Happily, I’ve never experienced a professional failure on the level that Chitose has, but that doesn’t mean I’m not familiar with the feelings she experiences. After all, tripping over your own feet (literally or metaphorically) is something we’re all probably familiar with in someway—and if you’re not, don’t bother reading this article because you’re too perfect and won’t understand what I’m talking about at all.
Let me assure you all that I never expected anything as good as this arc out of Bungo Stray Dogs. After dropping the first season midway through and only coming back with readjusted (read: lower) expectations for the show, I was prepared for this season to be more of the fun and games with a touch of occasional out-of-place seriousness. This arc, adapted from the companion light novels to the original manga, blew those expectations completely out of the water. Series director Takuya Igarashi storyboarded all four episodes himself, and you can tell, because this is not only the best the written material has been, but also on the top levels of the show’s visual richness. What a treat this arc was.
The Summer 2016 season of anime is long over, but I’m still thinking about some of the shows I watched back then—and that’s a good sign. On the whole, I felt it was a pretty okay season, with a more balanced spread of truly great shows and shows that were just fun to watch than we’ve had during the rest of the year.
It’s been quite a while since I first wrote about the orange manga about two-thirds of the way through its publication run on Crunchyroll. That was almost two years ago. Now, an improbable anime adaptation has aired and I am compelled to, at last, put words to the feelings I have about the show. While I probably will continue to regard the manga as the superior version of the story, the merits of the anime adaptation are substantial—and, as you’ll read, ultimately none of that matters when it comes to orange anyways.
