I fell pretty hard for Bungou Stray Dogs over it's 3 seasons and the movie, besides a little confusion with the jumping back and forth between timelines, and the relevance of characters and plot points from that, the characters were INTRIGUING, the quality of the inking and coloring was MASTERFUL, the star voice actors were ENGAGING, and the idea of 3 different departments keeping each other in check while protecting the city and keeping order harkens back to the Russian made (and based on novels) Day Watch & Night Watch! When it ended, it left me wanting MORE, we never really delved that deep into the characters backgrounds and motivations, and like typical Anime fashion a la Btooom!, Soul Eater, Blood Blockade Battlefront, Black Blood Brothers, et al, it just ended! So when I saw this series with a basically same name, the characters have the same names, I was elated! However, that was short-lived, by ten minutes into the first episode, I knew this wasn't my beloved anime! This is a series about the souls (they're all dead) of famous authors, being forced to "live" in this gigantic library, from which there is no escape, and they are beckoned into their books, to fight off "the taint" A destructive blue vaporeal (we don't know exactly WHAT it is) substance that is trying to take over and destroy their books. Sometimes they are beckoned into the books of other authors they knew in life, and they can "free" those authors to come live in the library too.
The library is overseen by an Alchemist, and as of Episode7, we STILL haven't seen him \her, the closest things are a non-vocal, glowing, hovering, blue Stone, and a talking cat who says he's the envoy for the Alchemist.
They REALLY like to torture us by every once in a while throwing in something that was pertinent to BSD, such as the 3 main characters meeting at the club Lupin, and Dazai's penchant for failed attempts at suicide. At this point they're just being cruel to us. It's an interesting show, but try to forget BSD before you watch!
