And even then, I’m not so sure…

This was one of those anime episodes that just leave me gobsmacked.  They’re rare, but when they happen they stay with you.  Some of what I’m feeling now reminds me of how I felt about the first season finale of Tokyo Ghoul, Morita Shuuhei’s transcendent masterpiece.  I don’t put this one quite on that level (though the series as a whole is certainly better) but it’s absolutely on my shortlist of best anime episodes of 2019.

Normally I don’t wax overlong on the production side of things in these reviews, but this episode and indeed this series as a whole is so exceptional that it’s no insignificant factor.  I’m not an animator or visual artist of any kind; I understand narrative much better than production, and I’m much more comfortable discussing it.  But the brilliance on display here is unmistakable.  Orange has raised the bar for digital animation in television anime with Beastars – their visual choices are as fascinating as the material itself.  When you consider that this is Matsumi Shinichi’s first series as chief director, that certainly paints an exciting picture of his future.

Beastars is an incredibly challenging series intellectually.  First and foremost that’s a wonderful thing, but it can make it a tough watch sometimes.  There’s so much begging you to interpret it that it’s difficult to connect emotionally sometimes.  Orange’s choices here are interesting, because certainly haven’t gone for a minimalist approach so as to let the allegory and symbolism dominate the stage.  Their visuals ask as much of us as Itagaki Paru’s writing does, and at times the experience can be overwhelming.  But at other times – and often in this episode – those visuals have the effect of dispersing the mists and allowing us to see clearly what’s happening on an emotional level.

That said, by no stretch of the imagination was this easy to watch.  From the moment Kabu’s corpse showed up it was clear we were going to be in for a dark ride.  In order to save Haru, Legosi must do something he dreads – unleash the beast inside him in her presence.  It’s bloody, gruesome – but Haru stands her ground.  That says a lot about her, and it says a lot about Legosi that even as he goes lycanthropic on the lion yakuza chief, he chooses to avoid killing him.  That job he unknowingly leaves for Louis, who arrives in the nick of time to prevent the don from taking his revenge on Legosi.  I guess even in a world of sentient carnivores and herbivores living side-by-side, guns are the great equalizer.

Louis is clearly pretty messed up at this point, and it’s also clear that his grand exterior belies a great deal of self-loathing.  His fate is left uncertain, though I’m not too worried (more concerned about Panda-doc actually, though he did tie up the bad guys).  No, the camera stays quite rigidly on Legosi and Haru for most of the episode.  This is their story.  And it’s such a complicated one.  His reflection that he’s come this far to try and get Haru to forgive him for being born a carnivore is the most interesting piece of monologue in the ep for me.  He’ll be in trouble when he gets home (especially since the dorm matron found his carnivore-herbivore pop psychology guidebooks) but for the moment, none of that matters.

Wolves are tough I suppose – Legosi recovers from his wounds fairly quickly, and shares a quick meal of yakisoba with her using the money he hides in his shoe (this scene has an almost Lady and the Tramp vibe).  But the trains have stopped running, and he still has money in his shoe.  The problem, as he tells Haru, is that given the adrenaline of the night’s events and the carbs, he’s fully in “male mode” and can’t guarantee what will happen if the two of them share a hotel room.  But Haru is insistent and what’s more, no stranger to the sorts of hotels that don’t check IDs and can be paid for with shoe money.  Soon enough, the steps to adulthood have become a supersonic escalator…

Simply put, it’s hard to overstate both how charming and how visually stunning what happens at that hotel is.  From the escalator scene onwards the visuals are fantastic, but the device of using the love hotel mirrors as a reflection to the first time Haru and Legosi “met”, well…  Not only is it stupidly clever but it’s also incredibly beautiful.  Orange isn’t just dreaming up clever tricks here – they’re animating them in gorgeous fashion.  I even loved the way Matsumi shot Legosi’s shoe falling to the carpet and his grandpa money falling out of it.

She knew the truth all along – of course she did.  Haru is no fool.  There’s a ton of symbolism here obviously, as always in Beastars, and I’ve come to see the primary thrust of it as gender rather than class-based.  But ultimately these are characters, and their potential relationship in the context of this mythology is incredibly problematical.  Maybe in the end, Beastars as much as anything is a musing on the nature of true love, and just how many real world obstacles it has the power to overcome.