English Dub Review: Bungo Stray Dogs WAN Episode 11

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

A younger Dazai discusses making New Year’s cards with his friends from his time in the Port Mafia.

OUR TAKE

Our penultimate chapter in this lighthearted parody season actually takes a bit of a darker turn, which you would expect from it being titled “The Dark Era”. This takes its name from the Dark Era arc from the original manga and anime which marked Dazai’s time with the Port Mafia, prior to him joining the Armed Detective Agency which his a part of in the present day story. Obviously going into the grittier details of how all of that went down wouldn’t quite fit the established tone of this comedy spin-off, but thankfully that doesn’t mean they are just limited to being one tone of comedic. However, instead of doing the multiple skits of characters in wacky shenanigans, we have a bit more wistful bottle episode that takes place solely at a bar, with three characters as past versions of themselves reflecting on the past and what the future might bring. It’s stories like these in this format that I think shows how much larger the emotional range is for anime comedy versus other comparable comedy spin-offs of western shows. You probably aren’t going to see something this sentimental on Teen Titans Go, for better or worse.

Of course, this is also likely only made possible because this is a Dazai based story. Dazai has been characterized as a pretty tragic person, even among the rest of the cast with their own angst ridden backstories, but he puts on a happy face about it (even if he is constantly asking to die), likely making that tragedy even more blatant. His friendship shown here with Ango and Sakunosuke, while having a lot of go over my head as someone who has seen only a portion of the story, still resonates as being about three friends with an easily identifiable dynamic and having a hidden layer of bittersweetness. Even without much of the context, I can still tell that these three were quite close during their time together, making the fact that two moved on from the Port Mafia while another died in it all the more heart wrenching. The previous ten episodes have basically worked solely on a superficial comedy level, which was acceptable at most but clearly not the best this version of the story had to offer. Thankfully we got a gem like this before the season was up, which will conclude next week with the finale. See you then.