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coldmail750 · 1 year

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In the continuing saga of me rambling about Beastars - having rambled at length now about four carnivore character arcs, I'd like to talk a bit about an herbivore character arc, one that is one of my favorite arcs in the series, and one that gets done incredibly dirty by how the series ends:

Louis's.

I'll Never Forgive Chapter 194

or, the Ignominious Death of One of Beastars's Best Character Arcs

So at the end of part two of the carnivore parallels essay, I summarized my thoughts on the deeply dysfunctional societal dynamic in Beastars:

...this carnivore-herbivore societal arrangement, as it stands, works for nobody. Herbivores live their lives in constant fear and regularly face either infantilization or objectification, carnivores live with constant self-loathing either for being carnivores or for not being carnivore enough, and hybrids get all the downsides of both with the upsides of neither.

In the same way that Paru uses Legoshi, Bill, Riz, and Ibuki to explore what it's like to live in the society of Beastars as a carnivore, Paru uses Louis to explore what it's like to live in this society as an herbivore - but, given Louis's backstory, he's also got a lot going on that's specific to him (in comparison to characters like Haru and Sebun, from whom we get a picture of slightly more standard herbivore life).

For the purposes of this essay, we're going to be focusing more on that Louis-specific stuff, but we will come back to the broader societal dynamics, because that is still an integral part.

So what is Louis's arc, then?

Louis's character progression, simply put, is him growing more confident with 1) not following the course laid out for him and 2) doing things that society does not approve of.

See, there's a fundamental clash going on between Louis's personality and Louis's situation. On the one hand, Louis is a very strong-willed character. He knows what he wants, is absolutely determined to get it, and has very little patience for anyone who would stand in his way. Indeed, Louis's insistence on living his life on his own terms is a hill he is literally willing to die on, which is part of why Oguma adopts him:

But Louis has never actually been able to live his life on his own terms. As a young child, he lived his life on the terms of the black market, as a piece of meat to be sold and consumed for profit. Adoption by Oguma meant salvation from the black market, but it didn't free Louis from living his life on someone else's terms; it simply changed the "someone else" from the black market to Oguma.

Oguma adopted Louis for a very explicit reason - he needed a respectable heir, another deer that he could pass off as his son who would make a respectable name for himself in school, graduate from a prestigious university, marry someone of the same species and the opposite gender, and inherit the Horns Conglomerate. That is the course that was laid out for Louis the moment Oguma adopted him, the terms by which he has lived ever since.

We can add to that the general Beastars societal pressures - that they will marry within their species, for example - and the societal pressures upon herbivores - that herbivores will hate and fear carnivores, for example - that Louis no doubt was exposed to regularly throughout childhood simply by virtue of living in the world that he did. These societal pressures are largely in line with - or, at the minimum, not in opposition to - the course laid out for him by Oguma, so we can group them together.

So what happens, then, if what Louis wants clashes with the course laid out for him by Oguma and by society? The way the answer to that question changes is how Louis's arc progresses.

At the beginning of the story... okay, to talk about where Louis stands at the beginning of the story, we have to talk about Adler.

Watching how Louis plays the character of Adler tells us how Louis approaches a role. When early manga Louis is playing the role of Adler, he gets really into it; he is constantly practicing, he drags Odie to an illicit nighttime practice to make sure that Odie's performance doesn't drag him down, he memorizes the lines so thoroughly that he can recall them months later, and - crucially - he insists on attempting to play the role even at the expense of his own health, as we see when he attempts to play the role of Adler even on a broken leg, only stopping when he is literally no longer able to due to his injury.

Louis, as it happens, is constantly playing a role - the role of the dutiful, obedient son who does what is expected of him by society and his father - and, at the start of the story, he is invested in playing that role just as much as he is invested in playing the role of Adler the Grim Reaper.

But that dutiful, obedient son is just as much a fictional character as Adler, and even at the very beginning of Beastars, the role is beginning to slip a little when what Louis wants contradicts what's expected of him.

