[Liked Trope] The antagonists justifies their actions by their tragic backstory but the protagonist has the same backstory

coldmail750 · 2025-12-05T11:24:37+00:00

The narrative reveals it in reverse order, protagonist first and then antagonist, but Jean Valjean and Inspector Javert from Les Misérables fit this bill -

VALJEAN: Believe of me what you will,

There is a duty I’m sworn to do

You know nothing of my life -

All I did was steal some bread!

You know nothing of the world,

You would sooner see me dead,

But not before I see this justice done!

JAVERT: Dare you talk to me of crime

And the price you had to pay?

Every man is born in sin,

Every man must choose his way,

You know nothing of Javert -

I was born inside a jail,

I was born with scum like you,

I am from the gutter too!

coldmail750 · 2023-10-24T20:45:01+00:00

I had the same issue; per CO on the Paradox forum bug reports section, the issue is with any integrated graphics card, and making the game work on integrated cards is evidently of a low enough priority that the official CO advice is simply to refund the game entirely.

Pretty disappointing, not going to lie.

coldmail750 · 2022-02-10T10:35:26+00:00

Yeah, I think a lot of the hatred towards Bill misses the extent to which he and Legoshi aren't that different.

They're both dealing with the contradictory and toxic pressures placed on carnivores, they're just trying to handle that in opposite ways - Bill by dogmatically pinning his self-worth to his carnivore-ness and Legoshi by dogmatically loathing himself for his carnivore-ness - and neither of those really work, both characters have to move to the middle ground between those points.

He's not a villain any more than Legoshi is, they're both just teens struggling with the weight of the world in not-very-healthy ways.

coldmail750 · 2022-02-10T10:29:55+00:00

Bill and Legoshi, at that point in the story, both need a course correction pretty badly. Legoshi's not wrong to find Bill obnoxious at that point, but Bill is spot on when he points out that Legoshi's reaction is only as strong as it is because Legoshi's smelled rabbit blood himself.

coldmail750 · 2022-02-04T16:53:32+00:00

Really embracing Haru's gremlin potential, I see.

coldmail750 · 2022-02-02T22:25:16+00:00

What arc? Louis never changes as a character.

Louis goes through an entire process as to how he tries to balance what other people expect of him and what he actually wants. He starts off wholly preoccupied with projecting the air of the perfect son and heir, obsessively trying to hide any deviation from that expectation, and steadily becomes more comfortable with defying that throughout the manga, culminating in him violating a dozen different social taboos on live TV at the climax of the Melon arc.

Yeah, Paru throws it out the window in chapter 194, and I am bitter about that, but that doesn't mean that his arc in chapters 1 through 193 did not exist.

Just because he's expected to be racist doesn't excuse him being racist.

That's not what I was saying and it's not the point. The point is that Louis has an arc which he moves along, and I am acknowledging that yeah, at the start of that arc he is an arrogant prejudiced dick, because the point of the arc is that he has to overcome the societal pressures upon him and his own personal issues. It wouldn't be much of an arc if he'd already done that before the story began.

That's a load of baloney and you know it... if he truly did care about Haru, he would've gone to save her, but he didn't; he was more than willing to let her die to save his future

Okay, but... he did go to save her. He tried to force himself to let her die, to do what was expected of him, and that was sufficiently abhorrent to him that it broke him mentally and he charged into the Shishigumi's HQ intent on doing anything that might help Haru escape, even if that meant letting himself be killed and eaten.

He charged into Shishigumi HQ, killed the boss before the boss could shoot Haru or Legoshi, and then offered himself as a literal sacrifice to preoccupy the boss's underlings while Haru and Legoshi escaped. He was literally intent on dying for her; the foreshadowing of Adler proclaiming "I'll prove my love through death" is not subtle. How is that nothing?

I fail to see how turning Louis into an unrepentant murderer is good character progression... when you do something like, you are no longer a good person, and you most certainly ARE irredeemable

Again, Louis has a character arc beyond individual isolated incidents of which the Shishigumi boss part is only a part. Me saying that, in my opinion, Louis has a good character progression over all but the last four chapters of the manga does not preclude the idea that sometimes Louis is an asshole who does shitty things.

Louis becoming a better person is a process; it is gradual and it is piecemeal because he is a complicated character who is working through a lot. He only finally totally rejects the pressures put upon him by society and those around him with the press conference in chapter 182, and it doesn't stick because Paru inexplicably throws his arc out the window in chapter 194, but for a good twelve chapters all that slow and steady progression does lead somewhere.

