Gayer Than Beastars: A Queer Reading of Beast Complex

it's just another regular day at cheriton University or as regular as things can be at a school for walking and talking animal people rul the lion is student council president an accomplished student and he has a very bright future ahead of him he's a bit obsessed with what other beasts think of him because he desperately wants to be seen as the ideal male lion trusted respected and admired it would certainly be admirable to live a noble life but to seek that reputation well that's just vanity isn't it one day he's asked by a teacher to prove his worth by seeking out a student that has been absent for a year now and convince him to return to school when Raul finds asmo the bat he's been living in an abandoned building fending for himself all this time asmo [ __ ] hates Raul why because it turns out a lion devoured his entire family that's why he hasn't been at school because this story takes place in a setting where Society is made up of animals that eat each other now rul is so unused to rejection that he lashes out at the bat which only serves to prove asmo right but over the course of this manga rul continues to visit asmo he begins to Grapple with how selfish he's been having only performed Good Deeds when they benefit his reputation in turn asmo overcomes his Prejudice when he's forced to reckon with the fact that rabul has nothing in common with the lion that actually hurt him finally he's able to move on and he takes to the night sky in search of a fresh start in life if you watched any anime during the pandemic you're probably thinking boy that sure sounds like a deleted scene from be stars that one homoerotic furry show and well kind of in fact legosi even appears on the second page and he eventually gets a few chapters of his own but this is actually Beast complex Beast complex I find it rather simple that's right I'm making this video because of has come to my attention that a bunch of you don't know that there has been even more be Stars this entire time in fact be Stars has not one but two predecessors back when parro igaki was still a student she made a small independent comic called Beast complex very few copies of this one exist I sold the manga at a festival at my art college I had so much fun they decided to break into the professional manga World while looking for a full-time job this extremely early iteration already featured Lego she and Haru in some form who would go on to be the main characters of be Stars unfortunately I can't tell you much more about this version of the story because while there are frustrating photos all over the Internet of entire stacks of these things they're not available today in any real capacity of those in the Beast Stars Community who have obtained a copy they seem to have opted not to scan or translate them I've also been able to find evidence of a beast complex animation featuring hand painted cells in which we can see versions of KET and Jack here's paru igaki talking about a screening in 2015 that claims it was completed all the way back in 2013 where are all of these send them to me look at this it's Lego she and Jack giving you directions to a panel all the way back in 2014 anyway paru igaki did eventually succeed in breaking into the manga world and Beast complex became serialized and Shonen champion in March 2016 the same month I became a full-time YouTuber weird not that Beast complex by the way this Beast complex the college Zen and the serialized manga share the same name confusingly so fans have taken to calling the old one original Beast complex or OBC the Beast complex that we'll be talking about today is an anthology of Highly allegorical stories featuring furry characters living in a modern city the title of each story always mentions two animals seeming to intentionally evoke asops fables AKA The Lion and the mouse the hair and the Tortoise The Fox and the grapes and hundreds of other morality Tales dating back to over 2500 years ago but then shortly after Beast complex went into publication Disney released a furry movie called zootopia after Beast complex was published an animated movie featuring animal characters was created near the castle located in a country of a certain world power and became a zootopian hit my series B Stars began right after that I'd already been drawing the series behind closed doors for a while but the timing wasn't good and I know you know what be stars is because well statistically you're only here because you watched my thre hour video about it I'm sorry and I'm back and I'm still annoying paru igaki only ended up putting out four chapters of the Beast complex Anthology before starting what she's now famous for seriously Beast Stars was in Shonen Champion only 6 months later so the first volume of Beast complex has this quirky discontinuity where its fifth volume suddenly has a drastically different art style having been printed nearly a year and a half later than the previous story it would be yet another year and a half before the sixth story and then nothing with Beast complex sitting dormant all the way until Beast Stars had reached its conclusion after 4 years and 196 chapters during its Revival period Beast complex received another dozen back-to-back stories but it has once again become a side project while P igaki works on S a manga about Santa Claus I don't have answers for you except that in parro graffiti her autobiographical Manga she says that she's horny for Santa Claus my type are hardworking large guys and there's one guy that's just my type that comes around this time of year I guess you could say I have a fetish for Santa beautiful in the meantime Beast complex seems to be back to getting about one new chapter a year because of all this the manga has a strange place in history it's technically the predecessor to be Stars I mean that chapter I just summarized lays the groundwork for the entire setting but 18 of its 4 chapters and Counting are actually newer than the finale of be Stars a few of them even feature legosi and other characters after the events of the story whatever you want to call the sister series it's interesting to discuss alongside be stars because it is all still written by paru igaki and while I doubt that any of this is going to be adapted into an anime it is still Canon to the setting in a way it's a relief that it's an anthology after all a lot of the most fun parts of the second half of be stars were its unhinged World building but a lot of its worst parts were how poor that World building was connected back into the plot I don't think anyone would have hated Q at her Ro reversal stands if she was just a chapter of Beast complex is all I'm saying so to celebrate my Beast Stars video hitting 1 million views I figured I'd extend my queer reading of igi's work to the rest of the Beast Stars universe as a treat I think it's about sexism I thought it was about racism maybe it's about homophobia uh duh it's about classism all righty before we get into the meat of it I need to give you a primer on what kind of analytical framework we're using here if you want the long version you can go back and watch my video Lego she is gay a queer reading of be Stars where I spent 50200 words setting this up but we're going to try for