English Dub Review: Bungo Stray Dogs WAN Episode 8

OVERVIEW

Akutagawa gets sick and also jealous of Dazai’s treatment of Atsushi.

OUR TAKE

As I’ve probably mentioned, Akutagawa serves as the rival character to Atsushi within the context of the story. He is very much the Vegeta or Sasuke figure to Atsushi’s Goku or Naruto, though obviously there are clear differences in abilities and personality between these characters beyond this simple archetypal overlap. One of the more distinct differences would be Akuta’s clear disdain for Atsu because of Dazai’s liking to him, which, according to reading the show’s Wikipedia article, may come from Atsu saving Dazai from potential suicide early on in the story. Dazai also used to work for the Port Mafia and trained Akuta as his student, but after leaving to join the Armed Detective Agency, later met Atsu and now trains him, which leads to the rivalry between the two characters. The two later formed more of a bond based on their own relationship between each other, though, at least if the third season is to be believed. Again, I have not seen the first two seasons of this show, and am often too busy to fit that in, so it’s hard to really view this entire character relationship in the whole context.

Then again, we’re on the eighth episode of this series and I’m still trying to pull together some sort of character analysis from the brief gags I can really construct enough to put under a microscope. As much as I hate to admit it, this may just be one of the types of shows that are very difficult if not impossible to critically analyze in our preferred way. Best I can say about any of these is that they are very likely going to be very funny for people who are already fans of the show, since they often require references to the material baked in for them to land their attempted jokes. Sometimes you get sketches that are more general and don’t require nearly as much backstory to get the point across, but more often than not, it’s about using these established characters from the series to make jokes about those characters, so you’re probably going to need to already like the original series in order to fully appreciate this. That is, sadly, to this side story’s detriment, as it makes recommending it without that knowledge or context pretty difficult. You could still technically enjoy this without all that, but you are very likely to get lost in the weeds trying to piece together things happening, which is only going to drag down the comedy. Anyway, just four more of these to go!