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Forum - View topicThis Week in Anime - BNA
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FinalVentCard
ANN Reviewer
 Posts: 517 |
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Yeah, Alan is definitely a fantastic villain because he wears such a blatant softboi mask for so long. Alexis Kerib and Ragyo and Kray all delight in how evil they are and how detached they claim to be from morality; Alan plays the wimpering-simpering "uwu" bit for as long as he can until he has nothing to lose and everything to gain and it's so obvious.
spoiler[Seeing that he was just as vulnerable to the Nirvasyl Disease as any other "mixed" animal] was immensely satisfying, if only because we get to see what it otherwise the most blatant symbol for Aryanism get completely owned on how meaningless ages of pride in "purity" are. I think in that regards, the existence of Nirvasyl Syndrome makes sense in what is already a dense plot; it's a good way of showing that even if you think you're some highfalutin' mover-and-shaker, your farts smell just as bad as anyone else's. Trigger definitely deserves credit for how they're able to keep making so many amazing shows that touch on similar themes but don't openly recycle topics. And hey, even if BNA isn't necessarily the best Trigger show ever or stumbles the landing because of juggling a billion threads, it's great that Trigger can still make this wildly-animated and meaningful stuff. Also: kinda bummed nobody made a "beast mode" joke. |
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darkchibi07
 Posts: 5471 |
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It's especially true if you watch the English dubbed version where Robbie Daymond voiced Alan since he used a very similar smarmy tone as Goro Akechi in Persona 5. I knew something is off with Alan at first glance; I just wanted to know how villainous he can be. |
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One-Eye
 Posts: 2261 |
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I enjoyed this, but I also agree that the end with Alan the story gets messy:
Also, I think the translation for the subs had some issues. I watched BNA with the dub on and subs and there were times when the dub made more sense and at least one or two times that the subs seemed flat out wrong. At one point Akko I mean Michiru says she's going to talk to her (Nazuna) the silver wolf (in dub), but in subs it says him. There was some other stuff too. I don't know if Netflix goes back and fixes subs? |
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Hikifroggy
 Posts: 86 |
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Definitely enjoyed it I watched it all in one day. I got to the end, it did get kind of messy and rushed but still good. Now thinking back it would have been better as a 24 episode series like little witch Academia. Hopefully they make a S2 one day.
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meiam
Posts: 3442 |
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It was typical trigger anime, fun when it was just wacky action (the baseball episode easily being the best) but failed when it tried to have more of a plot and message. Having the beastmen being a much more violent culture than human (escalating minor annoyance into violent confrontation is considered a good thing, the only popular sport involves murder and humanoid trafficking doesn't seem to particularly bother people) ended up making the message "human are bad, but boy it could be so much worse, look at those barbarian beastman", which I don't think was the intent.
If I'd learn that someone from an extremely violent culture wanted to move in to my neighbourhood, and that they also had super strength, I definitely would not be okay with that. Plus it does the whole "oppressed minority can naturally assume perfectly human form at any time but don't" which always reduce their blight. I feel like if the role had being reversed and that human were the minority in BNA world, you couldn't have had a reverse story because human would have been wiped out long time ago. |
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ErikaD.D
Posts: 659 |
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You are right. I think it wouldn't be messy and rushed if it air 24 episodes. So there are cons of animes with 12-13 episodes. ( cough "Sing 'Yesterday' for Me", still I wish it air 18 episodes, so it wouldn't be rushed with the ending.) |
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DavetheUsher
 Posts: 505 |
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It definitely suffers from Zootopia Syndrome, where any attempt to find allegory to real world issues falls completely flat because of things like actually having distinct and empirical differences between the two groups that don't exist in our real world. The article brought up X-Men, and yeah.. so many of the modern X-men movies and comics fall flat on their face and completely miss the whole point of what mutants were supposed to represent back in the day since it's so easy to try to boil it down to basic level symbolism for something like racism. BNA even does the Promare thing in the end where the villain is revealed to be part of the group people fear and more or less all but justifies the existance of said fear with an evil megalomaniac convoluted plan to kill people 
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Agent355
 Posts: 5113 Location: Crackberry in hand, thumbs at the ready... |
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I mostly loved BNA: fun characters and setting, incredible cartoony animation, more plot threads than some anime twice it’s length. But that Jackie Robinson allegory made me cringe (Jackie Robinson wasn’t violent!!!) and the Holocaust reference...at least it was short.
I’m going to repeat my main criticism of Attack on Titan: Don’t make your oppressed minority allegorical group turn into *actual dangerous monsters!* That’s not to say they cannot be depicted as having factions or individuals that are human level violent, corrupt or otherwise awful, but when you make them turn into monsters, it reinforces the idea that the fear of otherness is justified, even if it’s just in story. The part about Nyrvasyl syndrome also really confused me, because it made the 1,000 year old battle...actually a civil war? Did I get that right? Or was that just Alan’s framing, and he (or his ancestors) started it? I have no idea, and the show doesn’t explain it. And while I liked that the “turning Beastmen into humans” idea was thoroughly rejected and explained as unacceptable because it erases identity and culture, I think it would have worked better if Nyrvasyl syndrome was a man or Beastman made condition. That’s where I thought the show was going, What with all the illegal genetic research, but they reinforced that the condition was naturally occurring and had to be medicated away (albeit with a less extreme medicine) at the end. On a more superficial note: Nazuna had an awesome character design! I’m glad she turned out not to be evil, and that she learned she didn’t need a creepy manager to be popular! More idol shows should have the girls get rid of their creepy managers! 