the short version today for me breaking down the queerness of be stars is a very layered process there's the surface level which is just noticing that certain characters or interactions sure do seem gay don't they dudes shoving their hands in Lego she's mouth Lego she cross dressing overt queer coating and so on this stuff is prevalent and it's a large part of why we're having this conversation but if that was all there is to it this wouldn't be all that interesting instead the queering of be stars comes from a combination of its World building and tone the setting is made up of 50% herbivores and 50% carnivores logically each of these population should have an even gender split but it quickly becomes apparent that herbivores are disproportionately represented by female characters while carnivores are disproportionately shown to be male with this split comes the matching expectation that carnivores are aggressive and herbivores are submissive an expectation that is simultaneously animalistic and gendered this makes female carnivores and male herbivores feel more out of Step crossing the wires and how they're coated but then things get much weirder carnivores are known for eating herbivores in the setting which sounds villainous but then the story makes the interesting choice of frequently making carnivores the protagonist stranger still the act of eating meat is constantly conflated with sexuality which I'm going to be pointing out left and right you'll frequently be hit with the visual of a slavering carnivore who is currently thinking about how horny they are there are a lot of scenes in beds there's an herbivore stripper dancing for a carnivore audience and look at how Haru is posed when the leader of the shishigumi is threatening to eat her this stuff permeates the entire story but what especially interests me is the Myriad ways that this Dynamic is queered when we're aware of how devouring connects with sex how are we meant to interpret stories about men hungering for other men we're also given a binary where carnivores should only be in relationships with other carnivores and the same goes for herb bores so when their diets are coded as sexuality what do we call a carnivore herbivore relationship other than a queer one suddenly things get a lot more complicated than that original Vibe where you just felt like Lou was acting sus around legosi legosi do you know what a power bottom is it's worth mentioning that doing a queer reading or any reading really isn't the same thing as a fan Theory my previous video was never about proving that Lego shei is canonically gay because he obviously isn't but thank you for the hundreds of comments arguing with the first half of the title didn't read the rest I guess but that was a great boost for the algorithm no these videos are about interrogating the themes and subtext of the art and yes some of it is kind of Vibes based it's less a math problem and more standing in front of a painting and interrogating how it makes you feel but I have formed those feelings into words a lot of them all right that's enough of a primer it's time to get to business and you might be thinking Keith there's only like four volumes worth of Beast complex how often could this really come up to which I would say don't check the runtime our next story follows mogu the beaver and gone the tiger who grew up together as Nextdoor Neighbors in this world schools split carnivores and herbivores into separate dorms starting at the age of 10 despite this gone has gained a reputation as the tiger who keeps sneaking over to the herbivore dorm to spend time with his best friend one night the two overhear a bullying incident between upper classman photograph it and make a break for the principal's office during the ensuing Chase however the bullies who are all carnivores try to recruit gone after all he's going to be a huge strong tiger in a couple of years so shouldn't he just accept his nature he's expected to join them in their craving for meat a trait that seems not to have manifested in him yet he rejects them but in so doing he denies in futility his own Coming of Age here's a question though why are they separated at the age of 10 if this is about racism aren't racists racists against all ages so the segregation must be serving a different purpose the desire to eat meat right but that's weird too because why would you write a setting where the carnivores seemingly only become carnivorous at the age of 10 the answer comes when you remind yourself of how paru igaki conflates meat eating with sexuality right 10 years old is approximately the time where these kids are going to begin puberty hormones are going to change how their bodies develop and they're going to start getting strange new feelings that they'll need to learn how to navigate they weren't that different from each other a few years ago but now adults are going to start separating them and having very different conversations based on which side of that binary they land it's just like our gender binary where we have so many complexes about it that we've split our entire world along that line this makes gone the tiger very interesting to unpack as a queer character everyone thinks that he's weird because he doesn't conform to the binary that's for forced upon Him by Society he crosses the threshold every day right in front of everyone to be with mou I can't believe you go to all the trouble of climbing over that wall just to see him it's not like you're in love or something from Go's perspective he was doing just fine until the grown-ups went and made things weird by placing these expectations on them like legosi he exhibits self-hating thoughts he's going to grow up to be a massive powerful tiger but he lies to himself and claims that he's actually been shrinking lately mogu sees the changes that will happen to their bodies As Natural but gon sensing his own queerness is terrified of that happening to him he's going to be forced to develop into a completely different category of person and he has no say in that how is that fair we're left to wonder whether someone can be sorted into the wrong side of a binary or going deeper whether or not such a binary should exist in the first place on that note this is probably why people find it so compelling to portray Louie and legosi as trans the main characters of Beast Stars spend the bulk of the story trying to break down a society defining binary from both sides and they arguably succeed fans are just responding to the obvious subtext at the core of the story I mean Lego she crossdresses twice and Louis spends an entire Arc trying to eat meat it's not exactly subtle and speaking of devouring and sexuality this is the story that binds those two concepts together before we even get to meet Haru and legosi gam is a camel who works as a journalist for a newspaper he's long since grown sick of his job where he apparently writes about nothing but carnivore devouring every day which frankly comes across as a bit bigoted when there must surely be plenty of other things happening in this world he's going to retire tomorrow but he can't figure out how to finish his final article which is meant to answer why these devouring happen in the first place Abby a female wolf sits at his table so he asks