What a disappointment. I’m ready to stop writing about this series.
Bungo Stray Dogs Chapter 115, “Flecks of Dark Foam.”
Written by Kafka Asagiri, illustrated by Sango Harukawa. English translation by Kevin Gifford, lettering by Bianca Pistillo.
Bungo Stray Dogs is licensed by Yen Press and can be purchased from vendors linked at YenPress.com.
Content warnings for mentions of current events about Israel and Palestine, as well as fictional representations of or fictional mentions of suicide, war, post-traumatic stress, child grooming, and sexual assault.
Spoiler warning for Bungo Stray Dogs Chapter 115 and Dandadan Chapter 155.
I Don’t Want to Stew in Negativity: No More Bungo Stray Dogs Reviews?
Why have I been writing about Bungo Stray Dogs so much when the series is making me more and more upset?
(Here’s a game: count how many times I repeat “reason” throughout this essay. The word “reason” will tie in with Bungo Stray Dogs seeing as the series is, according to its writer, about characters trying to find purpose for living. Yes, this essay is going to get really depressing, but I hope this topic about why we keep going can help people feel a reason to persist despite how messy, disheartening, and even soul-crushing this world is. Now back to writing about the silly manga with the tiger man, the suicidal man, and the Russian guy who exploded out of a vampire.)
I must admit, part of what was on my mind was knowing there was a new Bungo Stray Dogs chapter coming out, and that my enjoyment of the series had been replaced with annoyance.
And I wish my remarks about each new chapter were not so repetitive, because this is yet again another chapter whose developments make me despise this current arc that has long overstayed its welcome.
Speaking of overstaying their welcome: yeah, after this point, I would not be surprised if in the future I wrote about any comic other than Bungo Stray Dogs, because I see little need to rehash the same complaints.
But there are two reasons why I’m still writing about Chapter 115, even as I really hope I can avoid writing about any future chapters and can instead write about stories I actually enjoy.
The first reason is that big reveal at the end of this chapter: Fukuchi’s entire arc was pointless. This not only makes the last four years of the manga (almost exactly four years ago, when Fukuchi was revealed as Kamui way back on June 4, 2020, with the release of Chapter 83.5) absolutely pointless and therefore infuriating but also makes the reveal itself designed in such a way as to make this entire exercise pointless.
Given how empty this chapter is at even addressing its most important point revealed right on the last page–that Fukuchi did all of this based on a lie told by Fyodor about the future war–and instead is saving that explanation for how Fyodor tricked Fukuchi for the next chapter all for the sake of a cliffhanger in this chapter, I had considered just not writing about this chapter. I don’t even mean I was considering waiting for the next chapter (Chapter 115.2? Chapter 116?) to talk about this revelation: I was so infuriated with this cliffhanger that I was ready to drop this manga entirely. If I don’t say anything more in this review about the future war being a lie, that’s because Chapter 115 has so little information–which is why I wanted to wait until the next chapter to talk about it, then got so upset I thought about not bothering to write about Bungo Stray Dogs any longer.
And that leads to the second reason why I still wrote and edited this review, and it’s a foolish reason: sunk cost. I don’t just mean how much time I devoted to writing about this series as a whole; I mean in the more immediate moment that I wrote so many notes about how bad this chapter was that, for the sake of having that time seem worthwhile, I figured I might as well devote as little energy as necessary to fill in the gaps, edit what is there, and just publish my review online already. That means that a lot of what follows is still more disjointed than I would have liked, but I want to be done with this review, this chapter, and maybe this series.
(There is a serious problem when the gacha game on my phone is more enjoyable than reading this manga–but we’ll get to why that is my flaw, not only one with this story).
And yes, this is the fallacy of the sunk cost, but the one way I can redeem that work or at least excuse it is that maybe what I write here can be a time capsule of where I was with this series, and with storytelling in comics as of June 2024, so that, whatever comes in the future, I can see how much things improved–or how much worse things got.
So, I’ve sunk myself into this quagmire, let me work my way through it by writing about it. (No, I will not put in more time and energy trying to record and edit this for YouTube and podcasts.)
But first: I don’t know how to talk about how bad Chapter 115 is without going in order of how I encountered the chapter. And that means talking about how at least one corporation is doing a disservice to Bungo Stray Dogs, spitting in the face of its writer, illustrator, and staff…
Yen Press: Stop Leaking Preview Images Early!
Yen Press and Kadokawa need to get on the stick with previews. With this and the previous chapter, the most pertinent pages from these chapters have been available to read for free without paying.
It’s not that a publisher shouldn’t have preview images from its new chapter: that makes sense, just about every monthly US comic has the first three to four pages of story available to read for free on ebook sales sites or on comic book news sites.
But with Yen Press, depending on which vendor you buy your ebook, they are sharing pages that come from random spots in the comic. Before the official release of this chapter, I already encountered spoilers with pages from the official Yen Press translation that showed Fukuchi killing Teruko, and the last pages of the chapter where Fyodor reveals to Fukuzawa that he lied about the future war.
Yen Press and those ebook vendors gave away the big death in the middle of the chapter and the cliffhanger for the comic. That is bad business and disrespectful to the creators.
Yen Press, you’re pushing away money off the table–a bad business decision. But you’re also dividing a comic up piecemeal to feed to excited readers who now are more likely going to skip buying the comic because they got the most shocking details about the chapter already spoiled for them, are going to seek out unofficial releases of that comic ahead of time, or are going to be so sour (like I admittedly was initially–and still am) upon reading these out-of-context moments and hence are not getting the moments in their context, thereby souring them prematurely before they see how things pan out. That undermines the setup and payoff that Asagiri and Harukawa were going for: you ruined the moment by presenting the story out of order and in an incomplete fashion. That’s not enticing readers–that’s turning them away.
(Granted, even as I read those scenes in context, my sourness did not dissipate, whether because I was letting my bad first impression taint my overall reaction to the chapter as a whole, or because even in context these moments fail on their own because the entire chapter fails as a whole.)
As much as I hate where this story is going, the decision not to control the release of free previews is a disservice to Asagiri, Harukawa, and their staff, spoiling details for readers but also presenting plot details out of context that do disservice to a fair judging of the work.
Why Don’t All Vendors Have the Chapter?
And that’s not even getting into how this is at least the second time I have been delayed buying the newest chapter. The new chapter came out from Yen Press on June 4, 2024–but not until June 5 on Amazon.
Why is it that the chapter is available as an ebook from some vendors but not others? Why is the roll-out so inconsistent? Why can I buy it from Apple, Google, and Kobo before I can buy it from Amazon? Is this an Amazon problem? Do Apple, Google, and Kobo have a better handle or get preferential treatment?
The chapter wasn’t even listed on the Yen Press web site on release day, June 4, 2024, while it was listed on those ebook vendor sites.
I’m not in the loop on any of this, so can anyone email me (derek.s.mcgrath@gmail.com) or discuss in the comments section why this keeps happening?
But enough about the publishing aspects of this comic, let’s get onto the actual chapter itself.
Asagiri Wastes Plot Points: The Future War Is a Lie
In previous chapters, we were told by Fukuchi that he had received a message from the future about a war that was coming.
Now we’re told Fyodor tricked Fukuchi, making up that war and tricking him, all to get to this point in the story.
