BNA – 11

「A Beastly Feast」

This week’s BNA raises the stakes to its highest yet as Michiru has to make the tough decision on whether to go along with an obvious trap to eliminate beastmen or take Shirou for his word by helping stop the concert. By narrowing its focus towards the concert as the catalyst for the show’s climax, it eliminates many of the threats that were posed on the town before Alan became more prominent in the picture.

This is most apparent with the mafia being reduced to palling up with Shirou and being his unwitting partners until Michiru gets her crap sorted out. The first few episodes positioned the mafia as a nefarious group that was not only causing internal strife in Anima City, but also wanted to kickstart a race war between beastmen and humans.

What the finale does, however, is absolve much of their crimes by going the route of declaring that the enemy of their enemy is their friend. Everything is dropped and instead of touching that with a ten foot pole, they just remain cordial and have a better relationship with Shirou than the crusty police chief. Not to mention that the relationship with the boss and his daughter hasn’t been fleshed out at all and the only closure on their end is that they’re technically getting along.

It’s a plot thread that was snipped quickly to make way for the larger plot with the pharmaceutical company. There’s not much evidence that after all of this, the mafia won’t just continue turning humans and beastmen into chum while the police and townspeople look the other way. Even if Anima City is restored to how it was before Alan and the cult came in, will it not just continue to be partially run by the mafia? The Mayor was bad enough when it came to trusting Alan’s word, but letting the mafia take charge of how districts and businesses operate was never a part of her personal interest after the first couple episodes passed.

The plot also relies on Michiru being incredibly dense and prone to being manipulated at any turn. Her lack of personal autonomy is her own construct as she constantly changes her mind on how to act based on how she’s feeling about a particular idea at the time. So when she goes from being slightly ambivalent, but ready to join Nazuna in confessing their humanity on stage to immediately racing to get her not to confess, it’s hard to take her thought process seriously. It was just as rough when she immediately back-stabbed Shirou last time, but she’s a character that has no convictions. The episode ends on a cliffhanger with Shirou biting into Michiru upon going berserk about the familiarity the concert has with the massacre, but we’ll see if that ends up sticking.