Kemono no Souja Erin (The Beast Player Erin)

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Alternative Titles

Synonyms: Kemono no Soujya Erin, Kemono no Sou-ja Erin

Japanese: 獣の奏者エリン

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Information

Type: TV

Episodes: 50

Status: Finished Airing

Aired: Jan 10, 2009 to Dec 26, 2009

Premiered: Winter 2009

Broadcast: Unknown

Producers: NHK

Licensors: None found, add some

Studios: Production I.G, Trans Arts

Source: Novel

Genres: Drama, Fantasy

Duration: 25 min. per ep.

Rating: PG-13 - Teens 13 or older

Statistics

Score: 8.32¹ (scored by 21,351 users)

¹ indicates a weighted score.

Ranked: #246²

² based on the top anime page. Please note that 'Not yet aired' and 'R18+' titles are excluded.

Popularity: #2274

Members: 86,669

Favorites: 1,502

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Synopsis

In the land of Ryoza, the neighboring provinces of Shin-Ou and Tai-Kou have been at peace. Queen Shinou is the ruler of Ryoza and her greatest general, Grand Duke Taikou, defends the kingdom with his army of powerful war-lizards known as the "Touda." Although the two regions have enjoyed a long-standing alliance, mounting tensions threaten to spark a fierce civil war.

Within Ake, a village in Tai-Kou tasked with raising the Grand Duke's army, lives Erin, a bright girl who spends her days watching the work of her mother Soyon, the village's head Touda doctor. But while under Soyon's care, a disastrous incident befalls the Grand Duke's strongest Touda, and the peace that Erin and her mother had been enjoying vanishes as Soyon is punished severely. In a desperate attempt to save her mother, Erin ends up falling in a river and is swept towards Shin-Ou.

Unable to return home, Erin must learn to lead a new life with completely different people, all while hunting for the truth of both beasts and humanity itself, with tensions between the two regions constantly escalating.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

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Adaptation:	Kemono no Souja
Summary:	Kemono no Souja Erin Recap

More characters

Characters & Voice Actors

Erin

Main

Hoshii, Nanase
Japanese

Lilan

Main

Ial

Supporting

Suzumura, Kenichi
Japanese

Tousana, John

Supporting

Uchida, Naoya
Japanese

Soyon

Supporting

Hirata, Eriko
Japanese

Shunan

Supporting

Hanawa, Eiji
Japanese

Nukku

Supporting

Fujiwara, Keiji
Japanese

Mokku

Supporting

Yanagihara, Tetsuya
Japanese

Kirik

Supporting

Kusuda, Toshiyuki
Japanese

Kashugan

Supporting

Kanada, Aki
Japanese

More staff

Staff

Wada, Jouji

Producer

Hamana, Takayuki

Director, Episode Director, Storyboard, Key Animation

Hiramitsu, Takuya

Sound Director

Takashima, Daisuke

Episode Director

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Opening Theme

	1: "Shizuku (雫)" by Sukima Switch (eps 1-30)
	2: "Shizuku (雫)" by Chitose Hajime (eps 31-50)

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Ending Theme

	1: "After the rain" by cossami (eps 1-29)
	2: "Kitto Tsutaete (きっと伝えて)" by Takako Matsu (eps 30-49)

Reviews

Nov 1, 2023

NisemonoDesu

Recommended

I watched this show with absolutely no intent of writing a review on it. Those of you who know the meta of MAL reviews know that writing a review of a relatively unknown show from over 10 years ago is a great way to make sure nobody reads it. But as Kemono no Souja Erin unfolded over its 50-episode journey, my thoughts on it were too scattered and my feelings too complex to boil down into a simple number or even a short note under the entry on my list page. This is an anime that deserves attention and discussion; even if no one reads ... this review, I need to write it for my own sake.

First, some backstory on how I stumbled upon this show. A long time ago on 4chan there was a daring individual who decided to compile a list of the “best-written” anime from the /a/ board and then post it on /lit/ hoping to draw comments from literature nerds. Those of you who know /lit/ can probably guess how well that went, but this list intrigued me—not for the shows on it I had already seen (which were most of them) but for the ones on it I hadn’t seen yet. While working my way through that list, I made it down to one of them that was a little show called Kemono no Souja Erin. Do I agree with that ancient OP that Erin is one of the best written shows of all time? Stay tuned till the end of this review to find out, because the discussion below is going to determine our final analysis.