her if she's ever wanted to devour an herbivore before she's offended so he takes her out on a date to apologize they end up having a one night stand together but the way they hook up at the hotel is very peculiar I've never had the desire to devour an herbivore before you're my first I think I could truly fall in love with you you devour me while Falling in Love love with me strange isn't it it's fascinating to see the main theme of be Stars established here so early on she's horny so she's hungry in the Beast Stars Universe you can't spell love without Vore garum is miserable before he meets Abby ready to quit his job forever but after they're night together it's like he has a whole new lease on life I know it sounds strange to say this but getting his finger bitten off was a positive experience for him it was a permanent change to his body that marked a transition in him an event where he learned something important about himself that changed him forever it's not far off from how people get tattoos to Mark major life events but the story of the camel and the Wolf is made even more interesting by its queer undertones it's already quite subversive for a carnivore and an herbivore to be sleeping together in this setting but in this case we have the additional Twist of the carnivore being a woman and the herbivore being a man so perhaps it's unsurprising that their sexual Dynamic is the inverse of what would be assumed about their gender roles she devour him and hundreds of chapters later a woman devouring a man has remained exceedingly rare when you combine that with how their very relationship is considered taboo well whatever this is it certainly isn't heteronormative she even ate the ring finger on his left hand so that he can never wear a wedding ring okay time to get weird Eugene the pig is a taxidermist that's right this is the story that establishes that [ __ ] Taxidermy is a thing in this furry universe and no it's not for regular animals it's for the furries people are bringing Eugene the cavers of their loved ones and he is stuffing and posing them completely nude within glass cases it's unhinged I love it honestly why even bother building a setting if you're not going to put something insane in it every form is unique loss everyone is a work of art worth preserving one day he meets jebra Daisy a male peacock that works as a police officer he derides Eugene's business as being shady the queer coding is pretty overwhelming with this character not only is Jabra drawn as beautiful and effeminate he's named after a flower and is a peacock just like Dom from bears Dom was the first character in the setting who was confirmed to be canonically gay my understanding is that his dialect in the original Japanese makes this more obvious jebber himself explains that male peacocks have such elaborate feathers because they're a weapon meant to charm women oh this bit is fun to interpret in B Stars Dom doesn't have tail feathers he's either an adult or about to be one so they should have grown in by now but the feathers are both a male gender signifier and are specifically meant to charm women so perhaps Dom Clips his feathers because he's not interested in women nor in presenting his m masculine anyway right after jera tells Eugene that the feathers are meant to attract mates he then plucks one from his body and gives it to Eugene oh what did he mean by that he literally just finished loading that gesture with meaning so is he cing Eugene Jara starts visiting Eugene all the time and they often go out for drinks together even drunk he was beautiful one night jebra apologizes for having insulted Eugene's career when they first met he said says that he'll do anything to make it up to him anything and so Eugene asks shabar to enter one of his glass cases posing in the nude for him like one of his subjects it's as if paru igi's characters will die on the spot if something intensely homoerotic doesn't happen at least once every 50 pages would you want to stuff me Eugene this is when jerber chooses to reveal that he's being transferred to a very deadly Precinct soon so he wants Eugene to kill and preserve him instead he begs him to do it going so far as to place his hands on his throat suspend me in time please Eugene agrees to jer's demands but claims that he needs time to prepare oh hey loosi when Jero returns he's instead greeted by 500 Gerber Daisies that Eugene bought him to celebrate his transfer it's a surreal scene a series of nude tax Derm men posing in glass cases like models among a field of flowers I want to you to keep blooming afraid to face his future zerber had begged Eugene to stop the march of time by preserving him this is tragic because jerber is choosing suicide for reasons that are tied innately to who he is as a person he as a peacock doesn't believe that he has the strength to face what life has in store for him given the mess of symbolism surrounding peacocks and his depiction it ends up feeling like he's choosing death because he's gay this is what makes Eugene so special as a character framed here as a sort of gay Elder a mentor figure he became someone that jebra could confide in that's why jerra visits him so often because they share a kinship that he can't find anywhere else he got jerra to drop his defenses and be honest with him and so when jebra is at his most vulnerable it's Eugene he comes to about ending it this is a story about the life-saving value of queer Community jebra is saved by a queer coed and frankly romantically charged gesture which itself came in response to his own initial romantic gesture he lives on to face his future in District 17 where we last see him smiling and loudly flamboyant among the countless flowers he brought with him he's out and proud confidently himself and handing out those flowers to the very same people that he was terrified of to begin with whatever comes next he's better off facing it as his true self than not at all oh I it's time to by next year's calendar I'm going to buy a mogie calendar again she's so cute every single year you can't not love [Music] her Mogi is a Sheba enu that makes a living as a popular calendar model contrary to popular perception however Mugi is not a girl but a nearly 40-year-old man he's content to wear the frilly outfits and the sequins for a paycheck but he lives out his other 364 days a year as a masculine presenting dude on the streets one day he gets in a fight with some tigers that recognize him from his modeling and their confrontation shows up on the news he figures this must mean that his career is over since the image of the character he presented as a model is destroyed but the idea of a Sheba enu with a short fuse has potential so he ends up rebranding could this work nah we last seen him cracking a beer while sitting proudly under a blown up photo of his public incident his future uncertain so I don't think that Mogi is meant in any way to be canonically transgender but his story sure the hell is or more specifically it's about the concept of gender performance in this case extremely literally Mogi presents himself as a masculine figure in his daily life this is where he's comfortable but whenever he goes into work he has to dress and act in a way that convinces people that he's a woman regard regardless