Spoilers
Hello Otaku Post. It’s me, Johnathan, the ranter who runs this shit show. So, it’s been an interesting journey we have all been on….
What the fuck am I talking about?
I started this site after my love of anime was re-kindled by the furry super show, Beastars. A surprisingly dark, complex, show reflecting on high school life, coming of age, and the absolute cluster fuck it all can be. I have said once and I will say again, it’s a lot like Zootopia with sex, and honestly, there isn’t anything wrong with that. It was no secret I was waiting, starry-eyed and bushy-tailed for season 2 to finally make it’s round stateside. So now it has, and I watched it, so let’s go on an adventure once again in the modern-day classic from studio Orange, Beastars.
Picking up at the end of season 1 we find Louis is on the lam, absent from school after notably offing the head of a well-known lion mafia of sorts. We are taken on a ride where Legoshi, our favorite perverse wolf as he proceeds to be called in most of this season, is finally tasked with solving the single thing that opened up season 1, who killed Tem?
So yeah, the series shifts from a typical weirdo high school romance to a noir detective series about a mafia of lions and the illegal meat trade. Then it gets spiced up with the power of friendship and one of the most annoying Dall Sheep by the name of Pina. Honestly the thing about Beastars, no matter how much I do love it, maybe too ambitious for its own good.
This isn’t going to be so much a review but my general thoughts on the second season compared to the first and an analysis of how this series tries to hit the broadest genres in stride. Something it gets flak for but imma be real, I think it is something it does well. Like I said season 1 of Beastars is a wonderfully dark tale of awkward romance and taboo, mixed in with suspense and drama that paints the world beautifully, then we have the second season.
I do want to state before I get into this anymore I liked the second season, in fact, I still love this series a lot. However, that isn’t something I have heard from my groups of friends who were also fans of the show. To be blunt, almost everyone I know hated the second season. It was a major shift from what the first season was, in almost every way possible. The taboo romance between Haru and Legoshi becomes a massive backdrop as he leaves the school in search of himself, what it means to be a predator in a world of prey, and ultimately, coming to terms that one of the drama club members is a murder.
Beastars 2 tries to paint this world of crime, mystery, and pain while still trying to uphold that coming-of-age cluster. Something that, is well, impossible. We discover that Louis, everyone’s favorite deer, has somehow managed to take over this meat smuggling operation run by lions, killing the boss and talking his way into a position where no plant-eater would find themselves.
Though sometimes Red Deer’s do eat meat we are going to ignore that.
Stripping himself from his school and his beloved drama club Louis’s obsession with power and validation leads him to run this mafia-esqu organization with ruthless efficiency. Going as far as to force himself to eat meat with the rest of his mafia family. Legoshi discovering that drama club member, Riz, was the one who killed Tem leads the wolf on a journey of becoming stronger. Understanding he would not be able to beat the brown bear as is.
This of course becomes tricky as the only real way for a carnivore to becomes stronger in the world of Beastars is to eat meat, the single thing Legoshi is hell-bent on not doing since he is in a deep love affair with a dwarf rabbit. Meeting up with his panda pal Gouhin, Legoshi begs him to train him, allowing him to awaken something that will not only beat Riz but force him to see the errors of his ways, making him understand what he did was wrong and that the two species could co-exist, the perverse wolf being proof of this.
What follows is a bunch of weirdo training. Mostly hunting down predators who have meat addictions, which looks a lot like heroin withdrawal but whatever. Sitting in a room alone with a giant chunk of meat he isn’t allowed to eat and a weird run-in with bugs that make him trip balls.
Anyways, so within this weirdo training Legoshi stumbles onto Louis, more specifically his mafia boss ways he has been up to. Perplexed he isn’t sure how to approach him, since Legoshi had an immense amount of respect for Louis, to see him betray everything they both believed in was overwhelming. It was equally as much for Louis, who admired Legoshi a great deal only to find out he, like every other carnivore that he had ever known secretly ate meat.
Granted that was an assumption he would quickly find out to not be true.
The season plays out with this narrative of Legoshi trying to take down Riz, while also trying to get Louis to leave the world he had found himself in and come back to the school life they all cherished earlier. It does this with random tidbits of Legoshi and Haru meet up, mostly for him to tell her that he loves her and he has a thing he has to do but he will return for her. Getting the general teasing responses in return but admiration from the rabbit.
Seeing how this season played out like nothing I would have predicted, the second season-ending leaves little to no answers of what three may bring. What we do know is that Legoshi is leaving school, though it isn’t really explained to as why. Riz had accepted his fate and was arrested wrapping up the mystery that started in season one and Legoshi again confesses to Haru but in the sense of wait for me, not so much at the moment.
So that is where we are. I still think Beastars is not only good but great. I loved what season 2 was able to do even though it was quite nothing like what I loved about season 1. It shows the ability of Paru Itagaki to really craft a world much more ambitious than one may perceive but that is a double-edged sword. I am very much so looking forward to season 3, I expect it to be different, but just as good as the first two and it will be a true testament to her writing ability. All I can say is, I hope this series doesn’t get too big for its own head, and I hope she can pull it off.
As always thanks for the read!
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