[Note: this review is for all 3 seasons and the DEAD APPLE movie.]

Atsushi Nakajima is having a bad week. First, he gets kicked out of the orphanage he called home—home to abusive adults, but still. Then, he seems to be stalked by a bloodthirsty tiger so he has to stay on the move. Also, he’s about to starve. THEN it turns out he is the tiger—specifically a weretiger, but he didn’t know and can’t control it.

My initial reaction from episode 1, and my current reaction 37 episodes and 1 movie later, are the same: Atsushi is a sweet cinnamon roll who needs a HUG and a THERAPIST and to SLEEP FOR A WEEK and I LOVE HIM

While Atsushi is our entry into the series and one of the main characters, Bungo Stray Dogs follows the supernaturally-gifted members of the “Armed Detective Agency," who accomplish different tasks including running a business, solving mysteries, protecting people and running interference with the local mafia, which also employs a number of supernaturally-gifted people.

This is a VERY FUN SERIES. It starts out seeming like a straightforward Underdog Good Guys vs. Well-Funded Big Bad Organization, and that’s not necessarily wrong. But as the series progresses, the “bad guys” get their share of the spotlight too.

Now first, I want to say, because I was confused for the longest time: this takes place in an alternate modern day. They’ve got smartphones and the internet, but there was apparently recently some big sort of war that doesn’t correspond to anything real, and the characters’ outfits are…well:

For several episodes, despite the cell phones and computers I swear I thought this was set in the 1920s, but no. They just all have the fashion sense of a 10-year-old playing with paper dolls.

I mean, look at the image above. And then look at Mr. Edgy High-School Vampire below:

These people not only inhabit the same city, but no one ever seems to think they look out of place.

Not a criticism. I admire a series that has devoted itself to such distinctly cosplayable designs and refuses to give an explanation.

Anyway.

The general storyline is usually: the Armed Detective Agency receives a job that involves investigating something murderous and/or supernatural, or that involves protection from something murderous and/or supernatural. Sometimes this is straightforward, sometimes this is part of a longer story that means things even more murderous and supernatural are lurking in the shadows.

The players are often the Agency vs. the Mafia, but these orgs will occasionally team up for the greater good if an outside threat tries to move in. Some members of one org were previously with the other, so there’s a lot of history and emotions between certain factions.

One such complicated person is this dork: Osamu Dazai. He’s the one getting strangled by his partner.

He’s often found in the middle of a [failed] suicide attempt, or asking a pretty girl to commit a lovely double suicide with him. He’s cheerfully nihilistic, not intimidating, comes off as an airhead and a dork.

…and then you see this face, which is Universal Anime Face for “character who knows SO MUCH and is excellent at scheming.”

The characters are this show’s strength. If you’d told me during the first handful of episodes that one of my top 2 characters would be a mafia leader, I’d laugh, because why would I like a bad guy that much? When something is set up as clearly good vs. evil, I don’t tend to land on the side of evil ~~regardless of evil’s extremely good character design~~

But hey, lots of evil gets a backstory and turn out to be super interesting—heck, this guy here is part of the focus of a half-season prequel! (Season 2, for the record–—the first half is a prequel, then the second half picks up after the end of season 1.)

The series is about fighting, and people get hurt, and people have to make tough decisions. But it’s often balanced with humor, and that’s part of why I enjoyed it so much. There’s so much to track—people on both sides with tragic backstories, the city- or world-ending plots that pop up, the many, MANY attempted murders—that if it went straight through, it would be overwhelming.

But in the midst of all that, you have characters making jokes, or being inept, or responding to a hostage situation by playing rock-paper-scissors to see who deals with it, or tripping their enemy in the middle of a Very Serious Battle like Bug Bunny showing up to fight Thanos.

(None of that really translates to gifs well, but here’s a character, in the middle of a dangerous fight, picking up Mr. Teenage “I Swear I’ll Kill You If You Laugh At Me” Hot Topic Model and carrying him like a sack of potatoes.)

Another fun thing about this series is that the title translates to “Literary Stray Dogs,” and all the main characters are named after famous late writers. This is easy to miss if you’re American like me and have never heard of “Doppo Kunikida” or “Akiko Yosano,” but once international characters show up in season 2, you’re faced with “Louisa Alcott” and “John Steinbeck,” part of a group led by "Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald.”

The characters’ powers all vary as well. Their names are often weird, until you learn that the names are all lines/titles of the original authors’ works (Chuuya Nakahara’s Upon the Tainted Sorrow gravity manipulation sounds ridiculous, Astushi’s Beast Beneath the Moonlight weretiger ability sounds pretentious until you know the connection). Abilities range from “great fighting ability” to “useful defensive ability” to “Herman Melville creates small flying whales and that’s…cool, I guess?”

Verdict

English dub? Yes, and I love it! I tried watching both, and I actually prefer the dub’s voices.

Visuals: This is a show dedicated to its aesthetic, at least as far as fashion is concerned. I don’t know if any of the character designs/outfits are based on their namesakes (although remember my comment that I thought this was set in the 20s for a while? A lot of the namesake authors were active/alive between 1900 and 1930, so…), but maybe? Or maybe they just wanted to have suspenders and hats and long coats. Whatever, it’s cool and looks good, as does the rest of the series. Much of it is bright and/or takes place in the daytime–avoiding the “too dark to see what’s going on” thing.

Worth watching? YESSSSS. Please watch sweet cinnamon roll too good too pure for this world Atsushi find a place of his own and learn he does get to have nice things. Please watch Dazai act like a total goof before the next scene shows us he’s five steps ahead of everyone else. Please watch Chuuya manipulate gravity so his hat stays on while he flips upside down. Please watch characters snark at each other even as they team up to defeat city-destroying monsters.