I don’t want to imply that I’m still half awake, but I just tried to title this document by editing the url and not the post title. I caught it in time though. Crisis averted. Speaking of crises, when the previous season of Bungo Stray Dogs ended, things were not looking particularly well for the cast. Even though I wasn’t going to do these weekly episode discussions any more, due to needing to focus on writing other things, I did promise I’d cover the rest of this series when it came out. So that’s where we’re at right now. I’m pretty excited for what’s to come, if I’m honest. So if you’re like me and you want to dive into this world once more, please join me in these weekly threads, which will probably be the last ones I’ll do for a while. Let’s get started.
Now I would be remiss if I didn’t give you a small recap of what happened last season, since we do kind of jump into the middle of a story arc. An organization only known as V or Five has been terrorizing the Armed Detective Agency and just the general population. One of their members and presumed leader, Fyodor, is currently in jail. Dazai is also in this same sci-fi looking jail. In the meantime, his organization – which officially goes by The Decay of Angels – is working out some grand conspiracy with the help of a powerful book that allows you to write things into reality. Using this book, they’ve made the world think that the Detective Agency is a group of terrorists which has led the military police group The Hunting Dogs to chase them. Fights and chaos ensue and the members are on the run. All of this culminates in a showdown in a flying casino where Sigma – a member of Decay of Angels – rules. Tachihara of the hunting dogs now believes that the Agency is innocent, so things might be changing sooner rather than later.
That was a lot, but if you’ve seen the show it should be enough of a reminder.
I honestly don’t remember if Kunikida was confirmed to still be alive in the previous season, but it’s good to see him either way. He gets asked to join the hunting dogs so they’ll heal his missing arms. Turns out he didn’t get out of it unscathed. Since I’m already going long on this post I’ll save the opening sequence for next week. We also learn that it’s about time for Yosano’s execution and on top of all of that a sniper is aiming at Kunikida. Things still look just as bad as ever, I’m sorry for my earlier optimism.
Speaking of things that look bad, Sigma awakens, being saved by Nikolai from almost certain death. These Decay of Angels folks are really hard to kill. Nikolai explains the trick to his fake death, but Sigma doesn’t quite understand why he didn’t die right there, as the plan was. Friendly reminder that Nikolai is completely insane and is apparently now planning to kill Fyodor. Silver linings, I suppose. Atsushi has collapsed in the middle of them planning their next step and it turns out he’s basically poisoned at this point. When he gets back up he confesses to knowing where the page is. Sigma seemed to have imprinted the information into Atsushi. Whether he did this willingly or not is another question. It turns out he might not be poisoned but just overwhelmed by information. We learn where the page is. It’s in the hands of the Angels’ leader, Kamui.
We move back to Kunikida who luckily sees the sniper in time. The sniper wasn’t alone though, and here we see Kamui for the first time, gassing Kunikida. They’re wearing a gas mask though, so who knows who they are. The voice at leasts sounds masculine. According to Atsushi, his goal is to kill everyone in the Agency, but Kamui walks off with Kunikida still alive, and someone targets Yosano while she’s already on her way to being executed. It doesn’t seem to tell the full story. Either he wants to do some sort of ritualistic execution or he has other plans. Fukuzawa is the next big target, but he seems to know who Kamui is. Tell us then, don’t leave us hanging like this. Meanwhile Fyodor and Dazai are playing games in the prison to stifle their boredom. It can’t get more laidback than this, although I’m sure there’s more to it.
Some small part of me was hoping this Kamui figure was someone from the agency, but I didn’t dare have hope after having my hopes crushed so many times in the previous season. It turns out that Ranpo had been planning some things behind the scenes and has now freed Fukuzawa. Is it really comeback time? But if Atsushi felt like Kamui was in the middle of an assassination who was he assassinating? Or was Ranpo’s plan so good it even tricked Atsushi’s sixth sense. I have questions, but I’m sure we’ll get answers as time goes on. It makes me wonder if Kamui really does look like how Ranpo looked here, or if he’s different. And of course Poe was involved. I did think the phone looked suspect. Their friendship – or lack thereof – will always be a joy to watch.
We then switch to a completely different scene. There’s a press conference about to be held by the son of KS Company’s president. No clue who that is, but I’m guessing they’re about to be important. The people attending are talking about how big of a deal the terrorist attacks by the Armed Detective Agency are. And this lady brings up a good point, what would their motive be? We see Ranpo at the conference, probably instead of whoever was supposed to be here. Now the question is if this is real Ranpo or a fake. Seeing as he’s defending the agency, it looks to be the real Ranpo. Ranpo finally reveals the truth to the public in an over the top manner, like we’ve come to expect from the guy. He asks the people to think for themselves and not from the position of being a cop. That makes sense, knowing how the text on the page would work. I am kind of sad that this was a split cour. I think this episode would have hit much harder had it been right after episode 13 of the previous season. But maybe that’s just me. I ended up writing a lot, I hope you all enjoyed my ramblings and you’re just as excited for this show as I am. Thanks for reading.
Opal Kaharis 