of how contrived the scenario is that's what Society expects of him and his livelihood literally depends on him maintaining this performance of gender when Mogi has his scandal he's publicly outed against his will he fully expects that the truth coming out about him means that his career is over since once you're outed you can't just take it back the Public's understanding of who he is as a person has changed on a fundamental level forever the question is whether that change can be for the better or not there's a fellow Sheba enu that works the counter where he usually shops she is there to contrast against his normal day-to-day demeanor she puts on a fake smile for the customers all day just like he does when he's modeling they both perform but after muki's incident her expression changes she applauds him for risking everything to stand up for himself he's her role model this is actually what leads to Mogi embracing the rebranding and giving his new life a shot seeing her reaction this is ultimately a story about why representation matters and how it helps people to see themselves and their experiences in the media around them but there are countless ways to tell that story so I find it especially interesting that paru igaki chose to make it about a person who is publicly outed not just that but the value that him being publicly out holds for his audience and like I get it I've met so many of you at conventions at this point and you've told me yourselves what my coming out meant to you the scale of it all is staggering but what I do know is that when someone claims that this sort of thing doesn't matter that person is an idiot okay I know I said that Muki doesn't read as actually being trans to me but I've been reading the official translation until now having taken a look at the fan translation while editing this well when Muki is Reminiscing on how he was thrust into this job he thinks it's like the standard procedure for Broke Girls to make the debut in a porno what did he he mean by that he then looks at the forced smile of the cashier woman and thinks there was a time when I was just like that part-time girl huh that just kind of hits different doesn't it there's also a chapter where a prolific author is assumed to be a female Mountain hair based on their writing but they actually turn out to be a huge male moon bear another story playing with gender but uh we we we just did this I don't really have anything to add besides pointing out that it does in fact exist overall the Chipmunk in the mountain hair reads perhaps as an outlet for paru igi's impostor syndrome the bear is a male carnivore that's known for his herbivore stories and she's a woman who recently married a man but is famous for writing a story that is perhaps best known for its homoeroticism but that's just a guess it is strange however that two stories in the same volume were about men who were mistaken for women because of their art two nickels and all that oh hey a Lego sheet chapter and you thought I click baited you this story actually serves as a short epilogue to be Stars where we revisit Haru Louie and legosi after the events of the finale Haru is turning 20 so it's time for her coming of age ceremony but after that comes a different ritual the wound purification ceremony during this event carnivores make amends with the herbivores that they'd once hurt Lego shei has had scratched haru's arm when they first met so here at the very end of the story we're going full circle all the way back to volume one amusingly legosi is distracted by the thought of whether he should be doing this ritual with Louie instead since he did eat his entire leg even in a Haru and legosi epilogue we're still struggling with the fact that he both has more chemistry with and has been through more [ __ ] with Louie than he ever has with Haru instead Louie is attending the ceremony with Bill over a wound that I promise you don't remember happening in the first place especially since the anime cut out Louis's gun this all feels like such a lampshade moment all that aside this is still a pretty interesting chapter because it feels like the story is grappling with the tension between its text and its subtext we've watched these queer characters make sense of their attraction to each other over 22 volumes but because of the setting that love had always been built upon a foundation of violence indeed many bounced off of be stars because of the fact that for every empowering interpretation there is to be had of the story there was another much more unsavory read to be had for instance if you picked up on the carnivore herbivore gender split then this is a setting where violence against women is extremely common and yet it foregrounds a man's perspective while sidelining its female cast and I mean legoshi is literally called a predator this dissonance has been baked into the series's DNA and I think that it's to its credit that it leaned into that discomfort and grappled with it instead of resolving it and trying to move on like it never happened there's something unrealistic about having clean answers when you hurt the people you care about what is that if not a contradiction of your love and how do you resolve that contradiction you apologize you agree to move on that's all you can do I love you I hurt you I'm sorry it's purely ceremonial because that's all it can be you can't ever really do anything you can only acknowledge it and move past it and hope that that's enough the tiger and the rabbit ahead of them are still arguing at the altar some haven't truly reconciled so for them this ritual seems pretty pointless but Haru leoshi the truth is I don't really care whether my scar gets purified or not I just wanted to attend this ceremony it's like a wedding this is kind of wild for Haru to say here this is a series that has been deflating sexuality with the carnivore desire to devour even Haru felt an instinctive reflex to let herself be devoured all the way back when she and legosi stayed in that love hotel after he rescued her from the shishigumi and now at the ritual that's all about reconciling that feeling she says that it feels like a wedding paru igaki never really misses a chance to reinforce that connection does she speaking of marriage that's worth unpacking on its face Beast stars is about racism and the struggles of an interracial relationship right so you would expect this to be a setting where legosi marrying Haru is illegal right it just feels intuitive but that's not actually the law it's completely legal for a wolf and a rabbit to get married and surprisingly there aren't really many people who seem interested in stopping them it's kind of odd considering that most would probably say that their relationship is the core conflict of the story instead Louie is the reason why Haru and legosi can't marry more specifically the fact that legosi ate his leg Lego isn't forbidden from marrying because he's a wolf he's forbidden from marrying because he's a registered meat offender that itself is a pretty wild phrase to hear isn't it like even if you're not following the subtextual connection between devouring and sexuality you're probably going to pause for a moment and think hang on that sure sounds a lot like legosi is a registered sex offender and