#dark era in 2016 irreversibly changed me and i was never the same after that

[dazais-guardian-angel]

Today is Bungou Stray Dogs’ 10th anniversary.

It’s hard to put into words just how much this series means to me. I don’t have any elaborate, deep story to tell as to why; there is no one character I heavily relate to more than the others, and there wasn’t a particularly hard time in my life it got me through or anything. But BSD is at the core of my most nostalgic memories with fandom, with online friends I made years ago -- many, many happy memories I have of watching the anime in 2016 (which was my introduction to the series), gushing about it, laughing about it, crying about it, discussing it for hours on end, and writing about it. There are many other manga and anime that I love dearly, some even almost as much as it, but none of them have ever been able to reach or surpass BSD for me, even if some of them I would probably call technically better written overall. Its unique style, unique beauty, aesthetic, such bizarre wackiness it has while at the same time carrying so much heart, and its nuanced, raw, and poignant handling of such delicate and realistic subject matter simply make it unlike anything else I have ever seen -- BSD is so unabashedly itself, and you will never find anything else like it. It was written as a love letter to stories by an author who deeply appreciates and was inspired by literature himself, and as someone who is enamored with fiction as well, I can feel every ounce of love and care that Kafka Asagiri puts into his story and these characters, and I adore nearly each and every one of them.

Since the first two seasons of the anime aired and since I first got into it, BSD has had over 100 manga chapters, multiple light novels, multiple stage adaptations, two movies, multiple spinoff series, a mobile game, and the story has gone in directions I never could have imagined years ago, and I’m still here following it all, even after six years. Even as I dip into other obsessions and my BSD fixation temporarily fades, I always, always come back, because it feels like home to me -- hell, I love it so much that I even made an entire visual novel out of Dazai Osamu and the Dark Era, my comfort arc(? lol), out of all the projects I could come up with. It truly is so special to me, in ways I can’t even describe, and I’m constantly rediscovering new things about the series and the characters, and bonding with friends closer over it. It may not be perfect (but nothing is), but I’m still on this wild ride, and I have absolutely no intention of getting off until we reach the finish line, no matter how long that takes. In the meantime, I’m so excited to see how the franchise will grow even more, and I dearly hope that more people will discover it, because despite the fairly sizeable fandom, BSD is still terribly underrated, and deserves to be so much more appreciated, for the masterpiece that it truly is.

Here’s to ten more years. Here’s to the Stray Dogs~ 🥃🥂💖