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Now and then, a show comes along that takes your breath away and leaves you watching in awe. And while the visuals of star-filled night skies manage this task alone, there is a simplistic beauty in how the interactions between protagonists Ganta and Isaki is handled.

Insomniacs After School has a core theme of (as the title suggests) insomnia. Insomnia is the difficulty of sleeping at night that leads to frustration, anxiety and difficulty living everyday life due to exhaustion. Insomnia is something that most people have experienced - and those experiences are unanimously negative. Despite this, Kimisomu deals with this delicate topic by focusing on ... the pair putting their energy into a positive outlet: astrophotography. I was initially hesitant to pick up this show as I figured there would be a lot of romanticization of insomnia and sleeplessness - which massively irks me as someone who has dealt with sleeplessness for the majority of their life and has affected me in college and relationships. However, seeing the two put their extra time from restlessness into something good - finding a new hobby in astrology and entering competitions is inspiring and charming to watch.

The main selling point for me was Ganta and Isaki's character depth - each with their own nuanced everyday life struggles. The two manage to connect over their shared troubles with sleeping, and support each other with their emotions and frustrations towards other problems in their life and constantly lift each other up. The support system that the two create between themselves made me feel envious of having somebody like that in my own life - who can accept you for exactly who and what you are and help you overcome anything.

Insomniacs After School is a package of visual and emotional beauty which I have enjoyed every second of and have found myself counting down the days for the next episode release. It is both an emotionally charged yet calming experience, and an overall worthwhile watch.

At face value, Beastars is a 'furry' anime that shows an unlikely relationship between a grey wolf and a dwarf rabbit. This is often what people think when they hear of Beastars, however, the story goes so much deeper and because of that I couldn't resist writing a review on it.

Beastars is an anime based around an anthropomorphic animal society - much like our own, just made up of humanised animals living day-to-day in society. I was immediately captivated when watching Beastars for the underlying topics that the show covers - such as the prejudice, discrimination and social hierarchies that run rampant in everyday society. ... Beastars has a very unique way of highlighting this discrimination - through the relationship between carnivores and herbivores. While the show begins as a story of coexistence between the two, we begin to see a strain between the two classifications of animals - mostly due to the media and the societal stigma that grows from the reporting of carnivores eating herbivores. Carnivores begin to be labelled as being unable to control their thirst for herbivore blood, a species that prey on the 'weak' herbivores. This in turn hurts the herbivores, giving them a reputation of a subservient species to the carnivores, only seen as weak and powerless. We see this from two main perspectives - the gentle giant Legoshi, a grey wolf who tries to fight his carnivorous instincts to pursue an 'impossible' relationship with the dwarf rabbit Haru - and Louis, the stoic red deer who exists at the top of their school's hierarchy as a talented actor in the drama club. Both of these protagonists are shown fighting these labels given to them within society and thriving for a society where herbivores and carnivores can properly co-exist, without any harm or prejudice towards each other.

Covering heavy topics in anime is usually a recipe for disaster unless done well, but the writers did a good job of handling it with care. It's not often that we get to see the effects of societal prejudice from all angles in media - it's often a plotline used to highlight a specific issue, and discrimination towards a certain group of people - but Beastars manages to masterfully show us it from every single angle - with the negative effects the strain between the herbivores and carnivores has on all groups of people - and how vastly different the negative effects are for each affected group.

As for the animation, Beastars is unique in being one of the few successful examples of CGI animation in anime. While the CGI was off-putting to me at first, it definitely grew on me within the first couple of episodes. Beastars is an absolutely stunning show, and the CGI gives the show a specific charm to it. The character movements and facial cues are fluid and realistic, unlike some other examples of CGI in anime- and it still feels like you're watching an anime.

The sound in Beastars is phenomenal, specifically the background music. Sometimes you'll watch an anime that just has the perfect setting for what is happening in the scene - the perfect music, background and voice actors. It's usually rare to find all three in an scene of an anime, however this is a common occurrence within the show.

Beastars is an audial, visual and written masterpiece. It's one of those shows where you can tell the passion, dedication and hard work that went into creating it - from scriptwriting, animation and sound design - and it definitely paid off in the end.