00:01
She's the daughter of manga artist Keisuke Itagaki, who's very famous known as Bucky.
Oh, wow, really interesting choice to become a manga artist just like your parent
and also for your parent to have drawn Bucky the Grappler.
And so they're working like simultaneously, they're both putting out material at the same time.
Maybe, yeah.
And I think they both have Netflix deals.
That family must be rich.
Okay, just saying.
Konnichiwa, I am your host Mayu for 2AM OTTACK!
In this podcast, we talk all about anime, manga, movies, music, and the history through our distinct perspectives.
As a born and raised Japanese non-otaku, that's me, and an American anime fan, Cisco.
That's me.
So we just finished watching the first part of the final season of Beastars on Netflix.
We can't wait already.
Yeah, I'm pretty hyped for the last half of the final season.
It feels like it was a bit of a tease to call it the final season and then only release the first half.
Yeah, it was literally cliffhanger.
Sort of, yeah.
But also, don't call it the final season if it's only the first half of the final season.
Like, this isn't a Marvel movie, you know?
Oh, you never saw any of the Marvel movies, so you don't know what I'm talking about.
I mean, I guess it's not like they called it Endgame and then had Infinity War afterwards, which would have been, I guess, like, more to the point.
But the real thing I'm trying to say is, if there's another core coming later, then that's the final season.
And this was, like, the penultimate season, which wouldn't have been as exciting a title, but would have been a lot more honest.
We don't know when the second part is coming out.
So it's not the final season. It's the almost final season.
Almost final season, but it was good.
It was very good. The first season of V-Stars was great, and the second season was confusing.
And this one is finally tying it together and making it make sense.
Okay, before we get into the...
Quote-unquote final.
Make sure to give us thumbs up and subscribe to our podcast.
Why are you laughing?
Somehow it felt like a threat. Like, if you don't give us, like, five stars and a thumbs up, like, the last season will never come out.
Maybe. I don't know. Nobody knows. Maybe.
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Okay, so let's dive into it.
Cisco, could you tell listeners what V-Stars is about?
The main character is a gray wolf, and he's in love with a dwarf rabbit.
In V-Stars, it's sort of like Zootopia. There's, like, all different kinds of animals.
I thought about Zootopia, too.
03:00
Well, I think the fact that they call their version of Google Zoozle really makes it feel like Zootopia.
It's sort of set in the same universe as Zootopia, where animals are people, and they all have fingers and hands, regardless of what type of animal they are, which is a very interesting choice.
Everybody walks upright. Everybody has opposable thumbs.
Now that I'm thinking about it, have there been any monkey characters in V-Stars?
No, I don't see any apes, I think.
I was going to say, now that I think about it, it might be that there's no primates whatsoever in this show.
I could be wrong. Maybe there's someone in the background. Whatever.
Anyway, the point is, they're living in an animal society that is basically human society, except with animals.
A lot of the central part of the show revolves around relationships between carnivores and herbivores.
The particular plot has to do with this young gray wolf, Legoshi, who's in love with a rabbit named Haru, is in the drama club with a red deer named Louis.
The second season makes it a lot more complicated.
There's a mafia made up of lions.
There's a panda who's an alternative medicine practitioner who helps carnivores who are addicted to meat.
And there are a bunch of other smaller characters, like the other members of the drama club.
In the third season, there's another whole batch of characters, but I don't really get into all of them.
The relationship between Haru and Legoshi is at the center of the show, as well as,
especially Legoshi's sort of conflicted feelings about wanting to eat meat versus not wanting to eat meat.
So I think that sums it up.
So the animation television series is adaptations, actually, from manga V-Stars, Haru Itagaki.
Yeah, and she's the daughter of manga artist Keisuke Itagaki, who's very famous non-Baki.
Oh, wow. Really interesting choice to become a manga artist just like your parent.
Yeah.
And also for your parent to have drawn Baki the grappler.
And so they're working simultaneously. They're both putting out material at the same time.
Maybe, yeah.
And I think they both have Netflix deals.
