YMMV / Killing Bites

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• Ass Pull: Rio brutally stomps on Mai in order to further her goals and everything including her internal monologues point to her having regretably killed her for real. Then Mai appears alive and well later, with the explanation they dressed up a still badly injured Moe like Mai (she's only dark skinned in the reveal's flashback) and had her take the hit. Both Rio and Pure were aware of all this.
• Awesome Music:
  • The opening theme is performed by the same band that did the catchy opening themes for A Certain Scientific Railgun and they don't disappoint.
  • The battle themes for the anime sound like they were plucked right out of the cancelled licensed Fighting Game or something. Eruza, for example, gets a pretty exciting theme that reflects her personality and agility very well.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Hitomi is a very big one. The opinions regarding her character are divided between the ones who likes her for her badass Blood Knight nature and her attractive design, while others dislike her for her abrasive personality and tendency to repeat her "The one with the sharpest fangs wins. That's what Killing Bites is!" catchphrase in every single episode, at the slight chance she has.
  • There's also a debate over whether Hitomi is just too overpowered or not, as she seemingly has a way to counter every bad situation she gets put in. Thrown into a wall with the force of a car wreck? She was just playing around before, but now she's serious. Got one of her arms ripped off, losing more blood than it should be humanly possible to, and facing an opponent with seemingly no weaknesses? She no longer feels pain, which lets her use her own severed arm to find her enemy's tiny weak spot and defeat him. However, many changed their minds after the end of the arc, considering Hitomi's ability to always come out on top no matter how much the odds are stacked against her makes her a pretty dangerous bad guy.
• Crosses the Line Twice:
  • The "Cobra Cannons" attempted rape scene with Brute Cobra and a prone Hitomi, which ends with the cannons being ripped off. Yes, snakes have two. Yes, he calls them that and it's spelled out in huge writing. Yes, they're shown uncensored and moving. Yes, there's close-ups of him about to stick them in, though fortunately her underwear is still on. Yes, he's emasculated bloodily, fortunately before anything further happens. This crosses the line from outrageous to outrageously funny back and forth several times over.
  • The Firebombing of Tokyo is turned into a visual gag when the Giraffe brute starts stomping on his opponents. From the Japanese man who brought you "The Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were an inside-job".
  • The Gag Penis comedy spinoff about Inaba servicing beastmen in a soapland is amusingly sickening from beginning to end, to say the least. Even the dutiful fan scanlator for the series had to take a break before working on the chapter about the exhibitionist gay monkeys randomly performing before Inaba. And how does the story end? With parodies of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to inform you about the unusual shape of turtle genitalia, that's how. Cowabunga.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Oshie. Her short, non-sequitur segments at the end of each anime episode have garnered her a large fanbase.
• Fan Nickname:
  • Kemono Enemies/Fiends *rimshot*, plus whatever synonyms of "Killing Bites" you can think of.
  • Takeshi Kido/Pangolin was christened "Animal Jiren'' due to his similar muted personality and World's Strongest Man powerlevel compared to the rest of the Destroyal fighters.
  • Following suit of the above, Hitomi's full Therianthrope transformation is called "Killer Instinct" as a play on Goku's "Ultra Instinct" form. Calling her "Hitomi Blanca/Negra/Morena" after the latin american "Gohan Blanco" meme is also common.
  • Snoopy for Pure (it helps that her pet beagle is named Nunuupi/Noopy) and Taz-Mania for Tasuku.
  • Ui Inaba's spinoff is nicknamed "Inabites" by Western fans.
• Fetish Retardant:
  • The scene where Eruza and Hitomi make out with each other while under Kaori’s aphrodisiac actually does its job as a Fanservice scene very well. But then Eruza starts thrusting her crotch on Hitomi’s while both still wear clothes on the lower half of their bodies, ensuring no actual skin-to-skin contact is being made. In-Universe this can be explained by the aphrodisiac being very strong, but it still is a rather silly sight, especially after you notice Eruza is thrusting her hips like a man would, which isn't very pratical when having sex between girls.
  • Inaba's spinoff baited people with the promise of nudity scenes for the bunnygirl and her soapland co-workers but with each chapter that got more and more toned down, leaving it with only bestiality Gag Penis imagery. Ironically, the main story had more female nudity than usual, with defined nipples and all, since the spinoff's debut — even if often leaning towards ryona like with Yuugo beating and humiliating a topless Eruza on live television.
• Friendly Fandoms: Discussion of Arachnid and its side story Caterpillar often runs parallel with discussion about Killing Bites, since not only it is from the same author but both series are pretty much the same thing. It should be no surprise that Furries like the show, too.
• Growing the Beard: The first arc is largely a prolonged prologue with an Excuse Plot and some fun fights, but it ends on a surprisingly compelling twist: On her superiors' orders, Hitomi lands a horrible slash on Yuuya and leaves him for dead. Sometime later animal-human hybrids become the norm and the Killing Bites tournament are public knowledge. The viewpoint changes to a new heroine and a much wiser Not Quite Dead Yuuya becomes her manager in order to take revenge on Shidoh. The anime ends just as this second arc begins.
