Bungou Stray Dogs Episode 3: Yokohama Gangster Paradise

Once they had mentioned the Port Mafia, and seeing how Dazai and Akutagawa seemed to have some sort of connection with each other, AND the fact that no one was able to figure out Dazai’s previous occupation, I put two and two together and was easily able to figure out that for Dazai to have a past relationship with Akutagawa, then he had to have been part of the Port Mafia. And he was. Hurray, now give me the reward money!
After the crazy aftermath of last episode, Tanizaki apologizes to Atsushi because he thought he was too rude in the test. He then formally introduces himself and Naomi and let me tell you I’m just not…into their whole touchy feely sibling thing. They look nothing alike and Naomi is all over him and it’s…ick. Well anyway they’re fooling around for a bit in the restaurant they’re in, and they play a little game where Atsushi guesses where each member did previously before joining the Agency, since Atsushi brought it up. He was easily able to guess that the siblings are both students based on Naomi’s uniform, them working part time, and their ages. Turns out, Kunikida used to be a math teacher. Looks like he was a scary one, Kunikida would be the kind of math teacher that I would hate. Also, I’m just not good at math. And I don’t like being yelled at. 🙁

Atsushi tried guessing Dazai’s job, but Kunikida tells him not to even try because NO ONE knows, and now there’s actually a reward of 700,000 yen to the person that actually figures it out. After Atsushi goes crazy making up guesses, Tanizaki gets a call from the Agency that they have a job and they all set out. They meet up with a blonde woman in the office who is complaining about smugglers and shady people lurking around the place where she works and she wants the Agency to look into it. Since it’s not such a huge job, Kunikida appoints Atsushi to it. This type of job isn’t the hardest job and smugglers are usually non-violent, so it’s a perfect job to get Atsushi rolling. Tanizaki is told to go with him, and then that means Naomi is going to tag along too.

It turns out that it was all a trap, though. The woman, Higuchi, is actually part of the Port Mafia. We learned that the Port Mafia is a large group that causes trouble around the city, and before Atsushi had left, Kunikida showed a picture to him of a man named Akutagawa, who’s known to be an extremely dangerous man. He was told that if he were to encounter him, that he should run away. We saw in a previous scene that Akutagawa went into a police station to turn in a lost bag, but we found out that he killed both police officers and planted a bomb into the bag he brought in, blowing up the entire station. We didn’t really get a good look of his ability until later. After Higuchi shot down Naomi (who must have used her ability to survive and protect the others), Tanizaki was enraged and attacked back with his own ability.

He has an interesting ability, but it’s not a combat type. He can summon snow that would make a illusions of the space around him where he could hide himself in. Could be very useful when used right. If Akutagawa hadn’t arrived, he seriously would have choked Higuchi to death. Before, Higuchi had contacted Akutagawa and he finally arrived. Slapping Higuchi across the face for unnecessarily getting into a skurmish with Tanizaki and Naomi, when their target was Atsushi.

Atsushi has a large bounty on him, worth millions. Akutagawa is there to capture Atsushi for reward money, as he was told to do by the mafia boss. For a mafia gang, of course that would capture their attention. Akutagawa uses his own ability, Rashomon, which seems to be a black beast that can destroy anything which also has different levels to its power. It’s actually a pretty terrifying ability as we saw what he did at the police station. I thought that Akutagawa would have a type of connection with Atsushi but it looks like it’s nothing more than business for him to reclaim the bounty, but it looks like I was mistaken and the deep connection Akutagawa seems to have with our main cast is with Dazai. I’m going to guess that they were close with each other, something happened, and now…I don’t know, it’s this. I wonder what we’re going to be seeing out of them later.

Once Dazai arrived, Akutagawa knew they wouldn’t stand a chance against them so he and Higuchi depart, but he promises to visit the Agency office again. Looks like after this episode things are finally going to get rolling. Other people have mentioned that they didn’t like the comedy in this show, and at first I didn’t mind it at all and thought it to be entertaining, but now I really hope that they’ll tone down on the comedy because serious things happened in this episode, and now with the Agency being the mafia’s target, I should expect we’ll be having more encounters like this. And probably emotional things between Dazai and Akutagawa. Akutagawa intrigues me, what with his cool and scary ability, and also with the fact that he seems to be sickly as he was coughing a lot? I have a feeling he’s going to die soon…

Also, how did Atsushi turn into a tiger again? I thought his ability could only be used when there was moonlight. But this was daytime. Also, how in the world did he regenerate his leg? *wags finger* I better get an explanation next week.