Beastars

Edit

What would you like to edit?

SynopsisBackgroundAlternative TitlesPictureChapters/VolumesPublishing DatesRelationsTypeExternal Links  

Anthropomorphism has been a part of cultures in various forms since the prehistoric age. When it comes to stories, it's often been used as a tool by writers to disassociate their messages from humanity so they become analogies, instead of direct teachings or statements. In case of Beastars, the same does ring true too. It allows for a very simple and understandable conflict within the society in the story and keeps it from being openly political. Besides that, the tone also remains reasonably *light* as a result.
But what I really like is how the author's genuine passion for the animal kingdom is visible. Well, I ... mean, she wears a chicken mask in real life, so...
But there's a huge amount of details that aren't necessary from the wider perspective of the whole story, details that just pertain to the species of animals (humans are animals too, I know, by the way) and make the manga feel full of life. But I'm grateful to Paru for including them, without them I could see the story feeling too blunt. The charm of the manga lies in there. But so, to conclude this opening segment, I feel the anthropomorphism is less of a technique and more of a style when it comes to Beastars.

Now, before delving into the actual narrative and the story, I should say that I highly recommend reading (or maybe watching since the anime is great) Beastars if you're into character dramas or psychological stories. Although the quality doesn't remain consistently great and drops off a lot in the final big arc of the story, it's probably worth it to just check it out.

***BEWARE OF SPOILERS FROM HERE ON!***

For me, the highlight of Beastars is definitely the character-writing, hence the list of characters whom I relish is pretty long: Legoshi, Louis, Haru, Juno, Bill, Sebun, Aoba, Gosha... and even the very minor characters such as Ako and Airdo. While they're fleshed out and/or contribute to the thematic core, a common aspect between them is that they're unhappy with their species.

Legoshi feels unjustly big and strong next to herbivores and loathes himself for being a wolf. He doesn't see any value in himself — a creature that's biologically *meant* to prey on others.

Louis craves confidence and puts on a facade to climb above others and get a feeling of control so he could escape his instinctual fear of predators and his fragility as a deer.

Haru wishes that people would treat her as an equal, but is patronized and everyone acts as if she needs protection. She sees herself as someone who'll be inevitably eaten and forgotten, but she continues to cling onto life for the moments that she cherishes.

Bill is proud of being a tiger but is frustrated by the responsibility that comes with his immense strength. He tries to shine in the spotlight but finds that just raw power doesn't cut it.

Gosha can never relax because he needs to always mind himself so he wouldn't hurt anyone with his venom by accident.

Beastars explores self-esteem and dissatisfaction with oneself. The problems the characters face are amplified though. By the harsh expectations and taboos of society. It's really engaging to see them struggle but mature and discover that they're not to blame individually. The entire society in Beastars is rotten at its core and the collective issue they all share is what needs to be solved. The society functions on willfully ignoring the fundamental flaws in its design, mainly, the black market. At least that's how I see the story tackling this topic.

Black Market.

Just the pure existence of it already puts onto a display that they aren't living in an utopia. Despite all of the effort that's been put into creating meals that can keep the carnivores healthy, the yearning for meat hasn't disappeared. Of course, that's not actually the fault of the society. What is however, is that despite it being an open secret, it continues to operate. No one dares to bring it up in the daylight and no one wants to risk getting into that taboo. While any individual isn't in the wrong for that, because a single person can't be expected to be capable of doing anything about an issue of such magnitude, the collective is morally corrupt for not addressing it. Some animals even say it's necessary evil to reason with it — that there's no way around it. Even if it was true, the attempts should still be done and the system of black market should at least be *ensured* to function on meat that comes from hospitals etc.

What is interesting is how we've shown everyone's acceptance of it. Aoba for example, he's a bird with a good heart, yet when he visits the black market with Legoshi and Bill he doesn't really pick a side at first. He's resigned to the fact that it exists and that he'll end up using it. If it wasn't for Legoshi, would he have done it and eaten meat there? Would he have committed to it?
And it's not just carnivores who're accepting of it, even herbivores are in the know, but don't seem to be taking any action. All of them are just playing the fool and hoping that they won't end up there. Also, even more interesting are those who've went there and found a way of making money buy selling parts of themselves.

