Kemono Friends and Jordan B. Peterson’s “Maps of Meaning”
There are few things less likely to cross paths than the newest cute anime and powerful, thoughtful philosophy. In fact, over the decades with a few notable exceptions (Madoka Magica, Neon Genesis Evangelion), very few anime shows are ever given a great deal of philosophical review.
We know that our movies, TV shows, manga, comics and books use archetypes while we enjoy them. Every time we see a “hero”, we are automatically giving validity that such a thing as a “hero” exists in the first place. With the recent surge of anime shows based on the Western comic book superhero archetypes- super powers, big action and big, bold colors between good and bad- there are plenty of stories to pick from to line up with what we expect in the stereotypical heroic adventure story.
In the midst of this action anime boom, however, one seemingly simple anime TV show has been a smash hit with anime fans around the world: Kemono Friends. A kid-friendly show about a girl in a strange place full of anthropomorphized animal girls, the main protagonist Kaban searches to find out what kind of animal she is, and learning about all the animals in the mysterious zoo-like “Japari Park”.

Produced on a shoestring budget by a minimal (some say as few as 10) production staff, aired in a non-optimal TV slot because they couldn’t afford the kid-friendly air time they were after, Kemono Friends has been the dark horse of anime productions. Sales of the blu-ray discs have smashed through sales records at an alarming rate, demand for content by rabid fans has led the surprised director to ask them to “please get some sleep”, and because of it’s connection to real animals zoos across Japan have been packed with onlookers trying to catch glimpses of their favorite animals from the show.
However, this all leads to one big question: Why, in the middle of so many high production value, flashy, action-packed stories, would this one rise to the top so spectacularly? I would argue it is because Kemono Friends has struck a number of chords that resonate with some of the most basic mythological structures of human civilization.
Those fundamental mythological structures are exactly where Dr. Jordan B. Peterson, a professor at the University of Toronto, comes in. His “Maps of Meaning” lectures, as well as his excellent and currently progressing “Biblical Series” lectures on YouTube are currently experiencing an explosion in popularity not too unlike Kemono Friends’ own unlikely popularity.
As clinical psychologist and professor, Dr. Peterson unpacks the narrative structures that underpin human civilization, tracing the mythologies found everywhere from today’s pop culture to the rule of Hammurabi in 18th century BC. With millions of online views and a massive backing on the crowdfunding site Patreon, Dr. Peterson is making powerful inroads toward the re-ignition of the spirit of the traditional humanities as an engine of truth-seeking and self, and therefore community, improvement. With the spirit of western civilization at his back, Dr. Peterson makes a strong, impassioned argument: clean your room, sort yourself out, and you can change, and beat, the world.

It will be impossible to give the entirety of Dr. Peterson’s exploration of meaning, history, mythology, and psychology as background for this article. I will, however, do my best as Dr. Peterson does to grab parts of the story of Kemono Friends and show how their narrative structures and mythology reflect the mythology of human civilization, found in places such as The Bible and the myths of ancient Mesopotamia.
Chaos and Order
One of the most persistent concepts in mythological stories is the great hero who defeats chaos and brings order. Whether this is the Mesopotamian deity Marduk, St. George slaying the dragon and rescuing the princess, or Moses parting the seas, the greatest heroes face the insurmountable chaos of the world and give it order.
Nearly all of the episodes of Kemono Friends have a fairly consistent structure: Kaban, with the Friend Serval (a cat), travel from each area to the next, encountering Friends with a range of issues. Over the course of the show, Kaban gains notoriety for her clever and wide-ranging solutions to problems in Japari Park:”
1. Defeating a “Cerulean” monster that is blocking a bridge between the areas with a paper airplane
2. Rebuilding a collapsed bridge over a wide river
3. Helping a mountain-top cafe create a sign to attract new customers
4. Working with Friend version of the Legendary snake, Tsuchinoko, to find an exit to a perilous maze
5. Helping American Beaver and Prairie Dog cooperate to build a wooden house
And so on. In each of these situations, Kaban has a clear pattern: she carefully observes the situation, allowing the Friends to act out their problems without interference and to try and variety of of their own solutions. Then, she proposes a plan in its entirety, overcomes any particular Friend’s personal foibles, and solves the problem.