Oh, really?
That family must be rich.
Rich. Okay. Just saying.
I guess.
All right.
The first season premiered outside of Japan in March 2020, and the second season was in July 2021.
And the final season just came out.
That's a long wait between season two and season three.
I thought so, too. Yeah, it was a long wait.
Was that because the manga was ongoing and they had to wait for it to produce more material so they could decide what to adapt?
I have no idea. Maybe COVID. I don't know.
Yeah, I mean, I guess they must have like finished making the first season before COVID happened.
And they were probably at least in production on the second season.
I don't think animation production slowed down that much during COVID because so much of it is done remotely in the first place. Right?
That's true.
Interesting. Okay. So it was a long wait for season three.
We watched first season and I loved it.
Yeah.
06:00
Like I was not into anime back then.
Right. But you still like this one.
I still like this one.
It was like a lot of meanings, I feel like.
And then we watched second season and then we watched the half of third season.
Right.
Final season.
And I want to go into the big topic of this show.
Yeah.
Which I can't tell.
Okay.
So what is the message of Beastars?
Deep question.
So in order to answer that question, I actually want to tell a story about a different animal story called Watership Down.
Do you know this book?
Okay.
So I was first introduced to Watership Down as an anime.
Well, maybe I shouldn't call it an anime.
As an animated movie.
This is a book written in 1972 by Richard Adams about rabbits.
It was made into a film in 1978.
So quite a long time ago that adapted the story into an animation.
Watership Down, the book, is about rabbits, but many people assumed it was a metaphor for British society or British politics specifically.
In particular, the rabbits go from one warren to another warren and like encounter other animals on their journey.
And that people really thought it was supposed to be a metaphor for like, I guess it's written in 1972.
And I actually don't know enough British history to tell you who the prime minister was back then.
This is like pre-Margaret Thatcher.
So I'm kind of like, I don't know.
I think, you know, there was some thought that like one of the sort of not super nice rabbits was like Richard Nixon or somebody.
People used to ask the author all the time, like, what was he trying to say with the novel?
And his answer was, it's just about rabbits.
Like he denied that he was trying to make a broader political statement with the film or with a story and was trying to be like, I just really like rabbits.
And like I made up a story about rabbits and there is no deeper meaning.
And I'm not sure that's true.
I think he didn't want to get in trouble for his politics.
And so like said that.
And again, like this is me, like repeating what my parents told me about the book because I loved the movie as a kid.
And so I don't, I don't know if it's true that there's really no politics.
I have read like actually a manga adaptation of Watership Down.
If there's actually call outs to 1970, probably 1960s and 1970s British politics, like I am not knowledgeable enough about it to be able to be like, ah, yes, like the character of so-and-so is inspired by this, you know, by Winston Churchill or whatever.
Like, I don't know.
It doesn't necessarily seem that way to me, but it also really could be.
And I just lack the proper context for understanding it.
The point of this whole story was it might be that Beastars isn't really trying to be about anything in the human world and is just somebody is like interesting.
What if scenario about animals and their relationship to each other?
That's I hate it.
I deeply hate it.
And because they can't understand them, simply dismiss them as deconstructionist to be like, oh, well, I don't get it.
09:03
So it must not have any meaning.
So we're going to try to make one up, even if it's not in there.
So I think the first lens that I tried to view Beastars through was, is this about gender?
And the reason for that is the main character, Legoshi, is both a carnivore and a male.
Most of his friends are also males and also carnivores.
And so most of the kids in the drama club, most of the like, I guess they don't explicitly tell you everybody's gender.
And with like the birds and stuff, it seems hard to tell, except by their voice actors, almost all of whom seem to be men.
Later on in the show, you get introduced to female carnivores.
But really, Juno is the only major female carnivore.
Right.
There are cheetah girls who are like in it.
Have we seen any other female anythings, any other female carnivores besides Juno?
Those like dancers?
The cheetah dancers.
Oh, the cheetah, yeah.
Something like that.
I feel like they're like in the background of a lot of shots and stuff.
