Anime / BNA: Brand New Animal

RUN WILD AND FREE

Hey! Are you ready to go?

— "Ready to", the opening theme

BNA: Brand New Animal is a 2020 anime produced by Studio TRIGGER, directed by Yoh Yoshinari (Little Witch Academia) and written by Kazuki Nakashima (Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, Kill la Kill, and Promare). This is the first time Yoshinari and Nakashima have helmed a work together, as Nakashima is best known for collaborating with Hiroyuki Imaishi on directorial duties. The series also drew attention pre-release for TRIGGER collaborating with Western artists Genice Chan and James Gilleard on visual development.

In a universe where anthropomorphic animals called "beastmen" inhabit Earth alongside humans, an Ordinary High-School Student named Michiru Kagemori has her whole world turned upside down when one day she mysteriously turns into a tanuki. Searching for a cure to what she thinks is a disease, she travels to Animacity, the one place in the human world where the persecuted beastpeople can live freely. Or so she thinks; despite Michiru's previous assumptions and the best efforts of the mayor, Animacity is dominated by organized crime and outside pressure from humans who resent its existence.

While residing in the city and searching for answers to what happened to her, Michiru finds herself tangled up with the lives of Animacity's denizens, including the seemingly immortal wolf detective Shirou Ogami. However, as she stumbles her way closer and closer to truth, she not only has her prejudices about beastpeople challenged, but also comes to realize that her strange transformation may be linked to a distressing, world-changing revelation.

The series is distributed by Netflix, with Netflix Japan releasing the first and second halves of the show on March 21, 2020 and May 6, respectively; the series was released internationally on June 30. It also aired on Japanese television via Fuji TV's +Ultra block from April 8 to June 24. A light novel prequel, BNA Zero: The Animals That Can't be Brand New, was released April 23, while a manga adaptation set between episodes 3 and 4 began serialization in July.

For another grittier take on anthropomorphic life that also was picked up by Netflix and aired on +Ultra, compare and contrast Beastars. For an older, somewhat different perspective on furry cop anime featuring both kemonomini and anthro characters, check out Hyper Police.

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BNT: Brand New Tropes:

• Absence of Evidence: When examining the explosion at the Sylvasta lab Ogami notices a period where there was no scent in it. As everybody has their own unique scent it was simply a matter of finding the person with no scent to find the bomber.
• Actor Allusion: This is not the first time we hear Yoshimasa Hosoya (Shirou) voicing characters related to wolves.
• Ambiguous Situation:
  • Nirvasil and what really happened there one thousand years ago. In Mayor Rose's version of the story, presumably told to her by Shirou, a human army attacked the city out of Fantastic Racism and slaughtered every beastman living there, Shirou included. However, a different version of the story is that the beastmen were already killing each other when the human army came and that the humans had to fight back to defend themselves because the beastmen immediately turned on them upon their arrival. What also adds to the ambiguous factor is that neither version of the story is told by an unbiased party. Alan is the Big Bad, who wants to use the incident as an excuse to eradicate "impure" beastmen, and Shirou is a card-carrying anti-human zealot whose memory of the event seems to be clouded at best.
  • The Nirvasil Syndrome itself. Is it really, as Alan claims a genetic disease, triggered by the stress of too many different beastmen living together? Or is it perhaps a Synthetic Plague, constructed by Alan to have a convenient excuse for his erasure of hybrid-beastmen? There is evidence for both, but neither possibility is a hundred percent confirmed at the end of the series.
• And the Adventure Continues: In episode 12, the heroes manage to provide a cure for Nirvasyl Syndrome to the Beastmen population without having them lose their beastmen identities. After averting catastrophe, Mayor Rose vows to change Anima City for the better. Starting with allowing humans to enter the city so that they and beastmen can coexist in peace. And while Shirou may not like it, he'll do his best to support her. Michiru and Nazuna decide to stay in Anima City so that they can share their experiences as humans and beastmen to settle relations between the two groups.
• Angry Animalistic Growl: It's a common thing for beastmen to growl or bare their teeth when upset, even when they're in their human form.
