theradicalchild | Beastars, Volume 13 (Reply)

BEASTARS, Vol. 13 by Paru Itagaki

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The thirteenth installment of Paru Itagaki’s Beastars manga, like its predecessors, opens with a synopsis of recent important events and visual depictions of the various dramatis personae, afterward continuing where the twelfth volume left off, with gray wolf Legoshi’s maternal grandfather Gosha in a fight that he wins. The lupine himself still works at the Udon Noodle Shop Bebebe and receives the unique task of delivering orders to marine customers that live underwater, who speak a language divergent from that on the surface. Upon first contact, Legoshi has trouble, although a spotted seal named Sagwan, who lives in the same apartment as him, comes to the rescue.

Legoshi becomes friends with Sagwan, who is half-sea and half-land, learning about the latter area of the world. The wolf afterwards goes shoe-shopping with Seven the Merino sheep, with her carnivore coworkers coming and harassing her, though Legoshi gets them to retreat. In the meantime, Yahya the horse, the current Beastar, is on the lookout for the drug BB (Blood and Bones), concocted from the bones and blood of herbivores, ultimately reuniting with his old friend Gosha. Back to Legoshi, he has a run-in with thugs masking the illicit substances as an energy drink, with Louis the red deer entering the scene and the wolf lauded by the police for confronting the drug-dealers.

Volume thirteen concludes with Legoshi receiving a gift as thanks for dealing with the BB salesmen, a box of mochi rice cakes, which prompts him to throw a party to get to know his neighbors, after which he finds a letter from Yahya. Following the main action are anecdotes about Legoshi and Sagwan being nude together in one of their apartments (with the spotted seal forgoing clothes in his apartment since he doesn’t wear them underwater, not to mention a look into the mangaka’s creation schedule, her love of steampunk and gothic fashion, and experience with an airplane ride. Overall, the thirteenth Beastars volume is enjoyable yet shares most of its precursors’ flaws, namely the lack of any omnivorism in the manga’s world.

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