The Spring 2016 Anime Preview Guide

Bungo Stray Dogs

On the bank of a river, at the end of his rope, all Atsushi Nakajima wants is a bowl of tea and rice. After being kicked out of his orphanage for mysterious reasons, the poor little guy finds himself on the brink of starvation. While looking for someone to mug so he can afford at least one more meal, he spots another vagrant floating legs-up downstream and frantically rescues him from a watery grave. Strangely enough, the soggy passerby Osamu Dazai didn't want to be saved, but he's happy to offer his savior a cheap meal at least. After all, he has cash to spare as a member of the Armed Detective Agency, a pack of famous authors/crime-fighters with supernatural powers. Dazai and his stern partner Doppo Kunikida were actually on a major case already: there's a giant white tiger on the loose in the city! Little does Nakajima know that his surprise connection to this fantastical beast will force him to become the newest member of the Armed Detective Agency! At least he won't go hungry? Bungou Stray Dogs is based on a manga and can be found streaming on Crunchyroll, Wednesdays at 1:35 PM EST.

Lynzee Loveridge

Rating:

Bungo Stray Dogs is a supernatural action series that blends literary references with a bit of old-fashioned anime energy for something that feels familiar with an interesting twist. I was all over the show's premise of recasting real-life literary authors as super-powered characters. I'm admittedly a sucker for fairy tale retellings, and this felt like a Japanese version of that. Of course, that also means if you're not up to snuff on Japanese literary works, a lot of the characterization and humor here is going to be lost.

The Osamu Dazai character, for example, is obsessed with suicide. This is played for laughs, from his introduction floating down a river to his admiration of a sturdy wooden beam. It's pretty dark honestly, as Dazai did kill himself after a number of attempts over his career before penning the equally depressing No Longer Human and following through with suicide. Personally, I found the gag off-putting, more specifically because the character is based on a real person. From a Western standpoint, it'd be similar to putting Sylvia Plath in a show and having the same trait. Some people might find that funny, but it's really not for me.

Dazai is flanked by his partner Doppo Kunikida, an author I'm not familiar with at all. I can't say whether his book of ideals or his stringent personality are plays off the actual person. A viewer can certainly enjoy the characters playing off one another at face value, but there's a more appreciable level of humor for those familiar with the authors and their works, so I just felt like I was missing something.

Studio BONES has created a good-looking show with a predominately exuberant male cast, so that's definitely the main draw. Whether that appeal excuses the dark humor, possible cultural entry hurdles, and somewhat dated overactive character humor will depend on individual tastes.

Nick Creamer

Rating: 2

Man, there is little that is harder to get through than a show trying to ride on comedy which is just not funny. I get the feeling that Bungo Stray Dogs, like this season's earlier Re:ZERO, was actually attempting to use this episode's heavy comedy focus to ingratiate you to its characters before the “real” premise is established. Unfortunately, also like Re:ZERO, this plan ends in failure as a consequence of Bungo Stray Dogs not actually being funny at all.

Basically, I really, really hope you like loud overreactions and silly faces, because that's pretty much all Bungo Stray Dogs has on order. The show introduces a lead with a very sad orphanage backstory and also establishes a supernatural agency of problem-solvers (these ones all designed as takeoffs on classic Japanese writers), but the majority of the runtime this week is characters making big faces and loud noises at each other. Apparently, the series composer and director previously collaborated on Ouran High School Host Club, which I've heard is pretty fond of this style of comedy, but my own closest reference point was the moments when Fullmetal Alchemist would try to be funny. It's basically just one simple joke, and not a particularly well-executed one, so the first two-thirds of this episode end up feeling like a bit of a chore to get through.

Things improve in the last act, as the show actually leans into its supernatural fixer premise with a fight scene that has a few nice cuts of animation. Additionally, the show at least has a rich color palette for its backgrounds, and attractive designs for the leads. But Bungo's middling aesthetic appeal can't really overcome the weakness of the comedy or overall writing. The lead Atsushi's sad feelings about his orphanage are both ridiculously portrayed (I can't imagine most children are expelled from orphanages by a squadron of adults calling them gutter trash in unison) and repeated ad nauseum, and since the episode mostly just alternates between those sad memories and its abrasive not-jokes, there's really nothing else to grab onto. Maybe give it a few minutes to see if you find the comedy more appealing than I did, but I can't personally say there's much to recommend here.