• Animals Lack Attributes: Beastmen in beast form have their “bits” covered by fur or feathers. Seen with the short skirt-wearing flamingoes (though one whose feathers Michiru blows off is careful to cover herself is a subversion, as all birds have internal genitalia).
  • and Shirou after he loses his clothes going god-form.
• Animal Stereotypes: Apparently all cops in Anima City are dogs.
• Anything but That!: Ogami has a tendency of painfully removing the signature body parts of a Beastmen when they 'abandon their pride'. Such as the antlers from a deer, or the horn from a rhino, which they always beg him not to do.
• Arc Symbol: The four-point star that appeared in all Trigger productions to date pops up many times here. It appears on the robes of the Silver Wolf cult and on the forehead of their actual god, it was a sort of emblem in the city of Nirvasyl 1000 years before and it appears several times in the last episode during the final confrontation and after it.
• Artistic License – Biology: A rhino beastman has his horn broken off in a fight with Shirou, revealing a bone core. Rhino horns are made up of highly compressed keratin and have no bone cores, unlike the horns of bovines, sheep, or antelopes.
• Artistic License – Economics: The mob is fixing baseball games so that the Bears always lose for their gambling operation. As the Bears were an extremely unpopular team with no fans before Michiru joined them, fixing games like this should have resulted in the mob losing money from having to pay off all the people who were betting against the Bears.
• Artificial Hybrid: Michiru and Nazuna were originally ordinary humans, but became beastmen in their teenage years after accidentally being infused with beastman blood.
• Art Shift: The story of the city of Nirvasyl told by mayor Rose is depicted in a style reminiscent of Ancient Greek art and pottery.
• Asian Fox Spirit: One character with a base fox form has kitsune theming: Nazuna, Michiru's old friend, displays shapeshifting powers. Her deceit of the wolf god cult for her own gain falls in line with fox spirits being tricksters in Japanese folklore. Kitsune and tanuki are also frequently portrayed in Japanese folklore as being rivals.
• Audience Surrogate: Michiru, a beastman who until recently was just an Ordinary High-School Student and needs to have the workings of Animacity explained to her. Some viewers have also noticed that her animal form is more anthropomorphic than the other beastmen.
• Bait-and-Switch:
  • In the first episode, as soon as Michiru enters Anima City, it seems completely empty, and after a while she gets surrounded by menacing silhouettes with shining eyes. It appears she's going to get attacked, but it was actually the population of the city gathering in the plaza to celebrate the festival and have fun.
  • In the third episode, Michiru's flashback to when she was still a normal human starts with a sound of rubber screeching on tile, which is then revealed to be Michiru's shoes on the floor of her gym during a basketball game. However, it could 'also' be the sound of a hospital bed cart being pushed possibly alluding to Michiru and Nazuna's hospitalization and subsequent beastman blood transfusion after both were hit by a truck. This is more apparent after the full reveal of those events.
• Baseball Episode: Much like FLCL before it, BNA features an episode where Michiru gets to show off impressive baseball moves and we get to discover that sports in Anima City are performed less for the thrill of it and more for the sake of gambling and organized crime. Baseball in Anima City is also a Blood Sport in which players regularly get killed, which is considered the main draw.
• Beast Man: The beastmen are treated as their own separate species, have animal-based powers, and can shapeshift into a human. Less commonly expected, most of them (except for Michiru) default to their human form.
• Berserk Button: Shirou utterly despises any beastman co-operating with humans that have anti-beastman goals, having broken off the antlers of a deer beastman and the horn of a rhino beastman for their treachery against their own kind.
• Big Bad: Alan Sylvasta is eventually revealed to be the true antagonist of the story.
• Bland-Name Product:
  • Human society's Facebook equivalent is called "Facelook". Though its interface is almost a carbon copy of Instagram's, and having stars instead of hearts for "likes" reminds of early Twitter, before it replaced stars with hearts too.
  • Instead of Red Bull, the beast people drink "Fire Bull".
  • Budweiser Beer has been replaced by "Bad Walrus Beer", and Heineken by "Hedgehog".
  • Rather than worshipping a Burger King, everyone worships a "Burger Kitty".
  • Instead of the sandwich chain Subway, they have Dogway.
  • Instead of YouTube, they have JuTube.
