The orphanage that Atsushi Nakajima has been living at has been recently plagued by a tiger that only he can see. Blaming him for the incident, they kick him out.
Now homeless, he wanders the streets until he meets the eccentric Osamu Dazai and saves him from drowning. As it turns out, Dazai is a supernatural detective and agrees to help him solve the mystery.
Supernatural detective anime are an easy sell, but Bungo Stray Dogs found the exact right mix of mature storytelling, interesting fights, and charming characters to make it a real powerhouse. If you are looking for more anime recommendations like Bungo Stray Dogs, head on down below.
Anime Like Bungo Stray Dogs
For Fans of Problem Solving Agencies
Blood Blockade Battlefront
Vampires, fishmen, supersonic monkeys – They are all normal residents living alongside humans in Hellsalem’s Lot, formerly known as New York City.
When a gate between Earth and the Beyond popped up there three years ago, old NYC became dominated by monsters, and now Libra, a secret organization, is tasked with keeping it in order.
After hobbyist photographer Leonardo Watch obtains the All-Seeing Eyes of the Gods, he finds himself recruited into Libra.
While they have their unique differences, Bungo Stray Dogs and Blood Blockade Battlefront present a very similar experience.
Both series follow agencies, either detective or government-sanctioned, that deal with criminal issues in the city that police can’t handle using their staff of super-powered, quirky individuals. The stories follow the most recent recruit into the organization who is also pretty unfamiliar with their own powers.
From there, both series follow lightly intriguing, but action-focused mysteries while also slowly building out, not just the main character, but the entire staff of the agency as interesting characters.
High Card
In the Kingdom of Fourland, the royal family possessed a powerful deck of 52 cards. Each card has the ability to grant its wielder a special power, but after an attempted theft, the cards were scattered throughout the kingdom.
In order to get them back without a panic, the Kingdom developed a secret group of players armed with cards called High Card to retrieve these missing items of power.
Secretly ran out of the Pinochle luxury car maker’s sales office, High Card, including its newest member, Finn, are consistently thrust into a frenzy of super powered battles.
While the Armed Detective Agency in Bungo Stray Dogs is about handling cases that are too dangerous for the police, High Card focuses on a secret government agency whose sole job is to secretly collect powerful relics that were scattered in the city after a botched heist.
Although their purposes differ, the way both series are carried out is very much the same. Both series feature somewhat episodic stories in which the cast of uniquely super-powered individuals fight criminals who also may have powers.
The biggest difference is that, because High Card is a secret organization that is trying to obtain objects, sometimes their means seem a little more criminal and heist-like. It also doesn’t build out its characters as well as Bungo Stray Dogs does.
Kemono Jihen
A boy nicknamed Dorotabo lives with his aunt in a rural Japanese inn after being abandoned by his parents. One day, a detective that specializes in the occult named Kohachi Inugami arrives from Tokyo.
He is there to investigate mysterious livestock deaths and takes an interest in Dorotabo. The boy ends up helping Inugami and discovers that he is only half human.
Possessing skill at dispatching beast-like entities known as Kemono, Inugami takes him back to work at his agency in Tokyo.
Both Bungo Stray Dogs and Kemono Jihen focus on a detective agency that doesn’t really solve mysteries so much as they use their powers to fight people causing trouble.
Both agencies are staffed by individuals who each have a unique power, but unlike Bungo Stray Dogs, the majority of the characters in Kemono Jihen are teens. This definitely makes the series more of a shounen series in tone, but it is also quite a bit darker than the standard shounen action anime.
While both series feature interesting fights and interesting characters, Bungo Stray Dogs does have more mature story-telling while Kemono Jihen is a bit darker and gorier than you may expect.
Undead Murder Farce
In an alternate 19th century, supernatural creatures exist among humans, but have been hunted and persecuted to the point where they have become quite rare.
Tsugaru Shinuchi is an experimental half-oni that has been used by a freak show to destroy the supernatural for the entertainment of the crowd. One night, he is approached by a woman carrying a bird cage containing a severed head. The head introduces herself as Aya Rindo, and asks Tsugaru to help her find and retrieve her immortal body that was stolen from her by a mysterious foreign man.
Leaving Japan for Europe, the trio decide to become detectives who come to be known as, “The Cage User,” investigating supernatural mysteries hoping they might hold clues to the mysterious body thief.
While Bungo Stray Dogs is supernatural in that the characters have special abilities, Undead Murder Farce takes the charming characters of Bungo Stray Dogs, and dives into the deep end of supernatural.
While both series follow detectives, Undead Murder Farce does occasionally have them laying out the solution to a mystery. Yet, like Bungo Stray Dogs, it also has the characters just fighting an opposing group of supernaturally-powered individuals too.