It's just so awfully fucked up, but that's why it's such an impactful way of building a theme.

In truth, no one benefits from the black market. The herbivores who avoid it don't because random predation incidents still take place outside of it. Herbivores who sell themselves are basically doing the equivalent of taking a loan but even worse.
And even carnivores, they just become addicted and Gohin showed us what that might end up in: carnivores eating themselves in their lust for meat or inflicting self-harm because of the guilt. There are no victors in that story.

One more thing to say about it, the ones who use it aren't evil, they've ironically fallen prey to their own desires. They're not in the right by any means, but they aren't absolute ruthless monsters.

In conclusion to this segment, it's a brilliant way of showcasing how hollow the utopia they have truly is.

Also, I really appreciated the impact on the overall story that the confrontation between Legoshi and Riz had. It wasn't just covered up so Legoshi could continue his school life, instead he was suspended and the setting of the story switched to basically life after school. It's nice for such consequences to exist in a story, while that sadly is the only really good example, it's still something I wanna bring up.

Also, the little story of Ako and Airdo is a really gripping little addition. They founded their relationship on acting progressive and standing out, but subsequently it wasn't pleasing for either and ended in a tragedy. In line with the story in its entirety, there's no one truly at fault individually. Both of them were thoughtless. Ako pushed herself on Ako who lost himself for a slightest second and bit her. There's no hero nor is there a villain. But the response from everyone around them is to immediately assume the worst, which is understandable, but the good response would be to keep an open mind and try to look at the truth. We don't know what happened to Airdo, but with how stern the laws in Beastars are, his life was probably ever changed. It's neglecting to fix the problem.

But the story isn't without a fair share of issues. Most of them are in the latter half of the story. After Melon shows up, the story shifts from a slow and somewhat aimless character drama to have a more concrete plot. In theory, that'd be great, and in my second favourite series, Kaguya-sama, it happens and pays off. But here, everything kinda crumbles and falls apart. The pacing jumps haphazardly around, many characters (Haru in particular) lack screen-time to make the conclusions for their characters work, a lot of fights but no stakes to speak of, plot-points entirely forgotten, etc.

Worst is that the brilliantly set up conflict between herbivores and carnivores is resolved with basically just a speech from Louis who makes it up on the fly. The intricate buildup of the black market and the dark side of society ends up amounting to almost nothing as it just stops being a problem after Louis has a few words on it and brings it into the daylight. Also, almost as bad is how unsatisfying and out of the blue the climax of Legoshi's and Haru's relationship is, being stacked on top of the entire Melon arc where Haru had practically zero screentime.

So, to conclude the review, Beastars is spectacular at start. It devolves into a mess but it's still a meaningful story. I don't think that it's awful at any point. But I really would've wished for a more nuanced ending. But personally, I'm interested in Paru's writing should she start an another manga. Though I do hope that she's been sharpened by this experience

Well, so long Beastars. I have followed you since the first chapter. And you should had been gone earlier, when you were great and not now. You were supposed to be the chosen one! Either way, time to start my filled with spoilers review:

The setting is pretty much the world we live in nowadays but instead of humans, we have animals of any kind. It's quite interesting and sometimes you can see small details like tiny stairs for mouses, divisions in police force regarding size of the animals (big ones, small ones) or abilities like flying, digging, etc... and worldbuilding in general that makes the ... whole world more interesting. Sadly, the author doesn't really explore that and besides a few odd chapters, she puts more attention to the characters which is not a bad thing but it gets tiring after a while because the whole drama is about mixed species animals and interspecies relationships which gets tiring. There was the whole sea animals topic the author didn't really explore and it could have been wonderful, way better than the whole arc about Melon and how dumb is Legosi.
Ah yes, Melon. I don't really know why the author created a character like him but geez, he is the example of a character that should have died 30 chapters earlier. A mixed species animal who is a BPD psycho that everyone fears for some reason even when he is pretty weak compared to most carnivores. We also have Legosi, part lizard part wolf and well, of course Legosi when the series starts and Legosi when the series ends are different in many ways. Mainly in how dumbass he gets to be but also in his confidence. His character really changes a lot in the series but not in the best path in the final run (he gets to be really dumb and nearly killed a few times). There are also Louis, Haru and the others characters in the school who after a certain arc, their importance is barely any except in the ending and it is still pretty eh, like most people actually forgot a few characters exist im sure, like Bill. Haru doesn't seem to be like a real love interest for Legosi and more like a fetish with the way it is described in his mind. And he is always scared of eating her??? So why the heck does he agree in going out with her?! As a note, i find Haru the most realistic character out of everyone and probably my favourite. She's been using boys to validate herself for wo lont at school, and then suddenly Legosi comes along and lifts her up, but she still wants to have her own agency. She wants to have a relationship with Legosi that's male and female as well as carnivore and herbivore (chase me, Legosi) but also she wants him to desire her.
Legosi and Haru are both complicated and flawed characters and they both probably overthink everything. Their relationship may never be easy, but they're so deeply entangled now, they know they'll never be able to be away from each other. Haru is doing her level best to make sure that what they have isn't co-dependent. She wants to have her own self-validation, and she wants Legosi to be able to be a complete person outside of her as well.
The author also does some huge ass pulls that makes you think she is a hack but some of them can be kind of reasonable but stuff like Louis becoming the boss of the lion mafia is just absurd. Or the ending when the whole city unites to destroy the black market of meat and everyone becomes friends. Yeah no, there must be several more cities or countries and destroying one alley where they sell meat isn't gonna stop anything. In the first chapters you could see a really poor animal selling his fingers as a way to get by. Who says there won't be more cases of that in the future?
Nor the ocean animals saying they will trade their dead ones. Why didn't they think of that earlier?
I feel that the series suffers from ending fatigue and that the author should have sticked with the psychological side instead of going full shonen with epic anime fights. Not matter how you put it, a wolf beating a bear in a fist fight is plot armor or the tournament in the black market at the end of the series. It was absurd. I feel that the last arc would have been way better with Legosi struggling to be an adult, his relationship with Haru and others plotlines of characters we already know about. Melon was just a plot device that didn't make much sense from my perspective. He was all over the place and also, the dumb promise Haru made with him amounted to nothing.
Anyway, I give to this series a 6/10. The first arcs are really enjoyable and well done but it gets worse after those arcs, has some ups and down in quality with the ending being quite mediocre in my opinion but not as bad as the ending of Game of Thrones. My main complains are that the author focused too much on Melon, the bpd mixed species and so little in side characters that were quite interesting like Juno.
The art is quite good and evolves. Just compare the first and last chapter.
Overall, this series is enjoyable as hell. Read it.

It had some good potential, but not only got prolonged, but also rushed at the end?

It started very good and simple, with a weird but creative Animal world and a murder mystery, but it got to a point where not only that conflict was resolved, but also everything else was going in circles

What started as a School Mystery ended up trying to be a new Fighting Shonen with power ups, Instant healing and Special habilities and all that.
There were LOTS of things AND EVEN CHARACTERS that got introduced but then were never seen again or never mentioned! And it wasn't just a minor thing, ... but they spent whole chapters on it. So it ends with none of that having any sort of importance to the plot at all!

The worst thing was how all of the Main characters had nothing else to say and were going in circles, as mentioned before. Specially with Legosi and Haru's relationship. Legosi's character went from a Depressed wolf but average at best to a Stupid wolf who does the most stupid things and can't do anything properly. The best character in my opinion was Haru, since she was the only one who had 0 issues with saying the truth or moving things foward, and not only with Legosi.

The last arc was ATROCIOUS. Melon is the most boring and annoying villain and the last and final chapters were SUPER RUSHED and offer no satisfying or clear resolution to anything. I don't know if it was because the series was cancelled or something, since it had proper pacing until that last arc.

Overall, it was entertaining to follow at it's time, but it made me mad to spent so much time and wait for every chapter for months just to get such a dissapointing ending with huge amount of conveniences and rushed as hell.