The proof of this is his relationship with Haru. Given the choice between the expectation of his arranged same-species marriage with Azuki and pursuing an interspecies relationship with a rabbit, Louis chooses the latter - but he obsessively tries to cover this up, keep it on the down-low, to give the impression that he's chosen the former. He wants to make it look like he's playing the dutiful son... but he's already kind of unsure about it.

This is symbolically alluded to by the fact that, when Haru and Louis first met, Louis had shed his antlers. Antlers are symbol of a male deer's virility, it's shameful to be seen without them (which is why Louis is trying to hide in the gardening club to begin with), and Louis acts embarrassed when he realizes he's about to kiss Haru while without antlers. But it also works as a way of symbolizing that Louis is clandestinely rejecting the course laid out for him by his father, the course that has him marrying Azuki and taking over the Horns Conglomerate; Louis is literally hiding the fact that he is without Horns.

The next time he's confronted with this choice between what's expected of him and what he wants is when Haru is kidnapped by the Shishigumi. He can either leave Haru to die, which will lead to the mayor erasing the records linking him to the black market, and continue with the plan that he will become Cherryton's beastar, marry Azuki, and succeed his father at Horns; or he can try to save her, at risk to his own life.

Louis tries to force himself to pick the first option. As he tried to play Adler until it broke him physically, he tries to play the obedient son until it breaks him mentally. He snaps, and - like the character Adler - decides that he'll prove his love through death; he charges into the Shishigumi's headquarters, murders their boss, and tells the underlings to kill him, giving Legoshi and Haru the chance to escape.

Of course, the Shishigumi does not kill Louis here, and this marks a turning point for his character development. Before Haru's kidnapping, Louis consistently attempts to pick "what's expected of me", and if he picks "what I want", he does so as furtively as possible.

After Haru's kidnapping, but before the final climax of his arc, Louis consistently picks "what I want" over "what's expected of me", and does so in front of more and more people... but still tries to not draw too much attention to it, justifying his actions only when necessary, and sometimes still telling himself and those around him "I'm definitely doing what's expected of me still, you must be mistaken".

So throughout the bulk of the manga - everything between the fight with the Shishigumi and the fight with Melon - that's Louis's modus operandi. When given a choice between the expectation that he will seek to return to normal society and his preordained course as soon as possible, or staying on as the head of the Shishigumi, he picks the latter; but the only person he tells about this is Oguma, as part of a failed effort to break his familial ties with his father, with Legoshi discovering it by chance and Juno deducing it herself.

When given a choice between sticking to this prejudice against carnivores which herbivores are expected to have, and abandoning it, realizing that he's come to deeply care about and even love the carnivores in his life, Louis picks the latter; he allows Legoshi to eat his leg, a transgression of this world's ultimate societal taboo, to help Legoshi defeat Riz. This stands as a total rejection of Louis's previous bigotry, the overcoming of his childhood trauma, and an expression of just how close he and Legoshi have become - but he keeps it and his reasons for doing it relatively quiet, and, in the same vein, usually hides the fact that he has a prosthesis afterwards.

When given a choice between accepting the title of Cherryton beastar, the sort of high school honor that would look great on the resume of a future Horns CEO, the accolade everyone has been expecting him to win, and refusing it because Legoshi deserves just as much credit but definitely won't get it, Louis picks the latter, and only explains why to Cherryton's headmaster.

The example of this change in habit that is the easiest for comparison, however, is his relationship with Juno.

While Louis's relationship with Legoshi is one based in their having been forged in the same flames, that knowledge that they can rely on each other when they need it, trust the other with their secrets and their lives unconditionally, Louis's relationship with Juno is wrapped up in an... almost envy? for her willingness to pursue his own wants - as is his relationship with Haru.

Haru and Juno are both open about their own wants, as opposed to what society expects of them, in a way that Louis feels he cannot be. Haru knows that being promiscuous is societally vilified, will result in her being shunned and bullied, but she does it anyways, because sex is the only time she's treated like a person, not an object, and she wants to be treated like a person. Juno knows that her entering a different-species relationship with a deer would be societally frowned upon, openly wrestles with this in front of Louis, and ultimately ends up angrily shouting that she loves a deer live on national television.

