I want to lead with something totally positive, so let me say this. If all CGI anime looked like Beastars, I don’t think fans would groan every time they found out a new series would be using it. I know I wouldn’t. Orange deserves a tremendous amount of credit for their work generally, but I really think Beastars is its apotheosis so far. Everything from the facial expressions (usually the bane of 3-D animation) to the backgrounds to the action sequences – it’s all gorgeous. Beastars sets a standard few series either hand drawn or CGI can match, and it’s the proof that in an ideal world, this sort of animation doesn’t need to be graded on a curve.
Maybe that first paragraph set off alarm bells (especially among those of you who knew me well). And you’re not wrong, though my praise for this series is heartfelt. But yes, I had some issues with that finale, and a couple with the season as a whole. I realize it’s not fair for me to bring my baggage on this trip – I can try and crack the code of Itagaki’s symbolism all day long, but it’s not her job to satisfy my interpretive imperative. Maybe all this time a cigar was just a cigar, and should only be judged on whether it smokes like a Sir Winston or a Dutch Masters.
But just between you and me, there’s no way that’s true. She’s way too smart and ambitious a writer.
Basically, neither of the two major developments in this finale really worked for me (I don’t include Pina being alive, since that was pretty easy to see coming). I didn’t buy either Ibuki’s suicide (let’s call it what it is) or Louis’ sacrifice. As soon as we saw the ED as the OP, I pretty much knew what was going to happen with Ibuki. But that doesn’t mean I buy that he had to do it. I think the plot needed Louis to leave the underworld and go back to his own world, and that was a way to make it happen with some pathos. But it feels more like pathos for its own sake to me.
Then we have the conclusion to the Legosi-Riv fight. You can take issue with the fact that Legosi obsessed over this instead of just turning Riv over to the cops in the first place. And I’m left wondering why Rokume – a character with great promise and charisma – was here at all, as he seemed to have no importance to the plot at all in the end. But for all that, the fight itself was pretty epic. And it was gorgeously choreographed. The showdown itself was sort of anti-climactic from a thematic standpoint, but highly climactic from a dramatic one.
I’m even good with the idea of Riv and Legosi making this a battle of world views in the end. Riv sees the strength of carnivores as something forever isolating them, their weapons of destruction only valuable to terrorize the world and push it away. For Legosi those weapons are a privilege, because they give him the ability to protect those he cares about (who pretty much all happen to be herbivores, the ones he’s protecting anyway). What exactly is Beastars trying to say with that? Well, that’s where things get complicated.
As for Louis telling Legosi to eat his foot in order to win the fight, well – I gotta admit, that was kind of a head-scratcher to me. Beastars is a weird series to be sure, and I’ve never been quite so perplexed by my own need to project meaning onto what I’m seeing. Maybe, as I said, that isn’t fair. Maybe (though I’ll never be convinced) there really isn’t any allegorical meaning beyond what we’re seeing on-screen. But that was not a deer telling a wolf to eat his foot in order to subdue a bear, sorry. Deer and wolves and bears don’t talk and aren’t plagued by self-doubt and self-loathing. If you tell me to just interpret events as if these were the animals they physically appear to be, I’m afraid I would have to call BS on that.
I will grant you this – I have no idea what to make of any of that. Whatever meaning Itagaki was going for there above and beyond the literal is lost on me. Maybe there’s a certain “to thine own self be true” element to all of this, and there’s no question that for a wolf, it’s impossible to be all you can be without eating as nature intended you eat. If that’s the message – we should accept our true natures rather than swim against the current – that’s all well and good. But what does that say about the herbivores in the equation? Whichever spin you put on all this – race, gender, identity politics – it gets uncomfortable pretty fast.
With the ending largely firing blanks for me, it’s hard to rank this second season of Beastars on par with the first – though that’s a very high bar indeed. Season 1 did strike me as more thematically consistent, and I found Legosi’s character journey there more compelling than this season-long dance With Riv (though we didn’t know who the dance partner was for much of it). I also missed Haru’s presence, because she closes the emotional circuits in a way Beastars generally struggles to do in her absence.
So what’s next? With the manga now finished, there’s nothing narratively preventing Orange and Netflix from continuing the story, and I know there’s enough material for at least one more cour (and possibly two). Whether there’s the financial imperative for a production committee to make that happen is another question, though I do think this being a Netflix show makes it more likely. Whatever issues I had with this season, I would certainly love to see Beastars get a full adaptation. It’s pretty close to unique for starters, and the writing has an intelligence and fearlessness to it that I heartily appreciate even when trying to come to grips with it leaves me thoroughly perplexed.
Aisha
March 26, 2021 at 2:41 amBecause we do not know if there will be an anime 3rd season, could you perhaps be willing to pick the manga for blogging purpose? I really enjoy your musings on this story. Riz arc ends on chapter 97.
This was my favorite arc in the manga, and ofcourse like every other source readers in history lol I think anime didn’t do it justice, esp through their speed run in last few episodes. But reading criticisms on it does highlight that the issues (like forgotten characters and plotlines) associated with the later half of the manga had already started to rear its head here, but were overshadowed by how good the rest of the content was.
However despite all its increasing issues in story telling, thematically the series keeps on getting denser and denser because Legoshi will no longer be shielded by this world by high school walls and will have to confront the question of what would it really be if haru and him do get together and decided to raise a family.
