Forum - View topicREVIEW: BNA: Brand New Animal
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PonSquared
 Posts: 246 Location: Lost in the Catskills |
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My wife, boys (10 & 12), and I all enjoyed the show.
Seems to be a lot of furry anime recently, eh? |
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Agent355
 Posts: 5113 Location: Crackberry in hand, thumbs at the ready... |
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Suggestion for ANN: can you consider doing episodic streaming reviews for Netflix’s binge model series, in the same vein as ANN’s Classic Daily Streaming reviews? This season and probably next season will be sparser than normal due to Covid, and shows like BNA and (I predict, haven’t checked it out yet) Japan Sinks 2020 would really benefit from 1-2 episode at a time analysis.
I liked BNA a lot. I wanted to *love* it, but it’s ham-handed handling of its discrimination metaphor bothered me too much. From their Jackie Robinson analogy spoiler[ violently lashing out at his teammates] to “going there” with explicit Holocaust imagery, to making their minority group analogues spoiler[ capable of turning into dangerous, super violent monster forms, a sure fire way to mess up any “we’re all the same inside” message (see also: Attack on Titan)] this show had a lot to say about bias, discrimination, intra-group politics, religion and psychology, but couldn’t do it without some very negative implications, or even getting its story straight spoiler[who started the war in Shirou Ogami’s past? I still don’t know!] That said, it was fun, upbeat and a blast to watch at its best, with some spectacular character designs (Nazuna looks fantastic!) and a really solid “old veteran/young rookie” team up at its center. |
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ANN_Lynzee
ANN Executive Editor
 Posts: 3028 Location: Email for assistance only |
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I can definitely take that into consideration!
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KitKat1721
 Posts: 974 |
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Yeah this was by far my biggest issue with BNA, and probably why I generally preferred the first half of the series over the later. I agree on loving the style though (and that ED is going to be stuck in my head for weeks). |
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El Hermano
 Posts: 450 Location: Texas |
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Probably the weirdest part of the message to me. Jackie Robinson's whole thing was he didn't get angry or 'act out' to all the disparage he got for being signed by the MLB. I mean, if Robinson did assault his teammates he would no doubt be fired, arrested, and be the poster child on why sports should stay segregated. But I agree overall. It's always pretty weird when a fictional work tries to do a discrimination moral but always falls into the trappings of making the discriminated subjects actual dangerous monsters. The whole point of real world discrimination is it being unfounded and based on flimsy reasoning. Being afraid of actual bestial creatures that have a history of attacking humans sort of rings more like common sense than some kind of bigotry based on ignorance. |
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Animegomaniac
Posts: 4157 |
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We all agree that the baseball episode was the best part of the series then? My complaints with the series have less to do with the themes and more to do with the plot. The series committed a fatal self wound when they not only had the Beastmen easily transform into people, the creators made it so that their human forms were their more common form and everything fell apart like they made an actual house on a house of cards.
Beastmen can tell when humans are beastmen by smell... BLANK, I'll just say "BLANK" and leave it at that... but humans never learned how to tell which humans are beastmen? Not even after a thousand years of supposed genetic hatred or a technological revolution? And yes, while they came up with genetic tests, you'd think someone would come up with easier on the spot tests such as body temperature or auditory tests. Seriously, a high pitch sound blast that could only be detected by beastmen should be as effective as a taser. Honesty, you should be able to overwhelm any of the senses compared to those of people so... Yeah, they're not really beastmen are they? They're just humans who can turn into furries? It would make the most sense in the end. |
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Skerlly Fc
Posts: 79 |
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Thanks. Finally, somebody who said and thought the same thing as me. Anime fans should leave with the fact that Netflix will not change their release method because it´s still successful with audiences that are not hardcore anime fans(and as I´m not from the US, I´d rather have a Netflix Anime dubbed in my language day 1 than to have weekly episodes in japanese and then wait 6 months later to watch the dub. That´s infuriating). So anime fans should invite not only ANN, but reddit, MyAnimeList and other sites to do weekly discussion about Netflix Anime Originals if they want to keep the sense of community. Please do so. Thanks for this, Agent355. Off topic, but sometime ago there was a link for donating money to the website to keep it alive, and sometimes I feel like I ask ANN´s reportesrs to do some new stuff for the site but I´d like to collaborate with them to make it happen. How can I donate money to this website, or which is the link? |
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Key
Moderator
 Posts: 18435 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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Nope. The baseball episode was actually my least favorite. But I think I've also made it clear in the past that loose animation styles like that are something that I respect more than like, so that shouldn't surprise anyone. I definitely agree that the thematic presentations in the series should have been a lot cleaner, especially with the ultimate villain's motives thrown in. I also found the last episode to be quite rushed. However, Michiru is probably now my favorite new character of the year, and Cherami Leigh's performance was a big part of that. Also liked her tanuki-form character design enough that I'm going to keep an eye out for a wall scroll or figma of her. |
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Tanteikingdomkey
 Posts: 2350 |
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Can someone please get me a fetish and fan service rating for this series?
