The fall anime season is rapidly coming to a close, and with it comes a crop of new and returning shows for folks to dive right back into. While most fall shows like Ranma 1/2 and Dan Da Dan got out of the starting blocks at the same time, Netflix-exclusive shows like the final season of Beastars didn’t begin until the end of last week. Moreover, the third and final season of the anthropomorphic coming-of-age drama is the first in a two-parter curtain call. Staggered release notwithstanding, the first batch of Beastars episodes goes beyond being an extended epilogue and raises the stakes of its already stellar story to dizzying new heights.
Beastars, originally created by Paru Itagaki (the daughter of Hajime no Ippo creator George Morikawa) and animated by renowned 3D animation studio Orange, tells a story not dissimilar from Disney’s Zootopia movie. It is set in a world with talking animals and a heaping pile of sociological (or zoological, in this case) problems. Key among them are the social unrest and power dynamics between carnivores and herbivores. At the center of its story is a young wolf named Legoshi who marries a precocious rabbit named Haru while trying to overcome his predatory animal instincts.
Also sprinkled into Beastars‘ loosely fitting allegory for racism are plots involving an extended murder mystery of a class friend by a carnivore, an illegal black market selling herbivore meat, and a crime drama among carnivores dominating the underworld. Suffice it to say, the second season of Beastars felt like a season finale, thanks in significant part to it nipping most of the show’s central plot with a resounding crescendo. Rather than playing out as an extended prologue to Beastar‘s sprawling story, the first half of its final season slowly ramps up to ever-greater heights.
At the onset of Beastars‘ final season, Legoshi, Haru, and their deer friend Louis are picking up the pieces from last season. Legoshi’s life is in limbo, with him and Haru going steady while he’s withdrawing from eating Louis’ leg to power up and take down the previous season’s big bad (don’t ask). Likewise, Haru is contemplating how she and Legoshi will be able to navigate a relationship with marriage and kids down the line, given he’s a grey wolf and she’s a dwarf rabbit. Louis, on the other hand, has a robot leg (incredible!) and depression as he struggles with deciding what to do with his life after stepping down from the head of a lion yakuza syndicate. He is also torn between conforming to societal expectations by marrying a fellow deer in an arranged union or embracing his emotions for a wolf classmate.
Relationships, be they interpersonal or communal, remain the cornerstone of Beastars. However, the main crux of Beastar‘s final season content is covering the slice-of-life elements of its three core characters. This season ramps things up another notch by introducing a new crime drama centering on a drug-laced energy drink that turns carnivores into rampaging monsters. That epidemic leads to the segregation in Beastars’ universe, heightening its already palpable allegory for classicism and xenophobia.
The final season tackles the much-anticipated question of mixed-race animals within the story’s world, introducing Legoshi’s komodo dragon grandfather, Gosha, and the main villain, Melon—a half-gazelle, half-leopard maniac fueling the drug crisis. To combat the chaos, Legoshi joins forces with a beastar, a detective like Columbo in this universe named Yahya, to halt Melon’s reign of terror.
Your tweets about BEASTARS are always fun to read. Thank you ! pic.twitter.com/VIq29wG8tx
— BEASTARS (@beastarsanime) December 7, 2024
As always, Beastar‘s score remains a strong suit of the anime, chiming in like a whimsical French romance in the countryside at its intimate introspective moments and ramping up at its more dire and brutal battles. Animation-wise, Beastars continues to be the exception to the long-held belief that CG anime is rough on the eyes with its stunning composition, fluid animation, and surprisingly prevalent use of 2D animation in places. This should be no surprise, considering Orange is the same studio behind anime standouts like Land of the Lustrous and Trigun Stampede.
While there’s sorrow for such a bold anime like Beastars ending, its final season comes with an added sting that many anime fans never gave an honest chance. In 2021, both seasoned anime fans and newbies chickened out of the show before its story got going because of how jarring its portrayal of mature sexual relationships was. In short, folks didn’t want to be caught watching the show and have accusations of being a furry flying at their face. That isn’t to say the show beats the allegations because it’s actually one of anime’s best and brightest furry anime. But as the above paragraphs note, the show has way more stuff going on than getting skittish over sexual relationships. Hopefully, Beastars final season will give anime connoisseurs a sense of FOMO and give the show a chance should it stick its landing.
The first 12 episodes of Beastars‘ final season are streaming on Netflix.
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