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"Beastars" manga + anime: Recommended
5 years ago
"Beastars" is a recent anthropomorphic Japanese manga, written & illustrated by Paru Itagaki. It started publication in 2016 in a weekly manga magazine, and of this date has been also published in 17 manga collections (with about 9 episodes/chapters in each collection). Viz Media, has started publishing official hard-copy USA English language versions of the collections in the Fall of 2019. Five collections are available.
Wikipedia has a good introductory article about "Beastars", and google images shows promotional art & sample pages.
I would strongly recommend taking a look at the story. It has story ideas that parallel some of the meta-story in Zootopia, but the story-line is developed in a much more gritty way. The setting starts out in an elite boarding-school for upper grade students located in a major city with echoes of a Japanese culture. The culture has herbivores and carnivores co-existing in the city, but instinctive stresses make life difficult for the students who are having to deal with growing up sexually, socially, and the academic pressure of an elite school. The society works because everyone attempts to learn to repress their instincts, reinforced by many social controls.
The students are shocked by the obvious murder of a popular herbivore student by an unknown carnivore (presumed to be another student). The students you are introduced to are distinct individual types, all with flaws and growing-pains. The later parts of the manga are post-high school, and show a wider view of the urban culture.
The manga story has been adapted into an anime series in Japan, starting in October 2019. Outside of Japan, officially the series will be shown via Netflix - USA English version starting 13 March 2020. The first season of 12 episodes is complete, and a second season has been approved.
I would say that for USA audiences, this would be a manga and anime story for late high-school & older. There is teen-angst, developing personalities, socialization crises, bullying, noir-menace, murder, violence, sexy (& flawed) males & females of various species, first loves, romance, sex, inter-species attraction (& children), personality development, power-politics, intrigue, black-market butcheries, Yakuza, and plenty of specialized furry world-building. It is a popular entertainment adventure. The manga has won several general awards in Japan.
And fan-art is appearing in Fur Affinity already.
Wikipedia has a good introductory article about "Beastars", and google images shows promotional art & sample pages.
I would strongly recommend taking a look at the story. It has story ideas that parallel some of the meta-story in Zootopia, but the story-line is developed in a much more gritty way. The setting starts out in an elite boarding-school for upper grade students located in a major city with echoes of a Japanese culture. The culture has herbivores and carnivores co-existing in the city, but instinctive stresses make life difficult for the students who are having to deal with growing up sexually, socially, and the academic pressure of an elite school. The society works because everyone attempts to learn to repress their instincts, reinforced by many social controls.
The students are shocked by the obvious murder of a popular herbivore student by an unknown carnivore (presumed to be another student). The students you are introduced to are distinct individual types, all with flaws and growing-pains. The later parts of the manga are post-high school, and show a wider view of the urban culture.
The manga story has been adapted into an anime series in Japan, starting in October 2019. Outside of Japan, officially the series will be shown via Netflix - USA English version starting 13 March 2020. The first season of 12 episodes is complete, and a second season has been approved.
I would say that for USA audiences, this would be a manga and anime story for late high-school & older. There is teen-angst, developing personalities, socialization crises, bullying, noir-menace, murder, violence, sexy (& flawed) males & females of various species, first loves, romance, sex, inter-species attraction (& children), personality development, power-politics, intrigue, black-market butcheries, Yakuza, and plenty of specialized furry world-building. It is a popular entertainment adventure. The manga has won several general awards in Japan.
And fan-art is appearing in Fur Affinity already.
You also had developed an excellent world-building trope within Herman's world.
I heard more recent chapters are more cleaned since the author finally got some assistants to help her out
The anime opening is really good though. I'm planning to take a look at it (assuming my region gets it on Netflix*).
* The Caribbean is usually lumped with Latin America for stuff like this including cable (Funimation's streaming service is region locked).
I really do like that anime opening. It catches some of the emotional core of the stories. The wolf-student Legosi and rabbit-student Haru have up-and-down boarding school experiences.
As a side note, the mangaka is the daughter of Keisuke Itagaki who's behind the Grappler Baki manga.
The most recent 3 or 4 episodes have Legosi encountering a couple of circumstance-friendly pit-fighters. Developing fighting styles is discussed & practiced. I assume Grappler Baki is a wrestler?
The manga collections are available from Amazon.com for about $12 for a fairly standard 6" x 8" tankobon, but it's also available for Kindle and comiXology for about $8 -- just a little hard to share with friends.