• It Was His Sled: Hitomi's attempt to assassinate Yuuya after the Destroyale.
• Like You Would Really Do It: On chapter 59, Tasuku, one of the two new deuteragonists alongside Pure, is abruptly killed by Nodoka in her moment of glory. Distraught fans naturally came up with arguments about how she could survive being practically decapitated, such as the narrator explaining the emergencial evolution capacities of tazmanian devils beforehand or how the scene parallels Yuuya's not-quite-death in the first arc.
• Magnificent Bastard: Reiichi Shidoh organizes the underground "Killing Bites" fights between the Half-Human Hybrid Therianthropes. Utterly unscrupulous, Shidoh uses shady tactics: tampering with the rules of the ring and manipulating the Zaibatu's conglomerates to allow for his experiments on Therianthropes. Betraying and arranging the murder of Mitsukado Zaibatsu's chairman, Yozan Mitsukado, Shidoh sets it up to look like an accident; then ordering his Therianthropes follower to murder her own investor to eliminate the witness to his crime. In spite of his unfettered nature, Shidoh truly believed his experiments on Therianthropes would fix the struggling Japanese economy and genuinely cares for Hitomi, even risking his own life to save her when he found her as a child.
• Memetic Badass: The whole premise of the series was likely inspired by notorious viral videos about honey badgers such as Randall's "The Crazy Nastyass Honey Badger".
• Memetic Molester: Yuugo makes Youko his sex slave for some time and it ends up being portrayed in a positive light. The rape becomes something that helps her grow and mature from the smug, bratty girl she was. She even falls in love with her rapist and thanks him for it.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "Honey Badger don't give a shit" from the Randall video mentioned above has been adopted for Hitomi. It helps that the story basically quotes the video in one scene.
  • Hitomi's tendency to repeat her catchphrase about that the one with the sharpest fangs wins in every episode have became one of the most notable things of the show, to the point a popular thing to do in any topic regarding the series is asking what Killing Bites is (pretending you don't know nothing about the series, or that you forgot about Hitomi's line), to be responded with the aforementioned catchphrase, or with any other variation the people can think on.
    • Like all good memes, variants show up in describing other anime, like "The one with the fastest hooves wins. That's what Pretty Derby is."
    • As the story goes on, "That's what Killing Bites is" becomes a meme in-universe.
  • Asking who "Bites" is and why people are trying to kill them.
• Memetic Psychopath: Pure indirectly causes Tasuku's death by hesistating to kill Nodoka and then begrudingly kills the sloth to put an end to her rampage. Going rather unhinged as a result despite presenting well, Pure turns the two of them into vivid delusions along with Nunuupi, and is shown to have absorbed their abilities. Many readers are worried that Pure's actions will also get Haiji and several other characters killed until the beagle becomes a walking haunted house of "tulpas".
• Narm: Just like Arachnid, this series is very over-the-top and features many cheesy moments, for better or for worse.
  • Hitomi's catch phrase being a Title Drop gets corny fast. In particular the translations that phrase it as "...Thus, Killing Bites". Naturally, it became a subject of Memetic Mutation once more people read/watched the series.
  • Like with Arachnid, the fun facts about animals are informative and mostly accurate, but they can kill the pacing of the fight scenes and distract the reader depending on how long they are or where they are placed. The anime does shortens them, but on the other hand, Jun'ichi Suwabe narrates those facts with an unnecessarily Hot-Blooded voice that cannot be taken seriously. Fans of Arachnid are also not going to be surprised that most of the time, the introduction of Hitomi’s opponent is just a prologue for “As cool as this animal is, the honey badger can…!” Sometimes it looks like the author is trying too hard to sell the honey badger as the most badass animal in the world.
  • None of the Brutes are very creative when it comes to naming their attacks, but Hitomi’s Finishing Move being simply called Slash still stands out. Makes one wonder why she even bothered naming it. Made worse by the fact that it has the same name of a Pokémon move.
  • The horned lizard twins shooting blood from their eyes. Yes, actual horned lizards do that, but seeing humans crying Tears of Blood and then shooting them like bullets can be quite the funny sight for all the wrong reasons.
  • Brute Cobra calling his hemi-penises "Cobra Cannons". Nice way of killing the tension of an Attempted Rape scene.
  • Most members of the Zaibatsu are selfish, sadistic and power-hungry, and thus they collectively make a very efficient Hate Sink. At least until we see their reactions to Brute Civet using an aphrodisiac to make Hitomi and Eruza make out with each other. They look less like “power-hungry politicians” and more like “man-children who never grew past their horny teenager phase”. Overall, the manga insistence in reminding the reader of how vile they are whenever they appear makes them look so cartoonish, over-the-top evil that is almost laughable.
  • Some of the male Brutes are proportioned like bobbleheads when they transform. One in particular is a giraffe, and many readers can't help but remember a certain other giraffe man claiming giraffes have limitless destructive potential while Pure has to avoid his stomps.
  • Nodoka's Megatherium form looks like an ordinary and fearsome ground sloth...with a bowl cut and gigantic boobs.
