ducks!

he/they | mushitarou veteran | i’m normal about fitzgerald bsd | bulgarian art blog is bonithica-art.

[kyouka-supremacy]

BSD Interviews Masterlist

A new masterlist by yours truly. There's so many interviews out there that I wouldn't dare to aspire to include them all; but since I've been stumbling across a lot of Asagiri interviews after they attended Anime Expo this year, I wanted to at least have one place where I can keep track of the ones I see. If you know any interview I failed to include, please let me know!!

The dates reported here refer to the date the interview was published, and not when it was taken; even then, please take them with a grain of salt. Some rows feature multiple links to dislocated translations of the same interview, so be sure to hover over all the text so you don't miss any piece. Finally, sorry if the list results a little bulky at times, I couldn't seem to come up with a better way to format it.

Manga interviews

Asagiri, Harukawa (Apr 2013) /// original

Asagiri, Harukawa (Mar 2014) (jp only)

Asagiri (Feb 2016)

Asagiri, Harukawa (Jan 2017)

Asagiri, Harukawa (Oct 2019)

Asagiri (Jul 2023)

Asagiri (Aug 2023)

Asagiri (Sept 2023)

Asagiri (Oct 2023)

Asagiri (Feb 2024) (jp only)

Asagiri (Mar 2024) /// original

Asagiri (Nov 2024) (1) (2) /// original

Asagiri, Harukawa (May 2025)

Asagiri, Harukawa: coverage 1; coverage 2 (May 2025) (jp only)

Asagiri (Jul 2025)

Asagiri, Natsuhiko Kyogoku (Dec 2025) (jp only)

Asagiri, Harukawa, Yuto Uemura (Mar 2026)

Asagiri (Mar 2026)

Anime interviews

Kensho Ono; Kishou Taniyama on season 1 (Jun 2016)

Kishou Taniyama on season 1 (Jun 2016)

Yasuomi Umetsu on the season 1 ending (Jun 2016) /// alternative translation

Kishou Taniyama on season 1 (Jul 2016) /// alternative translation

Suwabe Junichi, Miyano Mamoru, Fukuyama Jun, Miki Shinnichiro on season 2 (~2016)

Takuya Igarashi; Mamoru Miyano; Jun Fukuyama; Yuto Uemura; on season 2 (~2016)

Takuya Igarashi, Yoji Enokido on season 2 (Jan 2017)

Suzuki Mari, Chiaki Kurakane (Nov 2017)

Bones producer on Dead Apple (Jan 2018)

Yuto Uemura, Miyano Mamoru on Dead Apple (Jul 2018)

Asagiri, Takuya Igarashi, Yoji Enokido on Dead Apple (Dec 2018)

Yuto Uemura, Miyano Mamoru, on season 3 (~Sept 2019)

Asagiri, Hiroshi Kamiya, Yuto Uemura, Yoji Enokido, Nobuhiro Arai, Mari Suzuki, Nobuhito Takemoto on season 4 (Feb 2023)

Asagiri, Masahiko Minami, Chiaki Kurakane on season 5 during Anime Expo 2023: coverage 1; coverage 2; coverage 3; coverage 4; coverage 5 (Jul 2023)

Yuto Uemura, Kensho Ono, Rikiya Koyama, Yoji Enokido, Chiaki Kurakane, Asagiri, Kisho Taniyama, PON on season 5 (Aug 2023) /// alternative translation (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) on season 5 /// original

Kurakane Chiaki (Sept 2023)

Asagiri, Hirotsugu Kato, Chiaki Kurakane (anime producer) on Ranpo (Jan 2024) (jp only)

Yuto Uemura, Kensho Ono on season 5 (Feb 2024) /// original

Asagiri, Yoji Enokido on season 2 (Apr 2025) (jp only)

Taku Iwasaki (Apr 2026) (jp only)

Stage plays interviews

Masashi Taniguchi, Hideya Tawada; Hirofumi Araki, Hideya Tawada; Hideya Tawada; on the Dark Era stage play (2018 ?)

Masashi Taniguchi, Shohei Hashimoto, Yūki Torigoe, Rui Tabuchi on the Beast movie (Jan 2022)

Masashi Taniguchi, Rui Tabuchi on the Beast movie (Jan 2022 ?)

Masashi Taniguchi, Rui Tabuchi on the Beast movie (Feb 2022)

More interviews in Japanese can be found on my bsd magazines archive

[shinjuu-is-never-lonely]

BSD Wan Chapter 105!

Translated by: @kumorinashi

Typesetted by: @shinjuu-is-never-lonely

[bonithica]

hello chat i made a discord server for guild fans if you're a guild fan please join

Check out the guildings community on Discord – hang out with 7 other members and enjoy free voice and text chat.

[sorcerersandskillusers]

Bungou Stray Dogs does not follow our timeline! Its an entirely separate universe. So the question "what year is BSD set in?" doesn't have an answer.

This is one of the most common questions I've seen about bsd, "What year is it set in?" or people saying stuff like "Why do the guild dress so old timey?" or "Why do the characters have flip phones but such advanced technology?" etc...

