If you know me well, you probably know I am a big fan of Bungo Stray Dogs and have been ever since the anime started in 2016 (yes, a whole ten years ago now!). But volumes of the main series and most of the side content sit in my backlog, mostly because I read the monthly releases of everything except Another Story and Wan!, so I take my time savouring the full volumes later when some time has passed. I imagine, with the main series currently on hiatus after the conclusion of Part 1, I’ll binge my way through those volumes once we hear tell of the series returning. And maybe I will write something about that at the time; I mean, at least by then the English volumes might be caught up too, so I can excitedly talk about it with friends who don’t read the Japanese releases like I do. But today I want to talk about Volume 3 of Another Story: Yukito Ayatsuji vs. Natsuhiko Kyougoku. 

This has only sat in my backlog for about a month; it came out in March and had some higher-priority stuff ahead of it when it arrived last month. And truthfully, Another Story is the one spin-off of Bungo Stray Dogs I am not terribly invested in. I started it with the English releases back in 2019 and while I enjoyed the premise, I found the artwork hard to follow. And that didn’t change a great deal when Volume 2 came out at the end of 2022 (reviewed 2023)  Not liking the artwork for the manga adaptations of the light novel stories, sadly, isn’t unusual for me. I’m not a huge fan of Shiwasu Hoshikawa’s work on BEAST, Storm Bringer or Dazai, Chuuya, Age Fifteen but I have gotten used to it over the years, and it’s not difficult to follow. I just don’t like how they draw the cast compared to Harukawa 35’s original designs. I was sort of grateful when Hoshikawa, still busy with Storm Bringer, wasn’t picked for the Untold Origins of the Detective Agency adaptation. Adachi Tomori has taken the helm there and proven very capable!

But I digress. Back to Another Story. Back in 2023 I’d been sticking with the manga since the light novel it was based on hadn’t been released in English – a problem now solved! But it didn’t seem likely that I’d be seeing the manga again anytime soon; given when #2 came out in English, there was no sign of a third on the horizon, and the chapter releases looked stalled. And it was, in fact, an entire three years later when this third compiled book finally hit Japanese shelves. At this point enough time had passed where I was reluctantly interested in carrying on, probably due to having seen how the story played out in the novel. Well, that and my love of Bungo has only grown over the years so it gets increasingly difficult to just not buy the related material. They say this series is as big as it is because the merch sales are crazy, but it’s invested readers like me that no doubt keep it turning too (and I am not immune to buying merch either judging by the state of my office space)…

And now I’m sort of glad I did. As you’d expect, Oyoyo’s style hasn’t changed a great deal from the previous books, but it does feel a bit more refined and maybe more importantly, restrained. I definitely didn’t find myself anywhere near as confused about what was happening on the page, and the whole thing was a lot less verbose, so the art wasn’t being overwhelmed by panels and panels of text. I’m not going to say it was perfect or any kind of life-changing improvement, but I was very surprised by the turnaround. I had lost hope after Volume 2, and that’s on me, as mangaka are always improving and honing their craft. Although, having said that, it does also help that I’ve read the novel now, so I know what should be happening in a given scene. I’m not sure how big a difference that actually made, but it’s not nothing, that’s for sure.

Volume 3 is pretty slim all told, probably because Kadokawa really wanted to put something out after so many years. And we’re still not finished with the novel’s story, so there’ll be at least one more volume of this to come (we’re not that far from the end, but if they’re always this slim…). This release also contains everything currently written, as there haven’t been any further chapters published since October 2025, so I suspect at this rate it’ll be another 3 or 4 years until this comes back around. I am okay with that ultimately if it means the chapters are more refined and easy to read, as these were.

This is just one of those series that one way or the other has roped me into following it until the end, despite so many reservations about its presentation. I’m just happy that despite how reluctant I was, I quite enjoyed reading it this time and if it does keep going I find myself looking forward to seeing how Oyoyo’s art develops.