But they're not like one of the main characters.
They're not main characters.
They don't, you know, they tend not to have names, etc.
So they did put in Juno as like, there are also female carnivores.
I guess Legoshi's mom, eventually, she shows up in this season.
I think it's just notable that like the overwhelming majority of carnivores depicted in the show are male.
And the herbivores seem about 50-50.
Sure, Haru is, you know, is female.
And most of her friends are other girls.
And so a lot of the rabbits in the show, like, I don't know, have we seen any male rabbits?
I don't recall.
Right.
Ruiz is the really famous example of a male herbivore.
And Luis's dad, who's also a deer.
Which other male herbivores have we seen?
Like that really annoying drama club guy from the second season?
Like an alpaca.
Yeah, I don't think he's an alpaca.
Anteater?
What?
Anteater?
The anteater.
Well, we like came to this point that like, this show is like, has some, like, one of the things, one of the ways in which the metaphor breaks down is,
this show clearly treats carnivores, herbivores, mammals, and reptiles as like, quote unquote, humans.
But insects didn't make the cut.
Like those are animals, but they don't, they're not like humanized animals in the show.
It's okay to eat insects.
It's okay to eat insects.
Eggs and the dairy.
Well, and they do actually address the eggs thing with one of my favorite parts of the second season,
where they have a chicken character who like lays eggs and sells them.
Oh, I don't remember that.
You don't remember this?
No.
Oh, she's like a bit part.
But like, there's like a, there's like a bunch of, it's, it's like, I can't remember if it's like after the credit sequences or something,
but there's like these little, this little side story about the chicken who lays the eggs in the egg salad sandwiches that Legosi is eating in that series, in that season.
Wow.
And about like her like daily routine of like waking up and going for a jog and laying like the best egg possible to like make the customers happy and stuff.
They like totally address the, what's going on with the eggs thing.
But like, and I think like that's understandable.
Like eggs are like a bodily product of chickens that don't necessarily like contain new life.
12:02
Right.
Like that feels like a pretty reasonable thing for the chickens to be able to sell that like, you know, wouldn't be ethically messed up or anything like a fertilized egg, different story.
But anyway, to get back to the point, many of the carnivores depicted in the show are male.
In fact, like in a lot of the cases, almost exclusively.
And the herbivores have like more, there are more male herbivores depicted than there are female carnivores.
But especially in the first season, Legosi's desire to eat Haru and then also his sexual desire for her really seemed to overlap.
And it seems like, is the show trying to say something about like male desire and like men's?
I mean, like, I don't know.
I don't really like the lens of like men's inability to control their desire, because I think that is frankly not true or real.
But the show seems like maybe it's trying to talk about that in some way, because a lot of it is about Legosi controlling himself and like not giving in to his instincts to devour the rabbit.
Yeah. And then the final season, Juno, the wolf girl, say about the feeling for the deer, Luis, and she was like, I'm so in love with him.
But the more I love him, I get hungrier.
Right. And so maybe there's like a metaphor there about possession of one's lover or jealousy or like wanting to like, I don't think actually cannibalize anybody, but like take them over or control them in some way.
But the show is so literal about the carnivores eating meat.
Some of it seems like it's about like vegetarianism or the ethics of just eating meat, period, because of like the way that the black market, the black meat market is exposed.
You know, maybe it's like a simple metaphor. It's just like, hey, the show's about eating meat, period. That's the whole point.
I definitely felt that.
Yeah.
Yeah, because I became vegetarian throughout this season. I can't remember which episode, episode nine or eight, when Haru asks Legosi to take her to night market.
The black market or whatever it's called.
Yeah. And it's dangerous for Haru.
Right.
Because she can be like targeted. But she did. And they went in the shop that sold bunnies.
Right.
And like she sees all the like dead bodies of bunnies.
Right.
And it's like from her perspective, it's so cruel. It's so bad. Like you can't imagine what it's like if you see humans lying down in the glass.
Yeah.
Yeah. So like, I understand how gross that is.
