The story of Beastars can be divided into two parts: the murder mystery plotline, and everything that follows. I will discuss each independently, because sometimes it really feels like a different story in the second half. The first half is a solid 8/10. The murder mystery plot drives the story quite well, adding the right amount of tension to underscore a lot of the slice-of-life elements in the first part of the manga. Itagaki's writing shines in the slice-of-life moments. I love watching Legosi and Haru's relationship develop; Louis's internal struggle with his identity as an herbivore is especially compelling. The antagonist for the first half is also solid, though I will not elaborate so as to avoid spoilers. The reveal is well done, however, and Legosi's fight with this antagonist is the best in the whole manga. Itagaki stumbles a bit when writing action scenes, but she hit the mark with this particular fight. Overall, an entertaining and well-written arc.
The second half of the story is where the writing fumbles quite a bit. But I will start with the highlights. Legosi's time with the Hidden Condo residents has an aimless, ambivalent feel to it, perfectly encapsulating the mood of the story after the changes Legosi has gone through. The new characters are also rather endearing. I love Zaguan, and he adds a neat bit of worldbuilding about the underwater society within the world of Beastars. Pina - my personal favorite character - is annoying in the best way. Gosha is sweet; the audience pities his overly cautious way of living as a result of his venomous saliva. And then there is Yahya. Yahya is, in a word, cool. He is a superhero unto himself, a figure shrouded in legend. In a way, he replaces Gouhin as Legosi's mentor in the second half of Beastars; the two have a great dynamic. The issue is that a lot of these characters end up underutilized by the end. I understand that not every character will be given an equal amount of screen time in a series with an ensemble cast, but it feels like Legosi's connections to these characters ultimately led nowhere. Other characters are downright bad - though I cannot discuss them without getting into spoilers.
SPOILERS
Kyuu. What was the point of her character? To perform CBT on Legosi and then introduce a weird concept that is never once brought up again? To sell Legosi out to the villain and then dip until the very end? To me, Kyuu represents a lot of the issues with late Beastars. Concepts that come up out of nowhere, characters who ultimately amount to little, rushed arcs - and the worst part is that these ideas had potential.
The most egregious example of lost potential and my single greatest problem with this manga is Melon. I dislike how he ended up being the final villain of the series, with conflict quickly resolving as soon as he was defeated. There was much to be desired with Itagaki's exploration of the concept of a hybrid between carnivore and herbivore. As it stands, Melon is just another Joker clone who cannot feel normal emotions as a result of the circumstances of his birth. His backstory is interesting but never really touched upon aside from that one flashback wherein Melon kills his mother. It is an interesting backstory for sure, and I do enjoy how Melon's nature as an unreliable narrator clouds what is reality and what is fabrication. But that snippet is all we get. We find out that Melon's father is alive in the end - Melon's father, the cause of it all, the one who abandoned his vulnerable wife and son out of selfish fear - but it too leads nowhere. Melon's father barely gets a chance to reckon with the consequences of his actions. Melon's nature as a hybrid is also never explored, aside from that one chapter wherein he suddenly turns buff because of...biology. It is a shame, since I did genuinely enjoy Melon at first until he became a one-note Joker character. I do not like the archetype of villains who are unable to feel normal emotion and are thus insane and/or sadistic because of it. It is rather tiring and unoriginal at this point, and not to mention boring. The shock value of Melon's violent tendencies gives way to bland same-old. His final fight with Legosi is incredibly rushed, and he faces no consequences for his actions. Not every villain needs to die. It is, in fact, refreshing to watch a villain grow, develop, and start anew. But Melon does none of that. We never see the repercussions or implications of his actions, and what that means for hybrid animals. The thread about Melon supplying animal blood to illegal underground drug dealers is also dropped, unsurprisingly.
The second half of Beastars is insane, and not in the good way. It loses its sense of direction and starts adding all sorts of elements which make little sense. That said, I still commend Beastars for what it manages to convey in its first half. This was Paru Itagaki's first manga, after all, so some rockiness was to be expected. I hope she returns to the vivid world of Beastars in the future. Her series of one shots, compiled in Beast Complex, do a good job of further adding to the mechanisms of this animal society, and invoke the slice-of-life feeling of early Beastars. I highly recommend checking it out to readers who want more of this manga.
Now, for my final thoughts. The art in this manga is rather iconic, and you can see Itagaki's style visibly improve throughout the manga. Her style is unique, with lots of linework, large eyes, and small pupils that really emphasize how feral these characters are. Itagaki's inaccurate biology facts are definitely entertaining to read through. Logic must function differently in this world. I like that not everyone gets a happy ending. It is bitterly realistic how Louis chooses an arranged business marriage over his true feelings. I think that me and other ongoing readers thought that Legosi and Louis would become Beastars in the end, hence the title. That did not happen. Cool, I guess.
6/10. Solid, but falls off hard in the end. There is a lot more I could say about more specific elements in the story, though at that point I would just be rambling instead of writing a proper review; I have rambled enough. Regardless, I still recommend this manga. Even when it gets bad, it never really gets boring.
