Bungou Stray Dogs 5th Season

The Armed Detective Agency is still on the run from the Hunting Dogs, but not all hope is lost. Detective Ranpo Edogawa has a plan to prove the Agency's innocence and save the world from chaos: to find and capture Kamui—the leader of the terrorist organization Decay of the Angel.

In order to determine Kamui's whereabouts, Ranpo and his colleague Atsushi Nakajima must convince Ouchi Fukuchi, the renowned captain of the Hunting Dogs, for amnesty. Although Fukuchi was tasked with arresting the members of the Agency, his past with the Agency's president, Yukichi Fukuzawa, may be the key to earning his trust. But unbeknownst to them, Fukuchi might not be as honorable as he proclaims.

[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

Dostoevsky, Fyodor Supporting

Ishida, Akira Japanese

Yosano, Akiko Supporting

Shimamura, Yuu Japanese

Izumi, Kyouka Supporting

Morohoshi, Sumire Japanese

Kunikida, Doppo Supporting

Hosoya, Yoshimasa Japanese

Gogol, Nikolai Supporting

Koyasu, Takehito Japanese

Suzuki, Mari Producer

Kurakane, Chiaki Producer

Takemoto, Nobuhito Producer

Igarashi, Takuya Director, Storyboard

Reviews

Sep 20, 2023

Marinate1016

Recommended

Bungo Stray Dogs season 5 is the best the series has ever been. It’s got overwhelming odds, awesome action scenes and a villain who actually deserves to be feared. A must watch for any fan of the series and worth getting through the first 4 seasons for.

Normally I would phrase a review in general terms, but if you’re on season 5 of BSD it’s obvious you like the show and its characters. The important thing for you to know is that everything has gone to another level in this season from the action to the general sense of tension. The detective agency truly have their ... backs against the wall and all hope seems lost. It’s a desperate and gruelling battle against an enemy who can control reality itself. I mean how can you even compete against that?

With many members of the detective agency incapacitated or unable to fight, I enjoyed seeing new characters like Aya step up and play pivotal roles in the story. She really stole the show for me down the stretch and seeing her relationship with another character develop in the final third was great.

Atsushi is somewhat of a divisive character amongst the fandom. For many people, myself included he was kind of irrelevant for large parts of the story. I mean you’d be forgiven for thinking Dazai is the MC of BSD, but this season made me gain a lot of respect for him. It seems like he can go missing for 10 episodes and then pop up and be dependable when called on. He shines really bright in this season. Lot of good action scenes with him and I gained quite a bit of respect for the white tiger. While I still think he’s lacking as an MC and is rather shallow, credit where it’s due, he came up big here.

The reality altering book is a crazy OP concept, combined with the main villain’s other abilities and it makes for a nail biting set up where you actually struggle to see how the good guys will come out on top. In fact, given the anime is now fully caught up with the manga, the author might be feeling that way himself. He’s certainly written himself into a tricky scenario, but that’s why he gets paid the big bucks so it’ll be fun to see how the Detective Agency navigate this. This is for sure the best plot line BSD has had.


There’s quite a lot of action in this season compared to season 4’s slower paced plot. Almost every episode had a well animated fight or someone getting “killed” so there’s a lot of weight to every episode, making them all very enjoyable to sit through. I think one of the biggest issues I’ve had with BSD in the past is that it has some really good arcs, but they’ll be followed up by some episodes that put you to sleep. None of that in this season. It’s consistently engaging and the drama only builds as episodes go on.

As I said, there’s a lot of action in this season and Bones did a great job during all of the fight scenes. Great storyboarding combined with some banger OSTs adding a lot of weight to every scene.

If you’ve come this far in the BSD journey, you already know what you’re gonna get in terms of hot husbandos, character interactions, banter, battles of wit, etc. BSD takes it all to another level and I really feel like this is the peak of the series. It will likely be several years before we get more of the anime as it’s now fully caught up(ahead technically) of the manga, so the wait for more content will be excruciating, but they fed us good this season and I won’t be forgetting this memorable ride anytime soon.

