Beastars

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As far as people who like Beastars, it is one of those pieces of media that people are either weirdly proud of enjoying, or ashamed to have enjoyed. There is this divisive sense to Beastars and how accepting people are of it which I think makes perfect sense for the type of story it is. Personally, I think it is one of the most underrated manga out there. The way it explores exactly what it wants to in the way it wants to, is impressive to me. Of course the ending was rushed and confusing, but I don’t think that matters. I believe the author ... did what they wanted and didn’t want to do any more. For this I can respect her. The story excellently discusses the ideas the creator wanted to discuss. Specifically, I am left with no questions of what it would be like to be an animal in this society. How this extends to our society is important, but I don’t think that was the author’s main goal. If you are interested in exploring other universes that behave differently to ours, I think you will heavily enjoy Beastars. Personally, the use of consumption as both for the sake of sexuality and to quench hunger is beautiful to me. How these things connect to our society, how we as individuals are both sub conscious necessity and conscious desire, and much else comes to mind. For this reason, I heavily enjoyed Beastars and think more people should give it a chance.

I found Beastars' setting very intriguing and that was why after watching the anime (at the time of writing the 2 available seasons), I immediately picked up the manga wanting more from Legoshi, Louis, Haru and the surrounding world.

The setting - modern times but filled with intelligent anthropomorphic animals - was explored deeply and presented the possible issues that could occur, mainly, the divide between carnivores and herbivores, racial and cultural stereotyping. Which I enjoyed.

And up to the Interspecies Relations arc I was not able to find a thing I could dislike about story, pacing, characters. It all flowed well and the developing relationship between ... Legoshi and Haru with the difficulties they must face together of their respective carnivore and herbivore instincts, social stigma was captivating.

However, the problems started with the Interspecies Relations and became gross with Revenge of the Love Failure arc which for some reason took more than a third of the whole story! It felt like the author was branching out to cover multiple plot points and expand the world, but grasped too wide to finish up all or just most of what was introduced. That's why the direction of the story often times felt rubber-banding from one point to another and yet another, and ultimately the ending felt rushed.

It had some good potential, but not only got prolonged, but also rushed at the end?

It started very good and simple, with a weird but creative Animal world and a murder mystery, but it got to a point where not only that conflict was resolved, but also everything else was going in circles

What started as a School Mystery ended up trying to be a new Fighting Shonen with power ups, Instant healing and Special habilities and all that.
There were LOTS of things AND EVEN CHARACTERS that got introduced but then were never seen again or never mentioned! And it wasn't just a minor thing, ... but they spent whole chapters on it. So it ends with none of that having any sort of importance to the plot at all!

The worst thing was how all of the Main characters had nothing else to say and were going in circles, as mentioned before. Specially with Legosi and Haru's relationship. Legosi's character went from a Depressed wolf but average at best to a Stupid wolf who does the most stupid things and can't do anything properly. The best character in my opinion was Haru, since she was the only one who had 0 issues with saying the truth or moving things foward, and not only with Legosi.

The last arc was ATROCIOUS. Melon is the most boring and annoying villain and the last and final chapters were SUPER RUSHED and offer no satisfying or clear resolution to anything. I don't know if it was because the series was cancelled or something, since it had proper pacing until that last arc.

Overall, it was entertaining to follow at it's time, but it made me mad to spent so much time and wait for every chapter for months just to get such a dissapointing ending with huge amount of conveniences and rushed as hell.