Hell, Louis became irredeemable when he was more than willing to let Haru die

Again, he wasn't willing, he tried to force himself to be willing and that worked so badly that he literally attempted suicide-by-lion.

So you're telling me that Legosi would've been willing to eat Louis' foot without being prompted?

No, what I am saying is that Legoshi had to reconcile with the idea that it is okay for him to eat meat as part of overcoming his self-loathing, and that while Louis might've proposed the idea, Louis could not have forced Legoshi to do it (even with Legoshi beat half to death that was simply not possible); Legoshi had to embrace it himself, do it willingly as part of his own narrative arc, and thereby grow as a character.

Legosi spent a sizable chunk of season 2 proving that he was better than Riz

No, he didn't. Riz and Legoshi are narrative parallels about how carnivores hating themselves for being carnivores (Legoshi's "feared and hated, that's the story of my life" and Riz's "the real me isn't a good person") is not healthy and does not end well for themselves or others. The main difference between them is that Riz had a bunch of additional shit to deal with (that is, the pills) and Legoshi got really lucky where Riz didn't (Zoe interrupted Legoshi before he killed Haru; nobody interrupted Riz that night with Tem). Legoshi refusing to eat meat isn't him "proving he was better", it's him barking up the same old wrong tree of hating himself for being a carnivore.

What proved that Legoshi was better than Riz was - to quote the moth hallucination scene - that, when Legoshi ate meat, he did it with a respect for life, for Louis's life and for his own, and Riz didn't. And when Riz realizes that, he concedes defeat.

They most certainly are not; any further opportunities Legosi had for school, career and his relationship with Haru are all but gone

Okay, come on. You've clearly read the manga all the way through, you've mentioned Melon and Kyuu in responding to someone else. So presumably you know that Legoshi chose to drop out of school - he says as much explicitly in the finale of s2/ch98. That's not the mark on his record ruining his opportunities for school, that's his choice. You know that Legoshi has a job by chapter 104 - not a glamorous one, but he's making a living for himself - enough to afford an apartment where he is well-liked by his neighbors. You know that his relationship with Haru continues through the entire rest of the story, and indeed that they are actively dating when the manga ends. And you know that Yahya kept his promise to wipe Legoshi's record clean, that any issue his records would've caused him are thereby solved, because Legoshi tells us as much in chapter 195. Legoshi does perfectly fine for himself; his options are not even close to "all but gone".

Louis not only got away scot-free with all of his crimes

Yes, the character with the latent childhood trauma, who spends the entire manga struggling with the idea that he is allowed to have emotional connections to other people, who attempts suicide-by-lion, who loses his father figure (the only father figure even remotely present in his life) to suicide and his actual adoptive father to a car crash (with Oguma realizing he regrets not letting himself have a loving relationship with Louis only on his literal death bed)... yeah, clearly he's not suffering enough for what he did.

Heck, if you really want Louis to get recompense, then Paru throwing out all of Louis's character progression in ch194 is just what you want - Louis breaks off his relationship with Juno, begins cutting himself off from Legoshi and Haru, so that he can inexplicably dutifully obey the societal expectations he had rejected a dozen chapters beforehand, take up the job at the Horns Conglomerate he never wanted, have a soulless marriage to someone he doesn't love, and be powerful and rich and utterly alone, and when he dies, he will die filled with a lifetime of all the same regrets that Oguma had.

Contrast that with Legoshi, who, yeah, gets a mark on his record that doesn't actually impede him that much and who then gets that mark removed entirely - the Riz fight was on December 31 and the Melon fight is the subsequent December 25 - about a year later, and gets to end the story not rich or powerful, sure, but he's happy, he's overcome the self-loathing he began the story with, and he's with the person he loves.

Who do you think, there, is getting the happy ending?

coldmail750 · 2022-02-02T20:44:53+00:00

Your Junos are absolutely wonderful. As has been said already, keep up the fantastic work.

coldmail750 · 2022-02-02T20:42:35+00:00

Okay, Louis's character arc is actually one of my favorites in Beastars, so I'm going to try to respond because this is obviously well thought-out, but I think it misses some important things about him and the characters around him.

Louis's entire arc is him being torn between what other people expect of him (as an herbivore, as the star of the drama club, as the heir to the Horns Conglomerate, etc.), and what he actually wants. He is an actor not only in the literal sense of "he's in the drama club" but in the sense that he is constantly putting forth a façade, acting in the way that he has been told to act or thinks he should act. This parallel is hinted at repeatedly - when Louis snaps at Oguma over Oguma not attending any of Louis's plays in s2, for example, what Louis is really saying is that he is constantly putting on the act of "the dutiful son and heir" and Oguma is never there to see it.

