Bungo Stray Dogs Writer Discusses Creative Process and Plans for the Story’s Future

One half of the Bungo Stray Dogs creative duo has revealed how they construct the story of the popular manga, including how they pair characters and how they pick which characters to feature.

Bungo Stray Dogs, written by Kafka Asagiri and illustrate by Sango Harukawa, began serialization in Kadokawa Shoten’s seinen manga magazine Young Ace since 2012. The series has recorded over 10 million copies in circulation as of 2022. Bungo Stray Dogs inspired an anime adaptation, produced by Studio Bones, and is currently in its fifth season. Asagiri sat down for an interview with Crunchyroll at Anime Expo where Season 5 premiered.

Since Bungo Stray Dogs revolve around characters who possess, not only supernatural gifts, but the names of famous historical literary figures, Asagiri was asked how they picked who would be featured in the manga. The writer explained they think from the perspective of how they can expand on the character. “When it comes to the theme of Bungo Stray Dogs and the literary figures within, everyone already has an image in their mind of what those authors are like. With that in mind, I ask myself, ‘How much are we able to expand on their character, their background? How can we express that in the story with the other characters [in the story] in mind to come up with some kind of harmonious relationship?‘ I think of those elements very carefully and plan it out so that all comes together smoothly.”

Each character has a specific skill that is related to the literary figure’s work, such as Dazai’s No Longer Human ability and Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment ability. Asagiri often takes inspiration from both the author and specific scenes from their respective works and brought up Dostoyevsky as an example. “He has absolutely no similarities to Dostoevsky,” they said. “I took inspiration from Dostoevsky’s book, Brothers of Karamazov, in which there is a scene where Ivan has a conversation with the devil. I based Fyodor off of this.”

Crunchyroll praised Asagiri’s ability to pair unlikely characters and create an appealing dynamic and asked if it was intentional or by coincidence. The writer confessed the pairings often occurred both ways. “Dazai and Chuya…really don’t get along. They’re complete opposites,” they confessed. “As for Ranpo and Poe, you see that there is that similarity with their names ending in that sound ‘po.’ I took that as inspiration to pair them up and make the two of them have a deeper relationship.” Asagiri hoped to write Jono and Tetcho as a potential pairing, setting then up as possible rivals.

For other pairings, such as Dazai and Fyodor and Fukuzawa and Mori, they serve more of a narrative purpose where they “make sure that the story progresses and moves forward.”

With a large majority of the characters being based off of well-known literary figures, Asagiri recognized that this resulted in many characters being of European origins. They have revealed they plan on including less well known characters: “From now on, however, I would like to start using not-so-well-known, less famous authors from several different countries to introduce into the story.”

Season 5 of Bungo Stray Dogs is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Source: Crunchyroll