To understand any show I always first look to the creative forces behind it, in this case director Takayuki Hamana. Takayuki is a tough nut to crack as there’s not a whole lot of information about him online. He’s only done one interview which I could find, and that interview predated Erin by a few years (and I even had to dig through Production I.G.’s website on the Wayback Machine to find that one). From what little information I have been able to gather, he seems like an industry veteran—he got his start as a key animator and worked on anime as classic as Ranma 1/2, before moving to Production I.G. and working on some of the greats like Jin-Roh and Psycho-Pass. His journey as a director, however, has been a little less… how can I put it… impressive? Scrolling through his directorial works doesn’t really reveal anything I’d consider above average. Most surprising to me was that he was the director of the criminally boring Arte—a show which I dropped while it was airing way back in 2020. This career history of his might explain some of the directorial issues I have with Erin, which we’ll get into later.

One creative force I absolutely can give props to is the music director Masayuki Sakamoto. The OST for this show is one of its strongest points. The OP and EDs along with every insert song are incredibly catchy instant earworms. I dare you to not find yourself singing along to “Lalalila” or feel like a snake being charmed by “Ai.” I’ve seen some people complain about the OST starting to feel repetitive by the end of the show, but honestly—it’s a 50 episode run, you’re going to be tired of any show’s music by the end of that many episodes. Better for it to be an OST this good than some generic fantasy isekai score. This show is a great example of how good music can elevate any media; would Star Wars or Jurassic Park be even half as good without those classic John Williams scores?

Before we tackle the story itself, I want to talk about some of my technical issues with this show, which partially involves us going back to Takayuki Hamana again. Anyone who watches this show will instantly recognize two things: A) this show seems like it had a low budget and B) this show does NOT look like it was animated by Production I.G. I have no way of confirming whether the first one is true or not, but I can definitely say that Production I.G.’s inclusion as a contributing studio is just for clout—most of the animation on this was done by Trans Arts (of which Hamana was affiliated at the time of creation). They made the wise decision of going for a simpler art style which worked out in the long-term for the show. But neither their animators nor their budget could keep up with even that simple art style during high-motion action scenes. For any scene with even a modicum of motion, we get quick cuts, cutaways, and reused footage in a desperate attempt to preserve the animators from having to actually draw much movement. Hamana has a tendency of cutting from one angle of something happening to another angle that’s only slightly different, resulting in a weird jumpy effect that doesn’t show any new information to the viewer, it just poorly disguises the stiff art. In normal dialogue scenes we basically only get shot-counter-shot with uninspired blocking and business. Meh.

But art and direction aren’t the main selling points of this show—at least, they weren’t to me way back when I first saw this show on that list of best written anime. For that, we need to look to the show’s source material, an old book by Nahoko Uehashi of the same name. I’ve never read it as it seems to be virtually impossible to find it in English, but from everything I’ve seen online bi-lingual folks claim the anime adapts the first two volumes faithfully, aside from adding two anime-original characters in the form of our comic relief Nukku and Mokku (who, by the way, I didn’t mind nearly as much as everyone else seems to). And man, the story of this show is where its strengths start to shine.

Watching this show, it just FELT like a classic. At first, I couldn’t put my finger on why. Then it came to me—World Masterpiece Theater. If you’re not familiar with what that is, they’re anime adaptations of famous Western works of fiction, notably books like Anne of Green Gables and Heidi of the Alps. When I think of what makes books like that (and others like David Copperfield) classics, it’s that you follow the main character for so long and through so many stages of their life that you really feel like you know them. You stay with them through their young childhood, see them grow through young adulthood into full-fledged adulthood, and by the time they’re making adult decisions you truly understand all their motivations because you know them as well as you’d know an old friend. That’s exactly how Erin feels: it absolutely nails the feeling of the passing of time. I see a lot of people complain about the 50 episode runtime and say it should have been cut drastically down, but I disagree. We need to spend lazy days with toddler Erin, because in doing so we feel the weight of her adult decisions because we’ve seen her formative years. Once I got into the groove of seeing Erin at a particular stage in her life, something in the show would pop up that would make me look back and get me emotional with the weight of how far we’d come.