And that was when this chapter made me despise Bungo Stray Dogs.
I can’t remember whether I wrote it out in any reviews or talked about it during any audio commentaries to Bungo Stray Dogs anime episodes. But one problem I had with the Fukuchi and Fukuzawa arc was that at no point do we actually see Fukuchi as a child initially getting that message from the future about a war that he can avert if only he prepares the world for such a moment. At the time, I thought this was just a matter of incompetence by the creators and production companies: a refusal to show young Fukuchi getting this message because they didn’t have time to stage it, draw it, or write it. But it’s somehow worse: it was a deliberate choice, designed to make the readers think the creators were lazy, but actually just a distraction so Asagiri can do another “gotcha” moment to trick the audience, once again undermining any trust to put into the story and hence less reason to keep reading.
I did not anticipate the reason we were not seeing that scene of young Fukuchi getting the message was because Asagiri was going to reveal there never was some future war, that it was all a lie by Fyodor to get his pawns in place to acquire One Order, Bram Stoker, and Fukuchi’s two swords. I had thought that Asagiri, Harukawa, Studio BONES, and Kadokawa had just been lazy or unimaginative in staging the manga and the anime to show us in the audience what Fukuchi saw. Now that we know Fyodor had staged the entire event, I wish it was just lazy or unimaginative–because now it’s both lazy and unimaginative but also just bad writing designed to troll the readers.
We should have seen Fukuchi getting that message about a future war–because then you can foreshadow to the audience that Fyodor was behind that, too. Make the voice speaking to him the same as Fyodor. (I know that only works for the anime, not the manga–but since Kadokawa decided to privilege the anime over the manga by letting the anime get to this point of the arc first, we’re stuck with that bad choice, might as well use that opportunity to improve the story.) Make the illusion look like some power Fyodor or one of his associates used before.
But no, instead Asagiri makes a choice that fails to disabuse me of the notion that he is making this up as he goes along. Hey, you readers, you were excited or at least dreading that the story was going to have some future war? Don’t worry about it–Fyodor was lying, your emotional reaction was a waste of energy. You thought that this could be like Watchmen, where it’s a question of whether a fascistic choice to create a false flag situation can be justified in order to prevent a worse outcome, a Machiavellian “ends justify the means” rationale that Fukuchi offers and which Fukuzawa and our heroes will refute by showing the day can be saved and a supposedly fated event can be defied? Don’t worry about it–that’s a silly thing to debate, why did you ever think that a story about the horrors of war would get to the logical conclusion of asking that question about whether indeed ends justify means, when we’re just going to say Fyodor lied. How many more times is Asagiri is going to throw away the plot with the excuse that Fyodor lied before we in the audience can’t trust the storyteller to commit to just one core detail as true so that the story is not an exercise in futility and confusion that leaves me curled up like the Dean from Community asking for a time travel hoodie?
Two details make this even worse.
First, as people online have considered, it’s likely we’re about to see Fyodor use the Fukuchi corpse to now send that message to Fukuchi’s past self, hence creating the stable time loop. Get it–because now Fukuchi’s corpse can power up the time travel sword even more to go back not just seconds but decades? That sucks. It’s like a worse version of Return of the Joker: this is hardly as clever as the Joker possessing Tim Drake to get access to the satellite equipment and impersonate Drake to tell his wife he’s working late–this is some last-minute retconning to change a detail only recently introduced to readers, a twist that had little time to actually build up to something, the inverse problem to the (to cite Dan Drazen twice in this review) “loose continuity” problem.
And second, it’s even worse as I now realize the future war being a lie means that Teruko was following Fukuchi’s plan for no good reason, because she was trying to avoid the same future war. (Her back story introduced in this chapter should make it hurt more; I’m too angry with the lie to feel any worse about Teruko’s admittedly depressing death.)
And it means that Atsushi’s annoying, exhausting, way-too-long dithering about what to do about Fukuchi before finally realizing he should ask Fukuzawa whether they should help Fukuchi stop the future war or stop Fukuchi’s plans because his scheme is depriving people of their free will and lives not only was pointless but also nearly destroyed anything good in Atsushi’s characterization, failing at his overall path of character progression to get out of the shadow of the orphanage to once again just being a good little soldier who does whatever the last person told him to do, a protagonist that it is now infuriating to follow not because his flaws are not compelling but because the story is jerking the reader’s chain and failing to let him be a protagonist in his own story. For crying out loud, Atsushi has been a pawn of the orphanage and, debatably, the Agency for this long, and as soon as he sees Fukuchi is yet another person who has been made a pawn of forces larger than himself, he doesn’t bother to think for himself and decide already to just throw in with Fukuchi or rise above what would be an idiotic decision? What are we even doing with Atsushi in this manga?!
But I’m getting way off topic–and will complain about Atsushi’s role in this story later. Let me get back on topic…
Fukuchi fell for the future war lie. All of this could have been avoided if Fukuchi was actually as smart as he was built up to be. But instead…
Fukuchi Is a Wasted Character (Because Fyodor Is Overpowered)
My ranting about the future war being a lie is one reason why I am obsessed about showing us what Fukuchi saw in that vision warning about a future war. We have built up Fukuchi as someone who has plans within plans–numerous contingencies, able to think quickly on his feet to overcome Tachihara, Jouno, Ranpo, able to use the time travel sword to cheat his way to unearned victory. Sure, he got tricked by Aya and defeated by Fukuzawa–but much of that is also based on Fukuchi wanting Fukuzawa to gain One Order and wanting the Agency to contain the vampire plague, so of course Aya had to kidnap Bram and get the sword out of him (which is still bullshit: how could no one else get that sword out but Aya and a desk could?), and of course Fukuzawa had to defeat Fukuchi to get One Order.
And yet, after all the times we have seen Fukuchi being three steps ahead of everyone else, now Fyodor manages to trick him? I know the point is supposed to be that, if Fukuchi could be tricked by Fyodor, then Fyodor must just be that big of a threat. But we’ve been told enough Fyodor is already that big of a threat–told, more often than shown, because Bungo Stray Dogs has collapsed into each side just one-upping the other over and over again with little sense of logic as to how they tricked the other even as we’re told they got tricked. It’s the equivalent of needing Fukuchi to kill Teruko to add her power: no, he didn’t–Fukuchi already had infinite power, taking on Teruko’s power can’t “plus one” his infinite power; likewise, Fyodor has already been hyped up as a threat, we don’t need him to beat Fukuchi to believe it because the story insisted on it too many times for me to now believe or even need to believe it.
And this revelation that Fyodor is just that good ruins any earlier moments hinting at any vulnerability, flaws, or weaknesses to the character. Remember when Fyodor was practically admitting defeat when he was asking why God had forsaken him? If Fyodor was always three steps ahead, what was the point of him saying God had forsaken him by letting Dazai and Bram’s vampire kill him? Was it just a Christian reference, thereby substituting logic and theme with empty symbolism that will be considered deep by only the more pretentious of literary scholars who eat up such hackneyed references (says I, who has a PhD in literature), the equivalent of just pulling Bible quotes out of your ass?
And while I’m on the topic of Fyodor just being badly written:
How Did Fyodor Get One Order?
