BNA: Brand New Animal

BNA ビー・エヌ・エー (BNA)

10.0(1)

OtakuDen

7.3(223,283)

MAL Score

Ranked #2893

Popularity #674

Action
Fantasy
Anthropomorphic
Urban Fantasy

Episodes: 12
Duration: 22 min per ep
Aired: Apr 9, 2020 to Jun 25, 2020
Status: Finished Airing

Synopsis

For centuries, humans and Beastmen—beings whose bodies can transform through a genetic “Beast Factor”—have lived in conflict, driving many Beastmen into hiding. Built as a refuge from persecution, Anima City stands as a rare place where they can live without human interference.

When the city marks its 10th anniversary with a festival, Michiru Kagemori arrives after a sudden transformation from human into a tanuki. The promise of safety quickly cracks as an explosion rocks the celebration, drawing her into the attention of Shirou Ogami, an apparently unkillable wolf who dedicates himself to protecting Beastmen. As they hunt down those responsible for the bombing, the mystery of Michiru’s unusual nature and strange new powers deepens—hinting she may be far more significant than an ordinary Beastman.

Otaku Consensus

BNA: Brand New Animal is strongest as a Studio Trigger showcase: You Yoshinari’s direction, Hiroyuki Imaishi’s action supervision, and the studio’s cartoon-stretch visual language give its urban fantasy a kinetic identity few 2020 TV anime share. The verdict from critics and fans is admiring but qualified: the premise, social tension, and conspiracy framing land with style, while the most common complaint is that the 12-episode run leaves its political ideas and character payoffs feeling thinner than their potential.

Why You Should Watch

Watch BNA if you want Trigger’s maximalist energy applied to a compact urban-fantasy mystery rather than another school-battle or space-opera framework. It scratches some of the same itch as Kill la Kill in its exaggerated movement and Kazuki Nakashima-flavored escalation, while the racial-panic and body-horror subtext has led critics to place it near Devilman’s territory, just with a brighter pop-art pulse. The hook is not lore density; it is watching a one-cour series turn animal forms, city politics, detective beats, and conspiracy plotting into a fast visual machine. If you want socially charged genre anime without a slow-burn commitment, and you can accept a finale that moves faster than its themes deserve, BNA is a clean, stylish target.

Key Characters

M
Michiru Kagemori
Michiru works because her tomboyish bluntness gives the show a grounded emotional lens while her shapeshifting abilities let Trigger turn identity panic into elastic visual comedy and action.
S
Shirou Ogami
Shirou is the series’ hard-boiled counterweight, bringing detective and police-story texture to a show otherwise driven by bright colors, sudden violence, and shapeshifting spectacle.

What Makes It Stand Out

1
This is an original Studio Trigger production, with Kazuki Nakashima credited as both original creator and series composition writer, so its escalation is built for the anime format rather than adapted from a manga or novel structure.
2
The action has a major Trigger pedigree: You Yoshinari directs, while Hiroyuki Imaishi is credited as action director, a pairing that helps explain the series’ rubbery impacts, exaggerated poses, and sudden bursts of kinetic excess.
3
Its genre mix is unusually dense for a 12-episode run: AniList tags it not only with Animals, Anthropomorphism, and Shapeshifting above 96%, but also Conspiracy at 89%, Politics at 80%, and Detective at 73%.
4
The show’s visual identity is not just character animation; Yuusuke Yoshigaki handles character design, Masanobu Nomura art direction, Genice Chan concept art, and Yukiko Kakita color design, giving Anima City a deliberately designed pop-urban look.
5
Criticism of BNA often centers on compression: reviewers praised the engaging premise and stylistic force, but the recurring complaint is that its class-struggle and dystopian ideas are introduced more boldly than they are fully developed.

Fun Facts & Trivia

Fun fact 1: BNA aired as a single 12-episode spring 2020 TV anime from April 9 to June 25, making it one of Trigger’s most compact original series projects.
Fun fact 2: On MyAnimeList, it holds a 7.34 score from 223,283 votes, with a popularity rank of #674; on AniList, it sits at 72/100 with 3,197 favourites.
Fun fact 3: Kazuki Nakashima’s double credit as original creator and series composition writer is notable because it places him in charge of both the core concept and the episode-to-episode narrative architecture.
Fun fact 4: One early critical reaction described BNA as potentially “Studio Trigger’s Devilman,” a revealing comparison because it frames the series less as cute animal fantasy and more as a stylized anxiety piece about identity and social violence.
Fun fact 5: The production credits include both a dedicated director of photography, Nozomi Shitara, and editor, Kentarou Tsubone, underscoring how much of BNA’s impact depends on timing, color, and motion rather than dialogue alone.