Love?
News of Legoshi’s outburst get around school in episode 5 of Beastars as the paper distorts exactly what happened. Isolating himself from the others, Legoshi decides to stay back and avoid the crowds with his friend Jack, who stays to offer him support. When Legoshi mentions potentially being in love, Joe immediately sparks into action and asks him who it could be. Meanwhile, Rouis confronts Bill around the fight last episode and berates him, going on to suspend the tiger from the play as crowds gather to hear from the beastar. He takes a deep breath and goes on to tell them the entire fight from the previous episode was fabricated, throwing on a big smile for the group of screaming herbivores. The Festival of the Meteor fast approaches but Legoshi has trouble focusing, instead heading off to visit Haru. They sit together and share food as Legoshi tries to act calmly, despite his growing feelings for her. We then see a slick monologue as both Legoshi and Haru share their thoughts on this prey/predator meeting before heading home. As they do, Legoshi helps her with her shoe as he looks at her dreamily, clearing beginning to fall in love. Taking cues from Romeo and Juliet, Beastars is playing out the forbidden love angle really well here and given what we know about the history, it’ll be interesting to see what Haru will think if and when she finds out the truth about what Legoshi did in the past. For now though, the episode does a great job capturing those butterflies you feel in early love but beyond that, there isn’t a lot else to get excited about here. As we approach the halfway point of this anime, things look set to pick up and quite what will happen next remains to be seen.