BEASTARS
a review by BungeeGumDimitri
a review by BungeeGumDimitri
Beastars is a series I was originally hesitant to get into because it looks like some furry nonsense. I decided to take the plunge into it because the anime opening slapped. To my surprise, it was pretty damn good. Unfortunately for me, I got into it just past the peak of the series, before the fall into garbage.
I apologize in advance if this review is disjointed and ever-so-slightly profane, but I've not been this mad at an ending since Tokyo Ghoul:re. (If you've read Tokyo Ghoul:re, be prepared for that again.)
While Beastars starts off amazing and is decent overall, be ready to be disappointed by a mediocre final arc and an abrupt, unsatisfying ending.
Story - First Half - 8, Second Half - 3
Beastars starts off on a decent note, it's a standard slice of life and murder mystery with furries. It has a similar premise to Tokyo Ghoul in that carnivores and herbivores live together and must coexist, while the conflict of carnivores eating herbivores is the plot. It opens up with a carnivore eating an herbivore at Cherryton Academy, the school of the protagonist, Legosi. Legosi is a wolf who befriends an asshole deer named Louis, and falls in love with a rabbit named Haru.
Overall, the story itself is average at best. There's plenty of issues, such as lack of focus, weird tonal shifts and really a lack of a proper plot until the murder mystery becomes the main focus. Despite these problems, the series progressively gets better and better. The story is very heavily driven by great character development and world-building. The murder mystery arc is fantastic (entirely due to the characters) and is easily the peak of the series. Everything up to chapter 135 is great. After 135, this is where the story begins to decay into crap.
Without major spoilers, the lack of focus becomes a huge issue. Characters, plot points and arcs are completely dropped. The final arc is one big rehash of the murder mystery arc mixed with a Shounen tournament and the Joker movie thrown into the mix.
One thing I noticed was the tone being far less mature by the end than it was in the beginning. For a Shounen, there's a surprising amount of sex and sexuality in the first 135 chapters that the final arc is lacking. I'm not trying to sound like a horny furry, anthropomorphic animals participating in fuck is weird, but it would be like if Game of Thrones dropped the sexual aspect of the series in the last season.
Also, what's up with cliffhangers up the ass. Why? I can get the occasional cliffhanger when there's been a lot of boring stuff going on, but the second half of the manga is loaded with these. There's cliffhangers in almost all of the final 30 chapters of the manga.
Spoilers below:
This guy brings out the stupid in everyone. Legosi tries talku-no-jutsu on Melon to no avail, and gets shot by the dude. After killing and nearly killing everyone by the end of the series, Legosi does it again. SURPRISE, IT DOESN'T WORK. Melon nearly kills himself and Yafya. Melon's locked up, and Yafya lives.
The chimera stuff was fucking dumb and weird, and didn't end up having any importance later in the series. Imagine Nen being introduced in HxH, only to be dropped immediately after. Along with chimeras, the two characters involved with it, Kyuu and San, are completely dropped a little afterwards and immediately afterwards, respectively. San just vanishes and is never mentioned again, and Kyuu goes from helping Legosi, to betraying him, only to regret it and disappear from the series. Why? What was the point of these two?
__NOTE: _So I just found out that the chimera stuff is a reference to Baki, a series by Paru's dad, so I guess that's why it was in here. Still sucked ass though.___
In the 3rd to last chapter, Legosi get's a very long scene saying his goodbyes... to Sagwan the seal. WHY HIM? Legosi has a long, drawn out goodbye to one of the less impactful people in his life. What about a good scene with Louis, Jack, Juno, Gouhin, Yafya, literally anyone but Sagwan. This was so bad, and it set the tone for what to expect from the ending.
The food problem is never properly resolved. A whale whose backstory we never properly learn decides to ship fish sausage to land animal society to solve the "carnivores need to eat meat" conundrum. Then Yafya, the Beastar, says "nah, we good fam." Okay...? What was the point?
The name of the manga is also ignored. They did the title drop "leT's BeAsTaRs lolol" the same chapter Kyuu and San were introduced, 50ish chapters before the ending. Legosi and Louis don't become Beastars, so what was the point? WHAT WAS THE FUCKING POINT PARU, WHY DID YOU CALL IT BEASTARS?!?!?
Onto the ending...
The ending is the worst ending out of any overall good manga or anime I've ever witnessed.
