Beastars
Bringing light to problematic fetishes… and not the one you think
Odds are if you have been at home with the rest of us, surfing the internet you’ve seen more than a few questionable memes surrounding the term “Furries”. The cause is Netflix’s original anime, Beastars. Mystery solved. Furries are a subculture of people who enjoy anthropomorphic animals placed in erotic situations. Beastars, a show which takes place in an animal-based universe and has strong sexual themes surrounding the question ‘can a predator love their prey?’, has triggered a cascade of questions, winking and general smirking surrounding the entire fuzzy issue.
I am not here to be publicly shocked that furries are real. They exist, they’re normal people, and if someone wants to wear a fox tail butt plug while getting it on with you is that really such a bad thing? No. (Give it a little tug!) The issue of sexy animal people--while not my cup of tea, is not my talking point with Beastars. Once you get past the shock value of seeing near-naked bunny breasts, other more serious talking points, begin to arise.
Legosi a.k.a your friendly neighborhood erotophonophiliac
The main character of Beastars is Legosi, a not so seemingly unassuming large grey wolf. In his defense Legosi tries his best to blend in to his society, one in which carnivores are to serve, protect, and above all not frighten, their herbivore friends. He simply fails, through no fault of his own, by virtue of being a large grey wolf. The show makes sure to establish this dynamic starkly in the first episode, “The Moon and the Beast”, when it looked as though Legosi was stalking a young goat girl, Els. Turned out he was innocently offering her the love letter of a recently deceased alpaca friend, Tem, who we saw killed and devoured by a carnivore at the shows start. Watching the societal effects of the carnivores murderous nature on this thinly balanced animal society is the backdrop of Z̶o̶o̶t̶o̶p̶i̶a̶ Beastars. The main focus takes off in this same episode in which Legosi smells a rabbit, Haru, and attacks her with the full intent to devour her.
His desire to devour Haru is also distinctly sexual. The shows wording in this is very careful, never referring to the act as being eaten, rather as a devouring. The word ‘devour’ has several meanings only one of which means to eat hungrily. The other, according to miriam websters, is also “To be completely consumed by a powerful feeling” which arguably could be applied sexually. This juxtaposition between these two types of devouring is part of the premise of the show. Will Legosi devour Haru by making love with her? Or will he devour her by … eating her? My argument is that he wants BOTH and thats … concerning.
Haru a.k.a The Bunny who is into it
Legosi is further confused by Haru during his and her second encounter, when she, after failing to recognize him as last nights attacker, mistook his pure intentions to retrieve flowers for a scene in drama club, as a covert request for garden shed sex. Haru, far from being bothered by what she perceives as a sex visit, is fine with it, and actually tries to prompt the sex along by undressing herself, partially undressing Legosi and asking coyly to see how far down his cream colored tummy fur goes. Confused and aroused Legosi ends this encounter and runs away to complicate his already existing crisis. Haru, also confused, wonders if this poor wolf could actually be the only guy in school who doesn’t know she’s loose.
Autassassinophilia and Haru
Haru has a problem with purposefully placing herself in dangerous situations to stimulate emotion and arousal. Urban dictionary defines this most closely as Autassassinophilia.
“Autassassinophilia is an abnormal sexual response in which a person is aroused by the risk of being killed.” In episode 10, “A Wolf in Sheeps Clothing” Haru speaks on being a very small dwarf rabbit, being treated like an inferior, her feelings of helplessness and her desire to be seen and validated beyond her persona as a prey animal. During her monologue she explains:
“…Everyone feels sorry for me. I would be the first to die if anything happened. Everyone puts on a smiling face when interacting with poor animals like me… As I grew up around smiles of pity, I entered my third year in junior high school. I discovered the one thing I that could do to feel equal to others. I found that this is the only time people don’t feel sorry for me. Its an honest interaction with another individual where I’m not treated as the weak one. I didn’t want others to look at me and see me as just some fragile dwarf rabbit. I wanted others to see me for who I am… That was when I felt validated for the very first time… even though it made people look down on me. It was far better than being pitied.”
These feelings of unfulfillment, only alleviated during sexual encounters, is the core of Haru’s personality. She feels that she is only equal to these larger animals when she is having sex with them. The imagery is also a constant juxtaposition of Haru with overpoweringly large animals in a sexual context.
Haru uses sex as a crutch to feel more at ease. Whereas she uses danger to make her feel alive in a world where she feels mostly unimportant and unnoticed. She views her life as largely burdensome, and thrills in the moments when she feels connected with wanting, viscerally to be alive. During her time with Legoshi in the love hotel, after he confesses to her that he was the wolf that attacked her in episode one, Haru admits that she actually knew it was him. This throws into question all of her motives during all of their past encounters and especially makes interesting their second meeting in the shed where she practically threw herself onto his tummy fur.
“Don’t worry. Actually I had a feeling it was you…There were just a couple of times I kind of sensed it. Thats why I didn’t know how to feel about you all this time. I wasn’t sure if you were planning on devouring me or if you had… other intentions.
…Are you going to make love to me? Or devour me? The choice is all yours.”
