‘Bungo Stray Dogs’ Season 4 Announced: Anticipating the Good and the Potentially Disappointing

With a new season of Bungo Stray Dogs finally confirmed, there’s nothing better than someone who is both an anime nerd and a literature nerd making almost baseless assumptions about a season that hasn’t even come out yet. 

Spoiler warning for Bungo Stray Dogs (including all of what Season 4 probably will cover, up to Chapter 95.5 of the manga, as well as spoilers for the light novels, including the most recent one, Storm Bringer) and My Hero Academia (Season 5 and the new film World Heroes’ Mission). 

The Story So Far

I talked about Bungo Stray Dogs in an earlier post, so, to recap: 

Created by writer Kakfa Asagiri and illustrator Sango Harukawa, with additional spinoffs illustrated by Kanai Neko, Ganjii, Oyoyo, and Shiwasu Hoshikawa, Bungo Stray Dogs is about a world where characters, who happen to have the names of real-life authors of Japanese and other literature, also happen to have superpowers based on the titles of works by those same famous authors. 

For example, Herman Melville can summon the giant battle fortress the Moby-Dick, Edgar Allan Poe can suck readers into the fictional worlds he has written, and Motojiro Kajii has the ability “Lemonade,” which prevents him from being harmed by bombs shaped like lemons. 

…Yeah, this series is weird. 

But the real focus of the series is on Atsushi Nakajima, an orphan who has the abilities of a tiger and a supernatural ability to regenerate from any injuries. Needing help to control his ability, he joins the Armed Detective Agency, whose name hints at what it does: both private investigative work and paramilitary operations. 

(Spoilers for Season 3 and what may happen in Season 4 below.)

Studio BONES has adapted Asagiri et al’s series for three seasons, and today announced a fourth season. Season 3 concluded with Atsushi forming an uneasy alliance with a criminal organization, the Port Mafia, and one of its lead assassins, Ryunosuke Akutagawa, in order to defeat Fyodor Dostoyevsky, who intends to kill Atsushi and others like him who possess these superpowers. 

If the anime sticks close enough to the manga (and, again, spoiler warning), Season 4 will pick up immediately in the aftermath of Dostoyevsky’s arrest, as the Agency learns just how much he was covering up. While imprisoned, Dostoyevsky is still pulling the strings, as his allies instigate a series of murders that put Atsushi and the Agency into conflict with the military’s own unit of superpower soldiers, Ochi Fukuchi and his Hunting Dogs. 

The Good

(A lot of spoilers in this section.)

What can viewers expect from this fourth season? This section is probably going to be excruciatingly short. As I’ll explain below, it’s sometimes easier to pick apart what doesn’t work, or what you think may not work, than what you like, especially when, as already ruins a lot of what I’m writing, the season isn’t even out yet, so what is there to criticize? 

But I also don’t want to spoil too much about what is in this season, so I’m limited in just what I can say will probably be so good about this season. A particular member of the Port Mafia finally gets some character progression and back story. And we learn what Yosano meant in Season 3 when she said she and Mori had a past–and it not only helps with worldbuilding (this story takes place in a world that looks like ours, but its history and international relationships are very different, and it’s not just because some people have superpowers) but also showing why Yosano has turned out how she did. Keep all of this in mind: Yosano’s story in Season 4 is what should have been Chuuya’s in Season 3, but we’ll get to that. 

If you want more literature references that Bungo has already given you, they are there. Mushitaro Oguri is a new character, and the manga makes him into the most delightful little shit, probably the only character I can think of where “love to hate” works because he is technically an antagonist, but his motivations and condescending behavior make him sympathetic and hilarious. 

And based on the Hunting Dogs and the Sky Casino being the focus of the Season 4 poster, I expect this adaptation will remain an effective analysis about the dangers of governmental overreach and militarism. 

Speaking of the Sky Casino: we’re going to get the introduction of Sigma and his Sky Casino. I repeat: we get a character who has his own Sky Casino. We’re getting James Bond-esque stuff in Bungo without having to pay the Ian Fleming estate for his obnoxious colonialistic chauvinistic bullshit. This is like how the series brought in Ace as a stand-in for Alan Bennett because they couldn’t deal with the real life author Alan Bennett. Sigma is not a James Bond character, but his story is going to be a pleasantly surprising spin on Bond villain shenanigans.