Unfortunately, with that type of story there do come some drawbacks. Within those 50 episodes are several recap episodes and many, many, MANY flashbacks. For younger audiences I think that would be important, especially when watching weekly. But this brings me to a larger problem limiting my enjoyment of this show: its target audience. It is very clear that the original novel was intended for a YA crowd, and leaning much more heavily to the Y than the A. The political drama that unfolds in the background is very simplistic and leaves several pretty glaring questions unanswered by the end of the show. The scheming and plotting of the main villain, which is built up by being kept in the shadows for most of the show, is revealed at the end to be straightforward simple stuff. Basically, don’t go into this show expecting to be blown away by complex political intrigue and interpersonal relationships. If I was 13-ish when I found this show it might be my favorite show. But I’m currently an ancient fossil, and while I do try to keep an open mind to experience art meant for people other than myself, it wasn’t exactly “scintillating.”

Another weakness of this show is that it starts to fall apart towards its final act. The result of spending most of our time with Erin and very little on the actual plot means that the ending is rushed, unsatisfying, and leaves a lot of questions unanswered. This feels inexcusable when we have the equivalent of several entire episodes worth of flashbacks, recaps, and summaries. The story needed to refocus its attention and better utilize its time.

Going back to a positive note, I’ve always held to the idea that great art can be defined as anything that asks the question, “What does it mean to be human?” in a new or interesting way. If you asked, “What does it mean to be curious?” you might get Star Trek: The Next Generation. If you asked, “What does it mean to be alone?” you might get Evangelion. I think Erin asks the question, “What does it mean to have strong ideals challenged?” That, in my opinion, is the core of the show. Erin is a character with ideals. Because of the amount of time we spend with her through her life, we fully understand and respect her ideals. But the world she lives in is not going to let her ideals go unchallenged. The way she navigates the sticky ethical quandaries her circumstances put her in, the way she doesn’t always make the right choice, and the impact those choices have on the humans and beasts around her that she loves—that is the real heart and soul of this show and it works in spades.

So now I’m three pages deep in this Word document and I have to figure out how to actually end this thing. All in all, I’m going to give this show an 8/10, although it’s a complicated 8. As I’ve hopefully made clear by now, this is not a perfect show. It has amateurish direction, simplistic art, ugly CGI, tons of flashback and recaps, and an unsatisfactory conclusion (although YMMV on that part). However, what it does have is heart and a message. It feels like a classic. It takes its time to develop a character beyond what the average anime is willing to commit to, which results in it feeling like one of the great classic works of literature. So, to the random anonymous person who posted that list of best written anime years and years ago: if you’re out there somewhere reading this, you were right. Rock on Erin.

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Jul 17, 2023

liyeon

Mixed Feelings

I stumbled upon Beast Player Erin in search of anime with good world building like Slime Reincarnation and Ascendance of a Bookworm.

There are already many great reviews so the purpose of my review here is to provide expectations to potential viewers of this show:

Each episode will consist of:

10% mini music videos with overly played songs,
40% overly used flashbacks,
50% actual scenes that progress the story.

This series did not have to be 50 episodes long as a great much of it was just filler content. Frustratingly much of that wasted time used for flashback filler could have been used more meaningfully such as providing a more conclusive ...

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Mar 12, 2010

Rampant

Not Recommended

While it may strike as inconsistent to rate a series a 3 when I "finished" 50 episodes of it, there is one essential reason, that is pacing of this series. Not only is the pacing typically slice-of-life slow from the very start, but it has the most self-indulgent use of flashback I have ever seen. By the midpoint of the anime, flashback starts taking up easily perhaps 1/10th of the total time. We already saw these events, and they are already in our heads. Bringing the same events up as much as five or ten times is a horrible abuse of our viewership. Maybe it ... was for the kids, but it was a horrible mismanagement of structure.