Legosi decides that he wants to have sex with her, and as they’re trying to do so, Haru throws her arm into his mouth, saying; “My body is moving, it — it wants to go into your mouth!”
This is patiently ridiculous. Haru is dissociating with her own body during a moment of heightened arousal and is not confronting her feelings of literally wanting to be eaten by predators. Specifically Legosi. She is afraid, but while afraid, she is also more in touch with her desire to be present, something that keeps her grounded. This sentiment is echoed in her monologue during the first episode:
“…I’ve been living my life as a plaything for all kinds of guys. Well, it doesn’t really matter does it…I’m not even good enough to be a loser. You should just take me. I don’t even care anymore. But even with this sad life, I still had a reason to run. I cried because I was scared. Even I experienced all those things.”
Haru is a person that seeks out danger in order to feel more centered in an existence she frequently disassociates from. She also in several instances ties up these feelings of wanting to be grounded in her reality with her strong feelings of wanting to be seen as an equal to larger animals. These two traumas manifest together in Autassassinophiliac scenarios that are both dangerous and sexual and create a lot of confused feelings for her. Haru is an incredibly dangerous person to be placed with someone who wants to possibly kill her. Someone like Legosi
EROTOPHONOPHILIA a.k.a being sexually turned on by killing someone
In episode two, “The Academy’s Top Dogs”, during that critical moment when Legosi has Haru ‘in his clutches’, he has an extended moment where he thinks about what he is doing and struggles against his shadow-self. The physical manifestation of his desire to devour Haru physically by eating her, and the more subtly expressed desire for him to devour her sexually. In that scene, before the shadow even emerges and as he is crouched around her body, Legosi says the following.
“She moves around a lot. Her breath is making my arm wet. Under her clothes… Whats under her soft fur? What should I do? What? …should I? How satisfying will it feel in my mouth? The warm flesh. My hands wont stop.”
-Legosi
His choice of wording here is inherently sexual and this coupled with the imagery of him gently caressing her back and slowly restraining her hands is also very much linked with bondage/restriction imagery. This could be a nod to Erotophonophilia- which according to Urban Dictionary is:
“A paraphilia (unusual sexual interest or attraction) that centers on the act (real or imagined) of committing murder; it is the most extreme form of sexual sadism. Erotophonophiliacs tend to fantasize about stabbing, strangling and mutilating their victim(s)”
The definition here seems to also track with how actual wolves devour their real world prey. According to whitewolfpack.com:
“The wolf kills its prey by biting into the neck area. After a kill is made…Wolves usually begin to feed on the rump or the internal organs. The muscle and flesh is the last part of the prey that is eaten.”
Legosi wants to physically devour Haru and just like a real wolf, promptly stabs her with his incredibly sharp fingernails, drawing blood and arousing him further. As he prepares to bite her again, this time in the neck for the killing blow, he is interrupted by Zoe, because of an emergency situation taking place in the theatre Legosi was supposed to be guarding. The two themes of murder and arousal, just like this scene, are very intermixed within the plot of ‘Beastars’ and raises some important questions about the nature of sexuality and the nuances of violence within kink culture.
Later on in the series Legosi ends up in the black market, a secret market selling herbivore meat to carnivorous clientele. He is kidnapped by its resident psychotherapist, a threatening panda named Gohin, who reveals that Legosi’s erratic earlier behavior in the black market was most likely the result of him suffering an emotional breakdown at having devoured a herbivore recently. Legosi denies these claims, as he was interrupted before eating Haru and explains that they are classmates. Gohin marvels that Legosi is able to stand being anywhere near her and then shows him a wall of tortured carnivores in various stages of bodily mutilation. He explains that when left to their own devices, carnivores in their society don’t cope well, and nearly 100% of the time end up eating the object of their fascination and then torturing themselves for it. He specifically says: “One carnivore ate the herbivore because ‘he loved her so much’.” Later on in his same conversation they have an argument. Legosi asserts that he is not qualified to be one of Gohin’s patients because he doesn’t want to eat Haru, he just wants to be friends with her. Gohin asserts that:
“You’re just concealing your instinctual desire to devour every part of her… You think that you’re in love with her. Its just your convoluted hunting instincts.”
This sentiment from Gohin specifically echoes Legosi’s feelings at the end of the series where he confesses love to Haru minutes after telling another carnivore that he “knows the smell of her blood.” Because “Haru is my prey.”
These two are in a toxic relationship
At the end of Beastars, Haru admits that she cannot be without Legosi and that her desire to be together with him makes absolutely no logical sense. Legosi agrees and they both turn a blind eye for now toward their problematic instincts. Legosi’s desire to eat/protect Haru. Haru’s problematic instinct to be eaten, her craving to be on equal footing with anyone and her relationship with pity. Beastars engagingly introduces both of these characters and their problematic kinks, throws them together and boldly asks, “Could it work?” Honestly so am I. I don’t think they would logically be able to work it out but anime logic doesn’t always follow the rules of common sense. Theres really no way of knowing where the show will take this, and it makes the show incredibly provocative. I can’t wait to see what they will be planning with season two! Give it a watch if you haven’t already.