Louis wants to be able to openly wrestle against societal expectation and do what he wants, consequences be damned, like Haru and Juno do - and he does a little, letting Haru see him without his horns and letting Juno see his prosthesis - but he feels like he can't truly do it because of the expectations imposed on him by Oguma.

The specific contrast between Louis's relationship with Haru and Louis's relationship with Juno that I want to talk about, however, is how and where Louis conducts his relationship with each. Louis's relationship with Haru was something he conducted almost entirely beyond closed doors - a furtive thing that they shared only in places where they thought no one could see them, the quiet dark of the gardening club shed or a space hidden between tents at the Meteor Festival.

Louis's relationship with Juno is something he has in bubble tea cafes, at bus stops, in school hallways, on the metro - in public.

Of course, he insists to himself and to her that it's nothing, he's just indulging her. But no matter how much he tries to convince Juno and himself that nothing is going on here, Louis has once again chosen his personal feelings over the course his father laid out for him, and he's getting increasingly comfortable with doing so openly.

So that's where Louis stands for the bulk of the manga; he's increasingly comfortable with openly doing what he wants rather than what is expected of him, but still feels bound enough by what is expected of him that he avoids calling attention to this fact and still attempts to pretend, at times, that nothing is happening and he's going to precisely follow the course his father laid out for him.

Louis's relationship with Juno (and his relationships with Haru and Legoshi) all stand in contrast to his "relationship" with Azuki, his preordained fiancée.

While Haru and Juno demonstrate a willingness to wrestle against and ignore societal pressures that Louis secretly admires, and Legoshi is overcoming his own internalization of societal messaging in part through his relationship with Louis, Azuki embodies the outside pressures upon Louis. She is same-species, opposite-sex, also of the upper crust, the person who Oguma has arranged Louis to marry.

But there is no relationship, really, between Louis and Azuki. They have met each other a handful of times. Their interactions are stilted and awkward; neither much cares about the other beyond the fact that they are obliged to marry, because their marriage represents a corporate merger between Horns and Azuki's father's corporation. When Louis tries to force himself to become intimate with her, he cannot stop thinking about all the carnivores he actually cares about, and, ultimately, vomits.

The contrast is clear. While Louis's relationships with Haru, Legoshi, and Juno aren't exactly smooth sailing - they're all working through a lot, after all - it's clear that they are actual relationships with people Louis actually cares about, as opposed to his hollow, artificial construct of an outside obligation with Azuki.

There's one more event before the Melon fight that I'd like to talk about, though, and that's Oguma's death.

See, Oguma knows that Louis's "dutiful son" role is an act. Louis gets angry at Oguma over the fact that Oguma never attended any of Louis's plays not over the literal plays themselves but because he is constantly performing a role for someone who is never there to watch the performance; Oguma outright tells Louis that the reason he never went to one of his shows is because he wants Louis's wedding to Azuki to be the first time he sees Louis putting on his best performance.

It seems reasonable to assume that Oguma knows that this is an act because he has spent his entire life putting on the same act. That, once upon a time, Oguma's father laid the same path for him - make a respectable name for himself in school, graduate from a prestigious university, marry someone of the same species and the opposite gender, and inherit the Horns Conglomerate - and that Oguma devoted himself to it, played the part exactly as he was told to.

Since then, as Oguma tells us, he has devoted every aspect of his life to the Horns Conglomerate. He has treated every choice he's made as a business decision, evaluated every relationship he has ever made based on whether or not it was profitable for Horns - and was good at it, the company reaping the profits of his diligence and his devotion.

But now, on his deathbed, he's realized something.

There's one relationship he can't quantify.

Oguma was not a good father to Louis. He was near-totally absent from his son's life, interacting with him once a week; he imposed heavy expectations on Louis, expectations which Louis has spent the entirety of the manga suffering because of. The only halfway-decent father figure Louis had in his life was a lion in the yakuza.

But Oguma did love Louis - felt unable to express it, because of the expectations that he inherited from his father and passed on to his son, but did love him. And now, on his deathbed, Oguma realizes that this is his last chance to tell Louis that a real, loving relationship is more valuable than any business relationship, to the point of being beyond quantification, to tell his son that he loves him.

