The current anime season is a huge one, with dozens of quality shows I need to keep up with. So naturally I ignored them all and got caught up on season three of Beastars, the fun anime that asks hard questions about how an animal society would really operate. Keep reading for my thoughts on Beastars Final Season, and why this show encapsulates so much of what I love about anime!
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Why Do I Love Beastars?
In a lot of ways, Beastars represents everything I love about Japan’s approach to animation and storytelling. The freedom to tell dark stories that include death and violence and sex. The creativity needed to invent a world as complex and unique as this. And characters with real flaws.
Excellent Computer Animation by Studio Orange
If you know me, you know that I have a strong dislike for 100% CGI-based “anime” because it can be so jarring and unnatural. Obviously CGI is important to the industry, and is needed to animate cars and robots. But I have a problem with supporting shows that use CGI animation just to save money in an industry that already has low salaries. I feel that shows like The Duke of Death and His Maid and BanG Dream! It’s MyGO!!!!! would all be better if they were animated traditionally rather than with bargain-basement CGI that looks like it was made on a laptop from the 1990s.
But Beastars is one of the few series I’m totally okay with, despite it being 100% computer animation. The complexity of the world and the animals that populate it, the incredible camera angles and action, and the natural movements of the characters, couldn’t have been achieved any other way.
The Story Blends Genres
Beastars is a slice-of-life following students in a high school drama club. No wait, it’s a noir murder mystery! Now it’s a coming-of-age story exploring the complexities of love and dating. Following the budding romance between the “herbivore” grey wolf Legoshi and the “carnivore” dwarf rabbit Haru is especially fun.
In modern Japanese society, a person who aggressively seeks sexual partners is called niku-shoku (“meat eater”) while someone who doesn’t care much about sex is labeled sou-shoku (“salad eater”). So a story about literal carnivores and herbivores is the perfect vehicle for commenting on sexuality in modern Japan, which this anime does beautifully.
The World of Beastars is Complex and Morally Ambiguous
I enjoyed Disney’s Zootopia, which tells a similar story of anthropomorphic animals living together in a human-like society in which carnivores must curb their natural tendencies to eat meat. The plot of Beastars Final Season even revolves around a substance that causes carnivores to lose control and kill.
But in the same way that anime is far richer and more complex than any Disney animated feature, the sprawling world of Beastars is dark and filled with unsettling truths. Carnivores live alongside herbivores in peace… but sometimes they can’t resist the urge to eat meat, so they visit the black market to buy some contraband flesh. Illegal drugs also exist, and there are even “bunny porn” magazines for carnivores to read.
Animals have sex, including between different species. As the story progresses, dating between herbivores and carnivores becomes fashionable, despite the danger that a meat-eater might lose control and cause a “predation incident.”
Beastars Final Season Explores Themes of Identity
Identity is a core theme of Beastars. The story revolves around Legoshi, the grey wolf who’s in love with a rabbit, wanting to marry and have a family with her, despite being on the other side of society’s predator–prey divide from her. But we learn a lot more about Legoshi, including why he’s so uncomfortable in his wolf skin. It turns out he’s not a full grey wolf, but a hybrid with another animal, which is revealed during this season.
You Will Love Yahya the Horse
My favorite character in Beastars Final Season is without a doubt Yahya. He’s a horse who sets out to become a Beastar, the symbol of society who is able to bridge the gap between carnivore and herbivore.
Beastars Final Season…Part One?
The tagline “final season” made Mrs. J-List and I excited to see the conclusion of the show. But we didn’t exactly get a perfect ending, as things end in a bit of a cliffhanger. Happily, Netflix is pulling an Attack on Titan type move, and will roll out the rest of the story in 2026.
Splitting a 24-episode season into two parts is actually a smart move for Netflix. As I’ve written before, the approach of “dump it onto the platform all at once so viewers can binge it” is incompatible with anime. This is because anime series need one episode to be released per week in order to build enough buzz among fans. It’s much better to leave a gap in between the episodes, so fans can help build excitement for future episodes.
Thanks for reading this blog post containing my thoughts on the outstanding Beastars Final Season. What do you think of an anime about a society of anthropomorphised animals? Tell us in the comments below!
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