Bungo Stray Dogs 5

Bungou Stray Dogs Season 5 also known as the embodiment of Deus Ex Machina, starts to overstay its welcome with the excessive plot twists. On top of giving too much screen time to Atsushi who continues to be 100% irrelevant. Animation / Art / General Visuals - 9/10 ----------------------------------------------- The show continues to look great. Great scenery art and solid action animations. Sound / Music / Voice Acting - 9/10------------------------------------------ Top notch stuff. Great music, voice acting, additional sounds. Story - 7/10 ------------- I'm starting to get tired. S4 was fun, but S5 undoes a lot of the build-up by producing one story twist after another, all of which seem excessively contrived, and full of deus ex machina moments that ruin the narrative cohesion. Nobody ever dies. Everyone is always found to have been magically saved 2 episodes later, using one excuse after another. The entire season is a never-ending game of "I knew that you knew, that I knew that you knew, that I knew that you knew...". We have Ranpo, Dazai, Ando, Fyodr and others endlessly one-up each-other in ever more unbelievable ways. It's like watching Code Geass, except instead of following along the gradual planning of Lelouch, we're stuck as an out of loop third party, just watching all the craziness go down without having a clue. The main villain's motivations are only barely believable thanks to my own imagination, because the show surely hasn't fleshed out the world enough to make me relate to his mindset. We basically have to take his word that his rationale is solid, because there's no real supporting evidence for it. And the way it all played out in the end was absolute confusion. The season ended and I still didn't know who actually "won" and who "lost". Except I have a feeling that it's we, the viewers, who lost hours from our life watching this mess. Characters - 6/10 --------------------- A let down after Season 4. This time around, we have excessive focus on a bunch of fanatics. Most of the Detective Agency and Port Mafia is side-lined. The Guild is basically all absent. Ranpo is stuck carrying a large part of the weight, while Atsushi once again does his best to be the worst anime character ever created. My god, for the second season in a row, Atsushi continues to be 100% dead weight, with the story being in no way affected whether he existed or not. He still hasn't found any confidence in doing anything. He loses every fight he's in for the second season in a row. Like straight up, he hasn't managed to do anything successfully. And to make it worse, the show creates a 1 minute cliffhanger scene at the end featuring Atsushi as someone who's gonna be relevant in S6. Even though we already know that he's never gonna do anything because the character is clearly written to be utterly useless until the end of time. --- Total - 7/10 --- Bungou Stray Dogs Season 5 is a let down in my book. S4 started building up a fascinating storyline, but it all kinda fell flat because of excessively tangled up deus ex machina filled narrative. Still, the show looks great, and the characters for the most part are fun. Except Atsushi of course. He should never have existed. Here's me begging god again that S6 finally writes him out of the show. Please god. Make him trip and break his neck or drown in his bathtub or something. That character does not deserve the animation effort.

I don't get why anime fans are not talking about it. The first 3 seasons are good, but 4 and 5 are simply amazing. To those who are looking for a good anime and have exhausted the common choices this is the best anime. It has good story, action, mystery, suspense, comedy and all the things required of a great anime. The animation is good, characters are relatively well written, each with a unique power/ability. The deployment of the abilities in unique ways, and mystery and suspense are the best part about it (especially season 4 and 5). So far BSD Season 5 and Bleach TYBW arethe best series of 2023.

Season 5 of Bungou Stray Dogs continues to directly build upon the events of Season 4, though in a much less character driven way this time, which paved the way for a more fast paced, action packed season that also had many twists. That comes with the positive of keeping me at the edge of my seat in suspense for what was to come, but gave me less to think about after each episode ended, as it wasn’t as full of depth as the previous season was. It also did what few anime do nowadays, pass the current chapter of the manga to the pointof having a finale episode that covered scenes not seen in the source material. Seeing the fact that no one knew what the end had in store was definitely an exciting time, and it was overall once again another thrilling season. The plot builds upon the finale of Season 4 at the Sky Casino, and continues with the Detective Agency trying to clear their name, with the Hunting Dogs hot on their tail. Their goal was to capture Kamui, the leader of the Decay of Angels, but it turns out a familiar face is the one behind it all. The thing that impressed me the most with this season was that the stakes felt higher than ever before, with the fate of a lot of the characters genuinely uncertain, and with that uncertainty, it does a great job in creating that feeling where I was actually scared if a character would be killed. The one thing that was the source of some frustration to me was the one of the villain’s ability, as it was so overpowered that no one could stop him. However, as these stories tend to go, it would seem like he would have to be defeated at one point, and I felt however way the protagonists ended up winning would be through a deus ex machina. That said, I really liked the villains, as they were very crafty (especially Fyodor), and twisted enough to make things very interesting to watch. The story might not always be written at a very high standard, but it gets the job done in an immensely entertaining way, despite the flaws. Production wise, much like the previous seasons, it was very consistent, and the soundtrack continued to be solid, along with an excellent opening and ending song. The focus on the characters was not that balanced this time around, with some characters being virtually absent for the entire season, but the cast of characters that were present were about as good as before, though this time around, it wasn’t as emotional as last season, which had numerous backstories that really fleshed out the characters. Like I mentioned before, it was more of an action packed season, along with a lot of mind games in the form of twists. It was great to see the return of Aya though, as she was a nice character that appeared in one of the OVAs before. Overall, another extremely thrilling, enthralling roller coaster that had me looking forward to each subsequent episode, and while it was less emotional, with some notable negatives and some poor tonal shifts, it still got the job done. We likely won’t see another season since the anime has passed the recent manga chapter, but whenever a sequel happens, I’m sure I’ll be there yet again to witness it.

If I had to summarise this season I'll have to say "it's pain and suffering". This season was perfect, the suspense and anxiety it makes you have are priceless. I believe Atsushi didn't have much protagonism; nevertheless, it didn't bother me. I also loved the way they explain some characters in more detail, such as Kenji. In every episode they play with your feelings, things don't how as planned most of the time. There are parts, which could be seen as predictable, but I believe they compensate having characters such as Fyodor or Dazai, you never know what's gonna happen with them. A highlight forthis season, for me, would be the interaction those two had, it was amazing (altho I do think there are parts in the manga that would have been refreshing if they had been animated). I think the ending leaves a lot of questions, I honestly believe there were things that didn't have an explanation; still, they will hopefully explain it in the next season. I really recommend it if you like not knowing what's gonna happen next and if you like watching the main characters struggle, this season definitely made the script seem as if it was against the "good ones"