Considering his popularity in Whisper Of The Heart, it’s no wonder Studio Ghibli decided to give Baron a more prominent role in this spin-off. An anthropomorphic cat with a kind and generous heart, he’s the owner of the Cat Bureau and one of Haru’s most valuable allies, willing to risk everything to get her back home. His polite manners and polished outfits make him a pretty fascinating anime character.

A hard-working and well-mannered red panda, Retsuko works as an accountant for a corporation based on a strict hierarchy. Her elders’ mockery and constant bullying lead Retsuko to dream of a better life, with screaming her heart out at karaoke being her only way to vent her frustrations. Aggretsuko is populated with interesting and cute animal characters, but none of them will ever be as relatable as Retsuko.

Kiba is a ruthless loner whose only goal is to find the Lunar Flower and open the way to Paradise. He takes great pride in being a wolf and despises humans for mass killing his kind. This is why he feels irked when other wolves use their human disguises, even if he eventually realizes it’s necessary to survive.

The most famous anti-fascist in anime, Porco Rosso was an Italian veteran pilot during World War I before a tragic event sent him into a spiral of guilt and led him to transform into a pig. His past and disillusionment with people drove him to become an incredibly cynical man. However, his encounter with Fio changed his mind and made him believe there’s still some hope for humanity.

The polar opposite of his older sister, Ame is a shy kid who struggles to embrace his half-wolf, half-human nature. Bullied throughout his childhood, he can’t seem to connect with humans, and growing up only makes him more distant from the civilized world and his family. The siblings’ path towards self-awareness is one of the movie’s central themes and contributes to making the story so much more remarkable.

Legoshi is that character you can’t help but relate to. Born as a wolf with a heart of gold, the stereotypes associated with his species make his life more complicated than it should be. Having to live in a society where herbivores and carnivores try to coexist and consuming meat is strictly prohibited, he struggles on a daily basis with his internal battles to suppress his true nature and avoid messing up the few relationships he was able to build over time. He’s definitely one of the best-written animal protagonists in anime.

Similar to Beastars, BNA: Brand New Animal is another refreshing take on how animal main characters are portrayed in anime. Michiru Kagemori is your usual teenager, but one day gets transformed into a tanuki-like creature under mysterious circumstances. She barely makes it to Anima City, where she hopes to find some sort of remedy for her condition. Focused on turning back to her human form, she doesn’t want to be associated with beastmen at first, but as the series progresses, Michiru starts to develop respect and gratefulness for the beastmen living in Anima City.

Yuki embodies the Rat of the Zodiac, and the 2019 Fruits Basket adaptation finally gave this character some well-deserved justice. Not only does the new adaptation show us a more easy-to-like version of him, but it also goes deeper into his motives and actions that were not so clear in the first series. A chick magnet, Yuki looks like the type of guy with no self-esteem issues, but he’s actually profoundly affected by his past, to the point of being terrified of rejection, and keeps most people at a distance.

Odokawa is a middle-aged standoffish taxi driver disinterested in almost everything around him and thus lets his customers do all the talking. Thanks to his job, he learns about the mysteries and oddities occurring in Tokyo, including the puzzling disappearance of a teenager. His incredible photographic memory leads him to piece together the intrigue happening in the series, just from clues and tidbits of conversations with his clients.