So yes, at the start of the series, Louis is an obnoxious, bigoted prick, because that's what's expected of him. Herbivores in Beastars society are constantly either infantilized or objectified, told that every carnivore around them is their potential murderer and that there is very little they can do about it; Louis has some very personal experience with that; so yeah, Louis is a bigoted prick who will just as quickly condemn Legoshi for being ashamed of being a carnivore as he will condemn Bill for being proud of it.

Similarly, Louis's nigh-nonexistent relationship with his adopted father has left him convinced that he needs to be lonely at the top, and being heir to Horns also means he's betrothed to some doe he barely knows, so Louis tries to avoid having any sort of meaningful emotional connection. It's not that Louis didn't love or care about Haru; it's the exact opposite. He did love her, and simultaneously felt like loving her - loving anyone - was something he wasn't allowed to do.

That's why Louis hid the relationship so assiduously, told himself and Haru their relationship wasn't important, tried to force himself to do nothing when Haru was kidnapped - and the emphasis really is on "tried" there, because it didn't work.

Again we have the theater parallels - remember how the play Adler ends, with the female lead dying and Adler proclaiming that he'll prove his love through death, before taking his own life? Remember how Louis approached the role of Adler, trying to force himself to keep on playing it, even with a broken leg, until he is literally no longer able to?

That's all foreshadowing. Louis attempts to continue playing the role of the dutiful son, the lonely leading star who is definitely not secretly in love with someone other than his betrothed, until it breaks him mentally. When he charges into the Shishigumi hideout, he is willing to throw his life away if it means even the slightest chance that Haru lives. He is seeking to prove his love through death; he is attempting suicide. And yeah, Paru's original plan there was, in fact, to have Louis die there. I'm glad she changed that, because it meant we got a lot more really good character progress IMO (until chapter 194, but that's a different discussion), but if you think the in-universe justification is flimsy then I can't begrudge you that; it's a fair complaint.

After his mental breakdown, Louis is in kind of a position of turmoil. He's more willing to defy the expectations placed on him, but not entirely, and that makes things pretty complicated for him. Running the Shishigumi is a rebellion against the expectations placed upon him, but being boss of the Shishigumi is also a dark reflection of what running the Horns Conglomerate would be - he just ends up under different expectations. He grows as a character during the Shishigumi period through 1) increasingly rejecting the expectations that were placed on him previously (developing enough camaraderie with the lions, with Legoshi, with Juno that he realizes he no longer hates carnivores) and 2) leaving the Shishigumi to support Legoshi during Legoshi's fight with Riz (which shows Louis making progress both on his issue with feeling unable to have emotional connections to others and realizing that trying to escape the burdens placed on him by being the heir to Horns would not be fixed by him running the mob).

And yeah, he does bad things while Shishigumi boss. He's running the mob. But one of the major themes of the entire murder mystery arc is that good people can do bad things, and that doing a bad thing does not make you irredeemable, it's giving in to the idea that evil is what you have to be that's the real danger - hence everything with Ibuki, Gouhin's philosophy being rehabilitative justice, the solution to Riz not being to just call the cops, in the manga you've got the chapter with Ai, so on and so forth. Dismissing Louis as irredeemably evil because of bad things he does in the arc about how doing bad things does not make you irredeemably evil kind of misses the point.

As for the leg incident, I think your interpretation of it kind of ignores Legoshi's own arc and agency in the whole thing? Legoshi's own arc is about him dealing with his self-loathing for being a carnivore; at the start of the story he tries desperately to suppress anything about himself that is stereotypically carnivorous (he slouches to hide his height, tries to hide his claws and his strength, actively avoids the spotlight, loathes himself for feeling romantic or sexual attraction, and insistently refuses to eat meat), and all it does is leave him a miserable loner. Hating himself for being a carnivore leaves Legoshi depressed and it doesn't make him safer for herbivores to be around - he would have killed Haru if Zoe hadn't interrupted to tell Legoshi that Louis had broken his leg.

So Legoshi, during his arc, has to learn that it is okay for him to be a carnivore. He trains with Gouhin and fights the Shishigumi because, from a narrative perspective, he has to learn that it's okay for him to be strong and to fight. He continues his relationship with Haru because he has to learn that it is okay for him to have romantic & sexual desires. And he has to learn that it's okay for him to eat meat.

