To start off winter 2026, I’m watching The Darwin Incident as one of the seasonals I plan on watching as it airs. I don’t really have any knowledge about this anime outside of it’s anilist page, but it has me intrigued. I’m a fan of the sciences, and biology is no exception, back in middle school I read Darwin’s On the Origin of Species and it really was a great read. I also happen to be familiar with the Oliver humanzee case, which contributed to my interest in this anime. Additionally, I saw that this anime has the philosphy tag in it, and I see great potential for philosophical exploration with a concept such as this.

Alright, so I’m just gonna kinda throw around some thoughts that I have about the first episode. I’m writing this as I watch the episode, because I was intially going to write it after watching, but I have so much to say after watching just a little, I gotta just  write it while it’s fresh in my mind lmao.

The OP

Right off the bat, I gotta praise this OP.  This OP perfectly fits the vibes that I would expect from an anime like this, and the lyrics further reflects the anime, which is always great to see instead of just a random unrelated pop song.  The song is by Official Hige Dandism, which is a great band with plenty of anisong experience, and they definitely cooked here.  This song is probably gonna be in my head for a while lmao.

Humanzee

As I previously stated, my familiarity with the story of Oliver the humanzee is part of the reason why I’m interested in this anime.  Oliver was proven to be a full chimpanzee, but his human like features and mannerisms made people believe he was actually a humanzee for a while until people learned it was just a regular chimp that was trained.  Getting a humanzee in real life is impossible despite chimps being our closest relative due to the dissparity in the number of chromosomes that we have, 46 for humans, 48 for chimps.  The author was clearly inspired by Oliver as he is referenced in this new paper.

So pretend humanzees can exist irl, this news paper mentions something that would undoubtably be a massive topic of discussion and controversy, ethics.  Is it ethical to breed with a member of a different species? Is it ethical to produce a living hybrid being like this?  What kind of gates and standards will the first breeding between a human and chimp open?  How should a humanzee be treated, like a human, or like an animal?  How should they be treated especially if they happen to be intellegent, such as Charlie here?  You could go on and on with these types of questions, and I’m sure this anime will explore some, but it’s of course up to the viewer as well to form their own opinions on such matters as well, as while this may be fiction, it still has real world application.

American High School

Something else that’s unique about this anime, is that it’s set in an American high school, not a Japanese one.  What’s more, ths is actually a fairly accurate depiction of an American high school, not completely just stereotypical.  The building design, the atmosphere, the desks, the classrooms, the way the students act, and most importantly, these milk cartons.  I’m half joking with these milk cartons, but also kind of serious, these are legit the exact milk cartons that were used in my schools and are used in many other American schools, but you probably wouldn’t pay such close attention to detail in drawing something like that if you’re basing your school off of shows and movies and stuff. This makes me curious about the mangaka and if he attended school in America at all or not, but I don’t really see a lot of info on him, so I guess I’m just gonna be left hanging lmao.  But it really is such a cool feeling being able to witness a fairly accurate depiction of an American high school in an anime.

Reactions to Charlie

The way that the people around Charlie react to him is something that we all obviously are curious about.  As you’d expect, there’s mixed reactions.  There’s people that can’t help but stare (I would too honestly), people that are curious, people that have a prejudice that he’ll be more chimp like that human like and thus dangerous, people who are willing to get close to him, and people who want to bully him.  There’s really great variety here, and I think that’s pretty accurate to real life. Our first philosphical point is, how do you treat someone like Charlie?  Do you treat him like a human, like a chimp, kinda like a human but in a more weary way, or may do you treat him just like you do any other teenager at the school?  Again, we see a kind of variety in the ways people treat him, but there is a more wide acceptence of him with people treating him like a normal peer. Now I can’t really say anything about the future of the anime, but I still gotta point out the natural prejudice humans do have, and even if you treat him like you do everyone else, you can’t remove that thought in the back of you mind that he is indeed still different from you and everyone else.