that's disturbing because the list of reasons that come to mind for why someone would be marked like that are upsetting on the other hand it's worth considering that depending on what year it is or what country you're in engaging in homosexual acts can itself be a crime I bring this up because whatever you want to call what happened between Louie and legosi it was ultimately an act carried out by two consenting men and getting caught ruined legosi's life it's the opinion of the police that legosi is a criminal whose rights should be restricted but do you agree and for that matter does the story itself agree with that punishment Louie begged him to do it and then legosi basically turned Super Saiyan and save the day it doesn't really feel like something that he has to atone for instead it feels like a thing that happened between Lou and legosi that frankly isn't anyone else's business this is why this all feels so queer quoted legosi is attracted to herbivores but he can't get married because he was caught with Louie a male herbivore his motivation for the second half of the story is that if he becomes a superhero an unofficial be star he might get his record expunged and finally get to marry who he loves he's marginalized and that is used as leverage against him even the ability to marry herbivores at all only became legal 10 years ago incidentally next year will be the 10year anniversary of gay marriage becoming legal in the United States # relatable back at the purification ritual no one else in that line is worried about not being allowed to get married but Haru if legosi never got his record cleared she'd have to settle for this moment being like a wedding because it's as close as she would ever get Luke the snow leopard and Ros the Japanese deer are the lead actors in dinner a hit film about the Forbidden Love between a carnivore and an herbivore that ends in a climactic devouring scene they each win an Academy Award for their performance but then Luke confesses that he only did such a great job because he wasn't just acting he has actually devoured someone before and now he wants to come clean amusingly Ros doesn't actually give a [ __ ] about the devouring she's just pissed that Luke's Scandal will ruin both of their careers she tries to convince him to keep his secret but eventually says that she'll accept his choice whatever it may be he confesses to his devouring of a male duck on live TV and Ros does her best to pretend that she's hearing this for the first time this chapter dropped a bit of a bombshell right there on the first page I've been discussing in both of these videos how paru igaki repeatedly conflates devouring with sexuality but then we get a scene from the movie that Luke and Ros starred in it's only the climax but that's more than enough I love you I want all of you go on then devour me what's Wild though is that this movie exists within the setting of be Stars which means that the people of be Stars don't just happen to exist in a story that keeps overlapping these themes this connection is a known entity within the world itself they make art about it the setting of be Stars produces art with enough mature self-reflection that the characters from within this culture could feasibly be expected to reproduce the manga be Stars that's wild it's an explicit confirmation that I'm not projecting a connection onto the art but that the connection is instead so widely understood that it has developed into cinematic language there's also also still yet more depth to be minded by applying a queer lens here the chapter literally just made it clear that the connection between devouring and sexuality is there so then how are we meant to interpret the fact that Luke devoured Bob the duck that's gay like I would have already called it gay because of the analytical framework I've been applying here but this time it's also just gay within the logic of the chapter audiences cheer when Luke pretends to engage in these kinds of relationships on the Silver Screen but if word were to get out that he did it for real that's a scandal with another man no less this makes Rose's reaction interesting because when she tries to keep Luke's proclivity a secret she's essentially offering to be his beard for those that don't know beard is a term for a woman who publicly dates a gay man in order to maintain his reputation as being straight you might have seen this play out in sense 8 which was incidentally also a story about a gay actor because that's exactly the kind of person who has a lot to lose if public perception of him changes so with this whole mess of themes this chapter of be Stars ends up reading as the story of a closeted gay actor who won an Academy Award and then came out publicly promptly destroying his career kosumi is a female sheep whose growing horns will one day Pierce her skull and kill her she knows that she needs to get the surgery to remove them but she's too passive a person to make the choice herself in a self-destructive gamble she's waited years for anyone to notice her suffering and push her to save herself but no one seems to care but then she meets Abu a turtle people are afraid of Abu because he looks like a member of the Yakuza but he's actually an aspiring tattoo artist that practices on himself he notices kios umi's horns and he wants to make them beautiful he inks flowers onto her horns and they spend a special day together traveling the town and Sharing Smiles after that day Kos finally gets the surgery yeah I took a week off from school and got the surgery wow you look different happier though this chapter is very interested in the power that we have over our own bodies from tattoos to piercings to surgery we have a level of control over ourselves that surpasses that of most living beings but it goes beyond that if you somehow haven't figured out where I'm going with this I read kosame as trans I'm no expert on sheep but as far as I could find it does seem to be true that some species can have horns that might erently grow into their own skulls or otherwise cause problems but the distinction to make here is that those are the male sheep the Rams female sheep seem to have much shorter horns that look nothing like kosami it seems feasible that kosami was a signed male at Birth but she has chosen to live and present as female if we take her horns as a sign of her perceived birth gender they become become a fascinating visual metaphor for her need to medically transition kiam's horns are pointing at her head threatening to pierce her skull the problem started out small during her adolescence but the horns became more and more Sinister as she was left to endure puberty unassisted her body in its natural state is going to kill itself it's not clear when it's going to happen but it'll definitely be sooner rather than later there's a sad horror to the fact that she's so obvious ly and demonstrably in danger but no one has cared enough to help I keep waiting for someone to ask if my horns are a danger to me I want someone to care enough to tell me to get them removed I guess I want to be saved for 17 years I've gotten closer and closer to death and nobody's even noticed so stupid unfortunately for a variety of [ __ ] up reasons the trans Community is known for its high rate of