We now have Fyodor somehow holding One Order–which goes against what I thought the manga had confirmed earlier. That’s not even getting into the fact that the anime finale already showed us Fukuzawa was the one with One Order. But I can ignore that problem by just assuming the blast from Fukuchi turning into a singularity knocked One Order out of Fukuzawa’s hand. (Studio BONES? If you don’t do that, I don’t know how you are going to ask the audience to ignore how much you now contradict what the manga shows.)
And Fukuchi never had another plan or a way to think on his feet to deal with Fyodor. I mean, if Fukuchi had died that would have worked–but instead we had him alive long enough to warn Teruko and Fukuzawa, so this all just comes off as lazy and sloppy. (Again: Studio BONES, how are you going to pretend what happened in the Season 5 finale didn’t happen so that the story more closely follows the plot details of the manga?)
And we don’t even get interiority into Fukuchi to know why he would fall for Fyodor’s trick. This is my point: show us what Fukuchi saw as that warning from the future about a war. If you can trick us in the audience, it’s easier to accept that Fukuchi was tricked–but if we can see how stupid all of this was to trust Fyodor, then what hope do the supposed protagonists of this arc have?
(Since I don’t know where to put this: I am flummoxed as well by the end result of Fyodor’s action stabbing two swords into Fukuchi’s corpse being what noobslayerarchetype11 on Tumblr rightly pointed out as similar to the currently ongoing final arc of Servamp. That explosion knocks out Fukuzawa [until he manages to wake up again], but it only created torii gates? That’s it? I know I have to let the rest of this arc continue, but for such an impressive light show, I expected a larger earth-shattering development.)
Justice League Unlimited Did It Better
Fyodor’s emergence, literally out of Bram’s body and figuratively as the actual main antagonist of this story, reminds me of the initially planned finale for Justice League Unlimited. In that Season 2 final arc, the build up was the battle between Cadmus and the Justice League. Then the story swerves to suddenly be revealed that it was Luthor pulling the strings–but just kidding, it was actually Brainiac who possessed Luthor way back in Superman: The Animated Series and has been subtly influencing his decision to get to this point, all to create his own body.
Reading the current arc of Bungo Stray Dogs should make me hate that Justice League Unlimited arc. But far from it. Not only is the JLU arc far better than this, I already enjoyed that arc on its own for two reasons: it didn’t suddenly move away from its mission statement, and it built upon what was already there.
Let’s tackle the latter first, that JLU built upon what was already there.
Yes, a lot of it was fanservice, a reward for longtime fans of what Bruce Timm and his numerous collaborators had accomplished over a decade, in particular James Tucker for having gotten the ball rolling on tying a small detail from Superman: The Animated Series to this arc of JLU.
And yes, maybe you don’t like the twist that expects you to accept that what was a decision to appease network standards and practices–that Brainiac didn’t shoot a lethal shot at Luthor even when he had no reason to keep Luthor alive any longer–was ret-conned in JLU as a brilliant decision–that Brainiac always has contingency plans, and keeping himself alive in Luthor was one of them.
But damn it, that is a hell of a good twist that doesn’t contradict prior events and takes what you could accept before and move it forward to new stories that now get to be more mature and have cable TV standards and practices to be more edgy. It makes sense Brainiac would keep Luthor alive, and it makes Luthor more of a threat while still keep the story and its message relevant to the story: all wins.
Does Bungo Stray Dogs build upon what was already there? Not really.
I am going to contradict myself later with regard to Teruko’s seeming death to be absorbed by Fukuchi’s puppeteered corpse. But almost nothing here is building upon what we already know.
(And it’s made worse that we wait until Teruko’s supposed death to finally address her back story, the worst of the “Gintama villain tragic back story flashback upon defeat” trope–H/T Ellak Roach–but we’ll get to that.)
We didn’t know Fyodor could body-swap. We didn’t know Fyodor faked that future war.
Hell, we only recently learned about that future war. I have complained about details in a story taking too long to be paid off, what I said before about Dan Drazen’s complaint against “loose continuity.” But there is also something to be said about how infuriating it is when stories introduce a detail–and then contradict that same detail almost immediately. “Hooray, we’re not doing loose continuity–we’re instead addressing that new detail by immediately having Fyodor say, ‘That was a lie’! …That’s worse.”
It’s as bad as Sigma believing Fyodor had a split personality based on immediate information that is then not built upon later–unless you think Fyodor speaking with Fukuzawa to reveal the future war is fake or getting way too close to Aya is somehow Fyodor’s other personality re-emerging, and I hope you are wrong about that, because no, don’t give Fyodor more than one personality, even if it’s somehow Bram or Bram’s guard having had some influence on Fyodor’s personality because he possessed their body.
Let’s go back to the first reason I gave for why the JLU Luthor and Brainiac reveal worked while this Fyodor reveal about the fake future war does not: JLU did not ignore its mission statement, Bungo Stray Dogs has.
Yes, the narrative arc in Justice League Unlimited had now done a 180, completely changing its focus and the terms of the battle, moving away from the philosophical quandary as to whether the US government or the Justice League is correct, to just a tights-and-capes slugfest against a muscley technorganic supervillain. It’s now the original seven Leaguers versus the combination of Brainiac and Luthor–Lexiac?–rather than what we had before, the complex mature philosophical debate about governmental control versus personal autonomy as reduced down to avatars for the sake of superhero brawling.
But you know what? JLU almost immediately gets back to that debate about control versus autonomy.
What is Brainiac if not asserting control over Luthor without consent? And even when Luthor consents, what is that if not the combination of Luthor’s corporate power and criminal enterprise and governmental parasitism with Brainiac’s techno-fascism, thus now a battle between Luthor and Brainiac’s joint fascism against what Superman and his ilk have stood for in terms of liberty and the fight against abusive power? And through all of this, Superman is still wondering whether he is willing to kill unilaterally, because this entire Cadmus arc kept tying all of the story back to the earlier arc about the Justice Lords’ world, where Luthor killing the Flash prompted Superman to go too far, reinforcing Waller’s fears of individuals with too much power, where her paranoia and her (governmental) superpower let her serve as a foil to both Batman’s own paranoia and Superman’s (literal) superpower.
That is really good: the themes, topics, subject matter, and primary focus of battle remain the same, it’s just the packaging changed from a more mature governmental thriller that just happened to have superheroes to a Saturday morning kids cartoon where the superhero versus supervillain slugfest is the visual metaphor for the exact same topic of the more mature governmental thriller. Timm, Tucker, and their colleagues did not turn away from the message; they took a detour for the sake of a more exciting landing that could rope back in the people in the audience overly obsessed with animation and action scenes and less interested in the heady thoughtful material, appealing to multiple segments of the audience at the same time.
Bungo Stray Dogs, on the other hand? What about the topics it was addressing? The trauma of war? Post-traumatic stress? Yosano and Tachihara being tools for Mori and state power to perpetuate war off the backs of children and the disenfranchised? Sigma as well created as just another tool? Fukuchi’s loss of humanity because he was surrendering himself to a fate of a future war he didn’t think he could fight and thus he became an extension of military power, thereby literally and ironically fating himself to war as he was trying to prevent it? Fukuzawa’s doubts about whether he can lead others only for his arc to end with him once again alone without any allies to help him even as he now holds onto One Order, the power to control the will of others and put them under his enforced leadership, a type of fascism he had long abhorred but now may be pressured into accepting as the only way to get back what he may lose, that being his Agency, his son Ranpo, and the world and humanity itself?
