English Dub Review: Bungo Stray Dogs WAN Episode 6

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Dazai decides to play a prank on Kunikida before a big meeting, almost getting him in prison. Also the gang tells scary stories.

OUR TAKE

Dazai and Kunikida play off each other well, with the former being brilliant but lazy while the latter is a nosy busy body. Dazai wants to get know work done while Kunikida wants to get all the work done. As we’ve seen in other shorts, Dazai will find any excuse to avoid work or pass it off on others, but Kunikida needs everything done to exact specifications. This dynamic can lead to many comedic situations, which is good for a parody show like this. In this case, it’s not quite about what that dynamic leads to, but what Dazai is afraid will happen to his friend, showing that he does care about Kunikida after all despite their fighting constantly. But then once it turns out that there’s no danger posed, he goes back to his usual laziness and takes the lecture he is deserved. And so the status quo is reset there. Very competent comedy writing here, which is nice.

The next segment is about the characters telling scary stories, which are often a good way of showing character personality through what they believe to be scary. In Kunikida’s case, it’s being forced to quit working when he starts to feel sick. In Dazai’s story, he gets up for work, only to find it was a dream and that he has to get up all over again. In Kyoka’s story, more mundane accidents are told in a more chilling manner, like getting a paper cut or a really tough piece of meat. But Atsushi’s is probably the scariest of all, as he shares a time the orphanage he stayed at made him stay in the freeze and he hallucinated some figure in there. I don’t know his backstory very well, so it’s possible the orphanage was abusive and this is a case of someone playing off an abusive thing that was done to them as if it’s normal?

Oh yeah, and then they try to audition for a dance competition. It is very likely the most late 2000’s weeby shit I have every seen in modern day. I think there may have been some references to Carameldansen, and I’m not even going to go into all of that. But hey, glad that this week gave us some variety to the stories to properly dissect. We’re halfway through this season so hopefully that can carry on until the very final episode.