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DuskyPredator
 Posts: 15495 Location: Brisbane, Australia |
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I went over the episodes in the series discussion forum via the high seas method, and I do plan to watch this again, although I wonder what I might think since I watched Kipo in the meantime.
I think that the first half of BNA is the best, before the major plot points came in that felt like the story was made for 24 episodes and had to be squeezed into 12. The best episodes have to be the Nina and baseball episodes, that really felt like the series strength that I was a little sad it did not quite match up after that. Would have loved more wacky episodes along the lines of the Kill la Kill tardy episode. Also more of Nina and Flip, really feels like there should have been more there, that I think she only had small cameos in the last couple of episodes rather than becoming Michiru's friend. The review did seem to forget that there is a difference between Akko and Michiru, that Michiru is an athlete and thus has her own interests outside but related to the beastmen thing. She is totally like Akko and I love the thought of the two of them next to each other, but she is not really just Akko as a tanuki girl. Alan's appearance similar to Andrew also felt kind of distracting to me. Also, I think the rampage syndrome coming out of nowhere made no sense, like why did it first happen to the rhino guy first after he was visited? I think that it would have worked much better if at least there was something that had to be used to trigger it outside of their own biology. I will create my own head cannon that they had an alternate explanation but realized that the had to cut it for time reasons. |
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Animegomaniac
Posts: 4093 |
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So...
Both Nazuna and Micchiru are shapeshifters, their "animal" forms are famed in Japanese folklore for shapeshifting and unlike beastman human forms... they didn't need that at all by the way... their human forms are genuine for want of a better script. When Beastmen mate, their offspring is either one animal or the other... humans are animals too so the question is there just waiting to be asked... so we know they're genuinely not humans but who knows about those two. Other questions come up as shapeshifters are notorious for other "things" and they really, really, REALLY should have just stuck to furries. But this is just in hindsight. Was I the only one thinking while watching the show: "So does Michuru know she has the shapeshifter's immunity to damage or is she just coasting on 'new power as the plot demands' when it's really just the one power that never gets mentioned outright? Should I be asking where she's getting the mass or is that the wrong sort of question for this show?" My favorite episode was the baseball episode because 1: Shapesifting battles suck... wait, that's the series so there is no 2. I didn't hate the show but whenever the series strayed away from "Zootopia but... no, still Zootopia" they mixed their metaphor messages. Michuru was only hunted because she couldn't turn human but if the first thing Beastmen learn is how to pass for humans then why would there be organized humans hunting Beastmen at all? It's like they wanted Zootopia plus X-Men but they also wanted "Beastman" cross species pairings so they would have sex in human form but then... There's the problem: I've given more thought to the core concepts then they ever did. |
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SnowWarren
Posts: 272 |
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I assumed Boris told Yaba the truth about Nazuna and that made him change similar to episode 11, but we don't know if he believed in the cult so that might not hold water. There's a BNA manga of side stories that take place in between episodes so that explain things more clearly but so far only one chapter has been released. |
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DuskyPredator
Posts: 15495 Location: Brisbane, Australia |
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But they recognised Michiru when they first saw her as a beastman, I don't see how they would have thought Nazuna some ancient god, especially since they were people of science. I really don't think that it makes sense that it would not have happened to someone else before. Maybe if there were some explanations if Beastmen had not been around a human for too long or something as an allegory from becoming insulated, but even that I don't think works when I think Alan had some actual humans around him or something. |
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Custom Apex
Posts: 138 |
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How can you watched an 12-episode series within on day? Did you got some free time or binge in nonstop? |
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enurtsol
 Posts: 14784 |
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If Nickelodeon can do it prominently on a hit animated TV series, Disney will do it sooner than later (Not prominent but without a doubt, Disney did do it in the new Duck Tales TV series and in the movie Onward) |
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Silver Kirin
Posts: 1126 |
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Kill la Kill and Little Witch Academia were the only Trigger shows that I've seen, and while BNA is not as good as those two I still really enjoyed the show a lot. My only complaint is that, as many others said, it felt too short and a bit rushed at the end, but the animation, character design, story and worldbuilding were very strong. The main characters were likable and the main villain, though not as evil as Ragyo, was very effective.
Now, I'm not very good when it comes to analyse the themes in a story, but I thnink BNA handle them well. I was also surprised as to how dark the show got in a some episodes, I did not expect that. Finally, I watched BNA in neutral spanish and unlike LWA which was dubbed in Chile this show was dubbed in Mexico with more experienced voice actors in comparison. I have to give some props to Shirou's voice actor, since he doesn't have as many roles as the others but he made an excellent job in my opinion. Curiously there's some actors in the dub who also worked in Zootopia. |
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