Forget all of that: Fyodor’s back!
Fyodor took over Bram’s body and faked a future war, everybody! Aren’t you entertained?! Aren’t you excited to see why Fyodor was exploding out of another body in the Season 4 opening–that was foreshadowing for something you didn’t expect or want! Didn’t you want more of Fyodor?! No? You were sick of him? Well too bad, we’re giving you more Fyodor! Aren’t you excited for more Fyodor, a character who has overstayed his welcome?! Aren’t you glad that Fyodor is still here even after that prison duel that went on for far too long?! God, this is bad writing!
At least when Brainiac appeared, that didn’t suddenly stop the story from being about difficult questions about personal autonomy, or about how the right to individuality still ironically risks imposing control over other individuals, and the need for oversight but also the risk that such oversight could become totalitarian. When Fyodor appears, so many of the topics in Bungo Stray Dogs disappear. I will say this again later, that later chapters may redeem all of this should we learn more about Fyodor where his back story somehow ties into those questions that this current arc was addressing about warfare, the trauma of war, state powers reducing people into tools, and whether the ends justify the means. But right now, when the story is this much of a mess, I can’t see a path forward, and I’m not confident Asagiri can stick the landing without falling into the quicksand.
Stage the Comic Like a Play
And where is everyone?!
I am increasingly of the opinion that more and more narratives, especially visual-based ones like comics, would benefit from a stage mindset.
What do I mean by that?
Television seems like it was better when it was written, directed, and acted like theater: I’ll take Next Generation and Deep Space Nine over more modern Trek because the former knew where to have actors stand, sit, and move so that you know they are there in the scene.
The same applies to comics.
Fukuzawa was shielding Aya, he’s knocked out, Fyodor approaches Aya, Fukuzawa is now suddenly awake so he can witness Fukuchi killing Teruko hear Fyodor revealing the future war was a lie–but now where did Aya go? I get that this can be explained later, but my patience is already gone with how long his arc has overstayed its welcome.
And where did Ranpo go from the previous chapter? I get that we just had the big explosion of light, the torii gates appear, so, sure, Ranpo just disappeared, maybe to wherever Lucy, Yosano, and Kyoka disappeared to in this arc.
(And this is all worsened because, based on what happened in the anime, I just assume Asagiri, Harukawa, Studio BONES, and Kadokawa didn’t talk to each other at all when adapting all of this for animation: we saw in the anime where Lucy and Kyoka are, and they just weren’t involved; we saw Teruko and Atsushi were standing where Fukuchi died before Teruko got Atsushi to leave with her, but now the anime is going to have to come up with an excuse why Teruko is still there and Atsushi is halfway elsewhere; and we saw Ranpo hand One Order to Fukuzawa, and Bram and Aya were where the holy sword was, so now we have to explain why Ranpo didn’t immediately figure out Bram was going to get possessed, how all four of them ended up in the same spot, why Fukuchi who is dead in the anime is alive again to adapt these moments from the manga, and why Fukuzawa lost his clutch on One Order. It’s not that the anime can’t fix all of this or make better choices in adaptation so as to remain consistent with what the anime just showed while also doing their best to incorporate what we now see happening in the manga–but when the original story arc is this bad, when the anime was this bad, when the anime came out first but is now contradicting what the manga showed, and when the manga is getting worse, I’m not optimistic.)
I know a lot of my questions and my problems with this chapter can be answered in later chapters, perhaps redeeming the parts of this chapter that don’t work. But there remain two problems.
First, the reality of serialized narrative is that, the longer you take to explain something, the faster the audience can come to their own answer that they will cling to, whether out of their own bias or because it honestly makes more sense not only to them but to other readers than whatever the writer offers. Once readers get jossed (forgive the term named for that awful man), they tend to get bitter that their idea didn’t pan out. That’s not the fault of the writer, but it is the reality that writers now have to work at a different pace to address concerns and questions early on before readers get attached too strongly to their own ideas.
And second, Asagiri keeps contradicting what just came before. I already brought up how ridiculous it is to reveal that future war was just a lie by Fyodor. Now we have what Reddit user Altruistic_Drop_3590 pointed out: Fukuchi programmed One Order to obey Fukuzawa, so why is Fyodor able to use it? Maybe there is an easy enough explanation: Fyodor now controls Fukuchi’s body, One Order obeys Fukuchi as well as Fukuzawa, so Fyodor can control Fukuchi and hence One Order, therefore making the upcoming battle one between Fyodor and Fukuzawa to reclaim One Order.
But even that detail falls apart thematically: the battle was between Fukuzawa’s ethics and the reality of his situation, that he wants to let people have autonomy but in order to save the world ends up using One Order to take away that autonomy. Now we have potentially reduced this fight to just hot potato as Fukuzawa and Fyodor struggle to get their hands on One Order, robbing it of any deeper meaning: it’s not longer about Fukuzawa’s internal struggle, hence not a fight only against Fukuchi but a fight against himself, and instead is now just Fukuzawa and Fyodor wrestling for a macguffin, which is the less interesting battle–especially when we just had that fight, with Fukuchi and Fukuzawa both trying to get their hands on One Order and, as I said, having the deeper import of it also being Fukuzawa wrestling with his own ethics.
Shouldn’t Fukuzawa Be Fighting Fukuchi, Not Atsushi?
Also, isn’t it stupid that it’s going to end up being Atsushi and Akutagawa versus Fukuchi rather than Fukuzawa?
I know we just had the Fukuchi and Fukuzawa fight, and at least the anime gave Fukuchi the dignity to die as he was in Fukuzawa’s arms rather than the manga’s asinine decision to have him continue to live for the sake of empty hope that maybe Teruko and Fukuzawa could stop Fyodor from possessing Fukuchi but, oh no, they’re too late, Fyodor possesses Fukuchi anyway.
I expect we’ll see Fukuzawa battle this new Fukuchi one more time before Fukuzawa is sidelined, whether by losing or because his skills are needed elsewhere, while Atsushi rises as the next generation to help stop Fukuchi…which would have worked if Atsushi had been at all useful in this entire Decay of the Angel arc post-Sky Casino, where Atsushi’s agency disappeared as he was just doing what he thought Dazai would want him to do or what Akutagwa told him to do what Ranpo told him to do or what Teruko told him to do before he decides to seek out Fukuzawa and ask him what to do. I get that Atsushi is young and has been the victim of years of emotional abuse, but at what point is our supposed protagonist going to come to his own decision?
And even when Atsushi finally comes to that decision to defer to Fukuzawa, he still screws that up: he is too late getting to Fukuzawa to ask whether they should stop Fukuchi because Fukuzawa and Teruko already did it for him.
Tangent: Give Teruko an Actual Fight
And now that I think about it (and I wrote the following after finishing the rest of this essay after reading the newest chapter of Dandadan–just putting this out there as a peek into the thought process I had when writing all of this):
How did Teruko get to Fukuchi before Atsushi? I know that Akutagawa held Atsushi back so he couldn’t get there in time–I don’t mean that. I mean, why did Teruko stay behind and let Atsushi go, only to still get to Fukuchi to kill him before Atsushi could arrive?