suicidality these tragic statistics notably improve significantly with the aid of trans affirming care but kmi's plight has gone ignored for too long and she's incapable of moving forward because she feels like she needs permission to exist here the story zeros in on a very human mistake which is that we often make important life decisions based on what other people think it's often not about what will make us happy but what will make others happy with us this is where the trans metaphor collides with Body Mod culture Abu says [ __ ] that we're all going to die someday everyone's preoccupied with their own lives they don't have time to worry about anybody else the first tattoo I got was the one on my shell hardly anyone noticed that surprised me you mean we might as well do whatever we want it's important that Abu never actually made the decision for her despite her learned helplessness it was never for anyone else's decision to make what kosami needed was support she needed Community I've been thinking a bit about some common trans slang terms when someone is trans but they haven't figured that out yet they're called an egg when they do finally realize this about themselves that's called cracking the egg which is apt because once they've hatched well no one can put Humpty Dumpty back together again you can't unrealized something it's one of life's many great thresholds that can only be crossed once Abu tattoos flowers on kmi's Horns I feel like the introduction of body modification softened the blow for her a permanent change to portend a much larger permanent change it gives her a forward momentum as she finally faces what her future may bring come on let's go out tonight and make your flowers Blossom Abu accompanies her around the city to help her feel safe as she faces the world as a quite visibly changed girl and then the next time we see her she's had the surgery wow you look different happier though Community doesn't just go one way either soon after their encounter flowers begin to bloom on abu's shell as well this is where this chapter becomes really interesting to reread because what is abu's deal exactly you might begin to question why he's so interested in body modification why he isn't comfortable showing his face in public spaces how he literally lives in a shell and why the first thing he did when he started with tattoos was to label his own body hell hang on is he oh this chapter is so horny but a bit of background first in B Stars uty was a jackal and a high class successful businesswoman she was our introduction to melon's Club where we learned that she likes to masquerade as an anonymous herbivore and hook up with other women as the manga's first demonstrably gay character there's an element of role reversal here where her partner is shown to be a zebra that's dressed up as a predator this is also mirrored in legosi's choice to disguise himself as a deer like Louie because of course he did this is all to say that there's already precedent for this kind of storyline when this chapter of Beast complex introduces Aisha a tiger who is a hardworking businesswoman with her own saffic method of blowing off steam she visits a masseuse a female alpaca named Mar every week she tells herself it's because this is the only place in our modern woke Society where she can order an herbivore around but Marilyn sees right through her Aisha is actually here for the intimate contact she wants to be handled Marilyn doesn't mind Aisha's ulterior motive though because she also enjoys their reversal of roles there is one line that Aisha has yet to cross however she's afraid to show her belly because to carnivores this gesture means Sur rendering completely to someone she'd be making herself vulnerable this leaves her at a Crossroads since their interactions are escalating in intimacy but true intimacy requires honest vulnerability but all day every day she's walking on eggshells at work as a tiger she has to put extra effort into how she comes across to her co-workers so that they don't feel threatened it's a bit like how a professional Woman in real life needs to be assertive in order to function but may struggle to not be seen as [ __ ] because of the unfair double standards that she's forced to navigate Aisha keeps coming to the same masseuse every week always with the same ulterior motive but if she ever wants the full effect she needs to admit to herself what she's actually looking for a break from being a tiger oh I had no idea that not having to be a tiger but feels so good in a breakthrough Aisha lets Marilyn roll her onto her back and pins her wrists above her head now that she's exposed Marilyn observes that Aisha has no stripes on her belly which is normal for most animals but serves as a visual metaphor for how she's seeing a whole new submissive side of her it's a break in her pattern the one place where she's not a tiger Aisha cries but she does so alongside the internal monologue about how good she feels so it's likely that her tears are more a sign of how intensely she's feeling her emotions right now she has fully submitted herself to another woman to an herbivore and the roll reversal is complete what follows is ambiguous but not really we're told that it's all a blur that it didn't feel real but alongside that were given very real observations of how soft alpaca fleece is and how thankful Aisha is that the street outside is far too noisy for anyone to have heard them it's implied that Aisha has overcome something as a result of this breakthrough and that she's a healthier and happier person now your posture is so straight I almost didn't recognize you well take care kitten ah there it is it's like pup play it's a form of roleplay where you well reduce yourself you become something that's obedient and too simple-minded to understand silly things like student debt it's a form of escapism where you let someone else take charge the results being both kinky and therapeutic or so I've heard he said the cow is Rich and nag the alligator is poor they get caught in the rain together so they stop by hea's house to wait it out taking turns having a bath but when it's Nag's turn he starts drinking he's gamer girl bath water he calls it beef bullion there's some other stuff going on in the story about class disparity and whatnot but that's all off topic for the purposes of this video so I'll just leave you with that when heisa catches Nago drinking his bath water lost to his carnivore urges he might as well have caught him holding his used underwear this chapter is a lot so let me set the stage for a moment in chapter 100 of B Stars we learned that on the subway it's recommended that you only ride in the herbivore only car if you can along with the rest of polite Society this is because if you board the interspecies car well things get Rowdy and rumor has it that if an herbivore touches their cheeks three times they're saying go ahead devour me this didn't make it into my last be Stars video because I wasn't sure there was enough to talk about but when I first read this chapter I couldn't help but think is this cruising and flagging we'll get to the Beast complex chapter in a minute but for context cruising is a term that originated all the way back in the 1960s it refers to searching for public anonymous