The newest anime produced by Studio TRIGGER, BNA – Brand New Animal is probably one of the most popular 2020 animes as of now. With a unique character design for its protagonist, a different aesthetic compared to recent shows and the potential of being “TRIGGER’s triumphant return”, it’s obvious that BNA would become quickly popular. Unfortunately, popular isn’t a synonym for quality, as BNA shows itself as mediocre in many points until it gives up before showing a little bit more of its value.

STORY AND CHARACTERS:

BNA’s concept is cliché by itself (we’ve already seen “the ideal city” in Zootopia, “hate and bigotry” in X-Men, “violent beings” in Beastars…), but there’s no problem in that if the show is written well around its generic concept and creates something unique, just like Little Witch Academia, another TRIGGER anime, managed to do. BNA, however, doesn’t do this.

The first few episodes of BNA are basically about the protagonist Michiru doing nothing and being irrelevant to the story, while her friend Oogami fights criminals and stops the bad guys being the brute, edgy and generic character that he is. In the middle of those episodes, we have tiring scenes with un-interesting dialogues that try to make the plot go on with some kind of development (even though these scenes end up being irrelevant too). The show’s second half is even worse: these boring scenes are still present, and even those that try to present a plot-twist just end up being convenient and tedious. The anime tries to close it all off with a huge climax to recompensate for all this time wasted in foreshadows… but it isn’t worth it in the end.

As implied before, BNA is basically the synonym of “generic”, as there’s not even a single drop of creativity in its storyline. All the kinds of tropes are present in it and not a single one of them is written well, as they just rely on predictable ideas and results: an ideal city to explore, good guy that’s obviously the bad guy behind everything, obviously manipulated people, edgy character that’s closed and has a dark unknown past, friends that become evil because of time-skips, invulnerable protagonist that has a super-convenient plot armor and multiple Deus Ex-Machinas (which give birth to one of the most ridiculous plot points of the last few episodes)… and not even its character are safe. Michiru is literally the generic base for a protagonist that knows a new world and likes it more than she can admit as there’s no kind of depth to her (aside from a backstory about friendship), Oogami is the pure archetype of “brawling, violent mysterious character”, Animacity’s mayor… she just exists, the bad guy has the most non-sensical reasoning and backstory of all… and it goes on. It comes to a point that the best character in BNA is Jackie, a kid raccoon that’s a side character and has the most humoristic scenes in the anime.

It’s not only the lack of originality and boredom that destroys BNA, because its writing, as implied, is an absolute mess. Not counting the multiple plot devices, armors and Deus Ex-Machinas already talked about, the show presents characters with inconsistent attitudes with their own personality, shows rushed, out of place and badly-explored ideas, and doesn’t even explore properly its world. The last few episodes simply throw all of the story’s worldbuilding at that point (which was actually kind of decent, but underwhelming) through the window, as it starts mixing so many things together that it ends up becoming a giant mess. It’s as if you were watching, for example, “Toy Story”, and then the final act starts dealing, without any kind of foreshadow or build-up, a crossover with “Transformers” or something even more bizarre and unrelated. BNA’s finale is unfortunately at this level, perhaps even lower.

Out of all twelve episodes of BNA, however, there are two hugely interesting (and fun!) episodes mixed with all that mess, and these are episode four and five. The fourth chapter is about Michiru knowing more about herself and her human and beast side along her friend (actually, character of the week). Although it’s still kind of cliché, it’s a strong chapter due to its emotional and dramatical side, as it marks its viewer unexpectedly. Meanwhile, the fifth chapter is about a loser baseball team in Animacity (where the sport has strongly altered rules), and Michiru tries to help them achieve victory. It’s an episode that maintains TRIGGER’s essence in its frenetic humor, parody and animation, and it particularly made me laugh a lot, in a way I don’t even remember having this much fun. It’s a shame, because these episodes prove that BNA could have been way more special if it tried to maintain itself as a simplistic, comedic and emotional anime in its animal world. It would find a unique identity to itself… which is something the final version never found as it chased a big, complex story when it was out of reach for it.

ART AND SOUND:

BNA’s strongest point, to the surprise of no one, is its soundtrack. TRIGGER has already proved that their animes’ soundtrack will always be great, as seen in their most well-received series and even in their most controversial ones. The opening music “BRAND NEW WORLD!” is extremely addicting and gets to your head easily with its chorus… “Hey! Are you… ready to go?!”. Its ending song, however, is even more marvelous. “Night Running” is simply spectacular.

As stated before, the series has many scenes with dragged-out dialogues that end up being boring. However, thanks to BNA’s soundtrack, these scenes end up having a great depth and make them more torelable, even if they’re still forgettable and boring. Still, the anime’s soundtrack must be praised for doing this feat.

The anime’s visuals, however, are a little bit more controversial.

The aesthetic construction of Animacity (its architecture, colors at day and night, atmosphere) greatly describe the location as futuristic, even though this is never brought up in its story. The usage of various tones of blue to the buildings in the distance, the colors to indicate the darkness somewhere and on the character’s faces, the light tones of red expressing Oogami’s anger in some scenes… to put it shortly, BNA’s colors describe its ambient really well and are a huge part in bringing the viewer to Animacity.

Unfortunately, the animation doesn’t reflect the aesthetic intentions of the show. Most of time, we have characters in static poses or doing only a small movement, too much cuts in the “camera” and locations that are only detailed due its colors and no more details (the Animacity mayor’s room is literally a building floor with a table and a view of the city… and that’s it). We have more movement in the fight scenes, and even so, most of them are just that old, known shots of a character attacking as the background has lots of “scratches” to indicate movement. Out of all fight scenes, a huge quantity of them are just of Oogami attacking various bad guys non-stop without any effort (what a non-OP character, right?), that can be satisfying for some viewers, but boring and repetitive to others.

The most bizarre part, however, is how the animation’s direction in BNA is... weirdly flawed. This is not due to some minor stuff or “continuity errors”, but because it breaks fundamental things estabilished following guidelines of the audiovisual language. We have scenes where Michiru runs and the sound effect of her foot are for some reason not synchronized with her animation, out-of-the-sudden change of camera angles that break a common guideline in filmmaking (the 180-degree rule, search for it if you’d like to know more), and even more scattered around the series. It's... pretty weird.

It’s sad to recognize that the only part that BNA has a truly excellent animation quality is in its ending sequence. There are no words to describe how beautiful and well animated are the anime’s credits. The colors, style and flowing animation combined with “Night Running” provide a spectacular and truly-relaxing credits sequence. It comes to a point that you’re most excited to see in BNA is the end of the episode, just so you can relax by watching and listening to it.

TO PUT IT SHORTLY...

It’s sad to see that what was hailed as “TRIGGER’s comeback” ended up disappointing so much in general. This show proves that the studio still has potential and energy to come back stronger than ever, but unfortunately, this doesn’t happen today.

“BNA – Brand New Animal” ends up relying too much in a plot that has nothing to offer besides clichés on top of clichés, and things only get worse when it gets closer to its finale. In the end, it has to depend on its aesthetical construction, soundtrack and humor to be watchable.

FINAL SCORE: 4.6/10

[This review is not meant to insult anyone and their hard work on the production of this series, as it's only meant to be a critical and fair analysis of it.]