The easy way to have fixed this would have been to give Teruko her own fight to delay her getting to Fukuchi so that we get why she still got there first while Atsushi was delayed by Akutagawa.
And it would have improved the story considerably.
Atsushi was limited by writing from stopping Teruko, whether for good reasons, such as Kunikida clarifying that Atsushi is not a good fighter, a point unfortunately proven correct in Seasons 4 and 5 against Gogol, Hawthorne, Fukuchi, and Akutagawa, but also unfortunately a ridiculous retcon that ignores that Atsushi, albeit with help, has taken down threats as big as these, including freaking Shibusawa in the film.
Given how useless Atsushi has been in combat for two seasons, it makes Teruko’s victory hollow. It’s bad enough she is overpowered, but it’s even more pathetic when Sigma gave Teruko a bigger fight than Atsushi, our supposed antagonist.
Therefore, give Teruko one more fight in this arc.
And that fight can improve this story considerably.
After how ridiculous it was that Teruko and Fukuzawa were just standing around listening to Fyodor talk rather than attacking him, at least if we saw Teruko already had been in another fight, that would clarify why she is not just emotionally and mentally exhausted after killing Fukuchi and seeing him resurrected, but it would also clarify why she is physically weakened–because, sorry, I’m not buying that the super soldier Hunting Dog is downed like that from Fyodor shoving two swords into Fukuchi when non-superpowered Fukuzawa was able to stand up again–that reeks of some sexism right there.
And speaking of sexism, if you wanted, you could address the other problem this arc has had, the sidelining of the girls and women in this arc, by having one of them battle Teruko. Yes, that perpetuates its own sexism–having another girl or woman fighting Teruko–but also, this is about gender neutrality, that it is obviously valid to have Teruko fight a girl or a woman, especially when this arc has wimped out on having any other girls or women in this arc. Where is Yosano for a fight? Where is Lucy? You know Kyoka would stand the best chance against Teruko, even if Yosano repeatedly healing herself or Lucy portaling the two of them in and out of Anne’s Room would be more creative and visually impressive.
But in any case, maybe then Teruko’s death would seem less cheap rather than wasted potential, a refusal to let a girl or woman live or at least have shown more of their potential so that, if you really are going to kill them, at least make it hurt more because we saw what she was capable of and feel that loss, as opposed to, “Oh, the old man she admired and loved killed her when she let her guard down–how cliche.”
I went on this tangent long enough: let me get back to what I wrote before I read Dandadan.
Shouldn’t Fukuzawa Be Fighting Fukuchi, Not Atsushi, continued
As I said, Atsushi wasted two seasons deferring to everyone else, realizes he doesn’t know whether Fukuchi is right or wrong in his plan, so he defers to his supervisor Fukuzawa, runs towards him to ask what to do, gets sidetracked trying and failing to rescue Aya from Akutagwa, arrives at Fukuzawa in the anime–and sees Fukuchi is already dead anyway. What was the point of this except to make us realize Atsushi is still not cut out to rise to the occasion and has actually backpedaled as a protagonist since reaching closure about his time at the orphanage, that after defeating Fitzgerald, Shibusawa, and Gon he has suddenly become almost useless, even more useless than when we saw him in Chapter 1?
Atsushi still did not even succeed at getting to Fukuzawa in time to ask his ridiculously dumb question, “Hey, should I help you stop Fukuchi, or do you think Fukuchi has a good point that the ends justify the means of stopping a future war (that we now know Fyodor was faking) even if that means people die and lose their autonomy as vampires?”
I mean…God, this is so dumb. I know I have said Atsushi has been wasted as a protagonist, but now that the manga is ready to do what the post-credits tease did in Season 5, that being to throw him at Fukuchi as some “grand gesture” to make up for his prior failings–when, no, the grand gesture never does that, the grand gesture never excuses prior bad actions–is not going to help sell him to the readers, it’s an unearned moment.
What’s worse is that Atsushi is not battling Fukuchi in order to regain his lost status as a compelling protagonist in his own series. Instead, it’s all for the sake of one more team-up between Atsushi and Akutagawa, when the well has run dry on that. What more is there to get out of Atsushi and Akutagawa’s partnership? What new detail is there to their relationship, beyond just finally hooking the two up romantically and stop teasing that subtext? There is almost no new subtlety or dimensions left to offer…except that we finally get Akutagawa willing to team up with Atsushi–but even that achievement, that Akutagawa has learned the value of teammate, is hollow because we already saw that happen in the Season 5 post-credits tease, so the manga doesn’t even get to be the first to show that off. Furthermore, Akutagawa’s new willingness to work with Atsushi is not built out of any believable character progression: it took Akutagawa dying and being resurrected to have what appears to be not just a change of heart but a complete personality change, symbolized externally by the change to his attire so to hammer that point visually to the audience that this is a brand new Akutagawa–but that’s not compelling, it’s lazy. It’s just so empty rather than actually moving forward character progression for either Atsushi or Akutagawa. But we’ll get back to that in a moment when I get to the “What Happens Next (in the Manga)?” section.
Aya and Teruko’s Stories (Barely) Work (Pending Future Chapters)
Even as I point out why I dislike the failure of setup and payoff in this arc, there are at least two touches that make it feel like Asagiri is trying to build towards something, even if I hate that this is his choice and how he is going about it.
First, we have Bram’s concern for Aya, now perverted by Fyodor’s interest in her, whether brought about because Fyodor is now possessing Bram or because Fyodor wants to toy with Aya as he has access to Bram’s memories. (There’s also still the theory others and I have had, that Aya’s unconfirmed Ability and relationship to her police officer dad may be part of the larger scheme the Decay of the Angel had for her.) Maybe the stuff between Fyodor and Aya will lead somewhere engaging. (There’s another theory that Fyodor in the past knew Bram’s daughter, but that bothers me: it’s too convenient of a coincidence to work.)
But I can’t even appreciate that potential because, after Mori’s fixation on Yosano and Elise, I’m not optimistic Asagiri is going anywhere good with this plot detail, and I fear the story will once again lapse into uncomfortable material for the sake of shock value rather than actually saying something meaningful or offering a warning about that uncomfortable moment of a man getting way too close to a girl.
And the Aya stuff also falls apart because, when you think about it, we have observed the relationship between Aya and Bram far longer than Aya and Bram have actually had that parent-child relationship. We get more out of their relationship than the two of them get out of it: that’s a failure of the writing. We appreciate what is lost for Aya when Bram is taken over by Fyodor, but Aya hasn’t known Bram as long to make that moment land as well as it should for her. It’s bad enough that Aya knew Bram for only a short time relatively to the rest of the story, but to now have Fyodor possessing Bram’s body clarifies why this arc needed to end: as bad as I feel for Bram and Aya, imagine how much more engaging it would be if Fyodor’s possession came after the two had built an even more close rapport.
(There are leaks online right now of a gag comic from Volume 25 that show Aya imagining a “what if” scenario of enjoying a father-daughter outing with Bram. That being an out-of-canon gag moment doesn’t ameliorate the situation and only rubs salt into the wound. But I’ll get to that problem in the conclusion of my essay when talking about how Bungo Stray Dogs was never going to make a plot that was going to fulfill the potential its characters had–or the potential they have already fulfilled in Wan, the mobile game, or fan works. It is pathetic that the spinoff comedic series Wan and the freaking mobile gacha game do better at getting these characters to reach their potential than their original work.)