And as his final act upon the earth, Oguma says "let me do the most unprofitable thing", and hugs Louis.

When Oguma adopted Louis, he freed him from the black market, but he didn't free Louis from having to live his life on someone else's terms. On his deathbed, Oguma rights that wrong by telling Louis that love is more precious than profit - that what Louis wants is more important than that path ending at Horns.

With that, we can finally arrive at the climax of Louis's arc - the press conference during the Melon fight.

When Louis gets behind the podium at that press conference, he has to choose between giving a normal boilerplate speech about how business will continue at the Horns Conglomerate with him as CEO, sliding into the role he was raised for from the moment Oguma adopted him; or, he can bring up the black market, breach every societal taboo about meat-eating and carnivore-herbivore relations, and proclaim openly that he cares about deeply about a wolf and that that wolf is in danger.

As with Haru's kidnapping, this is a choice where his previous strategy for dealing with the conflict between what's expected of him and what he wants no longer works. Where Haru's kidnapping put him in a position where he could no longer pretend to pick the former while clandestinely picking the latter, causing him to shift to picking the latter but not drawing attention to it, he now finds himself in a position where, if he's going to do what he wants, he has to draw attention to it. He has to defy his preordained path, explicitly, live on national TV.

And that's exactly what he does.

Louis has seen the harm the expectations imposed by the society of Beastars can do. He has seen how they hurt Haru, Legoshi, Juno, Bill, Ibuki, Riz, his father, himself. He has watched people bend and break under them, felt the pressure to do so himself, struggled against it his entire life.

But now he has stared down those societal norms that cause or perpetuate so much of the suffering the characters of Beastars face, and won. He is no longer ashamed and fearful like the fawn in the cage, nor embittered and hateful like the young stag we met when the series began, but confident and optimistic. He has gone from feeling the need to bend or break under the expectations upon him, expectations that forced him to choose between what was "acceptable" and the people he cared most about, to using his power and his influence to help change what society expects.

This - Louis's total rejection of the path laid out for him in favor of carving a new path, a better path, alongside the people he cares about - is his great triumph, the culmination of one of the best character arcs I have ever read.

And then comes chapter 194.

Louis, having completed his arc, is given one final choice. He can follow the course laid out for him by his father, have his loveless but societally-approved arranged marriage with Azuki and wholly submit to being the next CEO of the Horns Conglomerate; or he can reject that, "do the most unprofitable thing", and continue his relationships with the people he actually loves.

The manga has very clearly set up Louis and Juno as romantic partners. It's clear that there's a lot going on between Legoshi and Louis, who are incredibly close and whose relationship is a fan favorite. If I'd been writing the manga I would've just made Legoshi, Haru, Louis, and Juno a polycule. If he suddenly declared his love for some random other character he'd never even interacted with before it... would be unsatisfying for a lot of other reasons, but it would still technically kind of fit with his progression as a character, because it would still be him choosing his desires over societal & familial expectations.

The only clearly wrong choice here, the choice which it makes no sense for Louis to make and which cannot be reconciled with his growth as a person, is for him - having been freed from his father's expectations by Oguma on his deathbed, having totally rejected the societal pressures upon him on national television at the culmination of the manga's final battle - to suddenly, inexplicably, for no good reason, throw all of his character development out of the window and cave to marrying Azuki.

siiiiiiiiigggggghhhhhhhhhh

The bleakness of this ending is amplified even more by a detail in the following chapter, where Haru tells Legoshi that she got a very short call from Louis, and it becomes clear that Louis hasn't just broken up with Juno to marry Azuki, he's stopped talking with Legoshi and is barely contacting Haru. Louis, whose entire arc has been about him learning to choose his own wants and the people he cares about over the path demanded of him by society, is now inexplicably cutting every person he cares about out of his life in the name of caving to societal pressure.