Right.
And it's terrifying. It's not necessarily telling about veganism or vegetarianism, but like, I felt that aspect. I couldn't help feeling it.
Right. So like, it seems a little bit like maybe it's like that. But even there, like the show doesn't seem to really have like a clear ethical perspective on this.
I mean, I don't know. Maybe there will be revelations in the second half of the final season that are like, yeah, this like ethics we were exploring about in the ocean.
15:07
Everybody just eats everybody else. Whatever. It's all good is like deeply ethically corrupt. And like, of course, they should know.
Like, you know, it's like, but it seems sort of like agnostic about that.
It's a little bit. Yeah. Confusing.
Yeah. It's like, are we okay with animals eating other animals?
Yeah. It's a different.
Natural or is it not natural? And it doesn't really like, I don't know. Sometimes I feel really convinced that the show is about power, gender relationships, sexism and rape.
And other times I'm like, is this just about the ethics of eating meat? And sometimes I'm like, actually, it's not about any of these things.
It's just like a random fantasy world where animals are people. And like, what would happen then? You know, and I can't really make it up.
I also as an American, I think, especially in the first season, I was tempted to like view this a little bit through like the lens of race.
But the longer that I watched it, the more I was like, I don't think like Japanese people have like a nuanced enough like thinking about race for this to be like an effective metaphor.
And none of the stereotypes of the different characters line up with like American racial stereotypes neatly enough for it to feel like that's what they're really exploring here.
Even though there's, I don't know, it felt like a little bit like the show is definitely about discrimination, bias, and like oppression.
And it does a really interesting job of thinking about why groups are discriminated against and like whether that's like, you know, well, not really whether that's fair, it's not fair, but it like is investigating all of these things about like animal instinct versus like self control versus social pressure versus like law, etc.
And so there are times where it really feels like it wants to say something about that. Like all of the Yakuza are lions. What's up with that? And then it's like, then it just doesn't really go there or extend the metaphor or try to really use it to say something.
What about the episode of Legosi's mother, like being like mixed?
Right. So then you're like, oh, is this trying to say something about like interracial marriage?
Yeah.
And I don't think it is.
No? What about like a mixed, like quote unquote mixed kids?
Yeah. Except that like, I think if they were really trying to say that something about that, the kids would just be like actually somewhere in between one parent and the other.
And instead, like, it seems like in this world, when child is born to two different species, it is one species for like most of its life and then randomly undergoes an extreme change towards the other species, like mid-lifetime, which is not a thing that happens to humans, really.
But like kids would look like.
Totally. Kids go back and forth.
Unique, yeah.
Sort of, but like not this extremely like, oh, I was a wolf, but now I have scales or, oh, I was a gazelle, but like now I have fangs.
18:04
Right. Like that. I don't know. I think it's like it's too extreme.
I mean, too extreme in the anime, but in human life, like, OK, like a change of hair or like change of like skin color and stuff.
I'm sure those kids go through a lot in their lives.
Yeah. I don't want to like trivialize the experience of like mixed race kids in our actual world.
Especially in Japan.
Especially in Japan. Yeah. So maybe it's I mean, maybe there's something there.
I just feel like, again, like it just doesn't like line up in any sort of way.
Like it doesn't make sense internally.
The like, you know, in the real world, even when you cross two very closely related animals like donkeys and horses, the offspring mules are all sterile.
They can't have children.
But like she's mom is like a mix of two radically different species.
And yet, I mean, there's like, you know, I guess the show itself alludes to it at some point.
There's like a line that's like, how does that even work, essentially?
But she's able to then have a kid.
In the animal world that I mean, for sure, she wouldn't have been born in the first place.
But even if that somehow were possible, she would theoretically not have been able to have children.
So like it doesn't hold up on under like the animal world's rules.
It doesn't, to me, make a ton of sense as a metaphor for, you know, the world today.
Like it's somewhere caught in the middle and it's kind of just its own story.
So I don't know.