So, the Aya stuff was the first touch that mostly worked. Onto the second touch: we have Fukuchi’s corpse killing Teruko to take in her essence and power. It has its problems, ones that I think overwhelm what works, but let me try to be positive and address what works.
Teruko has been one-note throughout this arc. If you listened to my audio commentaries, I really despise her, finding her portrayal to be inconsistent, her motivations up to now not compelling, her personality too abrasive to find even ironic joy at just how bad she could be, and her killing of Fukuchi as a cheap attempt to milk any sympathy for her. Anything in Chapter 115 that can lend some complexity to Teruko can only help.
Teruko just killed Fukuchi, now she wants to avenge him upon learning his death was planned by Fyodor: the irony is good enough to keep the action scenes going and giving an understandable reason why there is a change in motivation for this character, where it would be otherwise laughable that someone is trying to avenge the person they just killed.
Teruko also has been obsessed with control and power, taunting Sigma as being out of his league against galaxy-brain geniuses like Fyodor and Dazai…and presumably herself. I never bought that, as Teruko seemed clever but not much in the way of a good planner. But now, with this chapter showing that she was the last to survive in her insurgent group, that means I can infer there is a certain desperation she has that was how she planned around defeating Sigma, even at the cost of her hearing (although too bad that story beat went nowhere).
And this chapter introduces another good detail: Teruko is like she is, because she has always been like this. I have said before I prefer a story that says a character just is. Why do Vic Fontaine and Frankie Eyes hate each other in the Deep Space Nine casino heist episode? That’s literally their computer program, they have since they were kids–don’t worry about it. Why does Gordy hate TJ in Recess? He just does–don’t worry about it. How does the Lobe’s Norm Abrams sound device take over the world? It just does–don’t worry about it. And why is Teruko good at war? She has been since birth–don’t worry about it. I know “because the plot says so” has annoyed me. But that tends to be a problem in plotting, less so in characterization. This is who this character is, this is what they do, this is how they act–sometimes that is enough to accept. Teruko since birth has always had this superpower–now let’s see the ramifications.
Upon birth, Teruko aged up her body but also her mind. Up to now my focus was on how Teruko was aging up and down her body to fight or to disguise herself. Now we learn she was a baby who upon birth aged her mind up to think like an adult–without putting in the years of effort to get to such complex understandings. That is really good storytelling potential. She took on adult aspects long before she as a mere baby was prepared for them? That is compelling and exciting storytelling directions, something akin to Benjamin Button or even Bicentennial Man–forgive grabbing two really underwhelming stories, but at least they had potential in their ideas even if not in execution (and Teruko’s story has that same potential–too bad we killed her off instead of doing something with it).
Learning about Teruko’s origins also re-stages her interactions with Sigma. We are told Sigma was created out of nothingness only three years ago, fully formed as an adult. That is not so dissimilar from Teruko. That should compel me to re-read the Sigma fight…but I also remember how annoying that arc was, where Sigma loses out of chance and Teruko’s determination, not because Sigma did anything wrong.
And even with all of what we learn about Teruko in this arc, it is too little too late. As I will repeat later (H/T Ellak Roach), it is the “Gintama villain is about to be defeated, so here is their sad backstory in a foolish attempt to give them unearned sympathy” problem all over again.
Fridging Teruko Doesn’t Help
But more than that, it is also the problem of fridging again.
It’s gross after the last fridging: hi, Cat Burglar killed in Meursault Prison by Fyodor.
But Teruko’s fridging at least feels like it could be a setup for something–but probably won’t. It could to clarify the strength boost Fukuchi’s corpse will get off of Teruko’s super strength and age-altering powers when he faces off against Atsushi and Akutagawa in the Season 5 post-credits scene…except I don’t see why Asagiri needed to give that power-up to Fukuchi when he is already plenty strong as is, even stronger with the two swords, and just didn’t need Teruko’s power. It feels like this is done just to milk some emotion out of readers for Teruko when, as I already said, she’s not a likable character, and I don’t see how taking her out of the battle makes any of this more compelling when you are getting rid of one of the only two people–her and Fukuzawa–who actually like the thoroughly unlikable, flatulent, silly, fascistic, violent, gullible, and now falling-for-Fyodor’s-obvious-traps Fukuchi.
Fukuchi is already strong, we can believe being possessed by the swords made him almost infinitely strong–that’s why he’s a singularity, it’s power is infinite, you can’t add plus one to infinite. So, Fukuchi gaining Teruko’s powers doesn’t suddenly make him stronger–and yet, we did it anyway, for angst. So, yeah, I just convinced myself this is actually a terrible setup-and-payoff because it’s just a fridging–it serves no purpose except for the characters, mostly men, to angst and be compelled to do the thing they were already committed to doing: just as you can’t add plus one to infinity, you can’t motivate a character even more than they are already motivated to do the thing they were already motivated to do. You can’t make the characters even more compelled now to stop Fyodor: they already were, you didn’t have to kill off the only woman Hunting Dog to get to that point.
(Or, is it that, by killing Teruko, Fyodor now gained the seal on his hand to control the Holy Sword? That doesn’t make sense–Fyodor already took the Holy Sword and gave himself the seal so he could take over Fukuchi’s body–he already had control of Fukuchi’s body–how would killing Teruko activate the seal that was already active on him? How much of this is my failure to read what is on the page, and how much of this is Asagiri writing poorly and Harukawa not presenting the action clearly?)
And I don’t expect Teruko’s death to lead to anything significant for the character progression of anyone else, when we don’t even know how her fellow Hunting Dogs will react–because most of them are dead anyway: Tachihara is missing in action, Jouno is a mind-controlled vampire, and Tetcho is knocked out. Wonderful: I hated Teruko, and even I want the story to at least acknowledge the loss her teammates will feel, but the manga won’t address that detail for probably another six months at least (damn you, loose continuity!) because it’ll take forever to confirm whether there are any Hunting Dogs left to mourn her.
And what makes all of this worse is that you are probably already yelling at me the more likely reason why Asagiri gave Fukuchi the power of Teruko: so he can de-age himself and not look too much like Fukuchi in the Season 5 post-credit teaser…except we already figured out that opponent in that teaser was related to Fukuchi because it looked like Fukuchi, so it’s a fridging to prolong a mystery that was solved almost as soon as the teaser showed that opponent. Again, what a disappointment.
Keeping on the topic of Teruko:
Teruko’s Fixation on Fukuchi Is Now Worse
When I first saw the preview images of the possessed Fukuchi corpse killing Teruko, I had really hoped that Teruko’s death would mean something–and upon reading the scene in context, it’s even worse than I thought. It’s the “Gintama villain last-minute back story moment” (again, H/T Ellak Roach): you wait until the villain is about to die to then demand sympathy from the audience by showing they actually had a hard time growing up and that makes their death sad and their motivations more sympathetic. But as with Gintama, as it is here, that rarely works. Teruko was an insurgent, she is nearly killed by the Japanese military until Fukuchi offers her to surrender and join his Hunting Dogs or die…and this is supposed to explain her fixation on Fukuchi?