Aisha
March 26, 2021 at 3:19 amand im also tempted to link this expansion on louis and ibuki ending:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VyvhvlYvRnc&feature=youtu.be
i have no idea why anime thought to skip all the good manga panels in the actual anime itself only to include them in a video who a fraction of original animer viewers will watch. had it been like this in anime it would be far more emotional.
Guardian Enzo
March 26, 2021 at 8:38 amUnlikely I would pick up the manga for blogging purposes, but if there’s no news of a 3rd season for a while I may go back to reading it.
It did seem as if a lot got rushed this season. You could just tell.
Nadavu
March 27, 2021 at 12:00 amThanks for that video! Yeah, I feel they should have played it in its entirety… but there was barely time left for anything in the finale
Also, I love how the lyrics use “ibuki” (breath) just after Ibuki gets shot (3:00)
Gyarekushi
March 27, 2021 at 4:30 pmYa beat me to sharing that full MV of Yasashi Suisei myself
kiwi
March 26, 2021 at 3:44 pmI’m contemplating whether i should watch the second season of Beastars because frankly my memory is quite foggy about the first season. Additionally…. I don’t really want to watch another type of “animal species/race allegory” of show a la Brand New Animal or Zootopia because they usually get kinda iffy and rarely stick the landing. And the fact that many people are still confused about even the existence of such an allegory doesn’t exactly instill me with confidence haha.
Guardian Enzo
March 26, 2021 at 5:07 pmAs jumbled as the allegory is, Beastars is still orders of magnitude above BNA.
Gyarekushi
March 27, 2021 at 4:47 pmOh no – BNA and /even/ Zootopia, for sure, are honestly nothing compared to Beastars. There’s pretty much allegories only if you want there to be.
Nadavu
March 27, 2021 at 12:18 amWell, I’m not happy with how the show ended 😀
This felt so much like an anime-original that I had to go look in the manga, and surprisingly, it’s not the anime adding stuff in but rather leaving stuff out. Just one non-spoilery example that I think illustrates the heart of the matter: The manga dedicates a few panels to explain why Legoshi changes positions to listen to Riz’s “confession”. It’s a small thing, but without it, Legoshi’s actions seem… well, stupid and arbitrary.
In the end, I feel that the second season dropped the ball on pacing, spending too much time on dead-ends in the beginning and middle and not leaving itself enough time to nail the ending. For example, Rokume was cool and all, but ultimately you could have cut him off the story and have almost an entire extra episode. He might become important later down the road, but if you’re gonna make changes to the source material anyways, make them smart and consistent (well, it’s obviously an extremely hard thing to do well. But I like complaining)
I also think one of the intermediary fights with Riz could have been taken out.
In conclusion, the anime may have fumbled the ending somewhat, but it was a great ride, and I will for sure read the manga from scratch sometime in the near future.
Thank you Enzo for covering this show!
Gyarekushi
March 27, 2021 at 4:28 pmWhile the adaptation of the second half of the second season had pretty much the exact same issues I had with, say, JoJo Part 4’s rushed (& better) second half – it still highlighted most of what I wanted out of it.
I think when peeps rewatch (or read) the series, they’ll come to appreciate what transpired by the end here a bit more.
& as Paru-sensei herself stated, with the release of this finale, she feels that her work with Beastars has finally been completed. I certainly feel I share that sentiment, personally.
(And hi, it’s me who’s been coming around again – ever since your overview of episode 83 of HxH, tho I forget if I said this already)
Guardian Enzo
March 27, 2021 at 4:43 pmAlways great to hear from you!
GeminiSaint
March 28, 2021 at 10:18 pmAbout the foot scene, I might as well share my interpretations of it, that I wrote for a guy I know, who felt it irreparably betrayed Legoshi’s ideals:
This event is charged with a metric ton of symbolism. Let’s see…
1) Louis demanded Legoshi to do it. After all, desperate times require desperate measures.
2) Legoshi truly would have died without the boost granted by Louis’ leg, and Louis did not want to see another friend of his die. He says as much. He values Legoshi more than his own leg.
3) It was consensual by both parties involved.
4) In the end, Legoshi is still a carnivore. And a carnivore that doesn’t eat meat, well… it just goes against what nature intended, regardless of idealism.
5) Louis felt the number 4 on his foot was a shackle/curse he needed to get rid of (“Break my curse, Legoshi!”).
6) Now Legoshi will always have a little bit of Louis inside him. Their bond has deepened well beyond what Riz thought was possible.
7) It serves as a contrast to Riz’s devouring of Tem. Here’s a “devouring” that was actually consensual, with both parties surviving the deed, and with their friendship strengthened by it. All things Riz wishes his own devouring of Tem had. He even says to Legoshi: “You did it, didn’t you? You established a true friendship with a herbivore”.
8) Legoshi did thank Louis for being his first and last animal he will ever eat. So he definitely doesn’t intend to do it again, ever. It was a one time thing.
9) The whole “become a hero!” thing is a bit exaggerated and over-dramatic, in my opinion. That’s just anime being anime if you ask me. Legoshi is no hero, and has never been one. Yes, he has good intentions, but he’s also just a socially awkward seventeen-year-old with poor communication skills and a crush he doesn’t know how to handle. In fact, he often proves to be quite selfish as well. I mean, Gohin himself tells him this at the start of the caterpillar-eating scene of the previous episode (“You’ve always been an arrogant little shit, forcing your ideals on others,” etc, etc.
10) Lastly, this is Beastars, a show in which symbolism trumps all.