Bungo Stray Dogs uses the names of real-life literary figures for its characters and bases the names of their abilities on the works of each of these figures. Some superpowers in the series even reflect the theme of the work it was based on.
While all may be quirky and intuitive, they aren’t equally powerful. Some abilities are below average and barely useable, while others are so strong that they can literally shatter the constraints of space-time.
Check out the top ten strongest abilities in Bungo Stray Dogs that have set themselves apart from ordinary abilities due to their sheer power.
25Gasp of the Soul
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Gasp of the Soul was first introduced during the Sky Casino arc in Chapter 75.
Though the nature of Gasp of the Soul is unclear at first glance, we quickly come to know that this ability allows Teruko to manipulate the ages of other people and herself just by touching them.
But the potential of this ability is greatly hindered since it’s not exactly deadly. Teruko uses this ability only to disguise herself or to torture her targets for information.
24Gone With the Wind
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We don’t see much of Gone With the Wind in the series, which makes it difficult to understand the true extent of the ability.
Gone With the Wind is inherently a weathering-type ability that allows Margaret to wither down any material she wishes to destroy. So far, we have seen her disintegrate cloth, wood, and paper.
However, her threat to turn Kaiji into a mummy implies that her ability might be more powerful than we actually think.
23Discourse on Decadence
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Being a spy for the Japanese government is not an easy job, but Ango’s ability, Discourse on Decadence, makes this job much easier.
Discourse on Decadence allows Ango to read the memories left on a certain object or human by touching them.
The only downside of this ability is that Ango loses consciousness if he takes in too much information. Thankfully, a nice, tight slap or a stinging sensation is enough to bring him back to his senses.
22The Matchless Poet
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Doppo Kunikida is a man who is a stickler for rules and ideals he believes in. His ability, The Matchless Poet, reflects his attitude towards life and his principles perfectly.
With the help of the Matchless Poet, Kunikida can materialize any objects into reality by ripping a page of his notebook. However, he can’t create objects that are bigger than his notebook.
Eventually, he learns to materialize objects without his notebook. He even expands the extent of his ability by letting other people who possess a page of his notebook trigger his ability.
21Black Cat in the Rue Morgue
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What if you could transport yourself into a novel or manga you absolutely loved? Poe’s ability, Black Cat in the Rue Morgue, can make your dreams of transporting into your favorite piece of literature come true.
Black Cat in the Rue Morgue transports Poe’s targets into the setting of any novel they are reading. However, this setting isn’t necessarily fairy tale-like. Many settings revolve around a mystery and include murderers that can kill you if they want to.
However, that doesn’t mean Poe uses his ability to just kill people. There are times when he uses safer settings to provide temporary shelter for his targets.
20Anne of the Abyssal Red
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Anne of the Abyssal Red transports its targets into a space called Anne’s Room, which might look harmless in the beginning. After all, it looks like a (slightly sinister) nursery.
However, any targets that are transported into Anne’s Room have to engage in a deadly game of tag with a giant doll-like creature called Anne inside the space. Lucy can also knock out her captives and trap them in a secret chamber of her room forever.
19Light Snow
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Light Snow can be easily considered one of the strongest passive abilities in the Armed Detective Agency. Light Snow is an ability with infinite potential, since it can conjure illusions of any kind.
Tanizaki can alter his physical surroundings by camouflaging objects and people, or even switching their positions. He can also create multiple projections of himself to trick his opponents.
18All Men Are Equal
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Keeping many strong ability users under one roof can be quite risky, especially if some of them don’t have total control over their abilities.
Cue Yukichi Fukuzawa with his All Men are Equal ability. All Men are Equal can suppress the abilities of every member of the Armed Detective Agency, as long as they pass the entrance exam.
However, Fukuzawa can’t suppress the abilities of anyone who’s not a member of the Agency, which leaves him pretty vulnerable to his enemies.
17Thou Shalt Not Die
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Thou Shalt Not Die had the potential to become an extremely overpowered ability, if it wasn’t held back by its long list of limitations.
Thou Shalt Not Die is the ability of Akiko Yosano, the sole doctor of the Armed Detective Agency. This ability has the power to heal any physical wound, as long as the injured person is half-dead.
Even though Thou Shalt Not Die is an efficient healing ability, it forces Yosano to nearly kill her patients to heal them. Moreover, Yosano can’t heal internal wounds or poison with this ability.
