Bungou Stray Dogs Episode 4: The Tragedy of the Fatalist

I have to admit that this wasn’t as great of an episode as I thought it would be. It was all playing out to be serious and thrilling then ended up being a little disappointing. Like…no struggle at all, okay then. The comedy wasn’t bothering me at first but now it really is starting to get on my nerves because I feel like so far we haven’t really done anything in the show. We were introduced to Akutagawa last episode, and we saw that he was speaking to someone in a jail cell so that caught my attention for a bit but nothing happened with that.

The Black Lizard group interested me too. After the events of last episode the Port Mafia targeted Atsushi and declared war on the Agency. We see the Black Lizard Group of Port Mafia massacre a bunch of men working in a warehouse and when Atsushi sees the aftermath of it, he’s terrified that this group, that’s on par with special ops, is the “worst-case scenario” that Kunikida kept talking about. A strong group like them going after the Agency because of him, Atsushi remembers the hurtful words the people at the orphanage told him and decided that he would quit the Agency. Still having her business card, Atsushi calls Higuchi and tells her he’s quitting the Agency, so he doesn’t want the mafia attacking the Agency. But after he hung up, Higuchi calls the Black Lizard group anyway and orders them to attack the Agency, so Atsushi will be sure to never have guards.

We saw that this special group contained many men with machine guns, and two crazy-looking characters that seemed threatening. I thought that there was going to be a huge fight that would carry on in the next episode, or show the raid in the next episode, but I was surprised, and disappointed, to see that everything ended so quickly.

Apparently the “worse-case scenario” Kunikida wouldn’t shut up about was the Black Lizard group raiding their office and causing damages that they would have to pay for. And it seems to have happened a lot, according to Kunikida. When Atsushi was running away, he heard the gunshots and ran to the office. Expecting deaths and a huge fight, instead Atsushi found the members in the office easily fending off the group,with many group members unconscious in a pile. And then one of them started throwing out the men out of the window like trash. Kunikida repeats that Atsushi is part of the Agency and he should think about what he can do, and Atsushi starts crying happily that the thoughts he had in his head was wrong, and that he really is accepted in this group, no matter who he is.

These past four episodes they reusing the same flashback scenes of Atsushi in the orphanage, and I also noticed this episode that the animation wasn’t its best. Some shots were prolonged than normal, faces weren’t drawn in, and sometimes it would just look weird. It wasn’t downright ugly or anything, but you could see the quality dwindle. But holy crap BONES, they’re working on so many shows this year that I’m not surprised at this. I feel like they’ve bitten off more than they can chew, and I feel like the other shows they picked up this year might suffer from this. But not Boku no Hero Academia, that looks fantastic.

Anyway as for this episode, this wasn’t my favorite. I was expecting more out of this. I’m not sure what’s going to happen. I thought that there would be a plot to this but next episode it’s going to be a murder mystery, which seems episodic. I thought we would get an actual plot and conflict related to the Port Mafia and the relationship between Akutagawa and Dazai (who was mostly absent this episode). I suppose the bounty on Atsushi is going to be a recurring conflict, but what else is there going to be? is all I’m wondering.