Bungo Stray Dogs – Season 4 Episode 5 Recap & Review

A Dying Wish

Episode 5 of Bungo Stray Dogs season 4 ‘The Perfect Murder and Murderer (Part 2)’ starts off with Ranpo deducing Oguri’s crime accurately which worries the latter.

Meanwhile, Poe is going through the dead author’s manuscript he won hoping it has some clues. The officers dub it the Kindaichi Murder since the author predicted his murder in the manuscript. Poe hopes to find the culprit by reading it but sees that the last page is a photocopy and the last few words are smudged with water. At that moment he gets a phone call.

Meanwhile, Ranpo tells Oguri that Fyodor’s specialist and the murderer are the same people and shows him the original last page which he found by going through nearby stationary centres. He finally announces that Oguri is the murderer and the driver tries to shoot him. Oguri is not deterred since Ranpo doesn’t have any evidence. Ranpo proves them wrong as he was on call with Poe the whole time who shows up with the police.

But they are unable to arrest Oguri since he is in a foreign diplomat’s car. Oguri gleefully leaves but sees that Ranpo’s phone that he left behind rings. When he picks it up, Ranpo tells him that he will defeat him and Oguri is transported to the murder scene but this time the author is trying to kill him.

Ranpo enters the scene and Oguri realises that he is in Poe’s illusion of the murder. However, he is still confident as Ranpo has no evidence and he can easily break Poe’s illusion by finding the difference between the illusion and the actual murder scene. But Ranpo tells him that what he has to say will make Oguri turn himself in. 

Oguri recalls what really went down as he was helping the author, his friend in coming up with the perfect murder mystery. Turns out that the author had gastric cancer and only had a year to live. He wanted to write his murder which would create a buzz and asked Oguri to help him.

Oguri tells Ranpo that he agreed to kill the author in cold blood and also take monetary advantage by selling the manuscript. But Ranpo finds it odd as he points out that the last page had water which turned out to be the tears of the murderer. Oguri had never wanted to kill the author aka there was no grudge or motive.

Ranpo points out that if he exposes that the murder was a farce, the author’s last wish for an engaging mystery would be ruined. Ranpo also shows a dark side to him as he refuses to let Fyodor or any of his men hurt the Detective Agency anymore which scares Oguri. He ends up doing exactly what Ranpo had said and turns himself in to protect his friend’s wish.

As Oguri is arrested, he also undoes his ability so the police find evidence that Kunikida was innocent. Poe also wonders about the fake specialist’s murder and Ranpo deduces that the fall guy was killed by Fyodor and Oguri has never killed anyone except for the author. Ranpo goes to Oguri and gives him the calling card of the government’s special division. He suggests teaming up with them as he had promised to get Oguri a job.

Oguri is touched and wonders what his dead friend would think of him. While the police transport Oguri, a man pretending to be an officer kills the driver. He then introduces himself as Nikolai Gogol to Oguri and says he is there to tie up loose ends. Oguri realises he is with Fyodor and Gogol calls his group the Five Deadly Omens. Oguri uses the police radio to alert Ranpo to not take the next case they get and gunshots are heard.

The Episode Review

Turns out Oguri is not such a bad guy. Despite his ability which would allow him to get away with whatever crime he liked, the only one he committed was at the behest of his friend, the author. This is further seen when he tried to stop the driver from killing Ranpo and then alerted him when Gogol showed up. We do hope that Gogol has not killed him and he reappears once more.

And sure, who doesn’t love a deranged villain like Nikolai Gogol whose flamboyant attitude and cheery persona just makes him that much more dangerous? But the one that stole the show in this episode was none other than our Ranpo-kun who declared he would do anything to protect the Detective Agency despite not having any superpowers.