WhenBEASTARS got its exceptional anime adaptation last year, there were plenty of jokes going around about it being anime's very ownZootopia, but people ought to have saved their jabs for TRIGGER's latestNetflix Original,BNA: Brand New Animal. Not only does this series share a surprising number of similar plot points and character beats with its Disney Animation cousin, but it also uses its anthropomorphic cast to explore similar themes of how prejudice can divide and damage, which are ideas thatBEASTARS only ever touches on incidentally. When you take the entire twelve-episode season ofBNA into consideration, it isn't much of a reach to see it as a the result of simple “Zootopia + anime” calculation. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say thatBNA is the result of mashing up the broad themes and archetypes of something likeZootopia with the madcap antics ofStudio Trigger specifically, so much so that one could accuse it of simply playing as a “Greatest Hits” compilation of all of the company's favorite hallmarks, except, you know, now there are a bunch of furries everywhere.

My strongest takeaway after watchingBNA is that its greatest strengths lie firmly in being such an on-brand work forStudio Trigger, though nothing in here will surprise you if you have watched any of the studio's popular efforts. It shares both its gonzo visual style and general distrust of authoritarian conformity with hits likeGurren Lagann,Kill la Kill and the recentPromare, and it puts a major emphasis on complicated female friendships like we saw inLittle Witch Academia (and alsoKill la Kill). It also plays fast and loose with social commentary even as it escalates its action to preposterous proportions, and at this point viewers shouldn't be at all surprised to learn thatBNA was written byKazuki Nakashima, who wrote bothPromare andKill la Kill. Throw in an especially bonkers baseball themed episode storyboarded byHiroyuki Imaishi, and you've got yourself an anime that is literally impossible to mistake as anything but aStudio Trigger joint. In other words: The show looks and sounds awesome, even when the number of frames actually making it on to the screen is fairly limited. The show features what is probably TRIGGER's best coloring and lighting to date outside ofPromare, and there's something kooky and interesting to look at in practically every frame of the show.

As far as the cast goes, Michiru is another addition to the roster of fantastic TRIGGER heroines, managing to balance her plucky resolve with a willingness to open her mind to the experiences and struggles of the Beastmen. Plus, she's got badass shapeshifting powers, which make for some creative action sequences and visual gags throughout the season. Speaking of badasses, Shirou Ogami isn't anyone to screw around with, and while I was surprised with how little the show did with his and Michiru's partnership in the grand scheme of things, he makes for a great hero all the same, dishing out some supremely satisfying beatdowns of his own and spicing up the plot with his mysterious backstory. As far asNetflix's English dub goes, the vocal performances went a long way towards endearing me to the cast, especiallyCherami Leigh as Michiru. It took me a while to come around onBen Diskin's slightly off-center take on Shirou, but he totally sells the character by the end. Some of the translation can still sound stilted and awkward in English, and a some of the minor characters sounded noticeably wooden, but the dub gets the job done, and lives up to the standard set by the Japanese cast.

Really, the superhero-detective angle that I had thought would be the center ofBNA's focus is only one component of Michiru's experiences in Anima City, and I genuinely loved how varied and complex her story becomes as the threats to Anima City grow larger and stranger. From breaking out as the city's newest baseball superstar to cracking down on a mysterious cult with surprising ties to her own past, Michiru's life as a tanuki Beastman is eventful, to say the least. The cast of side-characters is eclectic and interesting, too, and half the fun of watchingBNA is seeing the crew at TRIGGER obviously having a blast messing around with background characters and stupid animal jokes. That sense of “messing around” is also where my reservations lie, though, because while I wanted to absolutely adoreBNA, I found myself slightly underwhelmed when all was said and done, because the show doesn't come together to form a satisfying whole in the way I was hoping it would.

The show's thematic throughline, for one, is both too shallowand overly complicated by the show's own vague worldbuilding. It doesn't use it's “anthropomorphic animals = oppressed people” analogy to say anything more nuanced or specific than “Prejudice is bad”, and even that message fails to land when you consider what the Beastmen are, and how they're treated by the show. Is the fact that they can assume a human form, but choose not to, supposed to be analogous for people who can pass for “normal” but choose to have pride in expressing who they are? If so, then why does so much of the conflict in the show come from Beastmen playing into the stereotypes and instincts associated with their animal forms? Likewise, Michiru suddenly becoming a Beastman and learning firsthand what it's like to live as one basically works as a way to make her more empathetic, but then you start wading into that awfully sticky territory of stories where people are suddenly transformed into a different gender/race/sexual identity and are completely able to grasp the entire experience of living your whole life within the confines of systemic bigotry after, like, a week or two. Michiru is never portrayed as having been particularly prejudiced to begin with, so the effect of her transformation never lands as anything other than a convenient plot device.

Zootopia has gotten a lot of fair criticism for the way it conflates imaginary distinctions between people (like race) with very real, biological distinctions between animals (like being a carnivore vs. an herbivore). I'd argue thatBNA is falling into a similar trap here, only it's even harder to parse because the social and biological structures of Beastman societyreally just feels like a thinly veiled excuse for TRIGGER to draw a bunch of anthropomorphic characters getting into fights and being goofy. Even when you put aside the half-baked social commentary, though, the overall scope ofBNA's story just feels needlessly messy. It takes two or three more episodes than it needed to in order to set up the true shape of the plot and all of the parties involved, and the arcs of several main characters, including Shirou himself, just don't amount to as much as you'd expect.

The good news is that, at the end of the day,BNA is a blast to watch, there's no question about it. Despite its flaws, this series is clearly the product of a team that is cutting loose and having a ton of fun, and TRIGGER's sense of playful excitement is as infectious as ever. That said, the world of the Beastmen provided an opportunity to explore some fresh themes and story ideas, and TRIGGER never takes the chance to fully exploit that potential. Instead, what we haveBNA: Brand New Animal is a perfectly satisfying serving of anime comfort food: It's pretty, it's familiar, and you'll probably feel good about devouring it all in only a couple of sittings. Anyone looking for a more novel or ambitious effort, though, will have to wait and find out what TRIGGER is planning to make for the next course.