If there’s one thing BNA isn’t big on, it’s surprises.  This series has more or less followed a predictable path, and that’s why it came as no surprise that the final resolution played out the way it did.  I don’t think there was ever any question that Shirou was Ginrou, or that Alan was a liar bent on victimizing beastmen, or that Nazuna’s cult was all part of the plan.  But then, I don’t think the series was trying to fool anybody – at least I hope not, as it wasn’t trying very hard if it was.

What Brand New Animal’s game was, then, was the telling of a predictable story in entertaining fashion.  And in that I think it largely succeeded.  It mostly avoided the worst sort of Trigger-isms (though I could have done without everything coming to a head at an idol event yet again).  I think the series had enough of a premise that it really needed two cours to really flesh it out.  That seems to be the trend with Nakashima Kazuki, though you have Kill la Kill too, so who the hell knows.  There’s a good core of a story here, of the treachery of the majority towards the minority, but as a 12-episode series a lot of punches are pulled by necessity.

The gist of Alan’s plan is to get the beastmen of Anima City to freak out due to the Nilvazir Syndrome, and roll the tanks in to take over and “cure” them on that pretense.  The trigger was going to be Nazuna admitting she was a human during the concert – she has to be pretty gullible to believe the pretext he gave her, but as I noted last week we have plenty of evidence that Nazuna is a pretty foolish girl.  The one you really feel for here is Shirou, who’s seeing his nightmare of a thousand years earlier repeating itself.  And that’s on top of Michiru doubting him and pointing a gun at him.

That’s not to say there weren’t a few twists and turns here.  Seems as if Alan’s plan wasn’t to turn beastmen into weapons but to wipe them out altogether.  I don’t think the motivation behind this was laid out in crystal clear fashion, to be honest.  We know Alan is a beastman himself as it turns out – a “purebred”, as opposed to the hybrid he refers to Shirou as.  His beastman form has three heads and immortality, the product of a ritual that takes the lives of 1000 beastmen to complete (which Shirou was subject to as well, apparently).  “Controlling humans from the shadows” is a normal enough supervillain objective – I’m just not sure why he has to destroy Anima City and turn beastmen into humans in order to do it.

If you like Hosoya Yoshimasa howling with all his might, you’ll certainly have appreciated the events of the finale.  It turns out his howl has charms to soothe the save b(r)east(man) – and not only that, Michiru and Nazuna’s blood can be used to make a serum that neutralizes the Nilvazir Effect without turning beastmen into humans.  Both these things are pretty damn convenient, the sort of gaming the system a writer has to do when their story is too big for the timeslot.  I’m also not that nuts about Alan turning out to be a beastmen either, because it really dulls the blade of whatever cutting social commentary BNA was bringing to bear.

Still, this series was not without its charms and neither was the ending.  The relationship between Shirou and Michiru was the best thing about both, and while it got tossed off way too matter-of-factly I was pleased she decided to stay in Anima City – and stay as she was.  I really wanted more depth to this side of the story, because it was there to be had – you can sense where Nakashima was headed with all this, but it all got resolved too quickly and neatly to have any real impact.

So in the end, middling as it was, BNA winds up being perhaps my second favorite Trigger series (after SSSS.Gridman – distantly).  The studio has been hit and miss with me but with the misses easily outnumbering the hits, and what sets Brand New Animal above the norm is the absence of crass calculation and misogyny that’s no prevalent in many Trigger works.  Production-wise it’s the usual Trigger package – some nice individual moments and a lot of style that can’t quite hide the fact that most of it was done on the cheap.  But BNA was a likeable series with likeable characters, and with SSSS.Dynazenon a possibility for Fall, 2020 could end up being Trigger’s best year ever by my reckoning.