• Brown Note: Shirou's howl does the opposite of harm: It compels beastmen who hear it to drop everything and start howling with him, regardless of species and regardless of whether they’ve gone berserk from Nirvasyl syndrome. Michiru and Nazuna are unaffected, as a final proof that they aren’t truly beastmen.
• Corporate Conspiracy: Alan Sylvasta, the CEO of Sylvasta Pharmaceuticals, is actually a pure-bred beastman who despises the beastman "hybrids" who allow their DNA to become mixed, and plans to administer a vaccine that will turn all of the hybrids into humans without their consent.
• Crapsack World: Throughout the world, beastmen face heavy prejudice and discrimination at best and regularly are killed by anti-beastmen hate groups. Animacity presents itself as a shining haven for beastmen, but those who make it there quickly learn that it's actually a place where crime is rampant, the mob has its paws in everything, news of the outside world is censored, poverty and unemployment is through the roof, and basic necessities like access to clean water and food are denied to people unless they can pay exorbitant prices. Beastman trafficking is a frequent problem that the police are basically helpless against. And the average citizen doesn't know it, but world governments are strongly tempted to simply wipe out the city because the beastmen have made themselves a convenient target. And beastman species who are migratory and therefore don't like staying in one place, like albatrosses, are liable to get shot just for crossing into a country's airspace. And there's a conspiracy to wipe out all "impure" beastmen.
• Cult: The Silver Wolf Order is portrayed as one, and with good reason, as their leader claims to be the Silver Wolf.
• Darker and Edgier: Not apparent at first, but once things begin to pick up, the tone of the show is significantly darker than the usual fare Trigger is known for, tackling themes not usually covered in their productions. To name a few: trafficking of beastmen (especially children), racial prejudice, terrorism, crime syndicates, attempted murder, cults... the list goes on.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: Alan's plan to let Japan become the first country to "take care of" their beastman problem is to allow for Animacity to be destroyed by Nirvasyl Syndrome, and then to swoop in afterwards to turn all the beastmen into humans so that they can forcibly be integrated into human society. The deliberate erasure of their culture, heritage, and identity rather heavily invokes the ways certain countries treat their smaller native populations.
• A Dog Named "Dog": Even ignoring the white wolf beastman named Shiro Ogami, a popular deity of this setting is a silver wolf called... Silver Wolf.
• "Do It Yourself" Theme Tune: "Ready to" is sung by Michiru's voice actress in-character.
• Either/Or Offspring: Mayor Rose explains that while different beastmen can marry and produce children, there's no chance of the child having a fusion of their parents' genes. They can either be one or the other.
• Evolving Credits: The closing sequence for the first five episodes features Nazuna singing, while from Episode 7 onwards she's still the singer, but is now in her beastman, rather than human, form.
  • The end credits of Episode 11 are entirely devoid of color after it appears that Michiru has been killed by a Nirvasyl-affected Shiro.
• Fantastic Racism: Reactions from humans to beastpeople range from unintentionally insensitive public comments to intentionally insensitive comments made when they think beastpeople aren't in earshot, to attempted murder. Both the mayor and Shirou advise Michiru not to go around telling others in the city that she used to be human, since if word spread that humans can turn into beastmen (or something like them) it'd lead to serious panic. This exact thing happens in the final two episodes, when Nazuna is publicly revealed to have been formerly human.
• Flintstone Theming: Mixed with Bland-Name Product as many well-known real-world businesses have animal-themed names, like Burger Kitty for Burger King.
• Foreshadowing: The intro predominantly features the evolutionary "tree of life" in its imagery. One particular shot shows the "root" of the tree stopping at Alan, hinting at him being a pureblood.
• Friendship Song: The end credits theme, “Night Running” is Michiru and Nazuna’s.
• Fully-Dressed Cartoon Animal: As Animacity functions almost the same as a regular human city, so most beastpeople aren't running around naked, especially since they can turn back into humans.
• Game Face: Socially, a beastperson staying in their animal form for extended periods of time is treated as a sign they're trying to be intimidating or looking for a fight. Unfortunately for Michiru, this means that her being stuck looking like a tanuki full time is seen as a childish faux pas at best and a sign of aggression on her part at worst.