  • Youko falling in love with her rapist Yuugo, kissing him and thanking him for making her "strong" is so ridiculous that even Yuugo is shocked.
  • Pure proclaiming that "the one who has the most fun wins; that's what Killing Bites is!" manages to be the most forced example of the catch phrase in the series, as she's just barely avoided being crushed into paste and, unlike the likes of Hitomi, neither Pure nor her opponent Rio are having fun at all. It comes off as a non-sequitur.
• Narm Charm: This manga/anime shamelessly embraces its own Excuse Plot, openly abuses Artistic License – Biology, and has an endless amount of cheesy moments. And many people think it’s an enjoyable read/watch because of those elements rather than in spite of them.
• Nightmare Fuel: Those sensitive to Gorn probably wouldn't like dealing with some of the fights, and it only gets worse the further you go into the series. Characters have been mutiliated, severely injured and a large variety of gruesome fates, even if it doesn't indulge in outright gratuitous amounts of it. Kind of inevitable when the combatants are turning into a number of predator animals — and occasionally the fatal results of what most would've assumed should be helpless prey.
• Not Badass Enough for Fans: Readers loathed Yuuya in the beginning for being a plain civilian guy caught up in the Killing Bites, warmed up to his stronger characterization and newfound abilities in the Deathtival's preliminaries and then got mad at him again for caring about Hitomi and trying to redeem her after what happened. It doesn't help that Hitomi never stops being unreasonably agressive towards Yuuya despite trusting him.
• Popular with Furries: Not surprising, given how it panders to them.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Yuuya was generally disliked for his cowardly Ridiculously Average Guy archetype, but people warmed up to him after his development into a Guile Hero for the second arc.
• The Scrappy: Den Ounuma/Brute Cobra. He was never meant to be liked, but he falls into this category because he has absolutely nothing else to his personality other than being a pervert who wants to rape Hitomi. Along with not being able to show any combat prowess, his one-note personality hasn't endeared him to many. Of course, there are some who find his perversion and creepiness so over the top, it ends up being funny.
• Signature Scene: The ending of the Destroyale arc, where Yuuya waxes philosophical about what “the sharpest fangs win” means and nearly gets killed for it by Hitomi in a scene dripping with irony.
• So Bad, It's Good: Killing Bites isn't winning any awards in the writing department. That said, many who hold this view find the abilities interesting and the fights good to look at.
• Squick:
  • Hitomi is able to snap out of the aphrodisiac effect that was making her have sex with Eruza by thinking of Shidoh. The context is that she misheard “Cum with me” for “Come with me”, something Shidoh said to her in the past, so the scene doesn’t interfere with the interpretation that Hitomi sees Shidoh more as Parental Substitute… but the idea of a teenager girl thinking of a man decades her senior while having sex is still totally creepy. However, when we get to see the full context of Hitomi's flashback later it proves to be quite the Heartwarming Moment, which helps tone down the Squick in hindsight.
  • The Cobra Cannons scene are esentially this. As the Cannon itself is the two vital parts of the Cobra brute that not only is badly animated but also pretty jarring due to said brute is trying to rape the main character onscreen.
  • Inaba's spinoff in general is beastman Gag Penis zoophilia under the guise of biology edutainment, with some shotacon chapters for good measure. It doesn't even have much pretty female nudity past the first exploitative chapter, either.
• Spiritual Adaptation: This is probably the closest thing to an anime adaptation of Bloody Roar since both center around fights between characters that utilize Animorphism.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The sex-work-is-work spinoff presented itself as official not-quite-hentai with lots of nude scenes of Inaba to draw attention, but it's a a fake out and past the first chapter it is exclusively Gag Penis Fan Disservice imagery. In fact, it heckles the staff of Uma Musume for the Rule 34 ban they imposed on their fans just to not make any of the expy characters show any skin even as they participate in a handjob competition. They only gave a couple topless pictures of Inaba that avert Nipple and Dimed on the illustrator's Twitter profile after the spinoff ended.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: This series takes place in a World of Jerkass where most people with power are arrogant, sadistic, sexual deviants and self-centered, and the few characters that are genuinely good mostly live under their thumb. Unsurprisingly, it’s hard to get emotionally invested when the setting is so bitterly cynical. With that being said, the huge amount of Narm Charm the series produces somewhat counterbalances the apathy.
• Unconventional Learning Experience: This series could double as an animal documentary thanks to the occasional moments where the narrator explains animal facts to the audience.
• Vanilla Protagonist:
  • Many readers wonder why the main character of this story is the boring college student instead of the hot, violent, badger-monster chick. Then in the second arc, Hitomi attacks Yuuya and leaves him for dead, whereupon Yuuya returns as a much stronger, smarter character. Even so, Yuuya is ultimately a Nice Guy and is quite a abnormality from the author, who usually writes entire casts of psychos or well-meaning people who struggle with their murderous nature.
  • Pure is likewise just a ditzy and kindhearted Stock Shōnen Hero, with the more abrasive delinquent Tasuku getting suddenly, depressingly and senselessly killed by Nodoka while she was about to beat Hitomi.

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