Last week I mentioned the lack of consistency in characters, despite the more focus and confident pacing of Bungou Stray Dogs. Well this we pretty much have the same issues here. The first part focus on Dazai and Nakahara and reveals a bit more about his past while he was in Port Mafia. While Akutagawa is short-tempered and easily offended by Dazai’s words, Nakahara seems wiser and understands Dazai better, which is not to say that he is not manipulated by the always-several-steps-ahead Dazai. I still can’t put my finger on the way Nakahara behave, because his behaviors don’t add up much. Let’s say he came to the place to harass Dazai (which in the end turns out that Dazai was expecting it), he then broke out the chains, fight with our main character, intended to kill him, but then was “blackmailed” so he would give Dazai information, frees the guy and “walks and talks like little rich girl”. The character of Nakahara has absolutely no consistency here. I understand that he held Dazai in high regards, being his former partner and Nakahara understands the guy more than anyone else in Port Mafia. I would understand why he like to harass Dazai but go as far as killing him? Nah. I don’t believe it one bit (although tips off for nice visual), so there was no stake to raise here, indeed he couldn’t bring himself to kill Dazai which brings me to a next point: Why include that scene in a first place? It just seems like it was included to further demonstrate how awesome Dazai is. Everything falls into his plan (including how he was kidnapped in a first place). This, and the very awkward “walking and talking like a girl” bit, the show surely overplayed the superhuman, almost perfect Dazai and make every actions made by Nakahara incoherent.
The second part, though, is as entertainment as Bungou Stray Dogs can get. But still I don’t see the point of Kunikida’s rescue here. How the hell would he thinks that yelling out Atsushi name (so all the people in the ship would hear) the best possible action? And he basically helps nothing except being there for Atsushi to jump as well? So why include him again? Well anyway, the fight between Akutagawa and our main character is great, and it’s really great to see Atsushi can perform his gifts at will and gets better and better at fighting. There are many nice visual in a fighting sequences and the choreography is excellent as well. All that and the reveals of a bigger, more bad-ass boss (F. Scott Fitzgerald, can you believe that?) made a nice touch to the series (I would never think they include writers outside of Japan) and set up nicely to the conflict of second season of the series. Anyway, I like to see more on the conflict between Port Mafia and the Agency so here’s hoping the last few episodes can deliver on that.
~SuperMario~