• God Guise: It's mentioned that the beastmen of the ancient past would pass themselves off as the animal gods of human civilization as a means of protection and control.
• Going Commando:
  • The pink flamingo baseball team clearly aren't wearing anything under their miniskirts, though Non-Humans Lack Attributes is apparently in effect for beast forms.
  • Inverted: Nina, by implication as her legs fuse into a dolphin tail (cetaceans store their genitalia inside of a ventral cavity).
  • In the final episode, Shirou is completely naked, which goes completely uncommented on.
• Hammerspace Hair: Michiru is shown keeping her wallet in her fluffy tail in the first episode. She later makes it large enough to grab several people, even before she figures out how to change her limbs.
• Human Subspecies: Beastmen are described as such: a separate and parallel human species with distinctly different DNA and behavior.
• Happy Ending: The Baseball Episode ends this way. The Bears finally get to play a game just for fun. Michiru's Rousing Speech causes all the gambling addicts to leave the stadium and real fans to enter it. And Dante decides to cut his ties to the gambling circuit as his love for baseball has been rekindled.
• High on Catnip: In chapter 3 of the manga Michiru is roped into attending a cat party where cocktails containing catnip are served, getting the feline beastmen highly intoxicated but barely affecting her.
• I Am Not Weasel:
  • Word-for-word. Marie Itami gets very angry when people call her a weasel; she is a mink. It gets to the point where she'll angrily correct Michiru before she even has the chance to greet her.
  • Michiru initially approaches this from the other direction by trying to claim she's a raccoon, not a raccoon dog, which others are quick to point out is an obvious lie even before she starts shapeshifting like a mythical tanuki. Her statement about not being a beastman at all is a bit more complicated.
• Innocent Bigot: Michiru constantly refers to her becoming a beastman as a "disease" that needs to be cured in front of several beastmen and -women, and doesn't once stop to think about how that might come across to people who were born as such. Even Nazuna is confused by her referring to the situation as this. She eventually owns up to this behavior in Episode 9.
• Invisible Streaker: humorously and cleverly Defied by Michiru while attempting Chameleon Camouflage. She's initially chagrined to realize the clothing-shaped flaw in her plan, but some tactical arrangement of her tail and arms preserves both stealth and dignity by covering enough of her outfit to avoid notice.
• Ironic Echo: When it's Michiru's turn to be the pitcher for the Bears in episode 5, one of the flamingo girls on the opposing team taunts Michiru that if she doesn't have the time to pitch, she should just go back to Kachikachi-yama to make a mud boat (referencing the story of Kachi Kachi Yama where a tanuki competes with a rabbit to build mud boats and cross a river to prove who's better). Once Michiru turns the tides and strikes out 3 batters in a row, becoming the batter for her team, she smugly throws the flamingo girl's words right back at her by telling her to hurry up because she has to make a mud boat in Kachikachi-yama.
• Kamehame Hadoken: Alan can fire energy blasts from his mouths when fully transformed. A bit after it gets used on him Ogami learns to do it too, leading to a climactic Beam-O-War.
• Lions and Tigers and Humans... Oh, My!: Humans and beastpeople exist in the same world, but don't truly coexist due to prejudice.
• Lost in Translation: Nazuna's name is a palindrome, and this hints to her duplicitous nature. However, it only works that way in Hiragana as its characters are full syllables (なずな). The Romanji version of her name backwards is "Anuzan" so it comes off as a non-sequitur.
• Made of Bologna: When Shirou is forced to put down an rampaging Yaba by cutting him into four pieces while in "God mode", no gore or even blood is shown.
• Missing Mom: Nina's mom isn't seen or mentioned. All we can assume is that she was a dolphin too.
• Morphic Resonance: Some beastmen have animal features even in their human forms. Mayor Rose, a naked mole rat, was bald and had wrinkles even as a child, while Flip has completely black eyes and sharp teeth whether as a beluga or as a human.
• The New '20s: It's implied that the story takes place during 2021:
  • Michiru was born in 2003 and Episode 4 is her 18th birthday.
  • Anima City was founded in 2011, and Michiru first arrives during its 10th anniversary.
