Bungo Stray Dogs Season 5

Episode 61

“Was there really no other way?” is one of the most challenging questions to answer. It implies unfathomable pain, a choice made when it feels like it shouldn't have been, and a sequence of events with no happy endings. It's an impossible position, an untenable decision, and likely to hurt everyone involved. Was there really no other way? With the choices made, it falls to hindsight to answer, and we all know how well that tends to work out. Fukuchi seems to have been operating in a sort of prophetic hindsight, trusting blindly in the vision of a horrific world war that his Ability showed up, and the result is the horror show we've spent many episodes watching unfold. He was a decayed angel, a being with good intentions warped and ruined by how he thought he had to carry them out.

But as we see in this week's season finale, Abilities aren't infallible. Bra-chan being freed by Aya (this season's amazing dark horse of a character) renders Fukuchi's Ability moot by removing the vampire lord from his control, and even before then, Chuuya and Dazai proved that being under his control can be very easily faked with some false fangs, contact lenses, and a throaty growl-scream. If a preteen girl with enough determination can subvert your skills, they're the furthest thing from a perfect superpower. But emotional pain? That's so much easier to inflict and rely on because it takes decades sometimes to recover from a really good blow. Fukuchi's final act of tossing the burden onto Fukuzawa's shoulders is probably the cruelest thing he's done and one his old friend will carry with him for a long, long time.

The reveal that Fukuchi's grand plan was to eliminate all war by creating a single coalition of humans feels weirdly naïve for someone who wreaked so much havoc. The man formed groups inside of groups, manipulated world leaders, and meddled with time, all for a goal that was about as deep as a puddle. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see an end to all wars. But I'm also cynical enough to doubt humanity's capability to pull it off for any length of time. There's always one person who thinks they deserve more who'll come along and mess things up. Ranpo seems to understand that more than the others as he muses on the way Fukuchi was the first person to celebrate the Agency's formation with him and Fukuzawa, and Dazai also realizes that things are never going to be as straightforward as people would like to paint them; his entire double-cross is based around playing with Dostoyevsky's expectations and assumptions. The only person who could be said to be acting honestly, selflessly, and for the greater good is Aya, and I don't think it's any coincidence that she's a child – just as Fukuchi is shown to be when he first tells Fukuzawa his dream.

As far as final episodes go, this is a good one. Aya deciding to throw herself off the roof, Akutagawa biting Atsushi, Dostoyevsky walking out of prison, and Fukuchi starting the apocalypse are all strong moments in and of themselves. The use of black-and-white imagery is breathtaking. The explanations are all solid, too, and someone ought to give Dazai and Chuuya some award for pulling their ruse off. The post-credits scene reassures us that the story isn't over yet, even if evil onmyouji Fukuchi wasn't something I was dying to see (or expecting). But even though things are mostly resolved, and the world is temporarily safe, there's a hollowness here, a sadness that hearkens back to the death of Odasaku and Atsushi grappling with the loss of the priest, even in Dostoyevsky's final words about wondering if even God has betrayed him. The world keeps on turning no matter how much you wish it might just pause for a minute, and even though this battle's won, many people will be nursing new wounds for a long time.

We'll see how that pans out when we eventually get a new season. In the meantime, we can all take bets on how long it will take Chuuya to get those fake fangs off his teeth because gravity doesn't affect superglue.

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Bungo Stray Dogs is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.