And the truth is, the series is set in a completely different world then ours, some series like Jujutsu Kaisen or Harry Potter are set in our world, and (mostly) follow our history. But the BSD universe is just fundamentally different, There was a war, heavily modelled after world war 1, less than 20 years before the present. There are loads of references to huge political events that simply didn't happen. in fact, it seems like the technology of bsd is many decades ahead of its politics. For instance, the Guild all being dressed like great depression era Americans fits if you consider that the great depression happened just after ww1 IRL.

Another difference is that In BSD Europe is described as the centre of global power instead of America, which might be explained by Dazai saying Europe has a high number of powerful skill users.

Maybe Abilities accelerated the growth of technology, they probably also changed the balance of politics.

What im saying is there is so much different in the bsd universe, that trying to match the story to a real life year or time period will never work, its like trying to find out what kind of wood a rock is made of, they have similarities but are just fundamentally different.

[kaurwreck]

Actually, I'd argue that Bungou Stray Dogs is set in a timeline that very much parallels our own!

You're not wrong that Bungou Stray Dogs is its own timeline, but there are actually WAY more indicators of period inspiration than only World War I and closer connections between Bugnou Stray Dogs' timeline with ours. Rather than a completely separate world, Bungou Stray Dogs seems to be set in an alternative timeline in which the existence of skill users dramatically changed the global geopolitical landscape. And I know that because it's actually possible to roughly, and with several exceptions, trace the current Bungou Stray Dogs timeline to the 1930s. (Hence the Guild being dressed like 1930s Americans!)

The older characters in Bungou Stray Dogs are based on Meiji-era authors (namely Natsume, Fukuzawa, Mori, and Hirotsu). The Meiji era of Japanese history extended from October 23, 1868, to July 30, 1912, and was characterized by Japan shifting from isolationist feudalism to modernization and industrialization based on Western scientific, technological, philosophical, political, legal, and aesthetic ideas. (Otherwise, Japan was at risk of colonization by Western powers; it was a transition undertaken under duress.) That's why Fukuzawa is aesthetically a rōnin (the actual Fukuzawa was born in 1833, decades prior to the Meiji era), why Mori rattles off Western foreign political strategies with which Fukuzawa is unfamiliar (the actual Mori was born just six years prior to the Meiji-era), and, most importantly, why Yokohama is sometimes referred to as the Yokohama Settlement, and why it is implied that there are national powers in Yokohama. (For example, in 55 Minutes, an antagonist declares, "If the Yokohama Settlement and the various nations' military parties within it are wiped off the face of the earth, there will be no way for their governments to hide the truth.")

The Yokohama Settlement was established in 1858, through treaties with the US, England, France, Russia, and the Netherlands that opened several cities and five ports to those Western powers. Although the treaties were abolished in 1899, the influence of those treaties appears to persist in Bungou Stray Dogs' current timeline, implying that they did exist, but perhaps not with those specific powers, and perhaps not within the same time frame. (This is further supported when Chuuya debuts in the story's current timeline; he mentions to Dazai that he had only just gotten back from quashing trouble in the West, which may be referencing the western section of the Yokohama Settlement.)

The younger characters (such as Chuuya, Dazai, Atsushi, Kunikida, Ango, etc.) were all part of literary and poetry scenes characterized by the impacts of World War I and World War II on Japan. Although their ages relative to each other and the older characters are NOT the same as their real-life namesakes, they roughly correlate with the generational differences cultivated by Japan's transitions from feudalism to industrialization to post-World War I.

Further, World War I was called the Great War, which is also what Bungou Stray Dogs calls the ability-based war that transpired 15 years prior to the current canon timeline. Like the real-life authors, the Bungou Stray Dogs characters are consistently and constantly grappling with the impacts of the Great War, which created orphans (like Atsushi and Akutagawa), traumatized soldiers (like Mimic and Fukuchi), advanced and unprecedentedly destructive methods of warfare (in WWI, it was chemical warfare, in BSD, it's ability-users), and which prompted multinational treaties and organizations that sought to prevent such devastation from happening again (Standard Island in 55 Minutes; in the manga and anime, it's implied the United Nations exists, although the logo is just slightly different from the real-life United Nations, which was not formed until after World War II).

As you've pointed out, there are still SEVERAL differences between the real-world and Bungou Stray Dogs' timelines. Many of these can be explained by the existence of skill users, such as the mixed technology in the series, which ranges from the 1980s to the current day. Others are analogs, such as Verlaine and Chuuya, who were both created in response to the Great War, such as how WWI rewrote how wars and war technology were approached. Others are less easily explained by anything other than the butterfly effect, such as the seeming continuation of Japan's port treaties and, as mentioned above, how instead of the League of Nations, the aftermath of the Great War in Bungou Stray Dogs led to the creation of the United Nations, decades before the United Nations formed in our timeline. Further, in Bungou Stray Dogs, France, Germany, and Japan were allied in the Great War, with Japan withdrawing early due to Fukuzawa's intervention (France and Japan were allied against Germany in WWI). The most inexplicable difference is that one of the Western foreign policy strategists cited by Mori is Henry Kissinger, who was only a child in the 1930s. So on, and so forth.