• No Hugging, No Kissing: While Michiru and Shirou grow very close during her time in Anima City, and there is a good deal of focus on Michiru's relationship with her human friend Nazuna, there is no particularly romantic aspect or Ship Tease to either relationship, with the story remaining focused on the social issues surrounding the beastmen and Michiru's personal growth.
• Nonhumans Lack Attributes: Zigzagged throughout the show. One the one hand some beastmen are shown wearing undergarments (Michiru has a sports bra visible under her tank top, for example) and Shirou has a coat draped over him after his clothes are destroyed by transforming from his Silver Wolf form. One the other hand, in some of those same scenes Shirou is shown to have nothing but fur without his clothes, while the beastmen affected by Nirvasyl Syndrome also have no visible genitals.
• Obliviously Evil:
  • Lisa, a human girl who befriended Nina online, isn't prejudiced against beastmen but still has a limited understanding of them, placing Nina in a tank full of salt water because she believed dolphins are fish. If Michiru hadn't smashed the tank in time, Nina would have drowned.
  • Nazuna is an interesting example, she knows she is lying about being the Silver Wolf, but believes the Silver Wolf Order is using the lie for good instead of being part of a plot to exterminate the ("hybrid") Beastmen.
• Older Than He Looks:
  • Shirou is over a thousand years old yet looks young enough to be in his 30's in human form.
  • While no spring chicken (or mole rat), Mayor Rose was a child during World War II and as such looks really good for a woman in her 80s. As a minor Genius Bonus, mole rats are noted for their extreme longevity, with lifespans as long as 30 years to the 3 or so years most rodents their size live.
• Our Werebeasts Are Different: Beast Men are shapeshifters who have human and anthropomorphic animal forms; the latter is inherited from one of their parents. In ancient times, they pretended to be humans' animal-headed gods. Some of them have additional powers inspired by mythology; for example, Michiru the tanuki has Power Copying.
• Policeman Dog: All the police officers in Anima-City are dog beastmen.
• Power Copying: Michiru uses her Partial Transformation this way, mimicking traits of other beastmen she's encountered to borrow their abilities. There are strong hints that it's something of an Adaptive Ability that works best when she's not thinking about what she's doing the first time she tries a particular transformation, with it being much easier to figure out how to do that on purpose afterward.
• Production Throwback: The series features several shoutouts to Yoshinari's previous directorial work, Little Witch Academia (such as a Luna Nova hat appearing at one point in episode 4 and an Akko nendoroid appearing on a desk at one point) and several of its characters make cameos in a few episodes, most notably in episode 9, which has Akko, Lotte and Sucy appear as Beastmen in a crowd shot at one point.
• Psychoactive Powers: Beastmen tend to involuntarily morph into their animal forms when they feel angry or passionate.
• Punny Name: "Shirou Ogami" counts as both A Dog Named "Dog" or Species Surname depending on how you read it. Shiro means white, which is his primary color, but in his case doubles as a homophone for "white wolf", much like the case of the Silver Wolf. "Ogami" can be read as a pun on "Okami" which also means wolf, or "Great God", which may reflect further ties with the aforementioned God the beastchildren taught Michiru about.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: A double example with some amusing zigzagging- the impulsive and headstrong Michiru is the red-jacketed hothead to the aloof silver Shirou, and the blue-furred, introverted Tomboy with a Girly Streak to the pink-furred, Extroverted Girly Bruiser Nazuna.
• Rule of Symbolism: The Tree of Life, a visual metaphor for evolutionary biology, is used in some key moments. Specifically, a reversal of the tree of life is shown when Alan reveals he is a pureblood; rather than the tree branching off into several points, they all converge.
• Running on All Fours: Some beastmen drop to all fours when running in beast form. In the pilot Michiru looks rather raccoon-like while running from hunters along a guardrail.
• Sequel Hook: Several are outright Discussed by both Mayor Rose and Shiro and Michiru and Nazuna at the end of episode 12, while others are strongly hinted
  • Sylvasta's actions have been exposed, he's been forced out of his own company, and he's been made a fugitive pariah to both humans and beastmen... but he's still an immortal demigod with vast resources and even more reasons to want the world to burn.
