Legoshi has an awkward interaction with the rabbit Haru in the hallway (she falls and drops everything, he helps her up). Then they sit together for a meal, which is even more awkward. Legoshi feels strangely drawn towards her, and wonders if it’s more than just blood lust. We meet a chicken character who earns cash by selling her unfertilized eggs- that are made into sandwiches eaten by her fellow carnivorous classmates. Kind of unsettling. She tells no one, but takes pride in the quality of her eggs. Leogshi meets a younger, female wolf who’s also in drama- and his friends tease that of course they must date (but he doesn’t want to). A bunch of the guys go into town later and Legoshi is exposed to a disturbing black market, where desperate herbivores sell their body parts to supply real meat to carnivores willing to pay for illegal goods. (There’s also meat from mortuaries and hospitals on the market, it’s not really explained why that isn’t legal, would make sense in this world). It’s a very dangerous place. While there, Legoshi meets a dark character, a violent panda who runs a health clinic of sorts (this was unclear to me) and tries to impose his idea of order on the illegal market. The panda challenges Legoshi to find out where his true nature lies.

Borrowed from the public library.

The wolf Legoshi goes to the garden club space to collect roses for decorating something, and encounters that rabbit girl from the other night. She recalls nothing- in fact she starts flirting with him. He is alarmed by his strong emotions and flees- and later hears from others that -ahem- she really gets around. There’s trouble in the drama club because the star actor Louis suffers a stress fracture and has to be replaced on the second day of performance- by the tiger. And Legoshi gets roped into a role too- he’d been much more comfortable working backstage. A fight onstage between their two characters becomes all too real. Louis reappears and breaks things up- causing wild applause from the audience of fans. So we have a wolf with a hesitant, sensitive temperament who fears his violent urges, a tiger who enjoys engaging in his wilder instincts whenever he can, and an arrogant young stag whose greatest ambition is to “rule” the school with top social status, showing his physical might even though he’s not one of the predators. It’s starting to feel interesting.

Borrowed from the public library.

Sometimes you pick up something out of idle curiosity, and end up reading outside your comfort zone, and the story turns out to be rather compelling and unlike anything you’ve read before, so you keep going even when it gets weird . . . that’s where I am. (Still behind myself in typing up reviews- I’m currently on volume 8 of this series, with quite a few other books scattered in between).

This is very reminiscent of Zootopia, at first- but quickly proves to be more serious, with far darker undertones (more like the original online comic that Zootopia was based on- which I read a lot of and then couldn’t find it anymore). A world populated by anthropomorphic animals- they all have human-like posture, wear clothes, have jobs and go to school, etc.- but also with characteristics and instincts like real animals too. Setting is a high school, divided into cliques mostly based on whether the animal is a carnivore or an herbivore (what about the omnivores? and I was confused why the hippo was pictured on the carnivore side, I thought they eat grass). Well, in the opening pages a student gets murdered and everyone suspects one of the carnivores did it. The herbivores are nervous and on edge, the carnivores resentful of being under suspicion. The deceased student and the main character- a wolf named Legoshi- are both in the drama club, which seems pretty serious business here. Legoshi is a predator who feels at odds with his feral instincts. There’s one very tense scene where he encounters a female dwarf rabbit student after dark and accosts her, having some strong urges (to attack?) but is startled by someone else approaching and lets go before he does anything. There’s also tension between the drama students over who gets the missing actor’s role, and the red deer guy in charge seems very full of himself, having power over the others.

Eh- I don’t know. I have a few of these checked out but the series seems very long. Do I really want to read a murder mystery high-school-angsty drama full of animals? I do really like the sketchy penwork line drawings- though sometimes confused what species the smaller animals are– and the leopard for example was so lanky I thought she was a cheetah for most of the book!

Borrowed from the public library.