Bungo Stray Dogs Vol 4
Rating: 5/5
Buy or Borrow: Buy
Source: Copy courtesy of the publisher!
The American group of ability users known as the "Guild" appears, led by the wealthy Francis Scott Fitzgerald, who has his sights set on the Armed Detective Agency! Can Agency president Fukuzawa stop him...!? Not if Guild member Lucy Montgomery and can help it!
Things are really kicking up a notch in this series, and things are finally getting started. We get two new villains in this volume, both of which will be familiar to fellow book nerds and I'm loving how this series keeps me hooked and keeps me reading.
Kyouka, the new character we met from the last volume, fiiinally joins the agency, which should prove to be interesting over the coming volumes. She clearly has a bond with Atsushi, and I can really relate to her. I got where she was coming from and it was easy to sympathise with her. Atsushi for his part, is really growing and developing as a character which is interesting to see, especially as Kyouka plays a role in it!
In this volume we get to hang out with Kenji for a chapter, getting to know another of the agency members. I'm not sure what word I want to describe Kenji with, whether it's air headed or naive, but he certainly has an interesting way of doing things. We spend another chapter with the mafia, specifically Higuchi. Things are quite precarious for her with Akutagawa out of action and it was interesting to get a look at how the enemy operates. A new ship was kinda born too, while getting a look at the inner workings of the mafia and the relationship between Akutagawa and Higuchi.
As for the rest of the volume, we get a new story arc and you guys.....Fitzgerald is a proper douche. It's brilliant. We have literary figures we're more familiar with popping in, our main characters are based off of Japanese authors, but with this volume and the previous we're getting more and more literary figures...and they're the bad guys. Which I love. I love seeing what their powers are and how it relates to their books. In this volume we have Fitzgerald who's the head bad guy, and Lucy Maud Montgomery (the author of Anne of Green Gables in case you where wondering), who's a complete psycho. I'm seriously living for this series and the literary aspects to it!
We als get another new character, who was shady right from the start and it turns out we've just met the Mafia boss and he's not happy. It looks like there's going to be an all out war between all three organisations which should prove to be interesting. We're delving deeper and deeper in to the plot. Until now, I feel like we've been being introduced to the mafia and the agency, the world of the series and being eased in to everything as we get a feel for how things are between both groups, and over the course of volume three...things started to build up. Another group was introduced, and this volume really starts to kick things off.
This arc ends leaving us open for the next one and for things to finally start in earnest. I'm waiting to see which author is going to pop up next! This series really appealed to the book nerd part of me, and since last volume we've started to get in to the more obvious literary aspects with the authors and a few references. I actually get so excited when I spot one! We got a really fun guide to the Japanese authors our group are based on, and I'm hoping for more of that in the coming volumes!
With volume four, there's more action, drama and excellent artwork. I love the way the abilities are drawn, and the characters. The story moves along in this book as the Guild makes their move and comes out as an opponent, with the Mafia opting to fight back too. The agency has two enemies coming for them, and things are going to get even more exciting!
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