Shout out to the guys who've posted all the information about Yoshihiro's struggles with his publishers - I genuinely didn't know that he'd been pressured into creating the wolf arc. That explains why it feels significantly out of place in the manga. For the record, I'm not saying that the wolf arc is bad, I adore it personally, what I am saying is that I am aware of it feeling like a different story entirely after the defeat of Akakabuto - a kind of shift from action/adventure to fantasy manga.
Anyway, I'm digressing... my question is; what happened with Benizakura's fur colouring in the anime? When Wilson is telling the story of Umibozu, his fur colouring appears like this;
Yet as an adult, his light underbelly and upper leg markings are replaced by a darker brown and the same goes for his eye patches;
I know that some puppies' fur colouration seems to darken with age, but this seems like an odd transformation. Is this just reference to how he looked in the manga?