I think the show has a lot to say about bias, about discrimination and like, you know, stereotyping and probably also about instinct and self-control.
But it's not like a unified whole or maybe I don't know.
You know what?
Maybe the last half of the final season is going to like tie it all together and be like, this is what we were trying to say.
And you just missed it until the end.
I have faith.
Let's hope for that.
But I guess the other thing I should say is I feel like here I'm really expressing some like frustration with the lack of a consistent metaphorical structure for the show.
But I actually really like it anyway as a story that makes you think about these issues without binding itself so tightly to one particular, you know, point of view or perspective or narrative that it like then has to obey those rules.
You know, I guess maybe it's OK that it's sort of internally inconsistent sometimes.
So I want to introduce some voice actors.
You will be surprised.
I know I'm going to be.
I can never tell who's who.
I couldn't recognize his voice.
But Legoshi was by Chikahiro Kobayashi.
He did the voice for Saichi Sugimoto from Golden Kamui.
Whoa.
I would love to hear that in the last season.
He's great.
He's great.
This is a great performance by him, actually.
21:01
Yeah.
And then Haru-chan is by Sayaka Senbongi.
It's a wonderful name.
She did a voice for Kikuri from Botch the Rock, the girl who was drunk, who was always drunk.
Oh, I can kind of imagine that.
Yeah.
OK.
And then Marushiru from Danjo Meshi.
Oh, I don't hear the resemblance immediately, but that's cool.
Yeah.
So she like she has an ears thing.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's right.
Yeah.
And then Juno is by Atsumi Tanezaki.
She does a lot of stuff.
She did Anya from Spy Family.
That blows my mind.
Yeah.
They don't sound anything alike.
Furiren, too.
We haven't watched it.
We haven't watched it.
Those three surprising voice actors.
All right.
Let's talk about theme songs.
So let's talk about from the first, very, very first one.
First season opening theme song was by Ali, Wild Side.
Yeah.
Wait, are you sure that was the opening?
Yes.
It was opening.
God.
I mean, you know.
I didn't hate the music.
I had no idea what he was saying, singing, but I didn't hate the music.
Yeah.
I remember being like, this is such a good show.
How come the opening is so not up my alley?
I didn't hate it.
I get it.
Uh-huh.
There's a like a satellite.
Blame it on the lag.
Yeah.
That's not going to work.
Okay.
Anyway.
Yeah.
I remember like being like just nonplussed by it.
Just being like, you know, like I would have liked it to have a better one.
Yeah.
We know Ali from Golden Comet.
I had a bigger problem with that other one.
But you kind of liked it at the end.
It's true.
Find a way.
Find a way to forever and find a way to pass it on my life to you.
It's true, actually.
Like, for all that, like, I really treated it as like that one.
I eventually did grow on me.
Wild Side did not really grow on me.
Like, I thought it was just okay from start to finish.
I never was interested in learning it or singing it.
I didn't pay attention to the lyrics, and I couldn't get the lyrics by listening.
I liked the music.
Oh, okay.
Well, that's good.
Yeah.
Kind of jazzy.
Yeah.
And I think I liked second season opening theme song the best.
The Yoasobi one?
Kaibutsu.
Yeah.
That was the best.
Heads and shoulders over all of the other ones.
I think this might be my first time knowing about Yoasobi.
Yeah, that was for sure true for me, too.
This is, like, my introduction to Yoasobi, and they are awesome.
Yeah, the animation was great, and the song was amazing.
I did a little bit of research about this song.
According to Yoasobi member Ayase,
he was trying to express the darkness of, like, approaching death aspect of Beastars.
24:05
So he got inspired and referred the beginning of Billie Eilish's Bad Guy.
Oh, that makes so much sense.
You can really hear it in the music, actually.
Yeah.
Oh, cool.
Right?
Yeah, I thought so, too.
He also read Beastars manga artist Paru's original novel based on Beastars,
and then he made the song.
Isn't that, like, Yoasobi's MO?
They read books and then make whole albums based on the books?
Yeah, that's what they're for, yeah.
