Bungo Stray Dogs (Light Novel) Volume 9 Review

The Bungo Stray Dogs manga is officially ending “Part 1” this month. At the time of writing, none of us knows what that actually means for the future of the series, but at least the story isn’t over quite yet! In the meantime, there’s still plenty of other things going on in the franchise, such as the release of the new light novel in English – Bungo Stray Dogs: The Day I Took In Dazai. Is this a must-have? Let’s find out!

Like many of the light novels written for the franchise, this one is set in the past. We follow Sakunosuke Oda, who is living a simple life as a deliveryman. One day, he happens to find a child (who we later learn is Osamu Dazai) on his doorstep, on the brink of death from various bullet wounds. Oda knows the most sensible thing would be to leave the boy to die on the street, but instead, he takes him in and carefully nurses him back to health.

Dazai wasn’t particularly looking for someone to help him, and he’s more annoyed than grateful toward Oda. Dazai, at this point in the Bungo Stray Dogs timeline, is working with the Port Mafia and still desperately seeking a painless way to die. Even if Oda hadn’t helped save his life, dying from his wounds would have been fine with him. But Oda refuses to sit by and watch someone so young throw away their life. Oda desperately tries to find a way to get the boy to feel some kind of passion for life.

However, both of their lives are soon in danger when a group known as the Forty-Eight takes them hostage, seeking a painting that Oda supposedly knows the whereabouts of. Will he and Dazai be able to make it out alive?

The Day I Took In Dazai is a ‘complete’ version of two short stories that were distributed during the theatrical release of the Bungo Stray Dogs: Beast live-action film. One was given out during the first week and a different one during the second week.

We’re treated to a ‘Side A’, which seems to reflect the canon events of Bungo Stray Dogs as we know it, and then there’s a ‘Side B’, which is set in the same timeline as Beast (Volume 6 of the light novels). While the beginning of the stories starts out the same, they diverge considerably, shortly after Oda takes in Dazai. I was particularly fond of the alt-universe we were shown in Beast, so it’s great fun to see another ‘what if’ take here. Even if that one is much sadder since Dazai and Oda don’t form the same close friendship we’ve come to know and love.

This is a relatively short release coming in at just 109 pages (a little less if you discount the afterword), but the two sides are given more or less equal pages. Author Kafka Asagiri reflects in the afterword that he struggled with writing this since he didn’t want to repeat the mistakes of Beast, which was also originally written as a bonus for a theatrical release of the BSD film and came in at almost 200 pages after he was only asked for 50… This time, he stuck to the page limit but took a long time to figure out what story to tell. The idea eventually came at the suggestion of the BSD anime director Takuya Igarashi, who wanted to see how Oda and Dazai met. And since Oda’s story is only ever told through the light novels (and later anime), this ended up being perfect.

Personally, I was a little disappointed to start with when I saw how thin this book was. But by the time I finished, I realised this was the perfect length to tell the two sides of their meeting. The story doesn’t outstay its welcome (even despite the repetition between the start of the two sides), and it fits in well with the rest of the universe. Plus, we get to spend plenty of time with Dazai, which is a treat as we’ve not seen as much of him in the manga lately.

Bungo Stray Dogs: The Day I Took In Dazai comes to the West thanks to Yen Press under the Yen On imprint and is translated by Matt Rutsohn, who has worked on the previous light novel releases. The book reads well and comes with several colour pages at the beginning from the main series mangaka Sango Harukawa. This is the most recent light novel released in Japan, so sadly, there’s nothing further in the pipeline on this front currently. But I’m sure it won’t be too long until there’s more!

Overall, if you’re a fan of Oda and Dazai and eager to find out how they first met, then this is well worth adding to your collection. It might be short, but it’s the same polished storytelling that we’ve come to appreciate the franchise for. Plus, adding to the Beast alt-universe with the Side B story was a nice surprise that works out well!

Our review copy was supplied by the publisher Yen Press