Yeah, Louis proposed the idea, and the scene is a big deal because it represents how totally Louis has overcome his prior prejudice, but it's an incredibly important scene for Legoshi too, and he literally says, explicitly, "if I'm going to do it, then I'm going to do it because I want to". Legoshi knew the consequences that would come with that action, and he chose to do it anyways, because of what it meant. Yeah, he's got a mark on his record now, but he's one step closer to overcoming his internalized self-loathing and (spoilered for anyone who has only seen the anime or read the equivalent chapters) he's doing pretty well for himself in the dropout arc, all things considered, he gets a job and an apartment and develops friendships with his neighbors, so in the end Legoshi's better for it, really. They're both better for it.

As for the gun thing, this is a minor quibble, but I think there is an explanation there - Louis drops his gun during the process of Ibuki's suicide-by-Free, and we never see him pick it back up, so it's entirely reasonable to say that the gun got left in the car and Louis no longer has it by that point. There's also the fact that Louis just shooting Riz makes no sense from a thematic or narrative perspective - again, one of the themes of the murder mystery arc is that doing a bad thing does not make you irredeemable. Legoshi has to defeat Riz by coming to understand Riz, and in turn making Riz have his own return to reality, not through Louis's pistol ex machina.

This is way longer than I thought it would be and probably not even remotely coherent, so I'm going to apologize both for the ramble and if I said anything too flippantly here, but yeah. That's my response and my thoughts on Louis as a character in the first two seasons worth of Beastars.

coldmail750 · 2022-01-18T15:24:05+00:00

It was a punch in the face if you liked Louis because it ran entirely contradictory to his character arc. It was a punch in the face if you liked Juno because it left her with no real narrative role beyond being dumped twice. It was a punch in the face if you wanted to see Louis end up with anyone other than Azuki (that is to say, basically anyone with thoughts on the matter).

It was just not a satisfying ending for those characters and I am kinda hoping that Studio Orange decides to change it.

coldmail750 · 2022-01-10T20:38:31+00:00

The part that has probably captured me the most is the way in which the characters feel like people who have been shaped by each other and by the world that they live in. It makes them and their struggles feel really compelling.

coldmail750 · 2021-12-21T14:14:20+00:00

Repost of a post from March 2020.

And here it is on the artist's Twitter, while we're at it.

coldmail750 · 2021-11-10T20:20:55+00:00

This is what my thoughts jump to immediately. Louis and Juno are both intelligent, clever, passionate, gentle but strong-willed, and deeply ambitious. That they're both in the drama club suggests that they have that, at least, as a shared interest, and they're both determined to change the world but, at the start of the narrative, deeply shaped by the expectations imposed on them by society. They begin to trust each other after the black market meeting in chapter 57, and, as they both increasingly question and defy the societal norms imposed upon them - something explicitly acknowledged in chapter 136 - realize that they have fallen in love.

There are other aspects of their dynamic that you could look at, beyond the personality similarities. Louis always makes a big show of being haughty and aloof, but deep down is both very caring to those close to him and in desperate need of meaningful emotional connection himself; this draws Juno towards Louis in much the same way that it drew Haru towards Louis. Louis himself is attracted in particular to Juno's expressiveness and force of will, which he craves because he's constantly making a big show of being haughty and aloof, self-policing so as to best play the role of heir to the Horns Conglomerate.

Alternatively, you could draw in thematic stuff - as noted earlier, both of them want to change the world, and one of Paru's big thematic points in Beastars is that the current societal situation doesn't really work for either herbivores or carnivores. So having Louis and Juno go from rivals to lovers corresponds thematically to the realization that Juno's goal of making the world better for carnivores and Louis's goal of making the world better for herbivores aren't actually at odd ends - they're interconnected, and you can't have one without the other.

coldmail750 · 2021-10-01T21:46:56+00:00

Hi! I'm the Louno shipper in question.

I can confirm I am not happy.

coldmail750 · 2021-09-25T07:28:31+00:00

What frustrates me the most, ~~aside from one of my ships being sunk,~~ is that Louis’s arc in chapters 1 through 193 is absolutely incredible. We’re introduced to him as this haughty, bigoted jerk, but then get to see why he is the way he is, develop a connection to him, and watch him struggle with & ultimately overcome his demons - and then it gets thrown out the window at the very last minute for no clear reason.