Jacob Hope Chapman

Rating:

Looks like it's time for another entry in Studio BONES long, proud history of pleasing fujoshi in style, hiding heaps of homoerotic fanservice beneath a compelling and well-animated story that even broader audiences can enjoy! When this show was first announced, the most common comparison I saw being tossed around was "a mix between Noragami and Blood Blockade Battlefront." It's an appealing pitch, and it's not inaccurate (all of BONES' technically-mainstream-but-slightly-more-female-aimed shows can kind of be compared to each other in that regard), but above all else, Bungou Stray Dogs reminded me of a very different show. Specifically, it reminded me of an evergreen hit that Aniplex has been milking for years and years to this very day, which might explain why Bungou Stray Dogs has been greenlit for two seasons and at least one OVA before it even landed on television.

It's Black Butler.

From the upfront focus on slightly-gayer-than-usual theatrics, superdeformed humor at the expense of plot momentum, and both references and costuming geared toward the more bookish ladies in the audience, Bungou Stray Dogs is easily the most blatant attempt to repeat Black Butler's success I've ever seen. The good news is that it shares some of that Hot Topic juggernaut's strengths. If you love camp for its own sake with just a little adventurous edge, if Takarazuka theater speaks to you even if you've never gotten to see a performance in person, or if the words "steampunk Sherlock" set your heart aflutter, this show was made for you, were-tigers in period clothing and all. If one of its future OVAs is Alice in Wonderland-themed, I won't be the least bit surprised.

The bad news is that Bungou Stray Dogs seems somewhat lacking in the things that made A-1 Pictures's Black Butler (and BONES's Noragami and Blood Blockade Battlefront) more appealing to a broader audience. Almost the full episode's runtime is taken up with bawdy, tasteless fujoshi yuks. Don't get me wrong, that stuff has its own charm and appeal, but half a dozen jokes about Osamu Dazai trying to kill himself can be real off-putting for those with a lower tolerance for camp and a desire to get to the action they were promised. When the action does arrive, it's just as silly and magical as you'd hope from the show's super-authors premise, but the balance does seem askew in favor of that certain niche audience.

Bungou Stray Dogs is an attractive, entertaining, gaudy action-comedy that fans of the genre will probably embrace, but it might be more of a snap-on-bowtie affair than its recent peers, if you catch my drift.

Theron Martin

Rating: 3.5

Review: Fair warning: if suicide is a sensitive topic for you then this is a series that you might want to pass on, as it blithely makes the suicidal tendencies of one of its main characters into a recurring joke. (And this episode does not in the slightest hint at why Osamu might be so inclined. Hopefully this will prove to be more than just a bizarre affectation.) That bit of tastelessness aside, the first episode of this manga adaptation finds a pretty good balance between its light-hearted and more serious content. And that is the main reason why I am giving it a mildly positive score.

The story takes the classic starting approach of looking at an established team of super-powered individuals from the perspective of a newcomer. Not too unusually, the newcomer in this case – the orphan Atsushi – isn't even aware himself that he is a super-powered individual; he just knows that he has been kicked out of his orphanage with a deprecating barrage of words and that even before that he was haunted by a tiger. Most viewers will pick up fairly quickly on the probability that Atsushi is the tiger; he's effectively what fantasy RPG gamers would call a weretiger, since he only transforms at night and isn't aware of his actions when it happens. This episode lays out his predicament fairly well and fully introduces that “suicidal maniac” who has the power to both stop him (he can negate superhuman powers with a touch) and join the super-hero team. We don't get more than a brief appearance by the rest of his future team members, but they look like the kind of diverse lot of eccentrics that you would expect from a series like this.

