It’s hardly a newsflash, but Beastars is a deep series.  I mean really goddamn deep.  Thematically this show has more layers than a puff pastry.  It also has no boundaries either of taste or ruth – no punches are pulled here.  I get the feeling with certain series (especially manga adaptations) that they represent a kind of psychotherapy for the authors.  This is something I know a bit about and I feel pretty confident in recognizing it when I see it – sometimes we write fiction to allow that which troubles us and can’t be expressed any other way to come out (Watamote is another prime example).

Beastars has certainly closed the loop for me in terms of making the emotional connection as well as the intellectual one.  I’m fully invested in the characters and what happens to them now, especially Legosi and Haru.  But that doesn’t mean I don’t see metaphor and allegory in every speck of dust and mote of moonlight.  I see it, I’d humbly argue, because it’s there.  Itagaki-sensei is making statements here – they may not often be straightforward and simple.  There may be times where even she’s not certain exactly what they are.  But these events have meaning beyond their simple relevance to the plot.

That plot is surely ticking along, though.  Legosi is intent on rescuing Haru at any cost (which can’t be said for Louis), but he’s awkward and lacking in basic common sense as always.  Heading to the black market and blurting out “Shishigumi!” to everyone he meets is transparently an awful idea.  I mean, it does eventually lead to his finding them…  But if it weren’t for the intervention of Gouhin (Panda-san) it would likely have led to Legosi being dead.  And that certainly wouldn’t have helped Haru any.

Gouhin informs Legosi that the Shighigumi are a group of 35 lions, and that trying to rescue Haru is suicide.  But try he does, even as a “lone wolf”.  There’s some amusing cats and dogs byplay here, but eventually it falls to Gouhin (you knew he’d follow) to save Legosi again (I’d argue that’s the lone weak moment in the episode).  Eventually with the panda doc’s help Legosi manages to get inside the Shighigumi’s rather gothic-tinged pagoda and fight his way to the fifth floor, where one of the zaku has conveniently told him Haru is being kept.  But this is all preamble.  The real episode is what happens after that.

The battle going on inside Legosi – to “tame the beast inside him” – is certainly plot-crucial and rhetorically loaded.  “That’s what it means to be an adult in this society” – jeebus, I could go on for hours.  But I’m hung up on Haru’s “will”, and recollection of how she got to this sorry state.  It’s heartbreaking to be sure, but so much more than what it literally seems to be.  She’s small, powerless – the smallest in a family of an already small and powerless species.  All her life her mother warns her to lay low or death could come at any time, and bigger animals (herbivores too – but all males) smile condescendingly at her.  Until one day, a boy who wants something only she can offer looks at her in a totally different way.

Well – the allegorical implications of that are pretty obvious and very complicated.  This is a current that runs through the deepest levels of fiction dating back to the dawn of storytelling – probably along with the fear of death the most fundamental theme there is.  But it’s also deeply personal and intimate with Haru herself, as a character.  She struggles with what almost everyone does, especially in adolescence – to divorce themselves from the view others have of them and value themselves for who they are.  And of course it’s revealing, in that Haru tells us – through her imagined writing session – who it is she truly treasures in her heart.

This is immensely complicated.  Let’s not forget that Legosi’s anger at the Shighigumi foot solider manifests in “She’s my prey!”.  But the fact is, Legosi is the one who came for her – who saw her as she truly was.  And Haru’s brush with death has sparked a sort of peace with herself.  The Shishigumi boss justifies his cruelty with the claim that shame and humiliation make the meat taste sweeter (again, I could go on for hours) but Haru has already felt so much shame towards herself that nothing he throws at her can faze her.  She can face humiliation and death with her pride intact.  And she can dream of Legosi coming to rescue her, even as she knows it’s impossible.  But love can do the impossible sometimes.  The problem is even if they walk out of there together, the task of doing that will have only just started.