Beastars, Volume 3

[theradicalchild]

BEASTARS, Vol. 3 by Paru Itagaki
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The third volume of mangaka Paru Itagaki's Beastars manga, like the second, opens with a synopsis of prior volumes' events, good for those who like to break from certain series for a time as I do, along with a visual list of dramatic personae. The performance of the play Adler during which the lupine Legoshi and the tiger Bill physically injured one another is still on the minds of the students at Cherryton Academy, with the drama club leader, the red deer Louis, threatening to suspend them. However, the first-year students received a positive impression of the wolf from the play, with many of them yearning for autographs, Legoshi himself still in love with Haru.

The carnivorous students groom themselves to prepare for summer, with a celebration known as the Meteor Festival forthcoming, celebrating the long-deceased dinosaur inhabitants of the world where the manga occurs. Legoshi helps with the preparation, breaking from the others to meet Haru, whom other students bully, among them a harlequin rabbit with a sense of superiority who blames the dwarf rabbit for her recent breakup. The wolf and rabbit have lunch together, with the moment awkward, as the two haven't exchanged their names at the time, which they do at the end of their meal.

In the following chapter, Legoshi buys a pack of egg sandwiches from the school store and at a subsequent lecture sits next to a hen named Legom who at first thinks he's eating the eggs she regularly sells so that other students can enjoy the products of her loins, the store owner considering them of top quality. A news story eventually releases discussing the murder by carnivores of the Thomson's gazelle named Ms. Rinna, with hostility naturally reemerging between the carnivorous and herbivorous students. Legoshi departs, having forgotten his backpack, and along the way helps a fellow lupine student named Juno who is the target of bullying and was in the past.

Legoshi and a few fellow students eventually visit the city near Cherryton Academy, soon stumbling into the black market which contains horrors such as a man with missing fingers who wants carnivores to devour those he still has for a price. As primal instincts attempt to take over Legoshi, he collapses in a back alley, with a panda turning out to be a psychotherapist finding him and taking him into his clinic, where at first, he holds him in binds, although he releases them once he becomes calmer. The panda is aware of Legoshi's relationship with Haru, thinking the wolf's aim is to devour her, and the third volume ends with the therapist giving the lupine a magazine of small animal pornography.

Itagaki follows the chief narrative with notes on Haru's name and design alongside tidbits about the world without Cherryton and how small animals find safety in numbers when navigating among the larger species. Overall, the third volume of Beastars proved as enjoyable as its predecessors, with the localization as before being excellent, the only indicator as to the comic's Japanese origin being that it reads from right to left, and the darker tone was a welcome change. There exist some minor issues such as one animal confusingly talking about the stripes on one animal's rear, but otherwise, I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend the third volume to those who enjoyed its precursors.

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