One small shared tidbit between the two is that they enjoy using characters named and lightly themed after other characters. Bungo Stray Dogs uses authors while Undead Murder Farce enjoys creating characters based on other fictional characters like Sherlock Holmes, Arsene Lupin, and Aleister Crowley.
Millionaire Detective – Balance Unlimited
Daisuke Kanbe is a man of extraordinary wealth and has been assigned to the Modern Crime Prevention HQ as a detective. He gets himself partnered with the stalwart defender of justice, Haru Katou.
They are polar opposites, with Haru frequently upset that Daisuke throws money at everything. However, they need to find a way to solve mysteries together.
While the Armed Detective Agency in Bungo Stray Dogs is a private detective agency, both it and Millionaire Detective focus in on detectives with interesting, sometimes comical quirks.
While Bungo Stray Dogs is more focused on characters with supernatural abilities, Millionaire Detective keeps things more realistic, but still ridiculous by having a detective who literally tosses money at every problem until he solves the case.
Unlike the standard Batman, he isn’t using a bunch of gadgets to fight, but instead uses his money to grease wheels and put plans into action to catch bad guys. While it doesn’t get quite as grand in the big battles as Bungo Stray Dogs, Millionaire Detective has a certain slick coolness to the action that fans will appreciate.
Darker Than Black
After the appearance of the Heaven and Hell Gates, then rose the Contractors. These individuals that gave up their humanity for supernatural powers from the gates.
In Section 4 of Japan around the Hell Gate, Chief Misaki finds herself constantly at odds with a Contractor named Hei, a man who takes missions from the ruthless underground Syndicate that slowly peel away the layers covering a threat to all Contractors.
Darker Than Black is a bit of a different set up when compared to Bungo Stray Dogs. Instead of fighting against the mafia, Darker Than Black tells the story of a guy who does jobs for a Mafia-like organization. He’s like Dazai in the past, but less charming.
However, what Darker Than Black and Bungo Stray Dogs share is that they both tell darker stories using a wide array of characters that all have unique abilities and interesting character stories.
While both series love action and intrigue, Darker Than Black lacks the occasional moments of levity that Bungo Stray Dogs often offers.
For Fans of Special Powered Individuals
Noragami
There will be times where you may happen across an odd phone number written in red. If you call it, you will get in touch with a young man who introduces himself as the Yato God.
This Yato God is a minor deity and the self-proclaimed God of Delivery. He dreams of having millions of worshipers, but there isn’t a single shrine dedicated to his name. He spends his time doing odd jobs for spare yen until the day his weapon partner deserts him.
Just as things are looking down, he happens across a young school girl that saves him from a car accident by taking the hit for him. She survives, but her soul becomes loose. Together they set out to find a way to tighten her soul back up.
Both Bungo Stray Dogs and Noragami focus on a small agency of super-powered or otherwise supernatural individuals. However, while Bungo Stray Dogs takes place in a city of ability users, Noragami is more focused on deities, their weapons partners, and the supernatural problems that they have to address in the human world as well as outside of it.
While both series have the main characters solving problems, usually with a fight, these series are often most similar in their two major characters.
While neither Dazai or Yato are “the main character,” they are very much the focus of the series because they are both charming and mysterious. The story is told from the perspective of someone new to the whole action-packed world, but the story itself focuses on unraveling the mystery behind that charismatic character who drew the newbie in.
K
In this world, there are those referred to as Kings. They were individuals bestowed with great supernatural power and they use it to recruit others to their clan. To protect those members is a King’s great duty.
However, after a murder of a Red clan member, a student is accused of homicide. During the man hunt, the city devolves into full-on war among the Kings.
Bungo Stray Dogs and K both tell gang warfare stories in different wrappers. While the Armed Detective Agency is indeed a detective agency, they’re really just slightly less criminal than the Port Mafia. Really, both organizations solve problems in a similar way – violence.
K, however, is more straightforward by just being based around the increasing intrigue between various color gangs and some people caught in between. Both series feature characters with unique powers clashing with each other and specialize in unraveling the intrigue that it sets up with either plot or between its characters.
Hamatora
In this world, a small number of people have manifested the power to create small miracles. In Yokohama, two miracle users create a detective agency and use their powers to help people.
However, one day they realize that the jobs they are receiving have a series of strange connections to a serial killer that their police friend is searching for.
Both Bungo Stray Dogs and Hamatora center their stories around a detective agency that is staffed by people with unique abilities.
While most mysteries in both shows are really just an excuse to go have a battle with someone, both series balance action and comedy well by focusing on how wildly different personalities work together.
If you liked the comically quirky characters in Bungo Stray Dogs, Hamatora offers the same, albeit a bit more energetically weird at times.
For Fans of Slowly Unraveling Interesting Cast Back Stories
The Case Study of Vanitas
Scorned by his vampire peers for being born under a blue moon, it is said that the vampire Vanitas created a powerful grimoire known as the Book of Vanitas that would bring retribution to all crimson moon vampires.
