theradicalchild | Beastars, Volume 15 (Reply)

BEASTARS, Vol. 15 by Paru Itagaki
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The fifteenth entry of Paru Itagaki’s Beastars manga opens, unsurprisingly for those who have read prior volumes, with a synopsis of the storyline and visual depictions of the various dramatis personae. The first chapter highlights a news article about interspecies relationships becoming more common, with Legoshi the gray wolf and Haru the dwarf rabbit exchanging work and school schedules so they can spend more time together, which results in awkward moments with the latter’s family when its patriarch sees the couple. Meanwhile, Yahya the horse, the current Beastar, is giving investigators details about the half-gazelle, half-leopard criminal Melon, hoping to recruit Legoshi into taking him down.

The action breaks to Utsugi the jackal and CEO, who believes upper-class carnivores don’t care about eating meat, detesting the black market, and attending a masked ball beneath a café where meat-eaters and herbivores transcend dietary boundaries. Lego and Yahya are in disguise there as well in hopes of hunting Melon, although when the latter handcuffs him to a chair, the former is tempted into a conversation that has repercussions. In the meantime, Louis reunites with his former Shishi-gumi lion companions who are glad to see him again and invite him to dinner at their headquarters before their new boss shows up.

Volume fifteen ends with Legoshi having an out-of-body experience that reveals the backstory on his mother and to an extent his absentee father, also touched upon in the post-story sequences Itagaki includes with her manga. In summation, this installment of Beastars is largely on par with its predecessors, which is a good thing as it has plenty of action and a few surprises, continuing to elaborate on Legoshi’s family lineage that prior entries had started to unravel, with the English localization being mostly spotless as well. However, the same issue of the lack of any gray area between herbivores and carnivores persists, but those who enjoyed prior volumes will have a good time continuing to read Itagaki’s magnum opus.

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