  • Sylvasta made it pretty clear that he wasn't the only pure-blooded beastman with his views on crossbreeds and humans, and that he and Shiro probably aren't the only immortal super-beastmen running around.
  • A cure for Nirvasyl Syndrome exists. Now they just have to make sure that everyone gets the cure. Especially those who might want to become an unstoppable rage monster- say, like all those beastman guerilla fighters and terrorist cells known to be out there.
  • It is now publicly known that there are ways to turn humans into ultra-strong beastmen, to turn existing beastmen into living weapons, and to turn beastmen into humans. The information on how to do all of these is directly tied to that cure that has to be globally distributed.
  • That previously mentioned fugitive demigod with a vendetta? He's had unrestricted access to the research and development of every aspect of this technology for decades, and had already begun weaponizing and trafficking the results.
  • Also, it would be nice if, while trying to deal all that, the various types of bipedal hominid could address some of those massive societal problems that were causing all of these problems to begin with.
• Shapeshifting Excludes Clothing: Most beastmen don’t have beast forms notably larger than their human forms. But Michiru is shown tearing her sleeves when she goes gorilla arms sometimes (though she usually wears a tank top), while Nazuna’s followers drape a robe over her as she’s changing back from her giant wolf form. And Shirou is completely naked after powering down from “god form.”
• A Shared Suffering: A keystone in Michiru and Nazuna's friendship was a traffic accident where Michiru attempted to shove Nazuna out of the way of a bus, injuring them both and leading to their beastman blood transfusions.
• The Social Darwinist: A majority of Anima City residents, along with its gangs, have adopted this mentality. They would risk their own lives and fight to the death in order to assert their dominance over others.
  • Michiru is horrified to hear on the news during the Baseball Episode that all of the dodo beastmen have gone extinct due to the Blood Sport nature of baseball in Anima City, but nobody else seems to think this is out of the ordinary.
• Special Edition Title: Episode 6 doesn’t show the usual “Night Running” animation, instead laying the credits over Michiru confronting Nazuna over lying to her and the other Beastmen while the theme song plays in the background. Episode 11 after Michiru is seemingly killed by berserk Shirou, shows the animation in greyscale. Episode 12 has a completely different end theme.
• Spoiler Opening: The opening sequence implies Michiru's Super-Speed and flight powers five and seven episodes respectively before appearing. The closer also outright shows Michiru sprouting wings (though in the show her arms turn into wings instead of wings sprouting). While Nazuna's brief appearance in the opener shrouds her face in darkness and gives her glowing red eyes foreshadowing her villainous role under Sylvasta, who appears just before her.
• Superhuman Transfusion:
  • In episode 9, we learn that Michiru and Nazuna became beastmen as the hospital they were in provided blood packs that contained experimental beastmen DNA. This would result in them transforming into beastmen and gaining Voluntary Shapeshifting powers.
  • Later on, Michiru's and Nazuna's blood turn out to be an alternative cure to Nirvasyl Syndrome. It's explained as their shapeshifting powers transferring in a limited capacity any beastman who takes their blood, allowing that beastman to settle back into their normal form.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
  • Beastmen have human forms, so it is therefore custom and practical for Anima City residents to spend most of their time in human form rather than have the city cater to every differing animal need. Given that multiple animals are obviously not bound for an equal playing field like uniform humans, assuming the Beastman form outside of certain circumstances is thus seen as aggressive or trying to gain an advantage in the city.
  • When Nina gets trapped in the fish tank by her friend Lisa under the belief that a marine Beastman would need water to breathe, she starts to suffocate. Nina is a 'dolphin' Beastman and breathes air like any other mammal.
  • When Nazuna's true identity as a former human is revealed at her concert, the attending beastmen are appalled. No matter how well-intentioned you might have been, people are going to react badly if you appropriate an important figure in their religion, just so you can push your message.
  • Alan might be a far more powerful form of Beastman than Shirou and just as immortal, but Shirou has a thousand years more combat experience than he does. Once he runs out of ways to surprise Shirou the silver immortal is easily able to take him on through skill.
  • Alan, prejudiced against lesser races, believes that the special qualities of his beast form are for those who go through the same ritual Shirou (inadvertently) did with pure blood instead of mixed. Shirou demonstrates that even a "mongrel" like himself can learn how to use them just as well once introduced to the concept.
