With You, Our Love Will Make it Through

Episodes 1-2

You know, I was wondering when we were going to get a show that was somehow hornier than BEASTARS. I'm not even kidding when I say that this might be one of the spicier public furry animations that I have seen in quite some time. Because it's only going to get more intense from here, based on what people have told me, I'm very excited for various reasons. I'm also curious how the general public is going to react because it feels like every year we get a new piece of media that forces everybody to unequivocally out themselves, even though I personally don't think appreciating some good furry media is a bad thing.

When you consider that, on paper, this is a pretty simple story with a tried-and-true setup, we have a typical society that is slowly introducing beastfolk into its curriculum. The beastfolk make up a minority of the population; it's implied that they are the result of experiments from long ago, and they are even sectioned off in their own neighborhood, with a checkpoint they must go through for the sake of "public safety."

There are a lot of allegories that you can make about what the beastfolk could potentially represent in the real world. Most furry mainstream media like to take that route. The idea that some people are just instinctively bullying Tsunagu, even though he hasn't really done anything, because his overall presence "threatens" them after he upset the “local power dynamic," is very poignant. It doesn't really go anywhere in these two episodes, but I hope that if With You, Our Love Will Make it Through is going to tell this type of story, it doesn't conjure a strawman or sideline its themes, as similar media have.

The best —and arguably worst —part of the show is the romance, which is the primary focus. I love Tsunagu as a character. He's the soft-spoken, gentle giant who is forced to be overly conscious and self-aware of how he relates to everyone else. He hates himself for acting on instincts that he can't control, is always trying to put other people ahead of him, and you can tell it's not just because that's something he was told he needed to do; that's just genuinely how he is. I can see why Mari would be infatuated with him, but I also think that the show might've shown its hand too quickly. Mari doesn't really give a reason, and it comes after such a physically intense scene, so it ran a bit hollow. I'm hoping we get more into the throes of what this relationship is actually like.

It was probably done to get to the explanation of these more passionate and intimate moments faster. In episode two, it's implied that these moments of passion are triggered by an oversensitivity to a partner's emotions. When our two leads are being casual with each other, things are fine, but when Mari seems to start desiring things, that is when Tsunagu starts to go haywire. It's interesting because it implies that the rather intense moments we have had so far are fully consensual. It's nice that the show establishes that Tsunagu does have some control over himself in these situations, and that Mari does have the ability to say no. That's always a fine line you have to ride when dealing with shows that make passion a defining plot point.

As for the intimate scenes themselves, we haven't crossed the line yet. The lighting for this show is theatrical, with very heavy shadows outside the comedic moments, to the point where it almost feels like watching it through blinders. It can be a little distracting at times, but it matches the wallflower effect the show is going for. It has a voyeuristic quality that gets your heart pounding. There's a lot of setup here for the world and its characters. I hope there's more to all of this than just an excuse to show some spicy material.

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