Reviews

I detest CGI, but Beastars is worth overlooking that, if you can also get past feeling like a furry excitedly watching Haru and Legosi interact. I was wondering if they could capture the same darkness yet grim realities reflected in the manga in this anime adaption, especially since the first episode came across pretty light-hearted, but they did an excellent job of capturing it. A lot of animes try to run away superficially with the theme of hierarchy and what divides people by making the main character a top talent due to raw intelligence, being just a naturally good person driven by this infallible heroic justice, or being such a hard-worker and then building up your skills to be talented blah blah blah. But Beastars opens the doors to this idea that the hierarchy is arbitrary and there is so much more darkness to overcome for people just wanting to "fit in" to this social construct. Legosi tries to challenge all this, but not as some overpowered figure, but just as some student who struggles against his predator instincts and even at times finds himself almost succumbing to it. This series touches on survival-rape, black markets, addiction, as well and offers a much more complex but also complete and parallel world to the one we currently live in, and I just don't think many mangas/animes out there do this, or at least do it this well.