That’s it? Her attraction to him was that he spared her life, even when he’s presumably from the military apparatus she was fighting against?
I know I just said it’s great when a character is fully formed upon introduction thus that you don’t need to give them a complex back story to get why they are how they are–but that only works if your back story doesn’t suddenly introduce a significant detail that makes their characterization now ill-fitting, and Teruko falling for the guy who is on the other side of this war is not “foe yay,” it’s not “love makes you do foolish things,” it’s now the back story actively undermining who the character has been–this writing sucks.
(And something I thought off after I wrote the rest of this and after reading the latest Dandadan–more on that at the end of this essay–but Asagiri did this same tactic before when killing off Jouno: we learn he was formerly a gangster, we see him saving the old woman, then Fukuchi kills him to turn him into a vampire. Maybe the “Gintama villain false redemption” flashback didn’t bother me as much with Jouno as it wasn’t his origin story so the “death flag” foreshadowing was not as obvious to me. Then I read someone also saying technically we got a bit of Tachihara and Fukuchi’s back stories before they were killed, so this could all be a problem for all Hunting Dogs. But back to Teruko…)
Asagiri Is Not Writing War Well
We don’t learn what Teruko was fighting for, just that she was an insurgent–a lack of any commitment to showing Teruko’s philosophy, motivations, the politics of her world, just more of the utter cowardice of Asagiri to do an effective anti-war story because he refuses to commit to what the wars we see in this series were about, all the more egregious right now as Hamas’s attack on Israel remains a horrifying event and Israel’s ongoing slaughter of Palaestinians remains a horrifying event that hasn’t stopped.
And of course Teruko has to stop her agenda to avenge Fukuchi because she gets distracted by his reanimated corpse–which even if I can believe that is something she could hesitate to do, the fact that we don’t even have her confused and instead just in awe of Fukuchi is so tiresome and gross, as gross as killing off the one woman in the Hunting Dogs, all for a power-up that the already infinitely powerful Fukuchi didn’t need, all to raise stakes that didn’t need to be raised because the Agency has already been outclassed by his bozo Fyodor.
Show Us, Don’t Tell Us, How Teruko Got to This Point
One last complaint on this topic of the war, as I’m not sure where else to fit it in: I guess when the story says Teruko has been fighting since literally just months of being alive, she was born, then aged herself, then decided to start fighting? What is this narration even trying to say? There’s a way to tease out this mystery rather than just making the writing incoherent. And no, I’m not buying an argument I have seen from some comics writers that comics have to depend on such narration and dialogue to get a point across: comics are far more a visual medium than a word (as we typically define that idea)-based medium–use the imagines to get across the most bare-bones details of your point, and then use words to clarify your point. Not everything has to be an awkward box of Stan Lee-style descriptions as to what every single character feels: show us how Teruko got to this adult body and into this adult mindset and into this war, don’t just talk it at me.
Wrapping Up
How do I wrap up my thoughts? I have been a fan of Bungo Stray Dogs for quite some time. But recent developments in this manga have soured me. I’m not saying this will be the last time I read the manga–but unless something changes for the better in this series, or at least inspires something more substantive in me beyond just whining, I would not be surprised if this is the last time i write about a new chapter of Bungo Stray Dogs and instead focus on writing about what I hope are far better stories and far better circumstances in our lives.
What Happens Next (in the Manga)?
I’ll get to where I go next, because I don’t see much value for me to continue to write or talk about Bungo Stray Dogs if I’m just miserable reading it, if the cliffhangers just perpetuate the plot and don’t bring characterization to a satisfying conclusion or at least a plateau where you now know what the new personalities are for the long-established characters.
But what happens next in the manga?
I continue the fool’s errand of assuming the anime version is more or less what will happen in the manga, such as Akutagawa seemingly returning to sentience and assisting Atsushi against the reanimated corpse of Fukuchi. But Akutagawa is a vampire; he can only regain his sentience if the vampire curse is ended, and it can’t unless Dazai touches Bram, or Bram stops the plague willingly–and neither can happen so long as Fyodor is possessing Bram’s body.
So, here’s one likely scenario about what could happen next–which is only a prediction, and as I keep repeating, predictions are bullshit:
Maybe Fukuzawa stops Fyodor–maybe even dies with him in the process?–and that either destroys Fyodor’s body or restores Bram to his own body, at which point the vampire curse ends, and Akutagawa regains sentience to help Atsushi fight Fukuchi’s reanimated corpse.
But then there is the time window problem. If again we accept the anime as being mostly the same as how events will unfold in the manga (even as I keep repeating that I’m willing to accept that the anime has gone so far away from the manga that we could ignore it and just stick to the manga’s events whenever they transpire), that means that the events are in this timeframe: Fukuchi is defeated, then two hours later Atsushi and Akutagawa are battling Fukuchi’s re-animated corpse. That gives Asagiri two hours for the following to happen: Fyodor possesses Bram’s body, turns Fukuchi’s body into a singularity, kills Teruko, then has his vampire possession canceled out so that Akutagawa can re-emerge in a new armor to help Atsushi defeat Fukuchi. That is a lot to happen–but I am loathe to admit, compared to how rushed the rest of this arc has been despite how long it has taken to be published on a nearly monthly basis, two hours seems reasonable compared to how much else in this arc should have taken hours if not weeks to happens and instead took only minutes.
Also, as I finished writing this essay, I looked at other theories, so let’s talk about them:
A thread on Reddit–actually two of them–talk about whether Fyodor had Fukuchi write into the Book to send the fake message to the past for young Fukuchi, or whether this corpse of Fukuchi is possessed by Fyodor to send that message to the past to trick younger Fukuchi. But neither example seems sufficient for me to understand how this would trick the younger Fukuchi: who’s to say younger Fukuchi even recognizes this older person as what he will look like in the future?
And then there is still the page from the Book–with one good theory saying Ranpo could have stolen it from Fukuchi.
What Happens Next for Me?
I introduced this essay by pointing out that I had been following this manga for some time.
And unfortunately, after all of this time, I’m tired.
Maybe the next chapter inspires something in me to write.
But if the next chapter is just going to inspire me to complain and be negative, I’d rather write those thoughts–and keep them to myself. Unless such an essay could be a good time capsule, or allow for a deeper reflection on trends in storytelling, or a way to improve my teaching about literature and comics, I don’t see why I would share yet another essay that just repeats the same thesis statement:
Bungo Stray Dogs just isn’t that good.
It’s not the fault of the characters.
If anything, my engagement with this series seems like the universe wanting to play a joke on me.
Throughout much of my teaching, I have insisted that plot is more important than characters–that you can have the most engaging characters ever, but if you don’t have a good beginning, middle, and end for a story, you aren’t creating a story that is going to make people want to hang out with those characters.
Bungo Stray Dogs disproves my assumption that plot is more important than characters. I enjoy most of these characters. I enjoy imagining scenarios with them. I enjoy fan works about them. I enjoy seeing them pop up in more comedic stories in the Wan spinoff. The light novels typically are compelling stories because they are written with plot in mind: how Oda first met Dazai, 55 Minutes, new stories with new characters like the Ayatsuji spinoff novel.
