Bungou Stray Dogs is a massive literature reference

September 20, 2022

Bungou Stray Dogs is a massive literature reference

There is a reason for why Bungou Stray Dogs is mainstream in Japan and hasn’t reached anything close to that popularity in the rest of the world. It has to do with its very core: the premise.

Bungou Stray Dogs is a manga/anime about an orphan teenager, Atsushi Nakajima, who is dragged into the world of supernatural powers. Atsushi is forced to join the “Armed detective agency”, a group of gifted supernatural users who use them to solve cases, by the second protagonist, Dazai Osamu. There are multiple important organizations that the plot revolves around, such as the Port Mafia, the Guild and the Rats in the House of the Dead. The manga is written by Asagiri Kafka and illustrated by Harukawa Sango and the anime adaptation was made by studio Bones. There’s also a miniseries, multiple light novels and movies made.

Okay so nothing shocking so far, right? Well, the key to this is the characters and their supernatural powers. Each and every character is based on a real life writer and their supernatural abilities based on their work. So Bungou Stray Dogs is actually just a massive reference to world literature.

Here lies the key to its Japanese popularity. The main characters, either in the Armed Detective Agency or the Port Mafia, are based off of Japanese writers. The rest of us most likely do not know who writers such as Atsushi Nakajima, Dazai Osamu or Ranpo Edogawa were, but they are names Japanese people already learn in school.

The premise and its appeal doesn’t strike us nearly as hard, since you will only start to wonder about it in the later episodes when you encounter familiar sounding names such as Fyodor Dostoevsky, Francis Fitzgerald, Agatha Christie, John Steinbeck or H. P Lovecraft.

Because these are all references which aren’t outright stated in the show, you can completely miss out on the fact that there are references to begin with until American and Russian writers are introduced. It really isn’t clear from the first chapter/episode to the rest of the world, the way it is to the Japanese viewer. Most of the abroad fans are either literature nerds or fans who found the story otherwise interesting and stayed, not because the greatest hook the show has to offer actually worked.

I’d call this phenomenon something of a translation error that just cannot be properly translated. Even though the Japanese culture has slowly become more well known in the world over the years, its literature hasn’t. That’s why the hook of Bungou Stray Dogs will never work elsewhere like it did in Japan.

But let me talk more about the references themselves! For the most part the names of the abilities are the names of their famous work (there are a couple of exceptions of course). For example, Fyodor Dostoevsky’s ability name is “Crime and Punishment”, Margaret Michell’s, “Gone With the Wind” and Louisa Alcott’s “Little Women”.

The connection doesn’t end with the abilities, since the characters’ personalities are from the writers themselves or from their work (their own characters or otherwise). For example, Atsushi Nakajima (the writer) was described having an unhappy childhood and to never talk about his work due to his sensitive and introverted nature. Atsushi (the character) was raised in an orphanage and struggles with insecurity issues.

The last thing I want to mention is how the characters’ relationships, to some extent, are also inspired by the authors’ relationships. Ryūonosuke Akutagawa, for instance, was interested as a child of Mori Ōgai’s works, and in the show Akutagawa is Ōgai’s subordinate. Dazai Osamu and Chūya Nakahara did not get along in real life and neither do they in fiction.

Credit to this one goes to u/keyblade_crafter on r/BungouStrayDogs

Can you guess who's the author of Moby Dick or The Great Gatsby?

Bungou Stray Dogs is a manga/anime that does not open to the viewer properly without the full context, which I at least tried to open up a bit here. The show will make you want to look into the characters more by reading about the authors, and before you know it you’re at your local bookstore buying some classic literature. (Or maybe that’s just me~)