One of the anime titles coming in the Winter 2023 season that has a huge following and loads of excitement about its premiere in the next few days is the upcoming fourth season of the anime adaptation of the supernatural mystery manga, Bungo Stray Dogs, created by Kakfa Asagiri and illustrated by Sango Harukawa. Set to drop on Jan 4, 2023, Bungo Stray Dogs season 4 follows the narrow failure of Fyodor Dostoevsky's plan to disturb the balance in Yokohama by having the Port Mafia and Armed Detective Agency engage what would eventually become all-out war.
With two trailers teasing the arrival of Yokohama's next big catastrophe and a particular group's targeting of the Armed Detective Agency, the fourth season of Bungo Stray Dogs is set to be an epic ride as the very fate of the central faction comes into question. Here's some of what you can expect from Bungo Stray Dogs season 4.
What Is Known (From the Trailers)
The first Bungo Stray Dogs season 4 trailer is an 80-second whirlwind that quickly shows the upcoming season's most important plot line – the Armed Detective Agency is being targeted by a group known as the Decay of the Angel, and to make things worse, there's a conspiracy to frame the agency. Ranpo Edogawa's abilities of deduction are put to the ultimate test as the Armed Detective Agency's reputation is sullied, and its members hunted for unknown reasons. Despite being captive, Dostoevsky appears to have an important role in the events that are going to play out in the upcoming season, and features heavily in both trailers. It's clear that he isn't yet done throwing Yokohama into chaos.
In the first Bungo Stray Dogs season 4 trailer, a voice can be heard imploring his friends and colleagues not to accept a certain job because it will spell the end of the Armed Detective Agency. As the voice continues, the visuals of the first trailer show the leader of the Armed Detective Agency, Yukichi Fukuzawa, accepting an award or gift at an auspicious-looking ceremony, before the visuals get darker and shift to the clearly shellshocked face of Edogawa, followed by what appears to be a brief snippet of someone falling from height. The first trailer, given that it's a teaser, is a short and chaotic introduction to the upcoming fourth season; however, a second, longer trailer was released a few days before Christmas, in which one can get a better understanding of the unfolding situation.
The Situation
In both trailers, Ranpo features as a central character as he is seen investigating the conspiracy against the Armed Detective Agency. While the Decay of the Angel is definitely an enemy of the Armed Detective Agency this season, they also have to deal with the threat of a faction known as the Hunting Dogs – the strongest unit in the military police. With Dazai's arrest by these mysterious operatives, the Armed Detective Agency is without its most important member, and this serves to fracture them just enough for their enemies to feel confident enough to pounce. As can be heard in the trailer, the Hunting Dogs are a faction established to enact order, and they introduce themselves as a group that will "tear through all those who oppose human ethics". These five officers will hunt down the various members of the Armed Detective Agency, who are without their most important member and separated from each other due to the notoriety they've gained somewhat overnight.
The Bungo Stray Dogs anime, up to the third season, has adapted material up to somewhere around chapter 53, so the following chapters are what is being adapted into the fourth season. Chapter 54 begins with a mysterious man on a rooftop carrying someone on his back, with a shovel in his hand. He says something cryptic but ominous nonetheless:
Death – a kind of spasm. Murder – a totem of the frail. I am the angel of murder, the King of Crime.
The line he delivers is chilling as in the following panels, the man uses the shovel to deliver a killing blow to the individual, whose identity remains unknown. In the following pages, someone in a stuffed animal costume is shown visiting Doppo Kunikida in prison. If one recalls Bungo Stray Dogs season 3, Kunikida was unfortunately mixed up in a little girl's suicide bombing, and he is being held responsible for her death despite telling the authorities what happened. According to Ranpo's exposition, the grenades used by the little girl share the same model number as those used by the Armed Detective Agency, and without any witnesses, the evidence points towards Kunikida. However, Ranpo understands that it was all a trap set by Dostoevsky, and a really nasty one at that. Ranpo is determined to clear Kunikida's name, because he feels partly responsible for the current state of affairs. He blames himself for not having seen the trap set out by Dostoevsky in Bungo Stray Dogs season 3, which is something he expresses in the first Bungo Stray Dogs season 4 trailer. From the way this new arc is introduced in the manga, Ranpo's primacy in the trailers, as well as the source of the murder accusations trailing the Armed Detective Agency is clear; however, these introductory pages are yet to detail exactly what kind of trial awaits.
Edogawa's Investigation
Ranpo tells Kunikida that he thinks that the enemy has an individual responsible for the disposal of evidence, a role crucial to maintaining the lie that has put Kunikida in jail and the Armed Detective Agency's reputation in question. Ranpo goes to the Sky Tree (in Tokyo), where he runs into Edgar Allan Poe and tells him about what he told Kunikida. Ranpo expects to spot the evidence suppressor from the observation deck, and since he knows what the man looks like, it seems like waiting there is a good idea. When Ranpo presents the information sheet with the identity of the evidence suppressor, the picture looks like the murderer shown in the beginning of the chapter. Edgar Allan Poe, despite being someone who hates crowds, is presently at the observation deck of the Tokyo Sky Tree in order to make a black market purchase of the final novel of a mystery author who was murdered. The author had recently written a murder-mystery that was impossible for anyone to crack, and upon its completion, the author was murdered in a manner that mimics his hard-to-crack novel. Ranpo is quick to deduce that Poe is meeting with someone who will be selling him the manuscript to that novel, so Poe tells Ranpo that the man he's scheduled to meet said he'd come holding a red envelope.
Ranpo spots one such envelope on one of the windows and when they take it, an arrow pointing upwards becomes visible. In that instant, a man is seen falling to his death from the region towards which the arrow was pointing. The man looks just like the evidence suppressor Ranpo needed to help bust Kunikida out of jail; however, the mystery gets even more confusing as it turns out that the evidence suppressor faked his own death. In the trailers for the upcoming fourth season of Bungo Stray Dogs, various character voice-overs speak of the Armed Detective Agency as criminals, so the problem doesn't end with Kunikida's arrest. Various pieces come together in this part of the Bungo Stray Dogs narrative, such as the falling deceased; the killer of the novelist; Kunikida's arrest and the subsequent arrival of the Decay of Angels.
The Decay
The character who is featured both trailers loudly proclaiming that it is "quiz time" is introduced in Bungo Stray Dogs chapter 57, after Ranpo manages to solve the mystery of the murdered novelist. This man, Gogol, introduces the Decay of the Angel as an underground murder terrorist society, and "the five fingers who will bring the divine to their demise". The voice heard in the trailer that implores the Armed Detective Agency not to take a certain important job is that of Mushitarо̄ Oguri, a man being manipulated by Dostoevsky to set into motion the actual series of events that will lead to the Armed Detective Agency's ruin. He features prominently in the case Ranpo solves regarding the murdered novelist, and it is his introduction that actually kicks off the major events to come in Bungo Stray Dogs season 4.