Unfortunately, we probably won’t get to see Bram Stoker, as I don’t anticipate this season will adapt all of the Hunting Dogs Arc. (More on that below.)

But probably the best new character that will be introduced in Season 4 is Nikolai Gogol. The real-life Gogol’s “The Overcoat” is one of my favorite short stories–and while I treasure what that story says about economics and inhuman treatment of other people, I love that Asagiri mostly ignores that story’s plot and just fixates on that word, “overcoat,” to make Gogol into this loud, energetic goofball of a clown with a jacket that lets him teleport anything. He’s a clown, a magician, and a serial killer all rolled into one chaotic mess. If this season works out well, Gogol’s violent antics are going to be eye-catching throughout, so casting and animation are going to be pivotal to capturing his supposed mania and the creative ways he can use his superpower. 

The Disappointing: My Hero Academia Sets the Example

My Hero Academia is probably setting an example for how Bungo Stray Dogs could turn out, production-wise. 

This section and its subsequent parts probably are going to take up the most space of this post, not because I’m necessarily a negative person, but both because it’s easier to identify flaws in something than to identify what works (especially when, as I will emphasize, this season was just announced and I am willing to be surprised), and because if I spent more time talking about what is going to be good in this season I would end up spoiling too much of what the original manga story provides. 

(Spoilers for My Hero Academia Season 5 and World Heroes’ Mission below.)

Some of my preconceived disappointment is probably sour grapes on my part. While Studio BONES has done a great job animating numerous series, their work on the latest season of My Hero Academia has problems both at the level of animation and storytelling, and I worry what standard that sets for a new season of Bungo. 

In the latest season of My Hero Academia, the storyboards seemed to take the easiest way out. And while I didn’t mind removing blood and gore in some instances (“censoring” content for TV broadcast), I didn’t think the alternatives were necessarily that much more impressive, the choices made to frame Toga when she kills Curious coming across as something that should be meaningful but somehow felt empty, whether due to how Toga was drawn, how the blood was shown, or maybe even the lighting. 

I understand that animation resources for My Hero Academia were constrained, likely by COVID’s continued harm to this world but also focusing instead on the theatrical film for that series. I haven’t seen the film, but from what I read of its plot, it’s a solid enough story, and one that is needed vicariously for audiences (a road trip during our real-world lockdown), and one that sounds like it was well animated. 

But then that film’s release impacted the marketing choices for how to best tie it into the ongoing season, so the anime shuffled around which arcs from the manga to adapt first–and I’ve complained enough about the impact that those choices had on the structure of the season overall. What should have been a pretty good season cut so much content to fit so much into one season, while dangling details about the Meta Liberation Army that didn’t heighten the mystery. Granted, if you’re already a fan of the manga, you already read this story before seeing the anime, so there weren’t going to be any plot-based surprises. But when the tension and mystery work so well in the manga, to structure that same story in a different way for the anime, and give any audience members who didn’t read the manga something less intriguing, seems like a missed opportunity. 

And I see Studio BONES risking that same problem with a new season of Bungo. If as the poster implies we’re getting the Hunting Dogs Arc from the manga, I don’t know how this adaptation is going to work, because the Hunting Dogs Arc is the current ongoing arc in the manga–and it’s not finished yet. Maybe by the time the new season premieres that arc will be finished: given recent events in the manga, that is possible. And it’s not impossible that Asagiri already told Studio BONES how this arc wraps up, so we may be in a situation where the manga and the anime both have the ending of this arc premiering pretty much close to each other (BONES did the same with Soul Eater NOT). And I don’t expect BONES to do a “Gecko Ending” for the season, as they have with previous adaptations of manga (the first Fullmetal Alchemist being the ur-example). 