16Vita Sexualis
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Ogai Mori’s Vita Sexualis lets him manifest Elise, a young girl who follows the will of Mori. Mori can shape her personality in any way he wishes to meet his goals.
Elise can move quickly, and she has protected her user from various perils on many occasions. However, summoning Elise takes up Mori’s energy, so he can’t call her when he’s ill or physically weak.
15The Precipice
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Ivan Goncharov’s The Precipice was so strong that even Akutagawa and Atsushi had a hard time taking it down together.
The Precipice allows Goncharov to control the earth element, which gives him a huge advantage over his enemies, since earth is everywhere. He can use rock giants to attack his opponents and rock hands to defend himself.
Moreover, he uses his ability for passive actions as well, such as detecting the positions of his targets as long as they move on the ground.
14Strait is the Gate
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Gide’s Strait is the Gate and Oda’s Flawless can be considered equally powerful, since they are more or less the same ability.
Just like Oda, Gide can see five to six seconds in the future using Strait is the Gate. This ability also helps Gide to evade enemy attacks and move to a safer location.
However, Strait is the Gate is rendered useless against Flawless because both the abilities cancel out each other to form a singularity.
13Flawless
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Any ability which can exert control over the domain of time itself can be easily considered overpowered. Sakunosuke Oda’s Flawless ability was one of the first time-related abilities introduced in the series.
Flawless allows Oda to look five to six seconds into the future and predict the course of events.
But if he changes his actions or decisions, the future he sees changes as well, which exposes him to an unknown danger.
Besides, it’s very easy to manipulate the future he sees if an enemy is aware of the nature of his ability.
12Time Machine
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Many fans don’t know about this ability, since Time Machine has debuted only in the light novel. But based on whatever little we read about it in the light novel, we can clearly conclude that this ability is definitely stronger than other time-manipulation abilities we encountered so far.
Time Machine is the ability of H.G Wells, a character introduced in the fifth light novel of the series. Wells can slow down time and even send a person to any specific point in the past for 55 minutes.
The only restriction she faces while using her ability is that she can’t send the same person to the past twice, which means that she can only use her ability during emergencies.
11Rashomon
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Rashomon is the ability of Port Mafia arc’s primary antagonist, Ryuunosuke Akutagawa. Akutagawa can transform any garment he wears into a shadow-like, black beast. This beast can devour anything, even space.
Even though Rashomon seems like a strong ability, it doesn’t stand a chance against opponents like Fitzgerald, and it takes some time to unleash its space-devouring attack.
10Beast Beneath the Moonlight
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Beast Beneath the Moonlight seems pretty underwhelming at first sight. After all, what’s so impressive about transforming into a white tiger? But Atsushi’s ability is more complex than it seems.
Beast Beneath the Moonlight not only grants Atsushi incredible reflexes and regeneration power, but it also allows him to ‘cut’ abilities.
Unlike No Longer Human’s nullification that lets his targets recover their ability after he stops touching them, Atsushi’s ability-cutting prevents his opponents from recovering their ability.
Combined with Rashomon, Atsushi’s ability-cutting stopped Goncharov’s rock golems from regenerating.
9Mirror Lion
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The leader of the Decay of the Angel organization, Ochi Fukuchi, wields the Mirror Lion ability.
Mirror Lion allows him to increase the power of any material he holds by hundredfold. This material can be a weapon like a katana, a piece of wood or even a rock. Some of his weapons can even cut through time and space itself.
Fukuchi has rightfully earned the title of a legendary ability user thanks to his ability. So far, he has not lost a single battle against his opponents in the manga.
8Illuminations
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Illuminations doesn’t adhere to any law of physics, which truly makes it a fearsome ability. Illuminations was an ability that originally belonged to Arthur Rimbaud, but is now used by Paul Verlaine.
Users of this ability can create isolated spheres, in which they can manipulate matter in any way they can wish. They can also turn people into abilities and use them, even if they are dead.
Though Illuminations is overpowered, it still can’t fend off Dazai’s nullification.
7The Overcoat
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The Overcoat is a space-manipulation ability wielded by Nikolai Gogol, a member of the notorious Decay of the Angel organization.
Nikolai uses his coat as a portal to transfer and move objects within 30 meters using the Overcoat ability. He can even move living beings using this portal. So far, he has transported guns, telephone poles, and even his own body through the Overcoat.
