Brand New Animal, or BNA, is a brand spanking new anime fresh off the table of Studio Trigger in collaboration with Netflix. It premiered on April 8 of 2020 and holds a lot of promise.
BNA is a fantasy anime about a world in which humans have segregated a group known as “beastmen” in their own personal zone called Animacity. Beastmen can (as the name suggests) transform into anthropomorphic animals and are in great danger from many anti-beastmen groups that wish them harm.
Beastmen and Humans are not interchangeable. They are almost two completely different species, and have lived apart from each other for as long as possible. Due to the growth of humanity, and the removal of beastmen habitat, they have been forced to reveal themselves. Tensions run incredibly high and life is very dangerous for the beastmen, who have to rely on a few (shifty) human politicians to get what they need.
Which is where the anime begins.
Enter Michiru, a small tanuki beastman who was once human.
The typical protagonist I am more special than you trope kicks in here. Michiru shouldn’t be a beastman if she wasn’t born one, it doesn’t kick in after puberty or anything like that.
Michiru can also change her shape at will since she’s a tanuki. The show hasn’t shown any other tanuki beastmen at this point, but since none of the characters seem really surprised at her presence, I’ll let that one slide.
Michiru is promptly, but begrudgingly, taken under the wing of a freakishly OP, human-hating, wolf beastman named Shiro Ogami (amusingly enough his name can be translated out to white wolf).
After their initial rocky introduction, where Michiru thinks he’s a dangerous psycho and Shiro thinks Michiru is a terrorist, things calm down.
Shiro works as a detective/vigilante/social worker for Animacity and gets her started on her way to becoming a citizen.
One thing leads to another and after a few incidents that Michiru helps with, the two have begun developing a partner/friend relationship.
The show has a simple episode progression: each episode deals with a threat to either Animacity, or to individual beastmen. The mayor of Animacity will ask Shiro to use his keen senses to track down the perpetrators and Michiru tags along.
Michiru, and the viewer, gain steadily more insight into the hardships the beastmen have gone through at the hands of humans.
It should be fairly obvious that this show is a fantastical commentary on prejudice and the dark side of civilization, but it also deals with the idea that ‘fairness’ is subjective. While beastmen are slowly gaining ground and getting rights, they also find themselves trapped by humanity’s laws and cultures.
Michiru, who can see things from both perspectives, serves as a sort of foil for Shiro, who can only understand things from a beastman’s point of view.
Together, they run into all sorts of problems plaguing the city, from trafficking of beastmen, terrorism, corruption, crime syndicates, attempted murder, cults and even genocide, BNA tackles a lot of dark material.
Between Shiro’s impressive strength( and less than natural endurance), and Michiru’s flexibility, the two are well-equipped to handle the problems the show throws at them.
BNA is a VERY good show, and one I can recommend whole-heartedly.
Admittedly, there’s plenty of questions I have about some of the decisions that characters made, and most of the big reveals aren’t quite as shocking as they should have been (*cough* Shiro *cough*).
That said, BNA is a good watch, particularly if you are a fan of the style, enjoyed Zootopia but wished it had handled things differently, or just like a good story.
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