I was a little surprised to see that the series has no major staff in common with Baccano!, as the feel and aesthetics of this series reminded me of that one. Unlike that one, though, this is a much more straightforward series thus far. Some of its jokes are actually pretty funny, such as all of the exceptions that Atsushi has to make once he decides that he is desperate enough to rob the next person who passes by, though again, some of the humor is also casually edgy. The BONES production effort is probably most notable for its uses of color schemes and sharper lines and angles on its character designs, but the effort overall does not stand out much beyond the fully-detailed transformation scene where Atsushi becomes the tiger.

So the big question at this point is whether or not this is going to be yaoi-flavored, as Osamu does toss off the comment that Atsushi doesn't match his taste in men but some of the shots – especially in the opener and closer – seem to suggest otherwise. Whether it is or not, it's been entertaining so far.

Rebecca Silverman

Rating: 4

I am absolutely willing to admit that I may enjoyed this show more than it deserved. Not only does it feature a cast composed of excellent Japanese authors from the early-to-mid twentieth century (including one of my favorites, Edogawa Ranpo), but it also is rumored that Agatha Christie will show up later and, as an added bonus, it runs a lot like my favorite French comic, City Hall. Basically, if you're a literary nerd, this is going to be right up your alley.

Not that Bungo Stray Dogs’ characterizations of its authors-turned-detectives is particularly true to their lives. Instead the story opts to relate their personalities to their best-known works: Kenji Miyazawa, author of such children's classics as Night on the Galactic Railroad, is shown as a childlike, almost Tom Sawyer-looking figure, while Edogawa Ranpo is an over-the-top detective who appears to have a lot in common with early depictions of his children's character Kobayashi. Naturalist poet Doppo Kunikida is grumpy and grounded (which works for his chosen genre), while Osamu Dazai is obsessed with suicide. This is where the series actually risks losing viewers – in life, Dazai did try to commit suicide multiple times, eventually succeeding in drowning himself in 1948 at the age of 38. His introduction in the episode is when point-of-view character Atsushi Nakajima spots him bobbing along upside down in a river, a clear reference to both Dazai's multiple suicide attempts and the one that was eventually successful. Suicide is a sensitive topic and certainly not one that lends itself to easy jokes; to say that the ones made here don't quite work is perhaps putting it mildly.

Despite this, Dazai is the main contact for Atsushi and his point of entry into the Armed Detective Agency with all the other authors. He's a bit of an odd choice for the main character given his reality, but here he's presented as a lackadaisical goof who drives his partner Kunikida crazy. Like the other detectives, Dazai has a supernatural power: his “No Longer Human” allows him to nullify other peoples’ powers. Viewers familiar with Dazai's works, will recognize the name of his power as that of one of his most famous works; next episode will reveal Kunikida's power and his appears to take its name from the fact that he's generally known as a poet, so genre rather than title. As for Atsushi, his power draws more from the subject matter of his few works: his stories are known for their poetic and somewhat fantastical nature, and turning into a weretiger certainly fits both of those. (Plus it was only a matter of time before weretigers crept out of paranormal romance novels where they've proliferated and into anime; Tomu Ohmi already used them in her manga Barairo My Honey.) As with many stories using real people as inspiration for characters, Bungo Stray Dogs imagines pretty much everyone as young and beautiful, with very little relation between the authors’ real appearances and their character designs…except for the semi-alarming thought that the bandages Dazai wears on his lower arms might be hiding scars along his veins. There's an angular quality to the art as well as a sort of timelessness about the outfits; this last makes it difficult to decide when precisely the series is set. Again, this works with the general premise, although we may get a more solid answer in later episodes. The preview shows cars; we'll see what else shows up.

Bungo Stray Dogs is probably going to be more interesting if you know the authors in question, and certainly this episode relies on you knowing a little something about Osamu Dazai to get everything. But I wouldn't write off the possibility that it can still be fun even if you're in the dark, and hey, that's why we have Wikipedia. If you like City Hall or The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, this is worth checking out – and if you're willing to take authors you like in any way you can, definitely give this a watch.