Moreover, it seems he can even avoid No Longer Human’s nullification and fight against Dazai. To achieve this impressive feat, he ensures that he doesn’t touch Dazai during the transfer process.
6Dogra Magra
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Most of the strongest abilities in this series are offensive to some extent, but Dogra Magra is an exception. Instead, this ability controls other people as puppets that can dance to its tune.
To unleash Dogra Magra, Kyusaku has to force their victim to hurt them in some way. Once that happens, they gain total control over their target’s mind.
The only method to deactivate this ability so far is through Dazai’s No Longer Human. However, even after nullification, Kyusaku can reactivate Dogra Magra through the same process again.
5Draconia
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Draconia’s powers might remind you of No Longer Human, but they are actually a bit different from each other.
By using Draconia, Shibusawa can separate the abilities of all ability users, except for Dazai. The abilities then take on their own forms, and attack their own users.
Unless the powerless user destroys the red gem embedded in the ability, the ability can’t be retrieved. Draconia can also revive Shibusawa, as long as his collection of abilities continues causing singularities.
4Crime and Punishment
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All we know about Crime and Punishment so far is that Fyodor can kill anyone he wishes by just touching them. It didn’t even turn against its user, even when Fyodor was affected by Draconia’s mist.
Many fans believe that Crime and Punishment functions on the principle of karmic retribution. The ability turns a person’s awareness of their own sins against them, ultimately killing them.
However, Fyodor’s ability will be useless against Dazai, since he needs to touch his target to actually kill them. Touching Dazai means activating his No Longer Human ability, eventually leading to the nullification of his own ability.
3Upon the Tainted Sorrow
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Upon the Tainted Sorrow remains one of the strongest space-manipulation abilities in the Bungo Stray Dogs universe, even though it has been overpowered a lot of times by other abilities.
The user of Upon the Tainted Sorrow ability is Chuuya Nakahara, Dazai’s former partner and a Port Mafia member. He can manipulate the gravity of individuals and objects and change the direction or force of their gravity just by touching them.
However, his ability is rendered useless against Rimbaud’s Illuminations which uses physics-altering hyperspaces and No Longer Human’s nullification.
2No Longer Human
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No Longer Human won’t be a powerful ability if it existed in the real world. But this ability is really useful in the Bungo Stray Dogs universe.
Dazai’s No Longer Human cancels out the abilities of all the other ability users as long as he touches them. No ability can work against him, whether it’s an ability that affects human beings or the surroundings.
However, Dazai’s nullification doesn’t work against non-abilities, like Lovecraft’s Great Old One. Another downside of this ability is that he can’t take the advantage of abilities that can actually help him, such as Thou Shalt Not Die.
It’s also worth noting that while No Longer Human is ranked higher than Upon the Tainted Sorrow, Chuuya would’ve outranked Dazai if it was a list of users and not abilities.
1I am a Cat
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Soseki Natsume’s “I am a Cat” is the strongest special ability in the Bungo Stray Dogs series. By using this ability, Natsume transforms into a cat that can see through everything, including humans and the future.
Natsume had made several appearances throughout the series as a cat whenever a catastrophe is approaching. He has managed to avert those catastrophes countless times as well.
He can also destroy buildings quite easily, though we don’t know how exactly he does it. Even though the true nature of I am a Cat has been revealed, there’s still a lot we don’t know about this ability.
Honorable Mentions
There are some some strong abilities that couldn’t make it into the top 25 because they technically aren’t an ability.
Chuuya’s Corruption is a part of the Arahabaki sealed inside him. When unleashed, it just breaks the power scaling of the Bungo universe.
And then there’s Lovecraft’s Great Old One. Upon activation, Howard Phillips Lovecraft can transform into a super durable eldritch monster, partially or fully. While it may seem like an ability, Dazai confirms that it isn’t one. Perhaps, it’s another Godly form like Arahabaki, but that’s just a theory.
About Bungou Stray Dogs
Bungou Stray Dogs is a manga series by Kafka Asagiri and illustrated by Sango Harukawa. It has also received an anime adaptation.
The story follows Atsushi, a weretiger, who later joins the Armed Detective Agency, where people with special abilities help keep peace in the area.
The agency faces peril from time to time and must rise up against all odds.
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