ARC Review: Beastars, Vol. 3 by Paru Itagaki

BEASTARS, Vol. 3 by Paru Itagaki
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

At a high school where the students are literally divided into predators and prey, it’s personal relationships that maintain the fragile peace. Who among them is a Beastar—an academic and social role model destined to become a leader in a society naturally rife with mistrust?

It’s time for the Festival of the Meteor, a time when the animals honor their extinct dinosaur ancestors. Wolf Legoshi is still inexorably attracted to dwarf rabbit Haru. Is it a crush or bloodlust? Is it her or any small animal? Relationships are complicated for carnivores. Their bird friends lay and sell the eggs they eat, and some desperate herbivores even sell their body parts on the black market. Tiger Bill is tempted to buy a piece and invites Legoshi to indulge with him. But eating meat is highly addictive…

While the school carries on with the idea that Legoshi’s outburst onstage was part of the script, the theater club knows and so goes on their tentative friendship with each other. Legoshi is still conflicted over his loss of control, and fears his instincts taking over him. Particularly with Hana, his fears are compounded by the fact that he can’t recognize his feelings when it comes to her. In this volume, we encounter the world outside the school for the first time, as the killing of a herbivore once again strains the tense atmosphere of the school. On a school errand, the carnivores from the theater club go into the city and end up at the black market, which is worse than it sounded in the previous volume.

There is a turning moment here for him – because he is confronted with a horrible theory that may be plausible, and he wants to reject it outright. And then there is a doctor panda who tells him his romantic feelings are just a facade, and my god, this wolf is already having enough emotional angst to deal with. The carnivores are constantly vilified for the danger they represent, yet they are in more danger now at the school. A lighter balance to all this tension comes in the form of a short story arc about a hen who sits next to Legoshi in class – I was so amused by the fact that eggs are still an edible thing in this world (I thought it was all plant based food), but the awkwardness of eating your classmates’ eggs are some god tier levels of weird! Overall, it was entertaining, fun and serious, and I can’t wait to see where this story goes.

Received an advance reader copy in exchange for a fair review from Viz Media LLC, via Edelweiss.

Previous volumes in the Beastars series