man named Osamu Dazai from drowning. Whimsical suicide enthusiast and supernatural detective, Dazai has been investigating the same tiger that has been terrorizing the boy. Together with Dazai's partner Doppo Kunikida, they solve the mystery, but its resolution leaves Atsushi in a tight spot. As various odd events take place, Atsushi is coerced into joining their firm of supernatural investigators, taking on unusual cases the police cannot handle, alongside his numerous enigmatic co-workers.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Dazai, Osamu Main

Miyano, Mamoru Japanese

Nakajima, Atsushi Main

Uemura, Yuuto Japanese

Nakahara, Chuuya Supporting

Taniyama, Kishou Japanese

Edogawa, Ranpo Supporting

Kamiya, Hiroshi Japanese

Akutagawa, Ryuunosuke Supporting

Ono, Kensho Japanese

Yosano, Akiko Supporting

Shimamura, Yuu Japanese

Izumi, Kyouka Supporting

Morohoshi, Sumire Japanese

Kunikida, Doppo Supporting

Hosoya, Yoshimasa Japanese

Miyazawa, Kenji Supporting

Kagura, Kitsune Japanese

Montgomery, Lucy Maud Supporting

Hanazawa, Kana Japanese

Bezerra, Wendel Producer

Suzuki, Mari Producer

Simone, Jamie Producer

Kurakane, Chiaki Producer

Reviews

May 14, 2025

Kranst

Recommended

Like many similar series featuring an eccentric cast of characters and designs, a unique but interesting power system based on literature, and convincingly fun action and story beats, Bungo Stray Dogs delivers on expectations while making the format its own. This certainly feels like a starting entry to a series, but it has enough personality to make for an enjoyable experience despite being in its introductory phase. The humor can be quite hilarious with the tradeoff being it is sometimes out of place. In addition, there is sometimes an overreliance on repetitive flashbacks. However, there is potential here to make for great entertainment going forward.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Apr 3, 2025

Protege00

Mixed Feelings

BSD follows the bizarre adventure of Atushi, our Gary Stu, self-insert seinen protagonist. Based in the port city of Yokohama, Japan, BSD pendulums between suspending disbelief and straight-up broad daylight gang shoot-outs, with mixed success.
With each character's quirks, and the juxtaposing anachronistic detective vibes, BSD features a memorable cast. I do want to like BSD more— but as Season 1 stands, it just doesn't innovate much on the genre.
I would only recommend BSD to people who enjoyed Jojo, but wish it took itself a little more seriously. And don't be tempted by the name: besides inspiring the abilities, there don't seem to be ... any direct references to the literature they reference.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Apr 27, 2023

Sukamii

Not Recommended

Bungou Stray Dogs desperately attempts to be a quirky anime that tries to tell a "dark" and "gritty" story about organized crime, detectives and their interplay with a little bit of magic sprinkled in. However, the writing, whether it be the main characters, or any of the antagonists, or even the beats of the entire plot are at best generic (not inherently a bad thing) and at worst (which is the majority of the time) pedantically annoying and annoyingly melodramatic. It so badly wants you to empathize with the main character that every 2-3 episodes it flashes back to our protagonist Atsushis backstory, to the ... point it becomes overplayed and hard to care about. There's no nuance or subtlety with the character or how his tragic upbringing really affected him outside of these flashbacks, and a moment early in the season that feels empty due to its immediate resolution. It feels like a surface level justification that has little to do with the characters growth, struggles and life. For a show that's about detectives, psychology, and understanding the human being- its delivers nothing but shallow analysis and conclusions. It's boring and unentertaining.
Speaking of boring and unentertaining, the "Gifted" systems implementation feels like a half baked idea to me. On one hand, I totally understand the desire to add some degree of a power system to a story like this as it has some noteworthy potential- but this suffers from a similar issue as to what I felt like the Imperial Relics from Akame ga Kill did- there's no real cohesion with what's being chosen for gifts. It's just a power system but for detectives, with some having interesting implementations, with strengths and notable weaknesses like Kunikidas- and others feeling entirely haphazard like Akutagawa or Nakajimas. They don't seem to fit in the overall narrative cohesion of the story, and are more akin to "cool superpowers that we wanted to include" with there being no real precedent for what being "Gifted" actually is outside of apparently being magic that is somehow extremely prevalent but simultaneously not relevant in the public sphere.
A note about the characters, their designs, etc. While this may be more of a personal preference, I don't think any of their designs were all that interesting or memorable. It's a situation where each of the characters were meant to fill a specific aesthetic, but also be designed in a way that they reflect their personalities but often come off as strangely uninspired and uninteresting. I feel like I've seen all of them in another anime, whether it be the archetypes and rolls they fill, their personality, and even their powers- each one of them feels so bland I don't really expect to remember them outside of the names of the authors they stem from. Which is another fairly strong point of contention I have in regards to one character.
Osamu Dazai, the pen name for the author Shūji Tsushima, was a Japanese author who died in a double suicide via drowning in 1938. How does this anime interpret the tragic death of a real human being? By relegating much of the characters dialogue, and near every single one of his gags, to be how badly he wants to participate in a double suicide with a pretty woman. His character was first introduced attempting to kill himself via drowning in a river. It's so unabashedly tasteless, and frankly speaking its gross and was a horrible note to begin this series off with- and it set the precedent for the standard of humor and overall writing this show was to present.
Much of the show persists on an episodic format, introducing characters steadily that have a mild influence or importance to the story on the whole, and are relegated to importance later on- which I can only assume to be in its following seasons. If a character is introduced in an episode, then its more likely than not their arc will be concluded in that same episode. there's nothing inherently wrong with an episodic format, some of the greatest stories ever told have been done so in this medium. Stray Dogs, however, doesn't tell any interesting stories, or build the mystique of the world through this format. It wants to leave little crumbs of information that build towards a grander narrative, but that narrative is paper thin and I just don't think its good.
So far as positives I think the animation quality is fine, same with the directing of action sequences (however the lows for the action scenes are just rock bottom, like the gunfight in early episode 11). They're plenty punchy and tight, with the comedy scenes (while I don't think there's much humor to be found in the show) do a plenty fine job at conveying the attempts at humor and stylization that befits them- but that's not enough to carry the show, or even really do enough to help overcome the shows weaknesses.
Bungou Stray Dogs really doesn't care about its story or its characters, or even the real people they draw their names from. It's embarrassingly unfunny, bland, uninspired, and a slog to watch through. It was a struggle to force myself to watch this show, which is an utter shame as the premise was interesting- I wouldn't have considered it if there wasn't something I thought was worth my time. But the execution of the already struggling story results in a bad season. I'll more likely than not give the subsequent seasons a shot to see if they were able to redeem itself, but my hopes for what follows have plummeted.

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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