The Friends in each area are seized by chaos: certain places around the park are impassable, dangerous, or require the Friends to go through extra steps to work around collapsed park infrastructure. In each episode, Kaban’s solutions simplify their situation and thus their lives. When Kaban teaches American Beaver and Prairie Dog how cooperate and combine their respective skills they are able to build a home together. Jaguar, who was previously forced to drag a large piece of broken bridge back and forth as a ferry on the river, is freed from this task when Kaban restores a partial bridge.
As Kaban travels through the park, her solutions create order out of the chaos. There is no better comparison than to Marduk, the Mesopotamian god who used his great perception (eyes all around his head) and his powerful, “magic” words to capture chaos and create order. Kaban’s actions not only make Friends lives more convenient and less stressful, but she changes the physical layout of the park as she goes along, recreating lost structures or creating useful new ones for the Friends who need them. Slowly, the eerie, seemingly post-apocalyptic world of Kemono Friends begins to become more manageable and less wild.
It’s worth noting that chaos in mythology is often depicted as a murky, dangerous body of water. The chaos that is defeated by Marduk is described as a flood or some kind of sea-like entity. The Great Flood, which Noah survives in his ship in The Bible is a massive force of chaotic destruction. Moses is consistently associated with water, and acts as a renewing kind of chaos against the archaic, dry and unmovable Egyptian empire. When needed, he both walked on water and split the sea, later using the sea to destroy Egypt’s armies.

Kaban’s first enemy is a large “Cerulean”, a monster that is mostly a strange, murky liquid structure attached to a shining crystal. Her second act is the help rebuild a bridge across the river, and she makes part of her plan for American Beaver and Prairie Dog’s home to have a tunnel under part of the water. In each case she conquers some kind of sea-like or body of water.
The Story of Abraham and Kaban-chan
In the story of Abraham, Abraham hears the voice of God, who tells him to travel to a new land. On faith alone, Abraham listens to this and travels to Canaan. Once Abraham reaches the new land, he builds an altar, and is visited by the image of God, who tells him he will be the father of a nation. Abraham goes through many trials and tribulations before he makes his way back to Canaan to found the first nation of Israel. However, as he followed the correct path, his encounters with God become more and more “real”- what starts as a voice leads to a vision, meeting an angel, and later meets and gives hospitality to three strangers, who are representatives of God (if not God himself).

We see this story reflected in the story of Kaban as she travels through Japari Park. As Kaban follows the correct path through the park, creating order and helping those in need, she goes through a sequence of events that give her more and more guidance on her place in the world:
1. “Boss” the Lucky Beast appears, who only speaks to Kaban and not the Friends, giving her guidance to the Japari Library
2. Further along, the voice of Mirai, a previous Park Guide, can be heard taking notes and doing research on the Park, giving insight into the history of the park and the situation there
3. Visions of Mirai then appear, precisely when they arrive at the hospitable Lodge Campo, run by the Friend Campo Flicker with two other guests, Gray Wolf and Reticulated Giraffe. In this time Kaban learns what its like to be a “guest” and how to be a “good guest” at the lodge.
It’s also noteworthy that throughout the story, “Boss”, who for all intents and purposes is the “voice of God” in the narrative, knows far more than he will say. It is also through his eyes that Kaban is judged later in the story, which we can discuss later.

