English Dub Review: Bungo Stray Dogs Wan! Episodes 1-2
OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)
The Armed Detective Agency continue their battles and hijinks with their literature themed abilities as chibified versions of themselves!
OUR TAKE
Bungo Stray Dogs is…NOT back for a sixth season, nor has one been announced despite it having been over three years since the fifth season. Apparently it’s because said fifth season caught up to the manga really fast and they still don’t have enough material to adapt for another season even three years later. Given my history of being stuck reviewing episodes of this show despite not having seen the first few seasons, this long a gap might be a good opportunity to finally catch up so I have some idea of what I’m talking about here…but sadly that must wait as I am once again stuck reviewing the comedic spin-off show Bungo Stray Dogs Wan, which is just the show with everyone to cuter comedic designs and doing short skits. Also it’s half the length which makes it easier to watch but harder to review because comedy is more subjective and harder to review than drama and, to reiterate, I have massive holes in the knowledge I would need to effectively analyze whether or not these jokes are landing or saying anything of substance about these characters, most of whom I can’t even remember the names of from memory.
But hey, here we are, so let’s get these first couple over with. The first episode consists of three skits, one that has all of the characters as dogs, one about protagonist Atsushi teaching the audience how to make crepes, and lastly a sketch about certain characters having different views about Dazai, another main character who is pretty hard to read sometimes. Then, in the second episode, Atsushi spots ghosts at the team’s office, goes camping with some of them, and gets posed a thought experiment by Dazai about pushing a button that would destroy the world, which is apparently another thing he likes to do besides joke about dying. I can’t imagine that I haven’t mentioned this at least once, but I’ve seen plenty of these comedy spin-offs of existing action anime, and many of those range vastly in quality, with a big factor being whether or not the comedy requires much prerequisite knowledge of the source material or is just easy to laugh at on its own. That said, it’s also really unlikely that you would even be watching a comedy spin-off of something if you didn’t also watch and enjoy the more serious show it’s spinning off from, so…shit, you’re probably gonna watch this regardless of what I say anyway. But I still gotta give my thoughts on this so I would have to say that this doesn’t feel like much of a good supplement to the main show from what I recall. Maybe I’ll think differently as we go along, but that’s where I’m at right now. We’ll be going through the other ten episodes weekly regardless, so stay tuned if you’re curious.
