While many people have criticized Beastars AUs as "furry high school,"* Beastars has significant differences that distinguish it from being a simple furry high school AU that arguably flesh out Beastar's "world" in a way that other furry universes - particularly Zootopia - do not. Heavy spoilers ahead.





The Beastar: Beastars has a global council similar to the UN, in which each species has a representative that decides on the next "Beastar" - a political and governmental figure who generally attempts to better society in some way, usually by fighting crime. The Beastar is meant to be a uniting figure, although the position of Beastar is often used politically to advance the political motives of a particular species or class.



The B[l]ack Alley Market: In the Beastars universe, the desire to eat meat is considered a normal urge akin to the urge to mate. This differs Beastars from Zootopia despite both worlds having almost identical backstories - while Zootopia suggests that carnivores can be cooerced into eating meat again through medical intervention, Beastars suggests that the desire to eat meat is like the desire to sin - a socially unacceptable urge that a carnivore would struggle with on a daily basis. Only the laws of society and morality prevent carnivores from heating herbivores in Beastars.



The Whale: While the 'war' backstory in Beastars is almost identical to the backstory for Zootopia - even the fact that animals learn about it in high school - the Whale is a character that has existed for as long as modern memory, and is hinted to hold more information about the war.





Domestication: In Beastars, an arc reveals that some of the species in Beastars managed to domesticate themselves, producing domestic species like dogs. Dogs are shouldered with the responsibility of remembering and recording all of recorded history in the Beastars universe. Like the whale, not a lot of information about this is known.





Are there any points here that I missed?



*If any of you can link the Reddit meme on r/beastars so that I can give them credit here, it would be much appreciated.