Mirai, the Wise Father?
Mirai, the former Park Guide that left notes and recordings on the Lucky Beast “Boss”, has an interesting role in the universe of Kemono Friends. Through the story, we learn that Mirai was the last human responsible for Japari Park, which we now know is an island. She seems to have taught specific Friends how to take care of the park, repairing the power plant in the case of the two Foxes, and likely trained the three “Hunters” who fight Ceruleans in the Park to protect the other Friends.
All over Japari Park, we can see the remains of the orderly structure left behind by Mirai and her human staff. Some structures, such as the power plants, still function. Others, like the river bridge and the the mountain gondolas, no longer function.
The Friends are living in what Dr. Peterson often refers to as the “bones of your culture”, or as represented in the Mesopotamian mythos, the original gods lived on the dead body of their father, Apsu. As Apsu deteriorated, the god of chaos, Tiamat, burst through and brought chaos back to the realm of the primordial Mesopotamian gods. This was the chaos that was subsequently conquered by Marduk, who already through the story builds up a number of thematic connections to Kaban’s heroic efforts.
The Last 4 Episodes: Cornucopia of Mythological Themes
The last 4 episodes have so many mythological themes that it’s actually difficult to keep track of.
Clothes: Kaban-chan teaches the Friends that yes, they can remove the clothes they are wearing to use a bath. However, she is the only one embarrassed by the act of removing her clothes (off screen, this is a kids show after all!), but this plays directly into the Biblical story of Adam and Eve, who upon eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge become self-conscious and ashamed of their nakedness, and make clothes for themselves.
The Trip Up the Mountain: When the Giant Bull-like Cerulean, appears in Episode 11, they get information from Boss that the mountain volcano is emitting a dangerous version of Sandstar. As they follow Boss up the mountain, Serval is lured to go back down and fight with the Giant Cerulean. However, Kaban insists they continue up the mountain, once again on faith that the message from Boss would put them on the right path to helping their friends and finding the truth. Upon arriving at the top of the mountain, they are given information from Mirai on how to locate the “four gods”: four tablets that when placed correctly create a filter to stop the ‘bad’ Sandstar from escaping. It is at this time that Kaban sees another island in the distance across the sea.
The idea of Kaban going to the top of the mountain, receiving a message from Mirai, the “wise father” or “God”, and finding tablets to stop the spread of evil in the world below, combined with the bull-like shape of the Cerulean make for a powerful reflection of the story of Moses traveling up the mountain to receive his own message from God (culminating in the creation of the Commandments as tablets).
Kaban as Mirai, or “Son as the Father”: At the mountain top, Kaban receives the second feather in her hat from Raccoon. In a moment of determination, she puts the hat back on and in that moment, Boss sees Kaban in the image of Mirai, with the same silhouette. He grants her Park Guide status, which allows her access to information that was previously locked from her, and presumably allows her to manage many of the functions of Japari Park.
Immaculate Conception or “Son as the Father” Part 2: When Racoon retells the story of how she saw Kaban for the first time, we see that a hair stuck to Mirai’s hat combined with the Sandstar to create Kaban originally. This means that Kaban is literally “of Mirai”, or “is Mirai” to some extent, and also that her conception/creation story is an immaculate conception “free from original sin”.

Kaban the Sacrificial Hero
Kaban goes through a very complex series of events in the last 4 episodes of the series, and it’s in these episodes that the entire arc of her character comes into play. After traveling through the Park solving problems, and finding out that she is human and being directed to the harbor as the last place humans are seen, she reaches the harbor to find a single barge ship at the edge of the ocean.
At the same time, chaos bursts into the scene again through an eruption of the mountain, spreading a corrupted “sandstar” through the area. They find the Giant, Bull-like Cerulean fighting with three Friends who are the “hunting team” likely trained by Mirai to destroy dangerous Ceruleans.
Kaban sets a strategy to lure the Giant Cerulean to the barge ship by using its attraction to light, and then to sacrifice the ship to drop the Cerulean into the sea. During the execution of this plan, however, Serval gets swallowed up into the Cerulean. This Cerulean is a dark, murky black color, and it looks like swirling sea water as Serval is slowly drawn up into its depths. In this scene, the Cerulean is a physical manifestation of chaos, which the Friends have previously said destroys the form of any Friend caught in it, and removing its memory.
Without any nearby help, Kaban puts a rescue into action, tying a rope around herself and a tree and dropping into the Cerulean, letting the movement of the giant from the tree pull both of them out. When Kaban realizes that both of them won’t be able to escape, she lures the Cerulean away and in the final shot of Episode 11 the giant leg slams down ontop of her.
It is in this moment that the theme of sacrifice comes to the forefront. Originally, Kaban was willing to sacrifice the barge, her ability to leave the island to find other humans, to save her friends. When she realizes that this sacrifice wouldn’t be enough to reach that goal, she decides to make the ultimate sacrifice, and it works.