Look, I have a lot of respect for Paru Itagaki. She wrote the entirety of the character arc that I've spent the past god-knows-how-many paragraphs raving about, this wonderful narrative of a character who gets introduced as an asshole rich kid but becomes incredibly complex, compelling, and sympathetic, and did it all while working under a grueling schedule. But her decision to end Louis's arc like this is baffling and terrible all at once, and it still drives me up the wall two years later.

This is not to say she doesn't try to make it make sense. Louis says that he needs to marry Azuki because he needs to stay on as Horns CEO, and he needs to stay on as Horns CEO so that he can buy the Shishigumi a way out of prison and into his employ.

But that justification doesn't work because of a big piece of foreshadowing that, because of what happens to Louis's arc, ends up going nowhere: the whole "beastars" thing.

Paru Itagaki does a lot to foreshadow the idea that Louis and Legoshi are going to become co-beastars. After Louis refuses to become Cherryton beastar because Legoshi won't get any credit, headmaster Gon turns to Cherryton's deputy headmaster and tells him that it's a real shame that those two won't be a model for society to look to.

Shortly after that, we're introduced to Yahya, the sublime beastar, and to Gosha, Legoshi's grandfather. Yahya and Gosha just so happen to deeply resemble who Louis and Legoshi were at the start of their arcs - an herbivore who deeply hates carnivores because of an incident in their past, and a carnivore who allows himself to be feared and hated by those around him - and just so happen to have once dreamed of becoming co-beastars, before they went their separate ways.

Not long after that, we're told that Yahya is beginning to get too old to be sublime beastar, that his body is declining and he will soon no longer have the physical acuity or resistance to do the job he does, and that even Yahya is beginning to have to admit this to himself - in short, that soon someone will need to replace him.

We get an entire chapter about how Yahya once used his sublime beastar powers to get the 500 Cornered Rats - a gang of criminals who were captured by the police - released from prison so that he could take them on as his subordinates, which is important inasmuch as it establishes that Yahya can pardon Legoshi's conviction for predation and thereby allow him to marry Haru, but also clearly establishes that there is precedent for a sublime beastar pardoning and then hiring a criminal gang - something that would be really useful for Louis if, hypothetically speaking, the Shishigumi were captured and imprisoned.

Then, in chapter 158, Legoshi and Louis go to the black market, to the tower where Louis was once imprisoned, to the balcony where Oguma once told Louis he would change the world, and Legoshi proposes to Louis that the two of them should work together to change the world, that the two of them could be the beastars.

Louis even responds to this by making a big show of saying that Legoshi is being ridiculous, he can't just make up the title of the manga we're reading!

All of this foreshadowing is pointing so clearly in one direction. Everything that Paru has set up is absolutely screaming that Yahya will wipe Legoshi's conviction and then name Louis and Legoshi as his successors, the beastars; that Louis and Legoshi will build on the previous generation and succeed where they failed, with each other - and Haru and Juno - by their sides, standing as a new, healthier example of how carnivores and herbivores can live, work, and love truthfully, honestly, in solidarity alongside each other.

Louis, then, can use his sublime beastar powers to free and hire the Shishigumi, and break his betrothal to Azuki while giving her Horns - the only part of Louis she was actually interested in - since he's too busy to run it anyways.

It works as a culmination of the character progressions involved; it fulfills all of this brilliant foreshadowing Paru has set up; it makes the name of the manga work, because it establishes Beastars as having been the story of how Louis and Legoshi became the beastars. Everything ties together so neatly, so perfectly, so brilliantly.

Instead, all of this foreshadowing goes... nowhere. Legoshi gets an ending that's perfectly adequate but unexceptional, Louis's arc gets thrown in the trash, Yahya resigns from being sublime beastar but then keeps doing the work even though it was age interfering with his ability to work that was the issue anyways, all the stuff about "beastars" leads to nothing, and the manga just kind of fizzles out.

Again, Itagaki tries to offer some justification for this decision, putting the words into Louis's mouth:

I don't find this argument, this claim that Louis remaining close to the people he cares about most and becoming co-beastar with Legoshi would be too much like the plot of an overly saccharine movie, to be convincing.