Cool.
And they are always good.
Yeah, I mean, yeah, they've been just hitmakers one after another.
And then third season opening theme is by Issei, Into the World.
The lyrics here are, like, pretty basic, but I also kind of got into this one.
It's a very happy, like, positive opening, I feel like.
It's very pop.
Yeah, it's pretty poppy.
To me, it really sounds very disco, to be honest with you.
Like, it sounds like very 70s.
Yeah, there's no, like, darkness.
That's true.
Or, like, secret kind of thing compared to the first and the second season of, like, theme songs.
The first and the second has, like, some other side or backside kind of feeling.
But Into the World has, like, very only positive kind of feeling.
Yeah, I think that's true.
I mean, well, most of the main characters by the third season have kind of, like, grappled with their own issues and are, like, out on the other side.
And the new characters are where, like, some of the darkness is coming from, I feel like.
So that makes sense.
We're not going to talk about the endings.
Do you want to talk about endings?
There's not that much to say, other than, like, the third season ending is all in English, and I didn't love that.
Except for the fact that, I guess we can't really, like, say it, but, like, some of the lyrics in the third season closing really sound like something else to us that made us laugh very hard.
Like, from the very first time I listened, like, why is it on the ear?
Like, can she sing?
I didn't have this.
I didn't really, like, hear the lyrics that you heard until you explained them to me.
But once I started hearing them, it really sounded like that.
Right?
Like, now you can only hear like that.
Yeah, it's true.
Anyway, I am a bit of, like, a fanatic about insisting that we listen to the opening and ending theme songs.
And this was an ending theme song that I routinely skipped to watch to the next episode.
In part because it's a bingeable show on Netflix.
They released all of it at once.
And so I, like, I didn't enjoy the ending theme song enough to make a point of listening to it instead of going to the next episode.
Where, with most anime, I will almost always be like, we have to listen to the whole ending theme song just because.
Yeah, all the lyrics are in English.
Yeah.
I mean, that was probably, like, an instant sort of turn off for me.
Okay, a little bit trivia about Beastars.
This year, 2024, September, Beastars became musical.
I mean...
It's not regular musical.
It's reading musical.
What?
27:00
So there are characters on the stages with, like, books.
And they read and sing.
So they don't have to learn the lines?
Well, they probably learn lines to some extent.
But they have books.
The script in front of them.
Yeah.
And then they act and sing.
Sure.
That's, like, a type of thing that is done in, like, the drama world to, like, do, like, a reading.
Yes.
And, like, in this case, like, maybe, like, a more dramatic reading.
But why?
Why didn't they just do a regular full-on show?
I don't know.
I'm not so into musical.
It's true.
Especially in Japanese.
You really kind of hate them, yeah.
Like, I can't do Japanese musical.
Okay.
It was a little bit weird.
All right.
I mean, you liked Tokyo Blade in...
It was a musical, was it?
Oh.
No, it was a musical.
No, you're right.
It wasn't a musical.
It was a play.
Wow, that's weird.
Why did I remember it as a musical?
I don't know.
Is the play that they're making of Oshinoko going to be...
Wait, it's of Tokyo Blade, right?
Yes.
Is it just going to be a play?
It's not going to be a musical?
Nope.
I don't think so.
I'm a little bit disappointed.
But, okay.
Yeah.
All right.
You don't have to make everything a musical.
Yeah.
Americans kind of do, though, you know?
Right.
We do a lot of musicals.
I mean, I'm okay with musical in English, but not in Japanese.
Interesting.
Yeah.
I don't think I would be okay with a Tokyo Blade musical in English.
I think it would drive me crazy.
Yeah, that's true.
All right.
Well, maybe it's for the best that it's just a play, then.
Yeah.
All right.
Let's do Word of the Day.
There's two.
So, the words of the day are Nikushoku and Soushoku.
Okay, good.
So, Nikushoku means meat eater and Soushoku means plant eater.
And this is one of the reasons that I really, really thought the show was trying to say
something about gender.
