Bungo Stray Dogs, Volume 3: The Untold Origins of the Detective Agency

This is more of a 3.5 rating than a 4 star. The writing for these kind of wavers between okay, enjoyable (mostly coasting off decent plots), and cringe, and this one was at least funnier than the series light novels tend to be. I genuinely laughed relatively often with the first short story in it, about how Atsushi's entrance exam was picked.

The second short story, which takes up the majority of the book and is about how the agency began, is honestly a bit boring overall. It's interesting to see how Fukuzawa and Ranpo met, and the plot is relatively entertaining as BSD light novel plots go, though far less compelling than Storm Bringer, Dead Apple, or Dazai, Chuuya, Age Fifteen. Part of the issue is that I don't like Ranpo very much, at show more least compared to other characters. He's fun, he can be funny, and it's interesting to see him solve things. The story does handle him interestingly, and to be fair, he is 14 in this, so it's unsurprising that he's a whiny child. He's just... also whinier than he usually is when he's in his 20s and that's not all that enjoyable.

The art was all right. I don't know if I'm in the minority of folks who prefers the anime art over the manga art, but I definitely prefer it over the light novel art, at least for this one. Other light novels had much better art, or at least depicted more interesting scenes by and large.

Overall it's another light novel. It's currently/has been animated by Studio Bones for season 4, so if you'd like to just see a visual version rather than read this, you're going to be able to very soon. As of this writing, Episode 1 has been out for a number of days. There are definitely differences in the animation, with callbacks to things later in the manga story, as well as what looks like some very economical cutting for time of character backstories and descriptions, which are normal in the process of adapting books to anime. It's not necessarily worse, though you do get more informative backstory by reading the book. If you're curious, reading the novel isn't a waste of your time. But it's not the best of these by a long shot, unless you really love Ranpo and Fukuzawa. The short story to start with isn't even that thrilling because it's mostly Kunikida melting down and Dazai being annoying, even if he's sometimes funny. But generally it's an interesting addition to the anime. show less