Crunchyroll rightfully promotes A Centaur’s Life for being a cute slice-of-life anime. But the series also effectively grapples with dark topics such as discrimination and racism to the point where these sudden shifts in tone make more of an impact on the viewer without sacrificing the innocence that fans of slice-of-life series enjoy and expect.
The majority of A Centaur’s Life, originally called Centaur’s Worries by Kei Murayama, focuses on the everyday life of the eponymous centaur Hime as she learns about the intricacies of living in the real world with the help of her family, classmates, and their families. But as this world’s version of humanity has evolved into distinct groups that include catfolk, goatfolk, angelfolk, draconids, centaurs, merfolk, and Antarcticans, the series has ample opportunity to explore how these groups treat each other and the special accommodations that society provides them to help promote diversity. A Centaur’s Life does just that with a more sensitive hand than many other far more serious anime series.
A Centaur’s Life Shows World Building is Key to Tackling Serious Subjects
However, as early as episode one of the anime, A Centaur’s Life hints that this ostensibly progressive society isn’t as innocent as the characters’ designs imply, with random references being made to a nefarious justice system that was put in place to overcompensate for a dark history. But these comments are conveyed so offhandedly that they don’t negatively affect the series’ tone, leaving viewers a little on edge. These random instances, take a more definitive shape when a member of an isolated human subspecies integrates into this inclusive society. But even then, A Centaur‘s Life remains upbeat and positive by subtly communicating the differences of these subspecies and the inherent nuances of promoting inclusivity.
The most effective instances that explore each species’ proprietary nuances occur during episodes that capture different aspects of diversity and inclusivity. Episode seven, for example, explores the development of certain parts of the human anatomy by comparing the differences in hormone production to the fictional aspect of the evolutionary processes of each subspecies. That same episode also tackles the unfairness or the preferential treatment that certain types of people enjoy from both the real-life perspective, like how the number of one’s siblings can affect one’s freedom, and through a fantasy lens by examining how the size of a certain subspecies allows them to more safely participate in certain activities.
A Centaur’s Life Perfectly Blends the Literal and Figurative
Like the overall tone of the series, A Centaur’s Life usually handles diversity in a lighthearted manner where Hime’s large size affects how she interacts with and accesses certain parts of society in relation to her smaller friends. That, or these fictional human subspecies wrestle with very real aspects of everyday life that viewers and fans have gone through themselves in real life. The series seamlessly blends the literal with the figurative. But A Centaur’s Life’s incorporation of dark subject matters like racism and discrimination adds another flavor that puts this innocent slice of life into a newer perspective.
A Centaur’s Life is streaming on Crunchyroll.
