Bungou to Alchemist: Shinpan no Haguruma

Famous writers throughout history find themselves being reincarnated by a mysterious, unseen entity known as the Alchemist. With their souls confined and bound to an expansive library, they are tasked by the Alchemist to jump into books to purify the pages of monsters called Taints. Along the way, they must also rescue and recruit fellow authors trapped within the very stories they themselves had written.

Although the writers take on new and powerful forms for this endeavor, some still maintain a semblance of who they once were, while others struggle to remember their pasts and the works they had penned. Despite there being no apparent end to their grand mission, they remain committed to the cause in hope of resolving the mystery behind their collective resurrection as well as questions that have haunted their former lives.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Dazai, Osamu Main

Nakamura, Yuuichi Japanese

Akutagawa, Ryuunosuke Main

Suwabe, Junichi Japanese

Nakahara, Chuuya Main

Kakihara, Tetsuya Japanese

Oda, Sakunosuke Main

Onosaka, Masaya Japanese

Hagiwara, Sakutarou Main

Nojima, Kenji Japanese

Shimazaki, Touson Main

Tachibana, Shinnosuke Japanese

Sakaguchi, Ango Main

Sugita, Tomokazu Japanese

Tokuda, Shuusei Main

Watanabe, Takumi Japanese

Shiga, Naoya Supporting

Maeno, Tomoaki Japanese

Murou, Saisei Supporting

Oosaka, Ryouta Japanese

Cook, Justin Producer

Kojima, Hiroaki Producer

Beniya, Yoshikazu Producer

Fukudome, Shun Producer

Reviews

May 22, 2022

alasitar

Recommended

I'm probably being biased because I watched this when I was in the hospital and it was one of my only sources of entertainment at the time.
When I watched it first I didn't really get a lot of it but i really like all of the characters and the concept so I rewatched it once again and this time i looked more into it
I liked how there were small details relating to the actual authors and stuff like that since i also like reading japanese authors books, my personal favourite author/poet being Chuya nakahara.
After reading alot of reviews here i realized ... that this anime is not really for those type of anime fans if you know what i mean.... I overall give this anime a 8/10 not the best anime I watched but still one of my favorites !
(Sorry if i made any grammatical mistakes i suck at spelling really)

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

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Mar 15, 2022

Firechick12012

Mixed Feelings

Over the course of anime's existence, every few years or so, depending on the current landscape, anime likes to explore trends or capitalize on what's popular. Back in the 2000s, this was visual novel adaptations and ecchi stuff. In the 2010s, isekai stuff began saturating the market, and still does to this day, and as of recently, the newest trend comes in the form of cellphone games. Naturally, anime is made to promote the source material they're adapted from, be it a manga, game, or a light novel, with Bungo and Alchemist: Gears of Judgment being no different. Mobile games have gotten immensely popular as ... of late, bringing in millions of dollars, so it's no surprise corporations would want to capitalize on this success and adapt some famous games into anime, even if said anime are just glorified commercials for the game in question. There are some mobage anime that I like, such as Kemono Friends and Granblue Fantasy (Still waiting for the second season to get dubbed!), and there are just as many that are good, bad, average, mediocre, or just...dull. Unfortunately, Bungo and Alchemist has mobage game adaptation written all over it, and I don't mean that as a compliment.

The story takes place in a labyrinthine library where the world's greatest writers are reincarnated and...basically made into pretty boys. Their mission is to delve into the stories of old in order to protect them from evil beings known as the Taints. Yes, that's the name they went with, and it's as stupid as it sounds. The Taints corrupt books and intend on either changing the stories completely or outright erasing literature forever, so it's up to the authors to put a stop to them. The premise of jumping into books and saving their content is nothing new, but is actually one I like. There are even some books I've read that have used this to great effect, such as Anna James' The Bookwanderers series, and some that don't do it as well, such as James Riley's Story Thieves series. I've always been of the mind that it doesn't matter how unoriginal or cliche your story is, as nowadays it's impossible to make something original, so long as you create good, deep, interesting characters that can drive the story and are passionate about what you create.

But passion project, Bungo and Alchemist is not. All the characters save for one are just static archetypes that you've seen in pretty much every other anime before this, all made to look like generic over-designed bishounen made solely to make girls squeal. None of them change or grow over the course of the series, and the show itself is fairly formulaic on principle: Characters go into a book, find the author of the book, fight and purify them, bring them to the library, rinse and repeat. There's just no reason for me, and by extension the audience, to really care about them as characters other than what's on the surface. None of them really stand out, nor do the writers really try to make them interesting and three-dimensional in any way. Not helping matters is that the cast itself is pretty large, and if there's one thing Lapis Re:Lights taught me, is that if you want to have a show with 20-something characters in it or more, 11-13 episodes is absolutely NOT the best length for a series with that big a cast.

That being said, Bungo and Alchemist does have its good points. For one, the animation is solid, but nothing to really write home about. Would you believe that this was actually done by the same production company that worked on Pokemon, OLM? Seriously, I had no idea until I looked it up. Also, it seems like the show's budget went into the opening at the expense of everything else, because not only is that opening theme really creative in its animation and imagery, it is amazingly well done. Why the hell is this better animated than the entire series?! Why couldn't the entire show been as creative and fluidly animated as the friggin' opening?! Don't have much to say about the soundtrack, other than that it really likes to abuse one particular instrument that I don't even know the name of. You'll know it when you hear it. As far as good things go, there is one thing that I really liked about Bungo and Alchemist: A certain revelation behind one of the protagonists and his connection with the villain. I really liked the twist about him, and it actually made the final two episodes somewhat better...though not by much.

In the end, Bungo and Alchemist just comes and goes, yet another mobage game adaptation that's just there to promote the game and not much else. It's not offensively bad, nor does it really reach any highs. It's fine if you want a nice little time killer, but you're not going to find anything groundbreaking with this one, and there are lots of other things that tackled the same ideas and concepts much better.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Apr 14, 2022

bufi_

Not Recommended

I've seen that people giving this show higher ratings tend to think its low overall ratings come from it appealing to a specific audience only, an while I do agree it's not for the big masses, that's definitely not the actual reason (the current rating is 6.46). Bungou to Alchemist has some big, too hard to ignore flaws.

The story has potential, and I would have loved to see how the biggest classics in Japanase literature fight for its existence, but the execution was just horrific. I don't think the writers knew from the start where the whole plot is going at all. Aside that, they ... didn't even know what kind of anime did they want it to be; at first, you'd think it's the episodic type (I mean, there was a farming episode with no action just because), but then they quickly throw all the ideas in at the same time in the second half. It's very messy and it just kinda dulles the enjoyment for the most part.

The art was fine, the action scenes are animated properly. Good work on it.

The sound was alright as well, the voice actors did their job properly. The OP and ED were actually pretty good.

The characters are the other major flaw of the show. The fact that there are a lot for just 13 episodes aside, they are just too shallow, especially for such praised intellectuals. Their chemistry isn't really that great either, and the relationship of the two that are the highlights of the show, Osamu Dazai and Ryuunosuke Akutagawa, isn't any better. The characters themselves are all, or most of them, undeveloped, and the ones that get the chance of being something by having more screen time end up as failures. They feel more like some cheap copies that the writers tried helplessly to make more interesting by giving them personalities that don't really seem to suit them. The number of characters and the lenght of the anime aren't a good match at all, so it's kind of understandable; however, that doesn't make it better.

Overall, Bungou to Alchemist is another failed show with potential. I didn't even get to enjoy it since it was just bad, so I don't have any reason to recommend it.

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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