Because in Japanese, Nikushoku doesn't just mean meat eater or carnivore.
It also means someone who is romantically or in a relationship, the sort of pursuer,
the person who is chasing or trying to get the other person to fall in love with them.
And a Soushoku is someone who is passive.
I mean, I don't even know that they wait to be chased.
It just means that they don't actually pursue romantic relationships or people.
And so, in particular, Soushoku Danshi, plant-eating men, has become a term in modern-day Japanese,
meaning the kind of guy who is too afraid to ask girls out or does not pursue relationships.
I guess with anybody, right?
Yeah.
It's implied with women because, I don't know, if you're a Soushoku Danshi, does that imply
anything about your sexuality?
No, I don't think so.
Okay.
You don't really chase anyone.
Whereas a Nikushoku Danshi is hitting on girls all the time and trying to get in people's
pants and stuff.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Okay, so that feels like a relevant word.
And I think because of that carnivore-herbivore distinction in slang, that was part of what
30:01
primed me to really try to interpret this show via the lens of gender.
And there is Nikushoku women, right?
In English, the term for that is a cougar.
Well, I guess only if the woman is older than the guy that she's pursuing.
But I think it's notable that the term we have for an aggressive woman trying to get
especially younger men to sleep with her is a meat-eating carnivore word.
And so I think all of that seems germane to interpreting this show.
But the more that I've watched of it, the less sure I am that that is actually the most
significant metaphor in the show.
It doesn't have to fit in one category or another.
It could be anything.
Everybody's different.
Yeah.
Everybody's unique kind of thing.
Sure.
Two words.
Nikushoku.
Niku is meat.
So it means grass or plant.
Weeds, yeah.
Are you Nikushoku or Soushoku?
I mean, I guess I do eat actual meat.
So in that sense, I'm definitely Nikushoku.
And I think if I were in Beastars, I'd probably be a dog.
You're a dog.
Yeah.
Or at least like an owl or something.
That was your favorite character.
The owl character in the third season is the best character in the whole show.
Love that guy.
That's your favorite kind of animal, bird.
It's my favorite kind of bird and arguably my all-around favorite animal.
Yeah.
I like his friend Jack, though, who's a dog.
That's like me in the show, for sure.
I know.
That's played by Okumura from 2.5.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
Seduction.
What was the right name?
2.5.
2.5 seduction?
2.5D seduction?
Something like that?
Dimensional seduction.
Dimensional.
2.5 dimensional seduction.
Yes.
He did the voice for the main character from Jujutsu Kaisen.
I cannot wrap my head around that, but okay.
So that's Jack.
That's Jack?
That's Jack.
Yeah, sure.
Why not?
Okay.
All right.
Wait, wait.
Time out.
You're not going to say what you are?
Are you Nikshoku or Soushoku?
I'm vegetarian.
I eat dairy and eggs.
I don't eat insects.
But when it comes to relationship, I think I'm a Nikshoku.
Yeah, I think that's fair.
I'm totally Nikshoku.
Okay.
Yeah.
It's like, I think I'd rather chase than being chased.
I don't know.
I'm not sure that I really fall on that spectrum, you know?
It doesn't have to be relationship.
It could be something goal.
Oh, you're definitely a goal chaser.
There's no question about that.
Yeah, if I decide, once I decide I'm going to do it, I'm going to do it.
33:02
I keep doing it until I get it.
Yeah.
I was going to say something about, yeah, you would go buy your goal off the black market for meat if you had to.
That's where it was located.
Yeah.
Okay.
Would you like to add anything?
I mean, this should be obvious from the show itself, but really, we both liked B-stars a lot.
And oh, you know, the last thing that we didn't mention is the final season, the quote unquote final season, the art is very different from the first two seasons.
It really feels like they transitioned from hand-drawn.
I mean, I'm sure it wasn't like actual, you know, cells, but from like a very regular standard 2D anime art style to like a very 3D modeled style in the last season.
And it looks really good.
It looks very clean.
It's well done.
But it's noticeably different from the first two.
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