In March of 2020, Netflix released the anime adaptation of Paru Itagaki’s manga Beastars. Featuring a wolf named Legoshi and his friends—including a white, dwarf rabbit named Haru—Beastars explores themes of discrimination and social status through the portrayal of anthropomorphic animals attempting to live together in harmony. Many fans of this series often compare it to another, more popular piece of media with similar themes released by Disney in 2016: Zootopia. The biggest question when it comes to these works of art, and their themes, is “who did it better?”

First, it’s important to note that Zootopia was made to be a children’s movie, and thus is limited in terms of how well it can execute its ideas. Discrimination is a complex issue, and it is this complexity that deters people from finding ways to explain it to children. While Disney could have made something with a bit more “adult content”—as they’ve done in many of their older movies—the era in which Zootopia was released was a time in which being family-friendly was a must for animation companies.

Meanwhile, Beastars was not aimed to target children, and is considered to be adult content, and not just because of all the references to sex. Beastars takes the ideas of Zootopia—predators and prey trying to live in harmony—and dives into the more complicated aspects of discrimination.

For instance, in the scene in Zootopia where Judy Hopps first enters the police department and talks to Officer Clawhauser, the movie makes its first reference to offensive behavior. Clawhauser calls Judy “cute”, which, in this universe, is deemed offensive and something only allowed between other bunnies. This is a reflection of how marginalized communities reclaim slurs in the real world, and how there is a difference between the “in-group”—those who’ve reclaimed the slur—and the “out-group”—those who haven’t—use that word. When the in-group refers to others within the group by that word, there is often no malice behind the action, whereas if someone from the out-group used it there is the sense of patronization or disdain. In Zootopia’s universe, calling a bunny “cute” when you yourself aren’t a bunny is offensive because it gives off the impression that you look down on them or think lesser of them for their small height and appearance: something Judy experiences throughout the film as she attempts to become the best cop in the city.

In Beastars, we see something similar in the narrative of Haru, the dwarf rabbit Legoshi befriends and develops a crush on. While there is no reference to reclamation in Beastars, we do see how people in this universe of anthropomorphic animals view dwarf rabbits. Part of Haru’s story is that, as a dwarf rabbit, she is often looked down upon and seen as weak because of her stature. This makes her feel helpless, as if she can’t do anything, which we see her reflect on within the first season of the show. To compensate, she sleeps with the men who offer her assistance, and she claims that it makes her feel useful. However, because of this, she is further looked down upon and viewed as slutty for her actions, and she is often bullied by the other girls in the school for this.

With this comparison, we see that Beastars touches upon intersectionality—or the interconnected nature of social categories such as race, class, gender, etc. as they apply to a given individual or group, creating overlapping and interdependent systems of discrimination—through Haru’s narrative while Zootopia only touches the surface of discrimination towards rabbits within their universe. In Zootopia, we only see references to the discrimination of a single group identity: predator or prey. While in Beastars, we see references to discrimination based on several factors: herbivore or carnivore, man or woman, etc.

In Haru’s case, her experience is based on her specific identity as a female dwarf rabbit. It’s different from other rabbits who are of a different species and wouldn’t be looked down upon in the same way she is. However, it is also different from male dwarf rabbits who wouldn’t be slut-shamed for sleeping around because of the simple fact that they’re male, and within the realm of Beastars men sleeping around isn’t as demonized. When Haru sleeps with the only male harlequin rabbit in the school, rather than him getting shamed for cheating on his girlfriend, the school takes out their disapproval on Haru. Her identity as a dwarf rabbit and as a girl both play different parts in her experience, but they come together to display the intersectional reality that is more reflective of the real world than what we see in Zootopia.

There are many other comparisons to be made here between these two works—such as how predators in Zootopia act “savage” only after they’ve been drugged by a berry that makes them aggressive while in Beastars the predatory instincts of the carnivores is innate and is shown to often be uncontrollable—but in regards to their themes, neither one does it “right” or “better”.

While Beastars dives into discrimination as something more akin to how it happens in real life with multiple factors playing into one’s experience, Zootopia isn’t wrong to portray discrimination in the more simplistic way it did. Especially when you consider that it was a movie made for children. Not to mention it still portrays the smaller things we may see in real life that may go unnoticed, such as in the scene where Judy witnesses a tiger sit next to a family of rabbits, and the mother pulls her children away from the large predator while eyeing him nervously. The way the mother attempts to go unnoticed in her act while still suspecting the tiger of wrongdoings is a perfect example of how we see microaggressions in the real world: think of a white woman clutching her purse on the train when a black person sits next to her, or switching her seat while appearing physically anxious, and you can easily see the similarities.

All in all, both Zootopia and Beastars work with their themes fairly well and each deserves their own credit. After all, with an issue as complex as discrimination there is no singular way to portray it nor does any way that it’s done objectively better than how others do it.