A lot of my enjoyment of this series owes I’m sure to projection onto the characters: there’s something fun imagining yourself in the roles of the characters in, say, something as rudimentary as a marble-slinging gacha game on my phone. I wanted to see Atsushi, Akutagawa, and Kyoka progress after trauma. I wanted to see where Kunikida goes after education didn’t turn out to be his career path. I wanted to see why Aya was brought back into the story, and how Bram addresses the crimes of his past to make a future for himself. I wanted to see Yosano heal Tachihara and whether either of them can reach closure after his brother’s death. I wanted to see Mori get his ass kicked. I wanted the Guild to have another arc, to bring back under-developed characters like Gon, Pushkin, and Katsura to see how they would thrive with new plots and new settings.
We’re not getting any of that. That is the purview of fan works, not what Asagiri is going for.
Asagiri has said that Bungo Stray Dogs is a story about characters who, as the title suggests, are strays, people cast out, struggling to find meaning in their lives. It’s why we have a character like Dazai who, even if we do not know why he is suicidal, is indeed suicidal. It’s why the anime has “Reason Living” as a theme song but also as a phrase popping up in in the lyrics so many of the anime’s other songs. It’s the struggle Ranpo had when he first met Fukuzawa, that Fukuzawa had after the war, after Yosano had after the war: how do you keep going? It’s why someone like Fukuchi was so foolish as to hold onto any message from the future when the evidence told him to be wary of such a promised fate: he didn’t need the future to give him a reason to keep going, he should have found that in the here and now. All of that means this story should work, to reach out to all of us, because we all want to feel like there is a reason to keep going.
But this chapter, this arc, has not stuck to that message. And I feel depressed trying to get through these chapters anymore.
There is no indication from this story to show why these characters persist despite whatever comes next. I understand this is one of the darkest moments in the story–but this entire arc has been a darkest moment ever since Gogol framed the Agency, this arc has gone on more than four years–and I’m sick of it.
Maybe after this arc ends I can look back at it and realize it was only a temporary problem, that the ending made the entire arc worth it and worthwhile to re-read.
But, honestly, this arc is still going on, while our world keeps getting worse. This arc fails to talk seriously about the actual war and actual fascism we are facing right now, because Asagiri thinks it’s funnier to have the immortal Russian guy pull one more trick out nowhere and avoid actually addressing seriously the very points about war and fascism that Asagiri was raising–and doing a bad job of.
And it is all the worse, because Asagiri approaches the ideas of war and fascism before receding back from them like a child having just touched a hot element. But we in our real lives keep getting closer to war and fascism and do not have that luxury to back away, because war is thrown at us, because fascism is thrown at us.
I’m about to list some real-life happenings around war and fascism. Kafka Asagiri did not contribute to these happenings, he is not responsible for them–but I do think he had at best bad timing with a story that just happened to coincide with some shitty real-world events and at worst did not have a great mindset for how to write about those topics in a way that was believable and that contributed to any better understanding of how screwed up the world can be and how we live through it.
So, here goes the list of what we are living through:
While this arc of Bungo Stray Dogs was being published, Hamas launched a fatal against people in Israel; the Israeli government is still committing inhumane acts that are killing people in Palestine for no good reason; and I see the United States risking another fall into fascism because some idiots would rather vote for that orange Nazi, that orange convicted felon, that orange adjudicated rapist, that orange Republican piece of shit rather than vote for Biden and all the good he and other Democrats have done–I see all of these travesties persist while this manga arc is still being published, and while we can put down the manga and walk away from the misery the characters are going through, we don’t get to escape that misery in our lives.
This is why, once the actual United Nations showed up in the manga, I was shocked that the anime adaptation kept that, that they didn’t change the name, such as making it another international organization but called “Nations United,” “League of Countries,” or “We’re Not the UN Don’t Sue Us.” But Asagiri went ahead and called it the UN–this could have been a powerful “take that” at state power and international institutions that have good goals but poor execution and a hypocritical failure to stand up to their own ideals.
But in Bungo Stray Dogs, the UN is just there to hand over power to Fukuchi before the story collapsing into a fight against one overpowered Russian immortal fixated on destroying other people’s superpowers that this many years later we still don’t know why he wants to get rid of those superpowers, making whatever allegorical importance that could be read into Fyodor’s actions shatter because Asagiri insisted on realism instead of believability, with the presence of the UN being one problem.
And that problem is worsened by the fact that it is also been this many years of publishing this story and Asagiri still hasn’t clarified what exactly ignited his story’s version of the Great War and what exactly led that war to rope in England, Germany, France, and Japan but not, say, the United States. What was that war about? Why were they fighting? We know they were using Abilities to fight that war, but those were, forgive the phrase, tools of war, not what the war itself was fought over. Why were those countries allies? What was the instigating event that prompted one nation and its allies to war against another nation and its allies?
This story would almost work better if instead of the actual nations of our world they were just re-named with fictional names still alluding to the nations they are based on such that, no matter how shallow the metaphors become, readers can trick themselves into assuming there is allegorical depth when really it was just Asagiri changing the names to avoid constraining himself to real-world associations. (It’d sure as hell make things less uncomfortable having Fyodor, a Russian character, pulling the strings of every other character as if we are stuck in a Cold War narrative, or how the 2016 election was thrown to that orange Nazi fuck.)
In other words, Asagiri could have done this like Fullmetal Alchemist: you can write a believable war as part of the historical lore of your story, while still having your story feature supernatural powers treating humans like mere puppets for their own selfish, fascistic, and hence childish obsession with power, all towards a message that individualism can help the world, but so can teammate and even governmental structures, that all of these are tools that need to be used responsibly and not necessarily discarded absolutely as moralistically bad just because they are used badly. It’d make Fyodor stand out more obviously as the villain, someone who wants to eliminate Abilities regardless of how that violates the autonomy of the people with those Abilities, and someone who refuses to consider gray areas where even the worst Ability may have application to help make the world a better place. I expect better of whatever Asagiri is going for with Fyodor–and he just isn’t doing it.
Since my undergraduate studies, if not far earlier, I have read numerous philosophies as to what is the purpose of literature: what is its reason for being? I think literature helps people see the world as it is or how it could be. Bungo Stray Dogs right now is not showing me the world as it is–and how it shows me the world as it could be feels like a defeatist imagining. This arc is still a depressing mess. This world is a depressing mess. I can help to do whatever is possible to make this world better. But I can’t change what this story is. All I can do is not read it anymore.
I guess we’ll see in a month whether I write about the next chapter of Bungo Stray Dogs–or I write about something else. Whatever happens, I hope in a month from now when I’m writing that it is about a better story, or at least about better conditions in our currently depressing mess of a world.
(It’s all the worse because, after I wrote all of this, before starting to make copy edits and add remaining links, I finally read Monday’s Dandadan, and while the stanning for a cop will definitely bother people, Chapter 155 was more heartfelt, stuck up for a message of persistence despite setbacks, and was legitimately funny when it needed to be–while offering an ending that still says such empty platitudes don’t change the past, and that trauma can persist. It gets to have its cake and eat it, too: the world sucks, we persist, but that doesn’t absolve people of what they did, and we don’t have to forget or forgive even as we get on with our lives.)
Derek S. McGrath 