Also, this anime seems to exist in some bizarre world where, despite there being super skilled assassin type figures and two types of invincible beasts, poison ends up being the most worrisome agent of life. I think the plot spends as much time on poisonings by the end as it does touda.

I did enjoy core elements of the plot, and that is the main reason I finished the anime. I liked the focus on Erin, and I could even forgive her being the typical "supergenius, super caring" character who can do absolutely no wrong because of the nice voice acting and the interesting progression of her life. I also liked the touda, though I liked them less once another super invincible creature was introduced. I felt that both touda and beast lords should have been introduced right away, or it should have only been one the whole way. I felt that after Erin&Jone, the anime struggled to ever keep itself at quite the same depth of interaction after moving to focus on beast lords. It especially struggles to make any action feel slightly convincing, and several conversations as it goes on become more and more incredibly tedious, e.g. Erin talking to either queen.

This is absolutely a children's anime, and I do not see why everyone is trying to vehemently deny it. The first OP and ED, the narration (utterly childish storytelling tone, constantly interferes with the quality of interaction with the story), and interaction between characters (Erin and her mom, the Queen and anybody, Erin and Yuuyan, any and all explanations about anything ever from one character to another) all make sure that this cannot progress above being childish. People can try to use the more violent moments to write it away, but the art contradicts that. Also childish are all depictions of Erin imagining anything horrible happening (the last example episode 44, 19:30 or so in, when she pictures what is happening at the academy).

The music is very nice sounding, especially when you have only heard each song once (with the exception of the song that inscrutably rips off one progression from Trigun). Unfortunately, they ram the same songs into your ears relentlessly, and eventually at very wrong moments.

Not much really needs to be said about the art, since the flaws are much more glaring than usual. Sometimes the mistakes are much more glaring (like when the touda are swimming underwater episode 7 and llook like barrel of monkey figures). Also, lots of shots that are the same shot being panned very slowly, or zoomed out from very slowly. Kid Erin is a bit annoying to look a thanks to her eyes (not that any character's wayward pupils are any fun to look at). The Beast-Lords, paraded as a paragon of beauty, are actually ugly beasts in motion, and simplistic when "shining" and flying to save the day.

Overall, I really have to rate this anime a waste of anyone's time. It loses what depth it has as it goes on, it struggles to balance the time and how the time is spent on any action, and everything is far too predictable. It is enjoyable enough, and there are plenty of cute moments, but it cannot be said to be worth anyone's time due to the length - it should have absolutely been a normal anime season, not 50 episodes.

Oh, like a lot anime and manga that lack substance, this series spends a lot of time making up for it pretending that characters going "oishiiiiiii" and talking about food should actually be entertaining. Like always, it definitely is not appropriate outside an anime or manga about food. I did not keep any official count, but surely somewhere around ten times.

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Uehashi Nahoko To Publish Sequels of Kemono no Souja Novel

Kodansha announced the release of the volumes three and four of "Kemono no Souja" novel. The author Uehashi Nahoko had thought that she fully concluded the...read more

Jul 23, 2009 1:35 AM by dtshyk | Discuss (19 comments)

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Poll: Kemono no Souja Erin Episode 36 Discussion wakka9ca - Sep 20, 2009	26 replies	by Rob7 »» Nov 15, 2023 4:58 PM
Poll: Kemono no Souja Erin Episode 42 Discussion DeathfireD - Nov 1, 2009	31 replies	by CalmTeaTime »» Oct 23, 2023 2:05 PM
Poll: Kemono no Souja Erin Episode 41 Discussion wakka9ca - Oct 25, 2009	37 replies	by CalmTeaTime »» Oct 23, 2023 2:03 PM
Poll: Kemono no Souja Erin Episode 40 Discussion wakka9ca - Oct 17, 2009	39 replies	by CalmTeaTime »» Oct 21, 2023 3:27 PM
Poll: Kemono no Souja Erin Episode 39 Discussion Ahohime - Oct 11, 2009	40 replies	by CalmTeaTime »» Oct 21, 2023 3:24 PM

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Kemono no Souja Erin

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Lilan

Ial

Tousana, John

Soyon

Shunan

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Mokku

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Kemono no Souja Erin

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