Referring to the sexual aspects mentioned earlier, this never got resolved either. We get to see Louis railing Haru near the beginning, Legosi and Haru have a lot of sexual tension in the hotel, only to have no payoff. I don't need to see the sexy time, but it's just another aspect of the story that never paid off. This relationship just ended terribly.
Louis gets crapped on. He ends up marrying a non-character that has been in probably 2 or 3 chapters. This not only shoots down the second main romance, Juno and Louis, but it undoes all of Louis' development, excluding his bromance with Legosi. He's someone who was living up to his father's legacy by being perfect Beastar material. Then he becomes a mob boss and has a pseudo romance with a wolf girl. After his dad dies because the story needed something stupid to happen, and the main conflict is resolved, he suddenly decides to undo all his development and live as his dad wanted him to. This could have been done well, but it ended up being a bucket of ass.
All the side characters who were important before get one or two panels in the final chapter. If I'm not mistaken, Juno, one of the more important ones, doesn't even appear. This really is Tokyo Ghoul :re all over again.
Shit, the Shishigumi get the worst of it. They're all arrested and end up getting longer prison sentences for messing up trying to be model prisoners. All that just for the lols.
For the people who shit on Demon Slayer's ending, behold: This is how you really ruin an ending.
As for my fellow Hunter X Hunter and Berserk fans: Be happy that if these series never end, they can at least remain unfinished while still good. Nothing is worse then having a Game of Thrones happen for decades-long series we love.
Visuals - 9
The art starts off pretty mediocre, but it turns into some of the best art I've seen. This isn't Berserk, but the visuals are amazing for a weekly manga. Character expression, as shown above, is incredibly well done. Characters can't feel same-y because of the different races of animals.
There isn't much to say here, there's no deeper meaning to any of the art, and there's no symbolism I've noticed.
Characters - 9
The characters are easily the best part of the series. It's because of this that the series becomes bad, because it shifts from being a character-driven story to a story that drives the characters.
Legosi is a great protagonist. He's the shy outcast who everyone thinks is weird and creepy. He has great development without completely disregarding who he was at the beginning. He becomes self confident and strong, but is still quirky and weird. His development shows that you don't have to become a completely different person to better yourself. In Legosi's case, it's is an incredibly unique take I haven't seen done in this way before. He's easily my favorite character up until the final arc, where he becomes incredibly stupid. Sora in Kingdom Hearts Dream Drop Distance stupid.
His romance with Haru is somewhat off-putting because neither of them really develop it. He just becomes infatuated with her, she eventually likes him because he saves her, and it doesn't go much further than there. There's more to it, but nothing of significance.
Speaking of Haru, she's kind of an awful character. She starts off interesting. A mature rabbit who is able to stand up for herself, is very promiscuous and derives confidence from that. Very interesting, but she hardly develops past that. We see why she is the way she is, but she doesn't grow as a character. For a series written by a woman, I find it odd that Haru is basically just a goal for Legosi. She also suffers from "the dumb" by the end of the series, agreeing to let Melon eat her...What in the actual fuck. By the way, this is completely forgotten by the end, it's never brought up after Louis finds out about it.
Louis is the second best character. The "breaking free from tradition" trope, but done exceptionally well. That is, until all his development is tossed out the window. His relationship with Legosi is interesting because they're so different, yet they get along so well. They strive to be like each other and improve themselves based off their friendship. Louis carried the second half of the manga as best he could. In return, he's got a terribly done ending.
I would go into all the other characters and why they're good, but the series pretty much dropped the good characters by the end, so I guess I will too. Juno, Jack, Pina, Yafya and Gosha were great, but were mostly irrelevant by the end.
In Memoriam of forgotten characters:
Overall Enjoyment - 7
I'm being generous with Beastars in giving it a 70, and this is only because the first ~135 chapters or so are great. Not flawless, but the characters, art and premise are enough for me to give that half of the manga a 10. Everything after 135 is extremely hit-or-miss. It can be good, but is usually fucking awful.
I'm not sure how much of this is on the author or the editors. We all know editors can ruin even the best of series, and I would not be surprised in the least if they had something to do with this tragedy.
The ending leaves a lot to be desired. Anyone who defends it is in denial of the immense bullshittery that we were subjected to.
I would recommend the manga up until 135. After that, either read a summary of everything, or force yourself through the slog to get to the good bits.
Thanks for reading.
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