Three Options for BONES to Adapt Bungo Season 4

But this is an arc that is still going on in the manga, and is still incredibly long, and has so many characters, change of settings, and plot twists that all of that is going to eat up how much patience the audience has to follow it all over one season, and potentially how much BONES has budgeted to design and animate so much. Therefore, I don’t see a satisfying way to pull off this adaptation, and I imagine BONES is going to take one of three choices: 

1. Make a very long season
2. End Season 4 with the arc incomplete, likely at a logical point in the story (probably after the Sky Casino portion ends, with the reveal of the real identity of the major antagonist Kamui since the manga at least has gotten up to that point)
3. Cut a ton of stuff and rush to the ending, perhaps even before it’s printed in the manga

The first option is the best choice. The second option is disappointing, as revealing who Kamui is doesn’t end the current arc in the manga and would be a cliffhanger for a fifth season that may not happen. The third option, sadly, is probably how things will go, given the track record BONES has had in adapting previous seasons of Bungo (cutting gags, plot details, back story). 

And I imagine a lot will have to be cut for Season 4, given BONES’s other track record in two parts: adapting at least one Bungo Stray Dogs light novel per season, and fixating on the character of Chuuya Nakahara. 

The Inevitable Light Novel Adaptation: Chuuya Nakahara

Let’s start with the first of those two parts, the light novels. Each season of Bungo Stray Dogs has at least one light novel adapted. Season 1 had the Azure Messenger storyline from the very first light novel in the series. Season 2 had what is probably the best light novel adaptation of the series, that of the Oda “Dark Age” light novel. 

And Season 3 dropped the ball with that freaking Chuuya light novel adaptation. 

I am never fair to Chuuya as a character in this series. I think he has excellent potential–potential that I think is usually handled better by fan creators, to give him more life than just wine, a Napoleon complex, and a homoerotic reading into his hostile back story with Dazai. I can’t remember whether Asagiri admitted this, but I do get the sense that he didn’t realize how popular Chuuya’s personality, design, and power set would be with fans, and I think that unexpected popularity led to problems for the first light novel focused on Chuuya, Fifteen. 

It’s not that there isn’t a story you could tell about how Chuuya joined the mafia and what led to his ongoing feud with Dazai. But when you sit through Fifteen and learn the origin of why Chuuya and Dazai dislike each other, it’s like the Aizawa back story in My Hero Academia: Vigilantes: it’s not that there is any one motivating event that made Chuuya and Aizawa relate to their peers the way they do, it’s just how things are. Chuuya and Dazai just don’t like each other–never have, never will, there is no story to tell. And that is so boring. 

Probably the best moment I have seen to address how annoying is such a trope–”what happened to make it so you two don’t get along?”–is this scene from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Bashir and O’Brien ask Vic Fontaine, a holographic computer simulation who is programmed to be self-aware that he is lounge singer in a fictional storyline Bashir and O’Brien can play, explains how he (again, he knows he’s a fictional character) ended up in a lifetime rivalry with a gangster: 

O’BRIEN: What is it with you and Frankie?

VIC: It goes back to the old neighborhood when we were kids. I used to beat him at stickball.

BASHIR: And?

VIC: And nothing. We’ve been rivals ever since.

The scene is perfect: O’Brien and Bashir are on the edge, waiting for more, that extended pause before Bashir asks “And?”–and Vic just had enough with this, saying it like it should be obvious, they just don’t get along. Vic, knowing he is just a character in a story, effectively tells the audience, “There is no story there, it would be for boring TV, my back story can be summarized in a few lines, just move on, don’t make an origin story for me.” If only certain other creators would realize not every character needs a back story (COUGH the Joker COUGH).

To hang a hat (…Chuuya’s hat?) on that detail, why Dazai and Chuuya don’t get along, made for a dull anime adaptation. The most you got out of it was worldbuilding, revealing that there is something bigger than Chuuya that is pulling strings behind the scenes–and even typing that out sounds so boring: “Vagueness is coming.” When I explained this to a friend, they responded with a variation of that SpongeBob meme: “You used me…FOR WORLDBUILDING?!” 

