Since the consensus seems to be “blog ’em if you got ’em” I’ll go ahead and cover the six released episodes of Brand New Animal.  Everyone including me can make a decision later, but so far I’m fairly interested.  I would love to know how many episodes this series is going to be – when they don’t tell you it’s almost always a single cour, but something about the exposition here makes me think Nakashima has a longer series in mind.  It feels like a big and complicated mythology, and so far BNA is in no hurry to flesh it out.

Obviously Sylvasta Pharmaceuticals is central to the whole juujin mystery.  They run a huge lab/hospital in Anima City despite being a human company, and they know who Michiru is.  It’s also worth nothing that Michiru had a human friend who went beastman before she did (and “disappeared”).  Whether their president (Ichikawa Kaitou) is aware of it or not, the director of the hospital is responsible for the bombing around town, all in the means of covering his own tracks.  But for what?  It obviously goes a lot deeper than embezzlement.

Oogami is right to be suspicious of Sylvasta.  He’s also suspicious of Michiru – or at least of the threat she poses as a human-beastman hybrid.  He even tries to lock her up to keep her secret from getting out, though a visit from the mayor allows Michiru to talk her way out of confinement.  Somehow I don’t trust the Mayor either, though so far she hasn’t done anything specifically to suggest she’s on the dark side.  She even pledges to help Michiru (she’s also a geneticist) try and find a cure for her “disease” – but how does it make a beastman feel when someone like Michiru calls being one a disease?

If Episode 3 was a bit of a placeholder, things really picked up with the next one.  The start was a bit rough – exposition by explanation is always a sore point with me – but it ended up being quite an interesting ride.  Getting past the genetics lecture, the rest of the exposition felt a lot more natural.  In hindsight it wasn’t surprising that Anima City is behind a firewall – it’s in the best interests of the powerful on both sides of the species divide to keep contact to a minimum.  But it’s even less surprising that black marketeers like Mary have their ways around that.

We’ve met him before, but the ruthless head of the yakuza, Guiliano Flip (an excellent Tadano Youhei) is obviously going to be an important figure going forward.  I’d pegged him as some sort of cetacean based on his name and his lapel pin – I was thinking orca from his build, but his daughter Nina is a dolphin and given Rose’s lecture, at least one of her parents would have to be, too.  Nina has access to the internet too, hardly surprising given her wealth – in fact she’s a bit of a Facebook celebrity, which leads to a meeting with Michiru.  It doesn’t end well for the latter, but eventually a new friendship is struck up here.

The hilarious sight gags continue here – a dolphin having a Wyland in their house in pure genius.  Somehow being around Nina allows Michiru to regain her human form, which leads to an obviously ill-advised plan to sneak across the harbor to the mainland and attend the party of a fellow online celebrity.  This is the most interesting scene of the series so far – a house full of posers who have juujin parties and fancy themselves as progressive.  Lisa’s real attitude towards beastmen reveals itself when Nina slips and lets her true form reveal itself – but jeebus, who doesn’t know a dolphin needs to breathe air to live?

There’s a lot of fertile territory for Nakashima to pursue here, should he decide to – the social commentary pretty much writes itself.  It’s always interesting when anime writers explore threats to the homogeneity of Japanese society, and though it certainly doesn’t always end well he has the chops to pull it off.  I should note, too, that it was acknowledged that Shirou was seemingly immortal – which makes me glad because his indestructibility was starting to annoy me.  He and Michiru are obviously both atypical, but I’m guessing not unique.  As for Michiru the birthday message from her mom at the end was a nice touch – a reminder that it’s not so easy to leave your entire life behind emotionally, and it’s good to know her parents didn’t disown her.