Bungo Stray Dogs Episode 32 Review: Fitzgerald Rising

A rather unexpected comeback in this week’s episode of Bungo Stray Dogs: Fitzgerald is back into business. Not only is he not dead, but he managed to rise into power and create his own new secret organization with Louisa’s help in only one episode. That man has some crazy business skills.

Japanese Original Episode Title: フィッツジェラルド・ライジング

Plot

Louisa is wandering around Suribachi City after the Moby Dick accident with nowhere left to go. Suddenly, she meets Fitzgerald begging for money in the streets and asks him to return to his position as the leader of the Guild, but he declines and walks away. Soon after, she is being cornered by some thugs living in Suribachi and Fitzgerald comes back and saves her, but this time he promises to grand her wish of being a leader once more. They soon take action on forging up a plan to create a new secret organization and slowly re-build Francis economical empire. They try to help an engineer by the name of T. J. Eckleberg, who works for the Manhasset security company where he has created the Eyes of God, an automatic identification system for security cameras, who has been blamed for the murder of his co-worker, but claims he was not the one who killed him. After cleverly putting Poe into getting the mystery solved by Rampo, they find out that the killer was the CEO of the company and make him get arrested. By the end of the episode, Fitzgerald manages to own the Manhasset security company after playing a trick on the ex-CEO, which makes him rise to the top once more.

Episode Highlights

Fitzgerald is more important than you think: I was kind of expecting his comeback to be honest because I found the way his story arc ended rather incomplete in a way and because he is voiced by Takahiro Sakurai, who would NEVER be given minor roles because he is absolutely awesome. I also wanted him to return as a villain (or not really a villain, since this anime makes evilness rather relative), but you know what I mean. I was quite sad when I heard his motives behind all this and how he just wanted to make his wife and family happy once more. On that note, when he said that his ring was ‘sacrificed’ to save him from the fall, I was like: ‘What it this sudden and unexpected intensity of romance, happening right now?’ Anyways, what I wanted to say was that if you think about it, Francis is not just a minor villain and side character of the show. He doesn’t come second to Port Mafia and if you remember carefully in the previous seasons, it is revealed to us that he was basically the one that set Atsushi’s entire story into motion by placing the seven billion yen bounty on him. He is also the one that makes the existence of the ‘Book’ known into the audience, a book where anything you write becomes a reality, which is probably what all the villains including Mori and Fyodor are going after and the reason why Atsushi is so important to everyone, since he kind of looks like he is connected with it in some way.

Louisa’s power is cool: So we learned that her ability allows her to slow time down when she is thinking in a private room. She has also never used her ability for herself, which makes her whole story rather intriguing. I hope that she has some good reason behind it and not just do it because she is completely devoted to Fitzgerald.

Themes & Trivia

J. Eckleburg: The engineer in this episode got his name from The Great Gatsby’s fictional character, who happens to be an optometrist and called Dr. T. J. Eckleburg.

Fitzgerald is pretty much Jay Gatsby: So in case you don’t know, Jay Gatsby is the protagonist from the actual Fitzgerald’s work by the same The Great Gatsby. Their personality traits are quite similar since they both seem to be overly optimistic, arrogant, and imperfect but nonetheless, they are determined and hardworking in order to obtain what they desire. They both acquired their fortunes based on illegal activities and although they do it in different ways, both of them use money at their power.

Comments

I just want to take a moment and appreciate Francis’ new obsession with cooking pots and deal offers in small markets. His quotes killed me in this episode: ‘Our headquarters are not the whole building but just one room in it?’ Oh Francis, you ignorant rich boy.

The tea is lukewarm. I question this company’s dignity.

Now that Fitzgerald is back in the game as well, I have no idea how the story will develop from this point onwards. Probably Fyodor is going to ‘unleash the kraken’ and all hell will break loose, so all the organizations might have to fight him back together, or maybe something will happen with the ‘Book’ and they will all fight each other to obtain it. Who knows?

NEXT TIME: Masked Assassin