Is it Little Witch academia level, Kill La Kill, normal harem, ecchi, typical shonen? |
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Key
Moderator
Posts: 18435 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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It's not a fetish or fan service show in the slightest. There may have been one bath scene, but even that was not portrayed in a sexy fashion. |
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Actar
 Posts: 1074 Location: Singapore |
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I love Trigger shows. But I was rather disappointed by the ending. Not as much as most people, it seems, but I was not as satisfied as I could have been.
Firstly, I never expected this to explore sociopolitical issues. We have Beastars (and Zootopia) for that. What disappointed me was some of the writing choices and how they decided to end it. Putting the whole convenience and contrivance of Michiru and Nazuna's blood being a cure for the syndrome, Trigger really has a thing for sudden twist endings where the true villain appears. But especially with this show, none of it was built up or foreshadowed properly. Having Alan be a Beast Man who managed to figure out the ritual was rather meh. Seriously, it's pointless for Alan to have that immortality if he isn't actually that old to begin with. Even if we go with Alan being a Beast Man, I really thought that he would have been shot by his own medicine as a rather poetic end. Like, he's not giving other Beast Men the choice to turn into humans, now he's at the receiving end. Kinda exactly like with the 3rd X-Men movie. Why not have Alan be the original general who somehow received his powers along side Shirou? Shirou could still have retained all his characterization and motivation even if he thought the general was dead all along. Having realized the general was still alive would have resulted in a far more poignant and impactful rage moment. Also, come to think of it, why did Shirou get the power and not any of the other dead Beast Men who were in that pool of blood? Seeing that they were all bathed in each other's blood, shouldn't all of them have gained Wolf God powers? Speaking of a cure, why on Earth is Michiru still waiting for one when the cure was already loaded into the drones? That didn't make sense. It kinda sucks that we never got a resolution to Michiru's relationship with her parents either. They were nice enough to make her a birthday cake and... they just left that unresolved. Last but not least, there were way, way too many false trails and leads for the sake of drama and at the expense of characterization. Like, there really was absolutely zero reason for Nazuna and Alan to hide the truth from Michiru. Nazuna, knowing Michiru's personality, should have just told her the truth (or at least tried to convince Alan to allow her to do so) as Michiru was already in the search of a cure anyway and wouldn't stop until she knew what was going on. Having her be chastised for her impulsiveness and self-righteousness was great, but to have her be right at the end regardless made Michiru and Nazuna's conflict rather pointless, doing a disservice to both their characterizations. Why not have Nazuna not believe Michiru about the human reveal thing only to have Nazuna realize that Michiru was right all along? Sure, that would have been rather par for the course, but it would have made far more sense given everything that's come before. They were all buddy-buddy, sure, but Nazuna should have gone, "Not this shit again." as she had zero reason to mistrust Alan at that point. I mean, they were going to have that snake guy reveal it anyway, so why take a character moment away from Nazuna? Honestly, they should have just made Nazuna a villain character (as hinted in the OP). Sure, have Alan pull the strings or whatever, but have Nazuna be the one with the warped ideals from her desire to become an idol above believing her friend jump at the chance of becoming the REAL Ginrou by acquiring the power via that ritual. Have the final battle be Shirou vs. Nazuna with Michiru having to decide between saving her friend and saving Anima City. Darn, how much more climactic and heart-wrenching of an ending would that have been? |
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Tanteikingdomkey
Posts: 2350 |
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Thanks I really appreciate it. |
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