BNA – 07

「Easy Albatross」

In this episode, Alan finally plays his first card as he comes in to pay the mayor a visit as the CEO of Sylvasta Pharmaceuticals. But his involvement in Anima City makes him a prime target for a group of bird terrorists, one of which being an albatross named Pinga, whose connection with Michiru makes him open to backing down cordially.

But while it was interesting to see from Pinga’s perspective as a former soldier willing to pull out a fake bomb to start a conversation about beastman rights, one part of the episode that is instrumental to how future eps will unfold is the presence of Alan. It’s the first time we see him outside of his mustache-twirling as he spies on Michiru, and it gives us a clearer view on what his motives are. His association with pharmaceuticals and his curiosity about both Michiru and the Silver Wolf Order make it more than likely that he’s involved in their transformation.

But as an added level of craziness, he’s drawn to the city just as the cult is planning on storming the capitol in light of their recent rejection from the mayor. The plans were to have the cult stay temporarily, but with the combination of the bird terrorist’s ploy to lift and drop Alan and Nazuna’s showboating for the cult, it leaves a foot in the door to allow the cult and Alan to be able to make their next move.

It can be difficult to track the direction that the show will be heading in when there are multiple different factions and subsets crashing into one another. You have groups of terrorists trying to spark either pro or anti-beastman sentiments, the mafia wanting to start a race war with humans, a pharmaceutical company working in conjunction with humans to experiment on each other, and a cult aiming to disrupt Anima City with their brand of faith.

And with most of them intersecting with one another such as with the final moments of Episode 07, it’s hard to imagine what the end game of the series will be. Unless it becomes a Blues Brothers ending where they all smash into one another while they’re at-odds with Michiru and Shirou, they’d have to resolve some of the threads quicker than others. Focusing on Michiru makes their task a little simpler since her issues have a small enough scale that her main priority would be solely to rekindle things with Nazuna and inspire her to reject the cult to go back to being her friend. However, the sociopolitical themes of BNA get heavily muddled when everyone has their hands in the cookie jar of conspiring with/against one another in a race to spark a war between humans and beastmen first.