Bungo Stray Dogs – Season 4 Episode 12 Recap & Review

The Strongest Angel

Episode 12 of Bungo Stray Dogs titled ‘Bungo Hound Dogs’ begins with Tachihara showing up for work at the Hunting Dogs’ HQ. While Teruko cries over easily making a criminal confess, Tetcho is busy working out in the middle of their briefing. The Armed Detectives were last seen 2 days ago and have disappeared since then. Teruko thinks it’s because they have found a base and leader.

Meanwhile, Ango tells Atsushi and Kyoka that Lucy is important for their plan as she can move them by hiding them with her ability. Atsushi apologizes for bringing her into their mess and she says she is paying back a huge debt. He is confused and she deflects it by moving on with their plan.

Elsewhere, Fukuchi visits Fukuzawa in prison with drinks and it turns out that they are childhood friends (probably why Fukuchi let him visit a young Oda in prison at the beginning of the season). He tells the President to tell the Detectives to surrender so that the Hunting Dogs stop targeting them. He then offers to tell him the state of Kunikida. Fukuzawa says that he knows Kunikida is alive and that he is confident that the Agency will bounce back.

However, Tetcho and Jono are busy searching for the Detectives as they visit the Uzumaki cafe to get info. They ask about their waitress Lucy but the manager lies. Jono sees through his lies and threatens him with the charge of aiding criminals.

Tetcho suddenly stabs Jono’s legs and reprimands him for his tactic. He swears by his sword to let Lucy go free while the Detectives will get a fair trial. The manager gets swayed and reveals that Lucy had told him they are going to the Sky Casino built 13 years ago by the war victors.

Tachihara and Teruko show up at the floating casino and ask the manager, Sigma to seal the exits so they can look for terrorists. Sigma refuses and even threatens them as it would affect his business but Teruko just detonates a bomb that seals the exits.

Sigma immediately tells his guards to look after each guest and even remembers some of the VIP ones which impresses everyone. While they whisper that he was born to be a casino owner, he hides and panics. He decides to kill the Hunting Dogs as they cannot find out his secret. 

While looking for the Detectives, Tachihara finds a coin. As he picks it up, he sees Atsushi go into a room and follows him only for him to escape into Anne’s Chamber. However, Tachihara finds a safe full of coins. Sigma sees it all through the CCTV and is shocked that he found the safe. To stop him, he tries to kill Tachihara by detonating the coin which happens to be a bomb.

Turns out, he is one of the five members of the Decay of the Angels and Fyodor had told him to run if he ever came across a Hunting Dog since he is the weakest. Sigma reveals that the safe full of coin bombs is their next act of global terrorism. On top of that, he can’t abandon the casino as it is the only place he belongs. As Tachihara stops the coin bomb with his ability, Sigma tries to crash an autopilot jet into Tachihara who stops it just in time.

As he almost tires out, Teruko comes in and saves him by throwing out the jet but is wounded. They deduce that the customers will win the coin bombs and trade them out in the world. Once everyone has it, the Angels will detonate the bombs. Teruko decides to take the communication room of the casino and expose the plan to the world.

Sigma’s guards try to stop them but the duo beats them up. In one of the rooms, Atsushi hears the fighting and is satisfied that everything is going according to Dazai’s plan. Ango figured out the coin bombs while Atsushi and Kyoka are to help the Hunting Dogs find out and take over the comms room. This will prove that they are not terrorists and then they can capture Sigma who has the reality-altering page.

Meanwhile, in the prison, Dazai asks Fyodor why he assigned Sigma to protect the casino. Seems like Sigma has no past and he should have been discarded after using his ability to exchange information to take the page from Taneda. The page was also used to create the casino and the fake background story hinting that it was created for Sigma.

Fyodor responds by saying that Sigma is the strongest man. He has no past because he has amnesia. The most powerful man is a mediocre man who doesn’t have anything else so he is desperate. In Sigma’s case, he will do anything to protect the casino which is the only place he feels he belongs.

As Teruko and Tachihara clear out a floor, some of the guests come out to see the commotion. Tachihara tells them they are safe but is stabbed by a couple while the other guests are all holding weapons. In every room’s TV screens, Sigma broadcasts an announcement – for every injury inflicted on the two Hunting Dogs, the guest will get $10,000 and a million if they kill them.

The Episode Review

We are finally reaching the final battle and the buildup to it is pretty exciting. The anticipation keeps increasing as we get new interesting characters, plans within plans and revelations. Though, there was an inkling that the Hunting Dogs were pretty much being played by the Detectives ever since the cafe manager revealed that Lucy ‘told’ him about her hideout even though she is harbouring fugitives. Looks like they wanted the Hunting Dogs to come to the casino.

Kudos to Dazai for coming up with such a risky plan but of course, if anyone can pull it off it’s Atsushi who is Dazai’s biggest believer. But with Fukuchi mentioning Kunikida, we cannot help but wonder about the other missing Detective who we last saw was on the verge of death – Yosano. We do hope we get a reunion with her, Kunikida, Ranpo, Tanizaki and Kenji before the season ends.