BSD season 5 gets a very easy 10 pages out of 10.

Reviewer’s Rating: 10

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Nov 2, 2023

ArchangelEST

Mixed Feelings

Bungou Stray Dogs Season 5 also known as the embodiment of Deus Ex Machina, starts to overstay its welcome with the excessive plot twists. On top of giving too much screen time to Atsushi who continues to be 100% irrelevant.


Animation / Art / General Visuals - 9/10
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The show continues to look great. Great scenery art and solid action animations.


Sound / Music / Voice Acting - 9/10
... ------------------------------------------

Top notch stuff. Great music, voice acting, additional sounds.


Story - 7/10
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I'm starting to get tired. S4 was fun, but S5 undoes a lot of the build-up by producing one story twist after another, all of which seem excessively contrived, and full of deus ex machina moments that ruin the narrative cohesion.

Nobody ever dies. Everyone is always found to have been magically saved 2 episodes later, using one excuse after another. The entire season is a never-ending game of "I knew that you knew, that I knew that you knew, that I knew that you knew...". We have Ranpo, Dazai, Ando, Fyodr and others endlessly one-up each-other in ever more unbelievable ways.

It's like watching Code Geass, except instead of following along the gradual planning of Lelouch, we're stuck as an out of loop third party, just watching all the craziness go down without having a clue.

The main villain's motivations are only barely believable thanks to my own imagination, because the show surely hasn't fleshed out the world enough to make me relate to his mindset. We basically have to take his word that his rationale is solid, because there's no real supporting evidence for it. And the way it all played out in the end was absolute confusion. The season ended and I still didn't know who actually "won" and who "lost". Except I have a feeling that it's we, the viewers, who lost hours from our life watching this mess.


Characters - 6/10
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A let down after Season 4. This time around, we have excessive focus on a bunch of fanatics. Most of the Detective Agency and Port Mafia is side-lined. The Guild is basically all absent. Ranpo is stuck carrying a large part of the weight, while Atsushi once again does his best to be the worst anime character ever created.

My god, for the second season in a row, Atsushi continues to be 100% dead weight, with the story being in no way affected whether he existed or not. He still hasn't found any confidence in doing anything. He loses every fight he's in for the second season in a row. Like straight up, he hasn't managed to do anything successfully.

And to make it worse, the show creates a 1 minute cliffhanger scene at the end featuring Atsushi as someone who's gonna be relevant in S6. Even though we already know that he's never gonna do anything because the character is clearly written to be utterly useless until the end of time.

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Total - 7/10

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Bungou Stray Dogs Season 5 is a let down in my book. S4 started building up a fascinating storyline, but it all kinda fell flat because of excessively tangled up deus ex machina filled narrative.

Still, the show looks great, and the characters for the most part are fun. Except Atsushi of course. He should never have existed. Here's me begging god again that S6 finally writes him out of the show. Please god. Make him trip and break his neck or drown in his bathtub or something. That character does not deserve the animation effort.

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

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Sep 16, 2025

joemaamah

Not Recommended

Funny

This season was such an utter disappointment. The art remained about the same. Colorful with great background work. The animation may have ticked up a touch with a tad more budget this season. The awesome cast of characters (other than the MC, who still totally sucks, and needs to be written out already) were back in spades. I think Ranpo is now officially my favorite BSD character.

But the writing? Well, it fell off a cliff. Vampires? I mean really guys, that's the best you can come up with? It was trite and the episodes were strewn with so many vampire cliches, I came this ... close to throwing in the towel on the trainwreck. But I managed to make it to the end of the season, and my thoughts then were that this anime should have ended permanently at season 3. It pains me to say it, but BSD, one of my all-time favorites, has dropped to the level of flashy trash with this season.

All in all, this season failed, being totally mid, and I couldn't grade it any higher than a D; 65/100. But no way I could call it fine. The earlier seasons set the bar, and expectations, too high to give this mess any kind of break. I likely won't watch another season, unless I see some exceptional reviews from people who have opinions I respect, and not the usual jibber-jabber of the fanboys (and girls).

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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