On his way to Paris, Noe is searching for this fabled book. While traveling aboard an airship, he is saved from a vampire attack by an eccentric man that claims to posses the Book of Vanitas and uses it to cure the attacking vampire that was driven rabid by a progressing event afflicting vampires called the Charlatan’s Parade.
As The Case Study of Vanitas follows a human who is curing vampires of a corrupting plague through force, it doesn’t seem applicable to Bungo Stray Dogs as a recommendation. However, the similarities between these two lie in the characters and not the set up.
What both Bungo Stray Dogs and The Case Study of Vanitas do well is create a large cast of charming and interesting characters that are addicting to watch. What really draws you in, aside from their alluring personalities, is the way the stories set up the mystery of each character.
Both Bungo Stray Dogs and The Case Study of Vanitas feature major characters who always seem like there is “something more” that they are hiding from others. While both series enjoy intriguing plots, they also slowly spoon-feed you the mysterious character backstories, which plays a large part in why you want to keep watching.
Durarara
Tokyo’s downtown district of Ikebukuro is awash in strange rumors, everything from colorless color gangs to a headless rider roaming town populate the rumors.
For Mikado Ryuugamine who just moved there from the countryside, he is but one witness to the district’s slew of strange events.
While they both focus in on a core cast of main and major characters, both Bungo Stray Dogs and Durarara are”city” stories. They take place in a neighborhood that is awash in either Mafia violence, gang violence, or just general supernatural-laced crime.
However, while Bungo Stray Dogs is focused on people with special abilities, Durarara is more about actual supernatural beings living among regular criminals in a Tokyo neighborhood. These supernatural beings have abilities, but there are a bunch of normal humans in the mix too. This means grand battles in Durarara are somewhat rare.
While Bungo Stray Dogs has more frequent action, both Durarara and Bungo Stray Dogs also really enjoy a more mature and complex narrative than standard supernatural anime.
Moriarty the Patriot
William Moriarty is the second son of the noble Moriarty family. During the day, he is a mathematics professor, but at night he uses his keen mind in order to work as a consultant for individuals with a particular need for his intellect.
He has dedicated himself to revenge against nobility in order to crumble the crushing social hierarchy that oppresses much of England.
Moriarty the Patriot is different in a lot of ways from Bungo Stray Dogs. It is set in Victorian London, follows a group of criminals murdering nobility, and no one has super-powered abilities.
However, both series balance both narrative and action well while drawing you in with its alluring cast. Even though Moriarty The Patriot is, essentially, a reverse murder mystery, it features a cast of criminals that beg you to find out more about them, not unlike the members of the Armed Detective Agency.
Both series feature its core cast of characters going up against indomitable foes, and using their innate abilities (super-powered or otherwise) to come out ahead in clever ways.
Hakata Tonkotsu Ramens
The city of Fukuoka seems pretty normal, but it is awash in dangerous individuals. In the mix is Banba, a detective investigating hitman companies in the area, and Lin, a hitman that is fed up with his lack of jobs.
After being refused pay for a target that killed themselves, Lin is tasked with killing Banba, but instead asks him to team up.
Both Bungo Stray Dogs and Hakata Tonkotsu Ramens tell stories in a city that is awash in crime and criminals. However, while Bungo Stray Dogs has most criminals and the people who fight them have unique powers, Hakata Tonkotsu Ramens is a little more grounded – there is a suspicious amount of assassins in the city, but they are otherwise not super-powered.
Both series feature plots of unfolding intrigue about what is going on in the city between Mafia organizations and those trying to bring them down. However, while both series create interesting characters, Hakata Tonkotsu Ramens makes them a little less suave and cool – choosing instead to make them eccentric, but otherwise normal.
The Great Pretender
After life turned him down the path of crime, Makoto Edamura cockily thinks himself the best swindler in Japan. However, after trying to swindle a tourist only for the tourist to swap it back, he finds the police on his trail.
Making his escape, he runs into this tourist again, a move that would take him all the way across the sea to Los Angeles. There, he learns that this tourist was in fact a man called Laurent Thierry, a successful confidence man, who wants to recruit him onto his team.
The Great Pretender is innately different from Bungo Stray Dogs since it is about a group of criminals doing grand international heists. However, both series enjoy creating charming, yet mysterious characters.
Bungo Stray Dogs entertains you with its ability-based action while The Great Pretender entertains you with its clever and intricate heists, but outside of that, these series are both series you enjoy because of the characters.
Each show has an inexperienced rookie as the main character and an mysterious leader that drips charm and mystery in equal measure. They slowly feed you character backstory in the background of the other plots, which adds an extra layer of depth.
Do you have more anime recommendations like Bungo Stray Dogs? Let fans know in the comments section below.