sex this might have taken place deep within large city parks near canals or really anywhere that makes it easy enough for two or more people to hide themselves from the view of passers by this kind of behavior comes with its own risks obviously but depending on your family your religion your state and the decade that you're living in as a queer person you might not have the luxury of persuading the mainstream Avenues towards carnal Pleasures so you meet a with a stranger under less than ideal circumstances you don't exchange names and then you part ways this is what happens when stigma forces people to hide folks make do it was an Open Secret that many bath houses survived largely off the backs of their gay clientele the Abundant steam providing ample opportunity to have some fun without getting recognized I'm saying all this because some countries are known to have a very particular recurring cruising spot as shown in the manga the back of a train particularly at night it makes sense I suppose you're temporarily off from the rest of the city and you can get on or get off wherever you want but when you do find your way to a cruising site how do you know which dudes are there searching for a hookup and which are just obliviously playing Pokémon go this is where flagging comes into play growing up in the '90s I already knew about the gay ear as a child before I really even knew what gay people were if a man had a single piercing on their left ear they were straight but if it was on their right ear they were gay not much of a secret if even I knew about it but apparently it originated back in the 7s the70s also gave us a somewhat more obscure Hanky Code men would wear colored bandanas hanging out of the back pockets of their pants left pocket for Tops right pocket for bottoms and the color of the bandan indicated what kinds of action you might be searching for the chart is very long and full of all sorts of words I can't say here but wait there's more asexuals would wear a black ring on their middle finger of the right hand to signal to other Ace people that they are not alone lesbians have been known for wearing their keys hanging from their hip on a carabiner clip once again left for top right for bottom oh and they had their own code where they'd paint all of their fingernails a single color except one and the color of that lone nail followed the same logic as the Hanky Code so knowing all this and knowing how much the series already conflates devouring with sexuality my brain lit right up when I saw seven board the Rowdy car of the train walk right up to Lego she at random and tap her cheeks three times to flag him this is where you go to be eaten right eat me at the end of volume 16 of be Stars parro igaki included a lengthy explanation meant to give context for chapter 100 I feel the need to bring this up because just like when I talked about Lego people are going to um actually me about the official explanation even though that's kind of missing the point since little of what I'm doing here has anything to do with divining authorial intent but in her story she says that she was going through a rough time and with a look tried to seduce a man on the train into kidnapping her upsetting implications aside this does mean that she took a real life story where she attempted to attract a man's sexual desire and represented it as a manga chapter where a sheep tries to get eaten by a wolf devouring and sexuality this connection is only reinforced when Lego she and 7 next meet where he's bricked up on meat withdrawals and pulls her into his bed anyway context giving tangent aside this chapter of Beast complex brings us back to the subway once again Gil is a Black Panther and an office worker PO is a sea otter who recently moved onto Land from the ocean and is very useful at Gil's company because he can speak both languages they share a train commute but whenever po reaches up to grip the handhold Gil is overcome with the desire to devour his hand Gil confesses to and apologizes for his urges in his tearful explanation he admits that the reason he wants to eat Poe so badly is because he's just been so lonely lately that's certainly not the justification that you'd expect him to use unless of course you're reading this chapter while already conflating the eating of meat with physical intimacy po confides that he'd never even heard of the word lonely until he left the sea to live among the people on land this is interesting because the only major difference we know between the sea and land animals in this setting is that it's a crime to eat meat on the surface but it's not a crime to eat meat in the ocean it's a reminder that queerness is inflicted Upon Us rather than being innate by which I mean how what makes us different is considered shameful rather than a mere neutral fact in the ocean po was merely po but now that he's on land PO is queer he's valued for his talents as a translator but he's shunned by his co-workers because they view his lunch as monstrous even though he's just living the same way that he always has he's being otherized for the first time in his life and so for the first time he has become lonely PO says that Gil is welcome to eat him whenever he wants to he then holds Gil's hand at which point it's helpfully explained that this is something that sea otter do with their mates so that they aren't separated by the ocean currents while they sleep they mates in case this all wasn't romantic enough already the train car doors open and a tide of bodies threatens to separate them they refuse to let go of each other so they're both swept outside together having been left on some random subway platform the two decide to make the most of the evening and go out together for drinks still holding hands so in this reading this was a story about two men who felt isolated one of which was explicitly shunned by Society for who he is who then found companionship through a moment of intimacy on the train MAA is a zebra who was catfished by an actual cat her dating app match is Atari a white tiger who claims to be a fellow zebra online they Clash at first but eventually accept that most people are a bit dishonest when they're trying to find dates ma ends up going along with it even though she's an herbivore and her date is a carnivore claiming to be an herbivore it turns out that white tigers are extremely rare about one in 100 and at has struggled to fit in with his own kind his last girlfriend a tiger with color only took black and white photos seemingly because she was embarrassed to be with him and other Tigers call him slurs m Embraces him and takes him to an old zebra dance club where his stripes can blend with her kind unquestioned to their credit no one seems to reject ADI but he freaks out and flees the premises seeing himself as a monster the chapter ends with mik asking him to find her again when he's ready without the app as if by Fate I loved this chapter I loved how Atri is drawn just this big soft man with large naive eyes chaotic Stripes contrasting against his solid black shirt it's a great design I love how we're shown their forearms matching from across the table and how the window blinds connect them in Stripes of Shadow and light as they bond I'm not super attached to this interpretation