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 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 ing

Taniyama, Kishou Japanese

Edogawa, Ranpo ing

Kamiya, Hiroshi Japanese

Akutagawa, Ryuunosuke ing

Ono, Kensho Japanese

Dostoyevsky, Fyodor ing

Ishida, Akira Japanese

Yosano, Akiko ing

Shimamura, Yuu Japanese

Izumi, Kyouka ing

Morohoshi, Sumire Japanese

Kunikida, Doppo ing

Hosoya, Yoshimasa Japanese

Gogol, Nikolai ing

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 , 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 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 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
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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 ing 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 20, 2023

slavemaster_1991

Not Recommended

And so, another season has ended. Is it good, did it fix the mistakes of the previous one? Of course not, “if it’s not broken - don’t fix it” as they say, eh? As I did for the previous season, let me tell you where this one falls flat.
First things first I’ll mention that flashbacks take much less time in this season and they are mostly fine. However I still don’t get why giving us flashbacks of the events that happened 5 minutes ago is considered a good idea. Thank you, but I don’t have issues with memory.
But if you thought that there would ... be no annoying overused writing method - you are mistaken. There is a golden rule for any movie, anime and any other similar work and it goes as “show, don’t tell”. You want a cool fight? Ok, show it to us. Great smart plans? Show us. Tragic events? SHOW US. Instead most of the “action scenes” consist of one move and a “Oh, you are surprised it didn’t work? Let me tell you why!” - and yes, after that we get a text dump that explains what happened. It would be fine in something that is not obvious, but instead you will hear this phrase several times per episode, even after some minor events that don’t need an explanation and are obvious. So the question arises: does the author think that we are brain dead? Because there is simply no reason to give such explanations, either this or cutting spendings on animations to further profit from fans who will ignore this obvious disrespect and be thankful for another season. And with those answers I don’t even care which one it is, as both show lack of effort put into the show.
While I am talking about the writing - no, it didn’t get better. The plot turns are obvious, the events try fruitlessly to ramp up the tension - and as with the previous season you as a viewer just can’t believe there is any danger coming at all. Why, you ask? Plot armour, obviously. For four seasons our brave heroes prevailed against any and all evil plans - how can I think they will fail this time, when the stakes are the highest? When in four seasons no one died and all the injuries were healed by a miracle healer - how can I care about a lost fight that led to serious injury? Instead of being thrilled I just think “nah, they will heal him anyway” and continue watching unfazed. To make things worse - some of the descriptions of the events in “let me tell you how” segments feel like an afterthought and a patch hastily applied to a plot hole, not like something that was carefully built into the world. At some point I was just wondering how bad the explanation would be instead of trying to enjoy the show. And as the result of ramping up enemies' strength the main villain is given a completely OP ability that he, of course, doesn't even use to its full potential as the main party would lose not even reaching a half season mark. I just wish more effort was put into thinking things through instead of trying to be cool while pretending to be smart.

I really thought that I had a lot to say about the show, but when I wrote down the text above I realised that most of the problems are already covered and going through them more would be more of the same, repetition. And this is EXACTLY what S5 is - repetition of everything you have already seen. If you are a hardcore fan and loved the previous seasons - this anime will be great for you, cause it is more of the same. If you, like me, didn’t like it - you will only waste time watching it - because, once again, it is more of the same. No progress in writing skill for the author. No significant character development. No major events that actually matter. Nothing, just another evil plan for our heroes to battle, more of the same stagnant mediocrity with zero entertaining value we have already been fed for 4 seasons.

Reviewer’s Rating: 1

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