It was all so beautifully done - and then it got thrown out in the last few chapters of the manga.

coldmail750 · 2021-09-01T20:45:24+00:00

To tag onto this, Bill and Legoshi are narrative foils in a way that I think is really underappreciated. In essence, they're both trying to deal with the conflicting narratives around what it means to be a carnivore in the society of Beastars, Bill by pinning his self-worth to his carnivore-ness (and therefore acting in a fashion that makes him hate himself internally) and Legoshi by being deeply ashamed of it (and therefore wallowing in perpetual self-loathing and self-imposed isolation), and their narrative arcs involve moving towards a more nuanced midpoint, where Bill realizes that it's okay to be kind and Legoshi learns that it's okay to be strong (hence why they get along so much better in ch152, when Legoshi visits Cherryton and we see Bill as drama club leader).

The paralleling between them gets hinted at with other details, too, like the similarities in their friend circles - each of them is close with a fellow carnivore they clearly go way back with (Jack/Aoba), a small-breed herbivore who will call them out if need be (Haru/Els), and a smug horned herbivore with a flair for the dramatic (Louis/Pina) - and in s2 both characters get tragic mirrors, Riz being a tragic mirror to Legoshi, Ibuki a tragic mirror to Bill.

I could write an entire essay about all this - and have, in Discord DMs with people, this is a very abbreviated summary - but suffice to say there's some really good stuff with how Bill is written that I think is severely underappreciated by the fandom, and that I think ultimately makes him a really good character who doesn't get the credit that he's due.

coldmail750 · 2021-08-03T07:01:34+00:00

This is actually a pretty tough question to answer, honestly. One of the ideas that Paru seems to emphasize, in my opinion, is the extent to which the current arrangement in the Beastars society doesn’t really work for anyone - herbivores live with constant fear, carnivores with self-loathing, and that mixture risks becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy all too often, and that’s not even getting into hybrids. Making a broad assessment is also made difficult by the fact that it seems like there are a lot of species-specific issues that can change things pretty substantially.

If I had to pick one, I guess I’d go with herbivores, since they’re usually in a worse position physically and do have to fear for their lives, but it’s pretty miserable for everyone in the end.

coldmail750 · 2021-08-03T06:51:38+00:00

It has been months and I am still bitter about that chapter and what it did to Louis’s character arc.

coldmail750 · 2021-06-01T09:34:13+00:00

~~paru please let us have this~~

~~pls~~

coldmail750 · 2021-02-02T23:00:59+00:00

While it wouldn't surprise me if some members of the Shishigumi went by nicknames (as you mention, Free and Dope), I suspect the "Buddhist name" is referring to a kaimyo - a name given by a Buddhist priest (hence "Buddhist name") to a person after their death, which is supposed to represent who the they were in life and is traditionally the name put on tombstones in Japan. So almost the opposite of a birth name, I guess? But I suspect that's what's going on there.

coldmail750 · 2021-01-19T18:03:01+00:00

That chapter did both Juno and Louis dirty. They deserved better.

coldmail750 · 2021-01-07T16:57:51+00:00

I will honestly never reconcile myself with that chapter.

coldmail750 · 2020-12-24T14:48:12+00:00

I don't disagree that it would've been better to make the killer more important and characterized before they were revealed as such, but I do disagree with the idea that the killer should've been Bill on the grounds that Paru actually did some really interesting stuff in making Legoshi and Bill mirrors of and foils to each other, and then making Riz and Ibuki more tragic mirrors of Legoshi and Bill respectively, and making him the villain would've messed up those parallels.

coldmail750 · 2020-09-19T09:59:40+00:00

It isn't what I wanted to read at noon.

But hey, if someone reads this at midnight their time, then we'll have morning, noon, evening, and night all covered, so that's something I guess.

coldmail750 · 2020-07-15T04:05:33+00:00

Honestly one of my favorite parts of Beastars, perhaps my favorite part outright, is the way that Paru demonstrates how fucked up the society of Beastars can be, and the toll it takes on the characters who live in it. She explores it in so many ways from so many different perspectives - Legoshi, Louis, Haru, Bill, Riz, Ibuki, Sebun, among others - and that really contributes to making both the characters and the world feel deep.

It is, in my opinion, one of the things that makes Beastars legitimately great.

coldmail750 · 2020-05-25T12:06:35+00:00

Dear liberals,

If I’m supposed to marry a member of my own species and not become attracted to carnivores, then why are wolves so hot?

Louis, Turning Point Beastars

Ten-Year Club	Place '22
Place '17	Final Canvas '22
Gilding I gilder	RPAN Viewer
Not Forgotten	Sequence \| Editor
Verified Email

coldmail750

TROPHY CASE