Dogs: Bullets & Carnage

Rewatching this OVA in 2025 really made me reminisce and go back to the manga and read it again.

This short OVA covers the prelude part of the series - vol 0, Stray Dogs Howling in the Dark. It's main focus is getting us to know the main characters and set the tone and plot that is to transpire.

The plot was good at setting up the stage and its players, but not much could be addressed as this is an introductory to the plot and characters.
The soundtrack was ok, and the art style is cool. The setting is interesting and the characters are unique.

There could've ... been a pretty cool show if the manga were to be an anime, here's to hoping that we might see an adaptation in the future.

Dogs: Bullets & Carnage is an inoffensive little OVA from 2009 that barely takes an hour to watch in full and definitely feels like a product of its time. It is nostalgically edgy in that particular late-2000s fashion, but beyond that it's a fairly unremarkable show. Beginning with the story, it consists of a series of self-contained vignettes connected in some way to the criminal underground of a city "somewhere in Europe", as the anime puts it. It's perfectly serviceable, and only lays about as much groundwork as is strictly necessary for the vignettes to make sense. Even so, it ... does feel a little disjointed, and the dramatic moments feel both sudden and unearned due to a total lack of buildup, which I have seen done well in even shorter shows before.

The art is this anime's strongest aspect, though I say this mostly due to its nostalgia factor rather than anything else. Everything from the character design to the overall art direction just bleeds 2009 in a way that's hard to describe unless you were there for that era. The random scars, the tortured pasts, the unrealistic gunfights- they might as well have tapped Evanescence for the soundtrack at this rate. Don't get me wrong, that's fun and it takes me back, but the problem here is that there's nothing particularly notable underneath that aesthetic.

Speaking of which, the sound meets all standards of quality for the time, with a jazzy flare to the OST that adds to the criminal underground vibe.

Finally, the characters, while interesting in concept, are all pretty weak, with little substance that makes their actions really hit home. Overall, Dogs: Bullets & Carnage is an anime which is neither bad nor good. It simply serves as a time capsule for the aesthetics that were popular at the time of its production, which is a trip down memory lane I didn't mind at all. Give it a shot if you have an hour to kill, and want a glimpse into the edgelord anime culture of the late 2000s.

This is fundamentally a panel-by-panel, frame-by-frame remake of the manga book Dogs: Stray Dogs Howling in the Dark, which is part 0 of the manga series Dogs: Bullets and Carnage.

Short version: Just read the manga. You don't have to read the whole series, just the one volume. The art is fierce, active, and evocative. And while each of the 4 short stories varies quality, they weave together into a powerful whole.

As I said, these OVAs are frame by frame from the manga. Some of the drawings are literally the exact drawings from the manga. Except the art/animation quality of the OVAs is very poor, and ... it just retells the story literally, with none of the power or heart of the originals. There are truly scary, violent people in these stories and on screen they just kind of stand around looking pasty and silly.

Quick summary of my ratings:
Story - 8 The stories from the mangas are pretty good. They weave together interestingly. But I would have rated this much lower if I hadn't read the manga first. They feel very lackluster in this adaptation, while the originals are defined by their ferocity.

Art - 5 The art is basic at best, nothing like the incredible detail of the manga. The characters all suffer from those poofy, featureless pale faces that certain animation styles have. And the use of color and background is absolutely, mind-numbingly dull.

Sound - 4 Nothing special. Gunplay is HUGE in this series, and some of the gun effects are downright bizarre. Someone can be going at it with a machine gun in both hands and it just kind sounds like a woodpecker 6 blocks away.

Characters - 8 I absolutely fell in love with these characters through the manga. Each one is very distinct (some tragic, some comic). But again, the animation style and voice acting really takes away their edge.

Enjoyment - 6 This is a 6 only because I had read the manga. Going in blind it would have been a 3 or 4.

Overall - 3 I repeat: Please for the love of all things read Stray Dogs Howling in the Night before you watch this. It's available all over, and it only takes an hour or two. There's really no point in watching this unless you've read the manga (and even then, since it's so painfully literal in its interpretation, its not very rewarding). I can't even say that if you dislike reading, or manga, you should watch it anyway to enjoy the stories. They are done such a disservice that you might as well not bother at all.