All Bungo Stray Dogs Seasons, Ranked From Worst to Best

While it may not be as immediately recognizable as shows like Demon Slayer or My Hero Academia, Bungo Stray Dogs has delivered multiple excellent seasons of literary superpower-themed battles, and we’re going to rank each season from worst to best!

Ranking Bungo Stray Dogs Seasons From Worst To Best

For those unfamiliar with the manga or anime, Bungo Stray Dogs is a series that follows the Armed Detective Agency, a group of people with supernatural abilities that use them to protect the city of Yokohama. What separates Bungo Stray Dogs from other series is how each of the main characters is an interpretation of a famous author and their superpowers are themed after one of their works. For example, Edgar Allen Poe is present in the series and his superpower is based on his stories Black Cat and The Murders In The Rue Morgue.

Outside of that gimmick, the show excels at having a large cast of characters with deep and far-reaching narratives that span decades. Some of these stories are character-centered dramas, others are filled with action setpieces, and the series even delves into massive global conspiracies and power plays for nigh indestructible superweapons. So with that in mind, we’re going to look at all five seasons of this unconventional series and see which are the best.

With that being said, here is our ranking of every season of Bungo Stray Dogs, from worst to best!

5. Season 3

Season 3 of Bungo Stray Dogs suffers not because of the quality of the writing or the drama of seeing the origins of Osamu Dazai, but because the season feels incomplete. The season starts with a flashback that shows Dazai’s early days in the Port Mafia, but it doesn’t add anything to the show other than emphasizing the friendship between Dazai and his old partner, Chuya Nakahara. It’s fine, but doesn’t add anything meaningful to the season’s central conflict thematically.

The conflict, where the Armed Detective Agency is forced to fight against the Port Mafia thanks to one of the show’s central villains, Fyodor Dostoevsky, delivers some good twists but feels like it retreads parts of the first season. Besides, after watching the two organizations team up during the second season, season 3 feels like a regression that’s just stalling until the next big conflict.

4. Season 5

By far the most complicated season as of this writing, this is a direct continuation of the events of season 4 where the Amred Detective Agency are labeled as enemies of the state. This climax features our heroes fighting the clandestine organization Decay of Angels and their incredibly powerful members. While the fight scenes are excellent and showcase how insurmountable the odds are against the Armed Detective Agency, like having to contend with an army of vampires controlled by Bram Stoker, most of the events feel drawn out and move at a snail’s pace, not helped by how a large portion of the arc centers on a little girl.

There’s a great game of cat-and-mouse between Dazai and Fyodor that’s been built up across multiple seasons, but season 5 reveals its hand a bit too early and doesn’t know what to do for the rest of its runtime.

3. Season 1

Season 1 may seem a bit tame by comparison when we see how large the conflicts of the show become, but it does an excellent job of establishing the large cast of heroes and villains the show is famous for. Each episode tends to focus on a character, whether it be the show’s protagonist Atsushi Nakajima, or the team’s resident detective Edogawa Ranpo.

We also get a real sense of the rivalry between the Port Mafia and the Armed Detective Agency and the emotional core of the season comes from the relationship between Atsushi and an assassin for the Port Mafia, Kyoka Izumi, and their coming to terms with their upbringings and the persecution they faced for being gifted. Again, it’s not as complex or well crafted as later seasons, but it still delivers a great introduction for Bungo Stray Dogs.

2. Season 4

Season 4, on the surface, feels similar to Season 3 in a lot of ways. The season starts off with a flashback that lasts for multiple episodes, though this one focuses on the origins of the Armed Detective Agency, and its central conflict doesn’t get started until we’re halfway through the season. However, what helps make season 4 so enjoyable are the individual episodes themselves, which focus on Ranpo and his mystery-solving abilities.

The rest of the season then centers on how the Decay of Angels frames the Armed Detective Agency for murder and manipulates the government into trying to eliminate them with their gifted military unit, the Hunting Dogs. It’s a white-knuckle conflict that features plenty of twists and turns and some truly bleak situations for our heroes, but much like how Infinity War is arguably better than Endgame, the early stages of this massive war were its best.

2. Season 2

Season 2 is a perfect, self-contained piece of entertainment that fully lives up to the series’ premise. This season of Bungo Stray Dogs has the Armed Detective Agency and Port Mafia put their differences aside to take down a mutual threat – the Guild. The Guild, an organization of American gifted led by F. Scott Fitzgerald, tries to lead a hostile takeover of Yokohama in order to find an object known as “The Book,” an item most of the powers in the show are vying over. This is probably the most action-heavy season of Bungo Stray Dogs, but that leads to some of its best moments, including the fight against Fitzgerald.

Even the first third of the season, which is yet again another flashback arc, is probably the best one in the show, as it focuses on explaining why Dazai left the Port Mafia. It’s a great blend of character drama and action sequences that make season 2 the best season of Bungo Stray Dogs.