[Shows] Beastars is Incredibly Messed Up

[jordangreywolf]

I remember hearing all this buzz about how Beastars is, like, this award-winning amazing thing that absolutely must be seen ... except, of course, it's only on Netflix in Japan and not in the US. Until now.

By the way -- I'm not going to say "whodunnit," or give away major plot twists (such as they may pretend to be) but in order to express my problems with the direction this story takes, I'm still hinting at a few things, and this might be considered spoiler-ish.

So ... possible spoiler warnings. Your mileage may vary. Also, standard disclaimers apply: If somehow you've found my stupid journal ramblings and have mistaken this for a serious CRITICAL REVIEW of an anime, please move along. I am nobody. I'm only ranting here because I can. Yay, internet!

...

Well, after seeing all these YouTube reviews (the reviewers presumably checking out bootlegs or something?), it seems that Google figured out that I was interested in the show, and on my smartphone, it popped up, in my daily "Google news" feed, a link to an online comic site with the Beastars MANGA.

So, hey, if Google is offering this to me on my phone, then it must be worth checking out. So I did, and ... well ... I didn't make it all the way to get current on the manga.

BEASTARS IS SERIOUSLY MESSED UP. I can't get how someone thought this was "award-winning." Rather, it feels like someone's furry vore fetish given life. I've read/viewed some reviews of the first episode that make this claim that the carnivore-herbivore thing is somehow "allegorical," but I suppose the same could be said of every manga/anime that has the fate of the universe being decided by teenagers in HIGH SCHOOL. At some point, I doubt it's so much a concern about allegory as it is a certain lack of imagination or slavish devotion to established trope.

Trying to articulate exactly how it's messed up, and not just in the same ways that countless "serious" anthropomorphic-animals series are "messed up" is hard to do. "Furry vore fetish" isn't quite spot-on ... but go too far into the manga, and I think it's getting pretty close.

As the story starts off, it looks like there's the potential for some interesting dynamics. It looks like, hey, this could be setting up to be a murder mystery where we have the twist that our "detective" protagonist is wrestling with the potential to become a murderer himself, because this is a warped world where ALL higher-order animals (mammals, reptiles, avians) are intelligent. Therefore, MEAT IS MURDER. (But it's okay to drink milk and eat eggs. Oh, and to eat bugs. And APPARENTLY, fish. I think. I'm not sure on that, actually.)

First off, the setting is a bit awkward in that there are no humans to be found -- no hint that there ever WERE any humans -- and yet our characters recognize themselves as "beasts," and there are domestic breeds (dogs, chickens, etc.). The title of the series comes from this vague "ideal" that some student at this academy wants to become the next "Beastar" -- this horrible portmanteau of English words is not just a clumsy translation of some Japanese term, but slapped right into the story.

There's this tension between carnivores and herbivores, though the dividing line is a bit vague at times. (Some creatures I would think of as omnivores somehow seem to be grouped on the "herbivore" side.)

Violence works strangely in this world. Sometimes characters can take an amazing amount of damage and still keep pressing on ... and at other times, their bodies seem to have all the consistency of Play-Doh (as one character -- not particularly imposing-looking, but he's a carnivore -- accidentally RIPS THE ARM OFF OF ANOTHER CHARACTER his own size while rough-housing, in a scene that comes off as almost being hilarious in its ridiculousness, yet it's played for "drama" in the manga).

Oh, and the power of food is positively anime-esque and mystic, despite the laughable attempts to be sensible and "realistic" in the world-building elsewhere (all that detail on how diets are carefully maintained for all our carnivores to live vegetarian lives). I'm reminded of this weird trope I remember seeing in Lupin III, where our hero is bandaged, in bed, presumably with broken bones and bullet holes, but he needs to get into action, so what must he do? FORCE-FEED HIMSELF MASSIVE QUANTITIES OF MEAT! Because that's what every hospital does to get its trauma victims out of the emergency ward in short order, of course? Well, that sort of logic apparently works here, too. Getting thrashed about in a fight? Surely it's because you've been denying yourself meat, Mister Carnivore, so HERE, EAT ONE OF MY LIMBS TO GAIN THE STRENGTH YOU NEED TO FIGHT! (What the heck *is* the message behind this series, anyway?)

(Also, forget the notion of conservation of mass. Never mind that in the real world, a carnivore who takes down prey his own size does not INSTANTLY CONSUME THE BODY IN ITS ENTIRETY, but rather takes a while to finish that meat, or has "friends" to help dispose of it. Nope-nope, NOM NOM NOM it's all gone now!)

And then there's the "erotic" angle. Okay, this is "for adults" (or something) so I'm not going to gasp in shock that naughty things happen. But ... eh ... it's one thing to have carnivores who can be attracted to and simultaneously want to devour a pretty herbivore. It's another to have an herbivore who "subconsciously wants to be eaten" and ... eh, if you read that part, you'd know what I mean, but I hope you don't bother. It just makes me feel as if the author had some serious ISSUES to work out, and it's all just quite the train-wreck once it gets that far along.

Oh, and that murder mystery? Forget that. This story meanders all over in all kinds of directions, and by the time we get to find WHODUNNIT, it's like ... WHO?!? Who's this guy? Was he here at the beginning as a suspect? Does he look at all like the hulking murderer we saw in silhouette early on? Were there really any clues at all to help us sort this out on our own?

NO. No, not really.

And I just started watching the anime (second episode in), and it's looking like it isn't going to improve upon this at all. Maybe in the original manga, the original writer either didn't know or care "whodunnit," or changed her mind partway through the writing ("Oh, that would be too obvious!"), and one trouble with releasing a story in a serialized format is that you can't just skip back to the beginning and slip in some foreshadowing or clues to make it all retroactively make sense. You can end up writing yourself into a corner. But here they're remaking it as an anime. THEY COULD FIX THAT. A second chance!