However, that it parallels our timeline explains exactly what you've noted above, which is the reason why Europe is the center of geopolitical power. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, that was still very true, especially in the aftermath of World War I (and which would continue to be true if Europe had powerful ability users). It also explains why the most powerful ability user group, the Order of the Clock Tower, serves as the Queen of England's personal guard-- while the monarchy isn't Britain's head of government now, it was in the early 1900s. It also adds context to Season 5, Episode 61 of the anime, in which Fukuchi reveals that his actions were spurred by his learning that there would be another global war, one much more destructive and violent than the prior. In other words, Fukuchi sought to prevent the Bungou Stray Dogs' version of World War II.

And so while you're right that Bungou Stray Dogs exists in its own timeline, it's not fundamentally different from ours, and in fact, follows the same patterns and themes that the real-life character namesakes explored in their bodies of work. Following the logic of Bungou Stray Dogs existing in an alternate but parallel timeline, it roughly takes place in the early- to mid-1930s. However, it's a version of the 1930s in which skill users exist and have existed for long enough for their skills to shape the course of human history. Thus, the timeline in Bungou Stray Dogs is a sandbox of alternative history that nevertheless honors the ideas, traumas, and eras of the authors whose lives and literary works inspired the series.

That being said, it's a fictional universe subject to the author's purposes, so nothing is certain unless indicated by Kafka Asagiri. But understanding the historical parallels certainly explains a lot, and provides a nifty guide for understanding the underlying literary references.

[changelingssys]

the binoculars in Deltarune chapter 3's egg room show grass almost the same RGB color (167,167,167) as Mystery Man room's ground in Undertale (166,166,166)... the typer value for DR Gaster's voice is 666 and 667... add this to the Forgotten Man linked to Gaster or Goners pile! I think they made it grass to let us know we're looking at the ground too, and not just grey circles...

[razberrypuck]

well, there is a man here

[abylou]

imagine spamton jumping in his arms like a princess right before this

[lovliaaaa]

shaking in my boots thinking of this. shivers down my spine. please lord let this never happen the other four berdly fans and i cant handle it

[daily-specilfeacher]

Day 63: Anyone remember THAT jingle?!

[gorryb]

I'm with you in the dark

[bonithica]

You couldn't have summed it up better🙏🏻 I too started to like him only after his redemption arc (I HATED him before, like reaaally hated, idk. As my friend says there’s a fine line between love and hate I guess) He’s such a silly little guy and pretty funny too! Strong agree on Dostoyevsky as well, he’s been one of my favorite writers wayyy before I’ve watched bsd but I can’t stand Fyodor, like at all :|

twin 😛🤞 like i said, my favs are francis/poe/akutagawa/louisa/mushitarou, my least favs are definitely fyodor/dazai/mori and its not even close. i cheered every time fyodor died and booed every time he came back. same w dazai. i just don't like characters that are so smart that they're always 10 steps ahead it's boring and dumb

[daily-specilfeacher]

Day 37: I'LL CRUSH MY TV FOR ITS HORRIBLE CRIMES!

[bonithica]

Nahh, you don’t know me and honest to god, I have absolutely 0 idea what makes him so interesting to us considering we don’t read any work by his real life counterpart in school, like AT ALL+tho I didn’t think we ever mentioned him lol (at least not in my country)

he's just a little freakkkkk tbh i only started to like him after his homeless arc and his redemption arc (but obviously now i love his character even from before) and then i read the great gatsby and got a tad obsessed because i loved it. i mean personally i always end up liking characters who are either blonde, flamboyant, funny, and he's all of those things. my other type of fav character is one that i can just relate to (it's why i like poe/louisa/akutagawa)

before him my fav character was mushitaro (flamboyant and funny) and i don't really know why francis ended up surpassing him. i feel like maybe it was because i read the great gatsby, but i also read crime and punishment and even tho i love the book i still hate fyodor. so idk

he's just such an asshole & "reformed villain that now isn't a threat and instead helps the main characters" is definitely one of my favourite tropes in fiction

[bonithica]

Just read your bio and I couldn’t believe it, another Balkan soul oh so very normal about Fitz lol

LMAO honestly unless i've met you before, you'll be the second person i've seen who's balkan and normal about this man. what is it about him that appeals to the balkans

[assassinbugs]

Force one of these Star Trek TNG characters into a timeloop that only they are aware of:

Jean-Luc Picard

William T. Riker

Beverly Crusher

Worf

Geordi LaForge

Deanna Troi

Data

Tasha Yar

Guinan

Ro Laren

Lwaxana Troi

Q

Voting ended onFeb 7

[aphrostiel]

two tickets for the fellowship of the ring 25th anniversary please

[professional-termite]

hi my name is geordi la forge and this is my boyfriend data and datas girlfriend tasha and tashas girlfriend deanna and deannas boyfriend riker and rikers boyfriend worf and deannas girlfriend beverly and beverlys boyfriend picard and picards boyfriend q and