but I do see a subtle transness in atari's story after all the idea that one in 100 Tigers is randomly born colorless isn't that far off from the percentage of our population that has a queer gender expression it's a bit of a stretch but it invites some interesting connections speaking of which at is ky about his identity and unwilling to show his face online which has made dating a challenge worse he knows that once he actually meets someone he's going to have to broach the thorny subject regarding the parts of him that he kept a secret and why he wasn't upfront about them to a person that might now be very mad at him it puts him at a disadvantage forcing him to navigate some very difficult social situations he's willing to take the risk however because the one thing he does know is that the life that he's been living as a tiger definitely isn't working today he's lucky to have met Mika who is surprised at first but quickly adapts to the news but when Atri gets exactly what he wanted he has a bit of an episode in that club he's immersed within the very identity that he had assumed as his own and no one rejects him no one but himself in an act born of internalized self-hatred he removes himself from the party disgusted in himself to me his reaction the sudden insistence that their stripes were nothing alike all along reads as dysphoric this is what's so interesting to me about this bittersweet ending that at's conflict here comes from within it's the ugly but honest feeling of someone that hasn't fully processed what they're going through he's not ready but M recognizing this sweetly reminds at that when he has come to terms with himself she'll be waiting she accepted him now he just needs to accept himself okay I actually tried to write a mini essay about every chapter but I ended up cutting most of them because the script got really confusing if I didn't stick to my thesis but if you're wondering what else goes on in Beast complex here's a lightning round chapter 4 establishes the Black Market before Stars was even published chapter 5 is about a cooking show with Two Hosts a carnivore and an herbivore which brings the politics of cooking in this universe to the Forefront chapter six is about a fox girl suffering from stereotype threat while paradoxically praising a chameleon boy for embracing his nature chapter n tells us that animals with white fur are called brights and that they get poached for their fur so they live in a separate District but one kangaroo has spots on her inner thigh so she's upsetting forced to sleep with anyone who finds out to keep her secret it feels oddly like the ones who walk away from Omas chapter 10 is about a la bird who's about to lose his easy gig flying his rodent housemate to and from work in Chapter 13 a python discovers that his hyena classmate hung himself so he panics and swallows him whole the VOR vored vely that day chapter 13 is another legosi story that expands on sea creature morality but we got into that stuff elsewhere chapter 18 expands on AO a minor be star's character and makes her kind of fascinating challenging the idea of the perfect victim in chapter 22 for some reason paru igaki wanted to share with us the fun fact that snakes have two penises she actually drew them he's a nurse chapter 23 shows us a dog that's so fixated on people's smells that he stalks them but the wolf he's stalking turns out to be Hannibal Lecter in chapter 24 a chameleon is saddled with taking care of a baby penguin which basically cures his alcoholism and then just last week we got chapter 25 where we learned that after 3 years together Haru and legosi still haven't had sex in fact they're still sleeping in separate beds I'm not sure if they've even kissed I'm honestly not sure what paru daki has planned for these two at this point I mean he's basically still been more intimate with Lou than he ever has been with Haru it's wild but that's where we've left off I skipped over those chapters because I didn't complement my thesis and I have to admit that that makes me feel like a fraud sometimes a volume of Beast complex generally has six chapters and on average I spoke about three of them from each book so two videos Deep now I ask myself am I cheating there are some stories I could try harder to make fit in one way or another like that chapter about the brights which highlights how a minority group is still capable of Cruelty and may contain a smaller intersectional group whose needs aren't met but then you have chapters like the one about the classmate who hung himself that's a pretty straightforward story about how people who are cruel to you might be dealing with their own stuff I could find more to write about it sure but I can't really stretch it back to my original topic and stretch is probably the right word for it at the end of the day B stars is a very flexible story setting filled with recurring subtextual implications it's about carnivores and herbivores it's about racism and interracial marriage it's about how all cops are bastards it's about the women that live in Daily fear of sexual violence it's about the men that feel tainted by what other men have done it's about queerness and living under stigma it's about facing an uncertain future and choosing to live it as yourself given how many plates this thing has spinning it's a wonder that it still ends up with a queer narrative even half the time and that last bit about the future might be the truest thing I can say about Beast complex so many of the stories feature a character that stands at a threshold in their life needing a push to face what lies Beyond it's easy to see why this setting was so meaningful to me two years ago when I was on the cusp of finally coming out as gay but here's the thing that choice to face your future is an illusion your future is coming whether you choose it or not time doesn't stop to wait for your self-doubt to clear the only thing that's frozen by your indecision is you the great conjunction is the end of the world oh the beginning end begin all the same big change Sometimes good sometimes bad each of these characters is to varying degrees coming to a realization that marks the end of their life as they've known it and then the story just ends rarely do we get to see how things play out we just know that they were faced with a choice keep living as a cobble together amalgam of what Society has told you to be or face uncertainty and live as your true self and considering how every chapter begins with a character that is stuck in time and ends when they become unstuck Beast complex has found its answer [Music] Thrive if you enjoyed this video please consider supporting my work on patreon it's seriously the only reason that I'm able to do what I do like this this channel has made a total of $2,300 in the last calendar year it's not nothing but considering how each video can easily take upwards of 200 or 300 hours for me to make well uhoh patreon supporters also had Early Access to this video for a full month it's not normally supposed to be for that long but I underestimated how long I was going to take to find enough voice actors for this one and hey I just brought back my Q&A Series so why not drop by and ask a question if not I'll I'll see you in my next video thanks for watching