Firstly, Louis and Legoshi becoming beastars with Haru and Juno at their side would not be a magic fix to all of the societal issues that Paru Itagaki demonstrated through her characters throughout the course of Beastars. Systemic change is slow, difficult progress, and it is never guaranteed that gains made will be kept. While Louis and Legoshi becoming beastars would represent the potential emergence of a new paradigm and the hope that change is possible, it wouldn't represent the issues they struggled to overcome being magically resolved overnight; but I don't think anyone unsatisfied with how Beastars ended is pretending that it would.

Secondly, even if Louis and Legoshi becoming beastars did magically fix all of the societal issues in Beastars going forward (which, again, it wouldn't and shouldn't, but just for the sake of argument), it wouldn't preclude the ending being bittersweet, because for a lot of characters, it's too late. It's too late entirely for Tem, for Ibuki, for Toki and Leano. Melon, psychologically, has been broken beyond repair; Riz will spend years in prison for what he did; Gosha and Yahya, once fast friends, spent thirty years not speaking to each other that they can't get back; Louis lost his childhood and Oguma lost the chance to have a proper relationship with his son.

Even if everything was magically fixed, the people who were hurt would still bear the scars - and I think that's plenty of bitter to balance out the sweet.

So there we have it. Paru Itagaki gave Louis one of the best damn character arcs I'd ever read, one that is incredibly layered and compelling, executed it masterfully from its inception to the final climax of the work, and then fumbled it in the final chapters, throwing out her own foreshadowing and leaving us with an ending that was a mixed bag on the whole and that, for Louis specifically, was outright terrible.

I guess that's why I'm still not over it, two years later, even though Beastars isn't even my most recent furry fixation anymore. It's agonizing to see something that was so enthralling and compelling get obliterated at the last possible moment, to think about what could have been, and to have the knowledge of what it ended up being looming over you every time you come back to the work.

I still love Beastars. But the way that Louis's arc ends, and the way the entire ending of the series got weakened to make his arc end that way... that's something I think I'll always be at least a little bit bitter about.

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cherishsscene · 1 year

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Songs from my playlist that remind me of Beastars characters: Louis

This is just gonna be a small series of posts making connections to songs I like and characters from Beastars because these mfs live in my head rent free. These might not be the most accurate but this is just for fun.

Song: The Family Jewels - MARINA Character: Louis

!!SPOILERS ALL THE WAY TO CHAPTER 196 AHEAD!!

Now this song is about Marina’s relationship with her divorced parents. I think this song makes a lot of sense for Louis since a lot the series is focused on his strained relationship with his father. Marina is singing about her feeling of disconnect from her parents and feeling the need to play a role in front of others to keep their clean family image. Almost entirely of Louis’s character is him playing different roles throughout his life, both literally and metaphorically.

With the opening lyric “I can’t break the cycle, am I just a fool?” you can relate it with the fact that Louis feels like he’s one of the people who are capable changing their society’s rules. He’s taking a different approach to this than Legosi. Louis uses his political influence while Legosi uses his natural strength. Systemic change is very slow and takes a lot of effort. There’s always going to be people that oppose you and that makes it easy to lose hope. Louis goes through the constant battle of choosing between what looks good for him and what he actually wants. Oguma frequently pushes back on Louis’s efforts in order to craft Louis into a person fit to be the CEO of Horns. This lyric connects back to Louis during the ending of the series where he cuts contact with everybody and still chooses to stay as CEO in a loveless-arranged marriage(I’m trying so hard to make sense of this ending lmao). He even says “But this is not a movie. You can’t have everything.” He feels like the only way to shape society in his vision is to comply with what is expected of him for the time being. Thus making him feel like his efforts to break this “cycle” were in vain. Even if he says he already changed the world, I feel like he doesn’t actually mean that.

