As BNA wrapped up, a thought hit us hard, this series did so many things right and missed so many marks. BNA had an intriguing premise that seemed to look at racism and succumbing to societal hierarchies all within a beautifully animated package. In the end, though, a lot of the story shied away from these premises and felt unexplored. Trigger still did an impressive job with BNA but we’ve seen better anime from them.

In our honest opinion, BNA feels too short for how much it tries to establish. You have episodes focusing on fights with beastmen who have a distaste for humans—such as Giuliano Flip—and shady corporations who are all too eager to do human experiments to see if they can change humanity at its core. If BNA had another 12 episodes, we truly feel the story could have been dived into deeper.

Humans turning into beast hybrids, special abilities and amazing—but bizarre—fights are just a few staples we’ve come to expect from Trigger. However, in BNA these strange oddities clash with the main theme of the series and can prevent the audience from taking the show seriously. We wanted to really love Michiru’s struggles as she tries to adapt to her new beastmen life but when she’s one minute fighting to survive and the next playing an insane game of baseball, her struggle falls on deaf ears. BNA is a Trigger work and while we love the oddness factor, we wonder if that causes the story to suffer a bit.

BNA closes on an almost too convenient ending and that is probably its biggest sin committed. Without unleashing spoilers on our readers, Michiru and Shirou’s battle concludes with a way to save the beastmen, save the relationship between humans/beastmen and give our main heroine a new lease on life. Studio Trigger has been known for some pretty great—and ho-hum—endings but BNA closes the curtain and makes you wonder…is that really it? Here’s hoping we get another season or at least a movie to see our warriors return in a future that is closer to being ideal.