But no, it doesn't look like they're bothering with that.

If you find something you like in Beastars, well ... good for you? This is, of course, purely my OPINION, and I'm just some randomly-ranting person writing in an online pseudo-journal, not some "serious" critic.

Season 1 is on Netflix now. I don't THINK they can possibly get to the serious "train-wreck" portions of the story I'm referencing in just a single anime season. Maybe they'll work a miracle and do some major plot revisions and salvage it, but so far they seem to be pretty faithful to the manga (for better or MUCH WORSE).

(I'm still perplexed by comments I heard from some that, "This is NOT furry!" This is one reason I usually avoid using such a term; it seems to have no useful, generally-agreed-upon meaning. If Beastars isn't "furry," I have no idea what is.)

Comments

[tuftears]

I've been reading the Dr. Stone manga on Crunchyroll! It's very silly yes, but fun.

[jordangreywolf]

Yeah, that hard-to-quantify "fun" bit is what makes it worthwhile. :)

Like ... you would THINK that "One Punch Man" would check all the boxes for the sort of anime I would *hate*, what with the ridiculously overpowered protagonist and all that ... and yet it's somehow funny and entertaining.

Well, it's likely the "funny" part that's critical here. If One Punch Man took itself seriously, it would be unbearable.

"High School Prodigies Have It Easy Even in Another World" would seem at the surface with a name like that to be intended to be "funny," but at least for me it doesn't qualify (and I utterly DETEST that show). The NAME may seem tongue-in-cheek, and the "story" such as it is, has protagonists who are ridiculously "OP" without any serious challenges or reasons for me to care about them at all -- to the point where if I described it the right way, maybe I could sell it as "satire" -- but it's played pretty much "straight." It comes across to me as being pretty much of the same type as "Knight's and Magic" {sic}: over-the-top wish-fulfillment that is so focused on the hero prevailing at anything, that we can't stand the slightest of obstacles or challenges for longer than a few seconds, tops (if even that).

Dr. Stone grants its protagonist RIDICULOUS abilities: I mean, he KNOWS EVERYTHING REMOTELY SCIENCE, it seems, with an encyclopedic memory -- he's well into "super-skilled" territory in comic book terms ... but he also somehow accurately counted the seconds of his imprisonment and constant consciousness for THREE THOUSAND YEARS without going insane.

But ... sometimes he actually makes mistakes ... and then tries again. These days that's positively remarkable in anime for a main character who isn't intended to be the target of all jokes. :D It's surprisingly watchable. (I was going to pass it over, but for a recommendation from someone that I should give it another try.)

[tuftears]

Oh gads, yeah, I didn't even *start* looking at the manga for High School Prodigies after looking at the summary. Knights and Magic is kind of amusing for the engineer wish fulfillment, and hey, it's part of my Crunchyroll package.

One Punch Man is great because it explores that space where OPM is both ignored by the majority of folks because he doesn't *look* special, and OPM is longing to find a real challenge. That and a lot of lampshading the classic tropes.

[jordangreywolf]

Re: One Punch Man: I find it kind of hilarious that all the cities are just given letters, and massive trashing of city blocks isn't considered that big of a deal, nor are almost daily global threats, because it happens all the time in this world. It's not all that far off from the kind of craziness that seems par-for-the-course in superhero comics, to the point where one has to wonder at the sanity level of anyone actually trying to live there. (Given how Earth is such a magnet for trouble, and given all the ways in which one might visit parallel dimensions, how many other habitable planets there are, how many superhero teams have their own private spaceships, et al., I would pretty much expect that by some point, anyone with MEANS is going to relocate off-world.)

[tuftears]

I dunno, look how often superheroes out in space run across isolated bazillionaires, they might figure the odds are *worse* offworld, or the same wherever they go. Sooner or later, the Plot will set its eyes upon them.

[rowyn]

A lot of the characters in One Punch Man are genuinely likable, too. Like Mumen Rider! n_n

[jordangreywolf]

Poor Mumen Rider! :D I've got to admire his spirit, even though it seems kind of hopeless against some of those monsters.

That makes me think about a wild tangent trope in superheroic comics (and related genres): the wildly varying power levels. I mean, you can have some robber whose "superpower" is "I have a gun pointed at you," or you can have someone whose ostensible power is "I make shiny light beams that cut through steel" -- but presumably that has NOTHING to do with how much punishment said person can actually take from a super-punch -- and then there's some guy who can chew steel girders like bubblegum, etc. It's all over the place, yet the go-to action for any super-strong hero is just to dish out a haymaker.

It's the same punch that could knock over a building, and somehow our hero doesn't over-judge the resilience of any given baddie and simply turn him into a fine red mist. (At least, unless it's one of THOSE sorts of comics.)

I mean, seriously, one of Superman's super-powers has to be the one to accurately gauge just how much PUNCH a given bad guy needs, and to finely tune his "raw brute force" so as not to splatter lesser villains into goo. (I mean, I'm pretty sure I've seen comics where it's made obvious that Superman hardly needs to use his full force to deal with a "mere mortal" bad guy, but there are just so many degrees in between "squishy mere mortal human" and "uber-being who smashes planets.")

Anyway, it's probably something I'm "over-thinking" considering all the other absurd tropes of superheroic comics, but it can be a bit jarring at times to see, say, a character I don't expect to be particularly super-human get knocked through a wall by a "good guy" and then wonder -- how did Mr. Good Guy *know* that "wall-smashing" was the proper level of punchitude to use?