Hello everyone! In this lesson, let's get into a story where there are no humans, but a society of anthropomorphic animals with Beastars!! So, most anime is about humans or at least has humans in it, but it is really common to see anime that besides humans there can be a character that is a talking animal, a magical creature, or some fantasy specimen created by the author. But in Beastars we have no humans at all, but still is really easy to relate to the characters since it is a story about a society of anthropomorphic animals, meaning animals that have been given human attributions, and their society is a reflection of ours actually.
So, this fantasy drama is based on this society where carnivores and herbivores live together and carnivores are not allowed to eat herbivores, but they still have that instinct or desire of eating meat so this creates a lot of tension and conflicts in their society. And our story starts with a murder in a mixed school of carnivores and herbivores, where a herbivore was eaten and nobody knows by who.
Now more specifically Beastars is about a Gray Wolf called Legoshi that is in this school and one night he has an encounter with a White Bunny called Haru and from that moment his carnivore instincts are awakened and at the same time, he falls in love with her. So from this point on he starts discovering more about his emotions, abuts himself, and also about society since he starts to interact more with other animals especially with a red deer called Louis.
Ok, this story is amazing and one of my favorites. First of all, we have great characters with nice character development and are really like humans? In the sense that we have normal characters with different thoughts, morals and so no one is really extremely bad or good, except maybe for a couple of characters that are a bit crazy and damaged. And this feeling of ordinariness or just simply life happening is felt throughout the whole story till the very end of the story that was quite simple compared to how the story began.
First, we have Legoshi. Who is shy, not sociable, and also really kind and innocent. But since he is a wolf everyone is afraid of him. The whole story revolves around him and so it is through him that we discover little by little all the troubles in this animal society as he is also realizing them for the first time. Because of this, we also don't know where the storyline is going, so it feels random with a lot of unpredictable events. On the other hand, the story is almost only focused on this character so I feel like sometimes other things are left behind without much development.
On the other hand, we have Louis, who is a herbivore who wishes could have a carnivore force since he is weak compared to them. Louis is more egocentric and intelligent and he is always fighting with himself, trying to be better than any other animal while trying to overcome his own weaknesses. So that's how these combinations of characters make this story so fun and interesting.
On the other hand, we have nice female characters being Haru, the most protagonist one she is always there being that motivation for Legoshi. She is a completely like bunny who looks really pure and cute but she is really straightforward, has relationships with a lot of males, and because of that, she is bullied a lot and also feels inferior to others for being such a small animal.
Besides these characters, we get a lot more characters each playing a different role in this fascinating society. The story also deals with a variety of conflicts, one of them the prejudices that exist in a society, bullying, murders, kidnappings, and secret and illegal stuff as well.
Now Beastars is a manga that finished recently this year and was written by Paru Itagaki. And the animation has a Season 1 and a Season 2 on the way. It was produced by Studio Orage and they did an amazing job making the animation in a CGI format. For most of the scenes, the movements flow nicely and the characters look great. On the other hand, the manga art style is amazing, with really cool drawing techniques for these anthropomorphic animals that become better as the story progresses. The expressions of the characters are awesome and the watercolor technique used for the covers is also beautiful and cool.
And finally the music, people! The music is one of the things I enjoy the most about the animation. The opening wild Side by Ali is great and the format they use for the opening was also really appropriate and sweet and kind of creepy as well. Not only the opening but the original soundtrack also gets away from the j-pop style and gets more instrumental, more classic style or as the composer said a gypsy style, that complements the vintage style of these animal societies.
And so this is it for this lesson, I hope you enjoyed it a lot and look forward to the next one. Thank you for listening and talk to you later. Bye-bye!
