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Beastars has pounced its way into anime fans' hearts, often considered the manga equivalent of an adult and profound version of Zootopia. The manga and subsequently the anime focuses on rough topics such as societal inequity, stereotyping, and coming of age into a divided society. However, the third season of Beastars may become a rough topic itself.
Beastars is a manga series adapted into a CGI anime featuring anthropomorphic animal protagonists. The series stars Legoshi, a wolf struggling with herbivore students who assume he will lose control of his carnivorous side. Aside from this, the story also focuses on Legoshi's relationship with Haru, a rabbit who is bullied for rumors about her sexual promiscuity at the school her and Legoshi attend. The manga and anime tackle incredibly difficult and relevant topics in modern society, using animal characters and their unique society to soften the blow of the subject. Some topics covered by Beastars include stereotyping, inequity, racism, corrupt government and subsequently corrupt media, the fluidity of morality, and even more. The first two seasons of Beastarswere met with critical acclaim, both for the unique animation and the stellar story. Much like the manga, the anime handles the difficult terrain of societal issues subtly through animal protagonists that help remove the realism, while portraying the emotions felt by the character and the situations therein better than most shows on television today. However, with the third season now confirmed to be the last, manga fans have begun to voice concern over the fate of the third and final season, aptly titled Beastars: Final Season.
Final Season Confirmation By Studio Orange
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Studio Orange, who have recently been announced to be animating a CGI reboot of Trigun, tweeted the logo for the new season last December. The tweet confirms the title of the third season to be Beastars: Final Season. Below is the tweet from the official English account of Studio Orange, containing the new logo. This, coupled with the final sentence of the tweet being "We hope everyone can join us for the show til the end" confirms that this truly is the final season.
This caused a stir in the Beastars fandom, which has been revitalized as the estimated timeframe for the season's release is coming soon. There is no confirmation of how many episodes there are, nor which cast members are returning, however it is safe to assume that the main cast will return to the series. Theme and ending songs, along with promotional material, also have not been released at the time of this article.
The Concerns For Beastars: Final Season
The problems lie in the amount of manga left to cover. Between the first two seasons, the first 99 chapters are adapted with content less important to the main overall plot cut for the most part. However, there are 196 chapters total; meaning there are 97 chapters that are left to adapt into Beastars: Final Season. Historically, anime that have much larger chunks of manga left to ram into a final season don't fare well. A notable example is The Promised Neverland, which famously had an entire arc last less than a second in the final season.
The Beastars manga covers incredibly delicate topics. Stereotyping, inequity, racism, corrupt government, the fluidity of morality, and more profound and deep conversations are expertly woven into the furry world of Beastars. A large concern is the Melon Arc, although considered to be mostly good and entertaining, was still considered by many fans of the manga to have a rushed ending. If the second half of the series is compressed into one season of the same 12-13 episode length the previous seasons had, the results could be disastrous.
That being said, there is a silver lining. A recent trend in anime is to split the final season into multiple cours, and even some anime such as Spy X Family having two cours for the first season. If Beastars: Final Season is split into two cours akin to recent anime like Attack on Titan, then it would roughly cover the same amount of manga chapters for each cour as it did for the first season. This could be a valid possibility, and quite possibly the only change at the anime maintaining the same quality level as previous seasons.
The most fans can do is wait and see whether Beastars: Final Season is split into multiple cours, or if Studio Orange will rush the final arc of the manga more than it already has been. In the meantime, Beastars streams exclusively on Netflix as a Netflix Original.