In the midst of this coronavirus pandemic, a couple of friends and I have decided to try to virtually watch anime together. There is a neat Chrome extension out there called Netflix Party that allows users to invite other Netflix users to sync up their video and watch together – with a chat window on the side. Despite what I personally consider shortcomings (Netflix-only, computer-only, text-only), it’s pretty cool and pretty convenient. We all used to be in a group that regularly came together to talk about anime, like a book club for anime, but this seems to be another approach to it. Realtime discussion with discussion encouraged.
After two sessions of the painful to watch Cagaster of Insect Cage – which I had to abandon because the protagonist sexually assaults a young woman, but only after the story deliberately tried to create a backstory for him in the very same episode that was intended to make us sympathize with the attempt – we landed on Beastars. I walked in with very little knowledge of the show. All I knew was that it featured anthropomorphic animals and people joke that it will turn you into a furry. Five episodes in and the latter isn’t true.
Five episodes in and I have so many questions.
The opening sequence, shown above, seems to come completely out of the blue after watching the first episode. It’s upbeat and a little silly. It looks like it might be a lighthearted show about a wolf courting a rabbit. What wacky hijinks will they get into together?
Except the first episode begins with our wolf character, Legoshi, apparently attacking a rabbit, Haru, and discussing his instincts taking over. And then we shift back a few days. We learn that there was a murder in the drama club. An herbivore was killed. The assumption is that a carnivore did it. This plants seeds of something akin to racial tensions in the school. The end of the episode returns to Legoshi jumping on Haru, but he doesn’t hurt her.
He meets her again later, in garden. We learn that she is sexually promiscuous, slut-shamed by her peers, but not at all ashamed of herself. Legoshi doesn’t take advantage of her despite her stripping in front of him. But he’s taken quite an interest in her.
The other episodes narrow in on the drama club of which Legoshi is a member. It’s a fairly standard anime/manga plot of characters preparing for a production, something could go wrong with the production, inevitably something happens, but they still roll through. It was interesting but far more light than anything that came before it. Which makes it confusing because this series doesn’t quite seem to have itself pegged down. What it’s doing isn’t bad, though.
What intrigues me more is the world that was created for the series. Anthropomorphic animals living in nigh-harmony with one another, but the tension caused by the murder suggests this union of herbivore and carnivore is still in its infancy. Despite that, they managed to create a massive school for everyone to attend, with furnishings and cafeteria offerings that cater to diverse sizes and appetites. (No meat, though.) It seems to present an almost idylic society, save for the fact that it feels like it could fall apart at any moment due to unnecessary infighting. It almost seems like a commentary…
In episode five they talk about an upcoming meteor festival. The festival celebrates the meteor that drove the dinosaurs to extinction, leading up to the society they have today. This means that this world was allowed to happen because humans did not evolve. In fact, and this could just be because I’m not looking for them, there do not appear to be any primates. Fascinating.
With every episode, I’m left wanting to know so much more about this world. How did all of the animals decide to come together? Why are some creatures, like the Harlequin rabbit, near extinction? If animals can interspecies romance and sexual contact, are there hybrids? Are there other schools – and are they more segregated? What is this world?
Due to the fact that it seems to be focusing on school life drama more than the murder mystery or world building, this is unlikely to become a favorite series of mine. It is still an enjoyable series and one that I could recommend as a display of what anime is capable of being. It is well produced, the characters so far as well created, and there’s enough to keep me interested past the three episode threshold. If the violence and sexuality weren’t so gratuitous, despite their rare occurence, this would be easier to recommend more generally.
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