What’s worse, it was an adaptation of the Fifteen light novel that cut content, changed the motivations of the character Randou (and did gay erasure at the same time, so that’s just offensive), and took up so many episodes in Season 3 that the season’s actual major arc, the Cannibalism Arc, was condensed, had content cut, and passed up a better opportunity to pause the arc for a flashback when Ranpo and Fukuzawa are at the hospital to adapt a better light novel, that being the one that explains how the two of them formed the Armed Detective Agency. And trust me, if Season 4 sticks close enough to the manga, you really need to know about how Ranpo and Fukuzawa formed the agency: you needed to know that to explain what that cat has been doing since Season 2 of the anime, but you really need to know to understand why the Big Bad of Season 4 is so interested in attacking the Agency. 

But Chuuya’s rising popularity with fans and Studio BONES makes me think he’s still going to be forced into this season in some way, like he was forced into an OVA about Kunikida when he never showed up in the original story that OVA was adapting. If BONES does force Chuuya into this season, it’s going to be awkward because, and sorry to spoil things for anyone not reading the manga, up to today, November 7, 2021, Chuuya’s involvement in the current arc that is being adapted for Season 4 is slim to none. He has one major action scene–and disappears from the arc. It’s been a running joke on social media, a countdown clock for how many days since he last showed up. It is possible Chuuya is in one of the latest chapters, but that’s not yet confirmed, as it’s possible it was one of two other characters already at the same location. 

But it is also that rising popularity that I think caught Asagiri off-guard–and led to a light novel like Fifteen that seems like it’s own separate story in its own separate universe. If Bungo got cancelled, Fifteen shows that Asagiri had a story in mind that could have become its own new manga series, kind of like how B Ichi showed that Atsushi Ohkubo had other ideas in mind that ended up becoming Soul Eater, or how Oumagadoki Zoo showed that Kohei Horikoshi had other ideas that ended up becoming My Hero Academia. Chuuya ends up becoming the center of another story, one where he is sadly the least interesting part: his story introduces government conspiracies, new characters like Rimbaud and Verlaine and the Sheep–all stuff that could be interesting on its own, but when forced into the main Bungo story is dull. This isn’t like how Ayatsuji and Tsujimura have their own adventures in the Bungo spinoff Another Story: that story is in this universe, but if you don’t read Bungo, it doesn’t detract from the story on its own. 

Chuuya’s story, unfortunately, feels like it requires everything in the series to grind to a halt to give his story all the attention, sucking up episode counts and budget. Unfortunately, that will probably continue into Season 4, if it does adapt the next Chuuya light novel. 

The Saving Grace: Storm Bringer 

That being said, if there was any good out of it, and what may retroactively save Fifteen and may save Season 4, is the next Chuuya light novel, Storm Bringer. That light novel works. It takes all that came from Fifteen and actually does something interesting with it, creating actual stakes, character progression, and actually good worldbuilding that means something and answers questions that are important to Bungo Stray Dogs and needed answers for so long. 

In addition to having great action beats, Storm Bringer has something that Fifteen was lacking: better comedy. I don’t agree with the sentiment that good Bungo arcs are the comedic ones: aside from Fifteen, I can’t think of a bad arc in Bungo, and a lot of the good arcs, including the one coming up in Season 4, are rather dark, bleak, and not that funny. But Storm Bringer used comedy effectively to make you care about any of these characters and to break tension. What comedy is there in the novel? There’s a detective from the fictionalized version of INTERPOL who is a robot who becomes Chuuya’s babysitter, treating him like a literal child, struggling to understand his adolescent rage and the traumas he has experienced, and his name is Adam Frankenstein. Adam. Frankenstein. This Data from Next Generation-esque robot is named Adam Frankenstein and offers candy to Chuuya to help him cope after the mass murder of his associates: it is dark, it is goofy, it is hilarious–Adam saves that novel from being a mess, and if BONES is going to adapt any light novel for Season 4, it should be that one. 

…But knowing my luck, Storm Bringer will instead be adapted as an animated movie, as BONES repeats the mistake of the most recent My Hero Academia film and diverts funds and attention to that film instead of making a good televised/streamable season.