Serval wakes up some time later, on the dock at the harbor, surrounded by other Friends. She’s told about what happened to Kaban, and they tell her that night has passed and the sun is already rising- it’s unlikely, or impossible, that Kaban could be saved.
It’s at this moment that Boss speaks to Serval for the first time, telling her to go and rescue Kaban. He explains that he can speak to the Friends only if a human’s life is in danger. It’s important to add a specific note here, which is that in the recordings Mirai says that Boss is malfunctioning, and that’s why she uses him to record her messages. By this time the question of whether Boss is semi-sentient with his own motivations, pre-programmed or not, or if he is the actual embodiment of the will of Mirai is present but the answer is unclear.
Serval and a the Hunting Team attempt to rescue Kaban, but the Cerulean is too powerful. At that moment, the Friends that Kaban has helped throughout the show burst out of the forest, and they activate their “wild ability”. This leads to a frenetic battle between the Friends and the Cerulean.
It’s worth noting here that mythologically nature & chaos takes a couple of specific forms: the nuturing and protective, and the chaotic and destructive. In this moment in the show, with the Son of the Father sacrificed, and the fate of the orderly world at risk, we see a clash between the two sides of the Mother: the chaos and the nurturing/protective. Also mythologically, it is chaos that is the source of creation or the birth of new things, which is often why it takes a feminine form.
As a result of the battle, the Friends are able to rescue Kaban from the Cerulean and they lead it to the barge, which Boss has set ablaze. The Cerulean crashes with the barge & Boss into the water and the entire area turns into volcanic rock.
Kaban has been transformed into a glowing orb of Sandstar. As the Sun rises, she slowly takes shape again as Kaban, and she is reborn with her memories intact.
Kaban fulfills her role perfectly as the Sacrificial Hero: She sacrifices herself to destroy chaos and bring order to the world, and the order she had created in the world helped her along the way in the form of the Friends rescue. She was then reborn from chaos as the pinnacle of the Friends hierarchy.

Hierarchies in Kemono Friends
There’s one more role that Kaban fulfills in the story of Kemono Friends, and that is, as Dr. Peterson says, that as a human she is a being that excels at climbing hierarchies. By the end of the series, Kaban has excelled in every social hierarchy that the Friends have constructed along the way. In the final episode after her rebirth, they have a celebration at the old amusement park, in which its clear that they not only appreciate Kaban as a hero, but as the ultimate Friend, someone who no matter which “area” she visited rose to the top of the hierarchy in competence and intelligence, and in the end rose above the hierarchies to both sacrifice and be reborn.
In Conclusion
In the final moments of the series, Kaban has become a transcendent hero. She has brought order to Japari Park in each area in her own way. She teaches some of the Friends to cook food and has improved the capabilities of the community as a whole to solve problems.
The Friends gift her a new boat, made from a Japari Bus, to leave the island with. With this, she sets off into the sea as any great hero would: with order behind her, and chaos and uncertainty ahead but the determination to create order out of the chaotic world.

Dénouement
This article set out to do an impossible task: to map complex ideas onto an already complex story that has plenty of its own unanswered questions and mysteries. I hope that what little justice I have done in regards to Jordan B. Peterson’s concepts of narrative structures and mythological concepts can help others make a stronger and more perceptive interpretation of these ideas than I have laid out here.
