I’m so disappointed… not by the episode, but by these freaking beastmen in Rabbit Town! I wanted to trust them! They seemed cool! But they turned out to be no good children traffickers. Maybe I’m naive, but I legit thought that they were telling the truth about these kids and that they just wanted a better future for them. Or maybe I just wanted the “obviously evil looking characters” to actually be decent people… But dang, when Gran Grandma said “I never said they were MY children,” I had assumed with Michiru that that was the case. Guess we were both wrong there. While it looks like they were forced to sell them, they still rounded them up off the streets to eventually sell them for a profit. I’m not okay with that! But I do appreciate that fact they’re driving home that despite beast men being looked down on, that doesn’t mean all of them are good people. There’s always a bad apple in all groups of people. I just hope we find good humans too one day. I’m just glad that the kids were saved.
We learn a little more about the city and society through out the episode. Like that beast men don’t assume their beast form at all times. They mostly have to be in their human guises, probably due to how the formation of the city was even allowed. Though I also wasn’t expecting there to be “the strongest will survive” type of rule in this society… Even though considering they’re all animals, it makes sense. Also when a beastman assumes their beast form, it means they’re looking for a fight. Which we witnessed at the registration place when that dog and bull fought over the front of the line. This society is such a dog-eat-dog-world and it’s kind of sad when you think about it. Especially when they start believing strength and power will get them through this world. It’s interesting to see that in a sense that while they show great loyalty to one another, they lack a certain sense of empathy. I can kind of see why people would be afraid of them due to this mindset and brutality, that by no means justifies the prejudice and violence towards them.
So we find out by the end that at one point, Michiru was in fact human. Though there were already some pretty strong hints just by the way she thinks, such as her very naive outlook on beastmen and assumed a lot about them. It almost seems like she was a human who was put into the body of a beastman suddenly. Not to mention, when we look at the world in Shirou’s scent view, while her scent originally comes across as yellow like other beastmen, when he hones in on her scent, her color changes to orange. Beastmen scent color is yellow while human scent is a reddish color. At first I thought it was just a way to show the main focus, but maybe I’m thinking too deeply into it and it could just be an artistic flare. But out of all colors, why choose the combination of both scent colors? It has to mean something, especially since trigger is known to give visual cues for hidden meanings through out their works.
Michiru’s case gets even stranger when attempting to escape the cage when her freaking arms somehow elongated. At first I thought it was just tanuki shape shifting abilities, but looking at what happened with Michiru in this episode and taking the opening into account… there’s definitely a lot more to this. Maybe there is some sort of disease going around? But I guess we’ll just have to wait and find out. I was watching this with my sister and she wondered, “Is she genetically modified or something?” She too thought that she was a hybrid of some sort as well, but being genetically modified is a pretty good guess and shouldn’t be overlooked. It probably is the strongest theory to what Michiru could be right now.
We find out the significance of a particular silver wolf referred to as Ginrou. Apparently Ginrou is considered the god of the beastmen and if they are in trouble, it would come down and save them. However, I get the strong feeling that Shirou may be Ginrou in a beastman guise or related to it in some way, considering the show has been paralleling that notion quite heavily through out these past couple episodes. Michiru even straight up called him Ginrou when she saw his silhouette before passing out. Watch this be a red herring lol.
I did find it funny how Michiru found Shirou attractive and even thought he was older. Which may not be wrong…
Now, I don’t know about anyone else, but Michiru feels like she’s flipflopping a lot as a character. One moment, she is having a fun time with beastmen, the next, she’s screaming how she hates them. Thinking about it, I can kind of understand why she would come to the conclusion of hating beastmen since she was so emotional at that moment and has dealt with nothing but bad impressions of them since coming. And while she did pleasant moments with some, the bad seemed to outweigh the good in her mind as the negative impressions were a lot stronger than the positive ones. She got pick-pocketed, she witnessed a terrorist attack and the brutality of beastmen fights and nearly got sold off. So I guess I can kind of understand her way of thinking. But I feel like a part of it is because she had a lot of assumptions about them that didn’t match up to how their society was actually like. She’s also just a teenage girl, so there’s that. And while I’m currently not a fan of her right now, I still believe she has a lot of room to grow as a character and I’m curious as to how the story will handle her progression.
Also no a completely different note, I found out that the voice actress of Michiru also voices Yachi from Haikyuu and actually sings the bop of a BNA opening.