I do think the connection between the song and Louis kinda falls apart with the lyric “Don’t you find it strange? Only thing we share is one last name” since Louis is adopted so him and Oguma don’t exactly share names, but you can then relate that to the only thing Louis and Oguma have in common is their species. Oguma only adopted Louis because he wanted another red deer he could pass off as his biological son. He only raised Louis for the purpose of inheriting Horns and keep the bloodline going, not with the purpose of creating a bond with him. Louis grows resentment for his father as he grows older because he’s realizing that fact more and more. Which is why Louis feels a disconnect from his father for most the series. It’s only until Louis is at the side of Oguma’s hospital bed when he realizes that his father just never really knew how to show his love.

“Did I beat you at your own game? Typical of me to put us all to shame” I can see this as Louis frequently doing things that could stain his reputation as future CEO from the public view. He tries to hide his true thoughts in the beginning but only grows more confident as the series continues; like at first hiding his injury when rehearsing so he doesn’t show weakness to leaving everybody to join the Shishigumi to asking Legosi to eat his foot(the symbol for all the emotional damage he’s been carrying) and ect. It almost looks like he attracts trouble. His scandals grow and Oguma pushes him to go to University and form a bond with Azuki because it’s what he set for Louis. It would be shameful if the CEO’s past, from his roots in the black market to what he did for Legosi, was revealed to the public when he’s supposed to be one of the products of perfection, a wealthy family, a high education, high status, powerful marriage, ect.

“Family said that I decided to live a loveless life. Is it my fault we stay divided?” Louis doesn’t have any blood related family but you could say he’s made his own family by the end (family that he ends up forgetting about in the end for no good reason but whatever) and we don’t get much of their personal opinions but I interpret his final train ride with Juno as her knowing this will be their last time seeing each other because Louis will have to focus on bigger things. Juno sees that Louis’s new life is completely different to the one she’s seen in the past and lets him feel something that she knows he’ll never get to experience again, a kiss with fangs. I’d imagine she knows that Louis decided to take a path he doesn’t agree with but reluctantly chose anyways; but you can say it’s not entirely his fault. People like Haru, Juno, and Legosi aren’t tied down to status or the future of a corporation so they can choose how to move forward with their lives; but Louis doesn’t get the same amount autonomy and is bound to this life he can’t negotiate his way out of. Which is showing how divided they truly are based on class and species.

“Simmerin’ sapphire can’t keep his cool” Louis has worked his entire life to move higher on the social latter even though he gets frustrated with a lot of it. When you feel like you’re living a lie you naturally start to rebel little by little. This dilemma of choosing what he wants for himself vs what is expected of him has been simmering for years. Louis was crafted to be a perfect jewel yet he doesn’t always comply with it out of spite. He forms a friends with benefits relationship with a rabbit even though he’s already engaged, starts running with the Shishigumi, gives up his foot to help aid a vigiliante, and further associates himself with said vigilante. Louis’s final act of retaliation with this life is when he talks about the most taboo topic on live TV: the Black Market. This is the moment when this sapphire finally loses his composure.

And lastly for the lyric I think fits the best with Louis “Coal to diamond, sold to fools”. Louis started out at the bottom of society; as livestock only raised to be eaten. He was saved by Oguma who bought him and promised him a privileged life and a privileged future. Louis’s whole life is supposed to be preparation for him to take over Oguma’s legacy; from the minute he was bought to present day. Louis’s whole character was put under pressure for this, to shape him into the perfect CEO, much like with a piece of coal. Coal has to be put under intense pressure to become the beautiful jewel everybody covets. And nobody in the public eye that Louis is trying to lead knows the full extent of all the struggles he had to go through to get to his position. All they see is the new, shiny CEO of Horns who has it all. Louis knows this and makes sure he’s displaying this image to society, and they just eat it up. Even though barely anyone knows, Louis started all the way from the very bottom to the top of the social hierarchy, he’s had to mold and polish coal into diamond for his whole life. He sells a facade to a society of “fools”

Link to song, really worth a listen: https://open.spotify.com/track/4pRfzrPuKvtqYGwOJ5F6ZZ

Those are some of my interpretations of Louis’s character, this was kinda longer than expected but I hope this was worth a quick read

#beastars #beastars analysis #louis beastars #legosi #beastars oguma #textpost #I wrote this over several days and finishing this off late at night #kinda tired but kinda worth it #just for fun

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