10 Second Anime - Bungou Stray Dogs - Episode 18

The Port Mafia strikes against the Guild and the Agency. Akutagawa returns to action.

Episode 18 - "The Strategy of Conflict"

Heh.

Some fun things right off the bat from the Guild: Francis F.'s boat is named Zelda. Zelda Fitzgerald, an author in her own right, was F. Scott Fitzgerald's wife.

Two more American authors were guarding the boat. Margaret M. (Margaret Mitchell), whose power is called Gone with the Wind, and Nathaniel H. (Nathaniel Hawthorne), whose power is The Scarlet Letter. Indeed, Nathaniel's power plants a big A on people. I wonder if Arthur Dimmesdale will be related to his powers besides how Nathaniel likes to dress up as a clergyman and quote the Bible.

Margaret's Gone With the Wind appears to be, uh, wind-based. She, naturally, dresses like a Southern belle.

The first half of the episode was mainly action scenes centered around Lemon Bomber Kajii and Akutgawa targeting the boat and the two Guild operatives.

Those Guild guards ran away quick after Nathaniel branded Kajii with the scarlet A!

If Nathaniel survives his fight with Akutagawa, I hope he learned his lesson not to ever use an opponent's weapon against him. It only makes sense that the Lemon Bomber found a way to make sure his grenades don't hurt him. Kajii wasn't just a regular mad bomber. He had his own powers too.

Akutagawa made his comeback after being in a coma, but he's not looking too good. He can fight, but he still has some internal injuries. All this coughing up blood reminded me of how many of these Japanese authors died of tuberculosis.

I didn't understand why Akutagawa called himself "Diabolo" and referred to Nathaniel as Irmão. These are Portuguese words, with diabolo obviously being the devil and irmão meaning brother. I don't know where Akutagawa got all that Portuguese stuff, but maybe he refers to Nathaniel as a brother because of the similarity of their powers. The real Akutagawa had a short story with Portuguese Jesuits in it, so perhaps that's what this is all about.

The second part of the episode dealt with the importance of cat videos, er, wait. No, it was about the Port Mafia's two-pronged attack against the Agency and the Guild. Ougai baited the Guild into attacking the house where the office staff went into hiding. Obviously, the radioactive tracer gambit worked on Fukuzawa.

My question is if the enticing target is actually the office staff, like Haruno and Naomi, to be used against the Agency, or if they were told somebody else was at that location.

Whatever happens, it's round two for Kunikida against John S. and Poe. With how spread out the Agency is, there's lots of story threads to keep track of.

The Guild's boat is on fire, two of their operatives are down. The mafia used up Akutagawa in that attack and I suppose Lemon Bomber Kajii is still good to go. We will have to see what the Agency does against the Guild at their hideaway.