• Tanuki: Michiru is a raccoon dog, which thematically matches up with her unusual shapeshifting abilities. In episode 4, she even tries to use a leaf to transform like tanuki do in Japanese folklore.
• Tanuki/Kitsune Contrast: Tomboyish Michiru became a raccoon dog while her girlier friend Nazuna turned into a fox. Their approaches to mastering their transformation abilities have also reflected the typical styles of their mythical counterparts. The former struggles with conscious control while intuitively inventing Partial Transformations as needed, while the latter finds sculpting total transformations easier, but lacks Michiru's versatility and inventiveness.
• The Mind Is The Plaything Of The Body: Despite having become a Beastman relatively recently, Michiru is effortlessly able to move in more animalistic ways than a normal human should be able to.
• The Outsider Befriends the Best: Shortly after Michiru arrives in Anima-City, she's taken in by the mayor and befriends a detective who's also an immortal Physical God.
• Unwanted Assistance: In episode six, with Michiru spending the episode assuming that Nazuna has been forced to play the role of guru in the Wolf God cult. She tries repeatedly to help her escape, culminating in her setting up a meeting with the mayor, which Nazuna uses instead to firmly establish the organization in the city. When Michiru tries to call Nazuna out for using her, she points out that not only did Michiru just assume she was miserable when she never said anything of the sort, but that her setting up the meeting was pointless anyway; the religious sect's rising popularity meant the mayor would have had to begrudgingly meet with Nazuna eventually.
• Voluntary Shapeshifting: Beastpeople are capable of shapeshifting themselves into human forms. Michiru takes this a step further by being able to completely alter her limbs, from stretching them out like a Rubber Man to changing her legs into those of a cheetah's to run faster. Ironically, even after realizing she can do this, she can't use it to go back to her human form at first. By the time she can, Michiru prefers the convenience of her tanuki form over trying to maintain her human form full time. Nazuna possesses similar shapeshifting abilities with an even greater degree of control.
• We Used to Be Friends: The state of Michiru and Nazuna's friendship as of Episode 6, as a consequence of Nazuna using her shapeshifting to deceive the wolf god cult. But, their friendship is mended as the series reaches the climax.
• Wham Episode:
  • Episode 8: Not only is it revealed that Sylvasta Pharmaceutics and the Silver Wolf Cult are working together (presumably without Nazuna's knowledge) but Shirou turns out to be the Physical God Silver Wolf, after he is forced to shift to his true from to defeat a heavily mutated Yaba.
  • Episode 12 tops it all: Alan Sylvasta is not only a beastman, he is a "pureblood" beastman with powers very similar to the ones of he Silver Wolf and is also basically a beastman version of Adolf Hitler, viewing "hybrid" beastmen as an inferior race worthy of eradication.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Michiru gives this to Shirou in episode 2, when she realizes he knew that Grandma Gran was going to sell her and the other beastchildren into slavery and did nothing to warn her or take them away from Rabbit Town until the last possible second. Granted he did it to catch the traffickers in the act, but as Michiru points out, if he'd even been a second too late she and the kids would have been on the boat and off to be sold.
• Wolf Man: Shirou is one, of the "actual anthropomorphic wolf" variety. Like the other beastmen, he can shapeshift voluntarily into a human being. On top of his natural beastman strength and less natural immortality, he has a supernatural sense of smell that helps him track criminals.
• World of Mammals: Most of the major beastmen are mammals (Michiru is a tanuki, Shirou is a wolf, Marie is a mink, etc.), with a few birds as supporting characters.
• Wretched Hive: Anima City is this. Despite claiming to be a haven for beastmen, it's actually a really rotten place. Crime is rampant, many citizens live in abject poverty, and unemployment is sky high. Trafficking in both adult and child beastmen is a regular occurrence. Communication with the outside world is illegal for private citizens. The only form of entertainment that seems to be available is baseball, which has been turned into a Blood Sport where gruesomely injuring or even killing members of the other team is encouraged. Surprisingly, the mayor and the police both seem to be actually not corrupt and trying to improve the city, but they're obviously in over their heads.

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