theradicalchild | Beastars, Volume 18 (Reply)

BEASTARS, Vol. 18 by Paru Itagaki
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Unsurprisingly, the eighteenth entry of the Beastars manga opens with a synopsis of prior events and visual depictions of dramatis personae. The comic begins with a flashback of Gosha telling his grandson Legoshi to enroll at Cherryton Academy, with his best friend Jack taking him and introducing him to his canid roommates. Back to the present, Legoshi is aware his status as a registered meat offender prevents him from going out openly in public. However, his former roommates invite him to stay with them. Cherryton has, since a recent devouring, segregated carnivorous and herbivorous students, with the drama club remaining one of the few integrated school clubs.

When Legoshi visits his former dormmates at Cherryton, Jack is in a depressed mood and is contemplating suicide by eating an onion, poisonous to canids, with the wolf seeking to stop him. Despite the school’s segregation, the dining hall remains integrated since carnivorous and herbivorous students ate with their brethren anyway. Jack is in a small elite class at Cherryton where they learn about the history, dating back to the Carnivore-Herbivore War a century before the manga’s events, carnivores then termed “life eaters” and herbivores “nature eaters,” with the former protective of the latter upon first encounter. The appearance of a whale ended the conflict, although that which did so refuses to share his wisdom with the world again.

In the meantime, Bill the tiger becomes head of the drama club, and, when dining with his friends, cracks open an egg to find it contains a chick in development, a “trauma egg,” which they aim to rescue and ultimately take to a local police station. At the black market, the Shishi-gumi mourn their fallen comrade given the posthumous name Lion Glasses and observe how the district has changed, with turf wars imminent and the head of the leonine Shishi-gumi, the half-leopard, half-gazelle Melon wanting to claim the area of the city for his gang. Red deer Louis, saved from the black market by his adoptive father, talks with his foster son, who quickly visits the area with a visible price on him.

Louis and Legoshi proceed to the abandoned tower of the organization that had initially held the latter captive for devouring, where they discover his old cellmates, the doe rabbit Kyu and the llama San. Kyu agrees to take Legoshi as her disciple in eventually taking on Melon. However, the wolf’s reluctance to punch females is one of his weaknesses, with the rabbit entertaining the idea of creating an “imaginary chimera” to aid combat. Thus ends the manga proper, after which is a humorous scene of Legoshi and his friends eating monja at a restaurant, a comical take on an older chapter, an anecdote about Itagaki purchasing the wrong drawing paper, and an indicator of canid muzzle length being concurrent to age.

Overall, Volume 18 is another enjoyable addition to the Beastars manga, with plenty of action and character development, not to mention a backstory well before the Carnivore-Herbivore War that occurred a century before the manga’s present day. The reunion of Louis with his herbivorous cellmates from earlier in the manga is also a nice callback. However, the need for Legoshi to undergo another round of training somewhat recalls what he had under Gohin. The absence of a gray area between herbivores and carnivores known as omnivores is further unmentioned. Regardless, those into mature animal-themed stories will enjoy this manga.

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