In real life we ofc don’t have humanzees, but we do have a wide variety of different races and cultures throughout the world, so especially in America where people from all over the world mingle together, figuring out how to interact with people different from you is ofc something you have to learn how to do, so there is still real world application to this.  For the same reason, I think it’s very appropriate that this anime does take place in America where such interactions are a lot more common.

Philosphical Questions Asked

So right off the bat, we have some philosphical questions that are directly asked in the anime.  The first one is brought up by Lucy and has to deal with, what does it feel like to be a bat (or a humanzee)?  Though ofc you can’t really understand what that’s like, since you aren’t one.  When she asks Charlie what it’s like, he responds by saying he also ponders what it’s like to be human. Ofc there is no clear answer here since as humans, we ofc can’t understand what it would be like to be a humanzee, plus humanzees are fictional.  What really strikes me though, is Charlie asking what it’s like to be human.  Even though he’s half human, Charlie doesn’t really consider himself human, which I find weird.  To make a comparison, I’m half Asian, and I consider myself Asian, I would never say that I’m not Asian since that’s simply false.  Charlie is technically part human, that’s a fact, but what I think he’s really getting at, isn’t asking what it’s like to be human physically, but rather, what is it like to be a normal person and can he be considered to be a human not in the sense of the human species, but rather to be human in aspects of thought, morals, and the way that people treat him, and as we know, many people don’t treat him the same as other humans.

The next question is asked by Ozzy.  If you’re a vegan, and vegans view all animals, no matter the species as equals, and a mouse that can kill you by biting you comes along, would you shoot it to save yourself, or preserve the mouse’s life and sacrafice yourself.  We again see a variety in answers here from different people.  I’m not quite qualified to answer this question since I’m not vegan, but I’d absolutely shoot the mouse as I value my own life over a mouse’s life.  Charlie would agree despite being a vegan.  Now also take into consideration this, Charlie is a vegan bc his adoptive parents are vegans, so that doesn’t necessarily mean he holds the same values as other vegans, but rather is just used to the diet.  Now to turn this question around, if a human or a partial human (i.e. a humanzee) was threatening your life, would you be able to kill that person?  This is something many people have unfortunately had to answer in practice.  Charlie’s answer is, he would shoot them dead.  I personally believe that you can’t really answer this one by thinking about it, you can say you’ll do something, but when you’re actually in that situation, you might not follow through with that answer you gave.  Ultimately though, I agree with Charlie’s answers as I would preserve myself over someone who’s a threat to me, and Darwin’s theory of survival of the fittest would agree as well.

Don’t be to quick to characterize Charlie however and view him as ruthless, as we’re then presented with a scene of him interjecting with nature to save a butterflie from being eaten by a spider.  This displays the complexity of someone’s personality, you can’t really categorize people too strictly.

The Antagonists

So it looks like the antagonists of this story is an animal rights organization that resorts to terrorism to obtain their goals.  Unfortunately this isn’t that unrealistic, and many protestors in real life do things like blocking roads and the such which gets in the way of people’s livelihoods and hinders emergancies from being taken care of, like if a woman is about to give birth and can’t get to the hospital.  I personally have the viewpoint that ofc you shouldn’t mistreat animals and they absolutely deserve protections, but at the same time, I don’t believe all animals are equals.  As nice as equality is, in reality equality doesn’t exist in nature, so I believe in accepting that the world is inequal in certain aspects, but I don’t wish to increase those inequalities.  And I definitely don’t believe in trying to force equality through violet means.

The ED

Pretty good ED song, I do prefer the OP, but the ED is still really solid.  I am a big fan of the visuals though, the americanness of the visuals almost reminds me of visuals in the Beck OP.

Conclusion

I absolutely loved this anime, and it seems to be exactly like I expected.  I love the philosphical questions being asked here, it’s always great to think a little and ponder such things.  I’m definitely going to be watching the rest of this as it airs, really excited to see the rest!