In the short teaser trailer he posted, a silhouetted figure can be seen making hand motions to the background music, before a series of videos of Sivan and his boyfriend Jacob Bixenman is shown.

[12][13] It features "a dark moody ambiance with Sivan enraptured in a seemingly endless infatuation" as well as "brooding electro, synth and drone".

[14] It opens with Sivan's "raw vocals and a soft ethereal piano", as it progresses, it builds up to "a crescendo with fuzzy guitars supporting Sivan's selfish yearnings for domesticity", before reaching "John Hughes' movie-like climax with an exhausted love slow dancing in the middle of a high school gymnasium", Paper's Matt Moen wrote.

[16] "From the way the synth sharply rises until it's cut with a cassette tape button sound effect to spark the switch-up, to the roomy reverb on Troye's voice with his repeated lyrics "maybe that's you (maybe that's) // maybe that's you" over the distorted beat," Alex Beach wrote for MTV News.

Tom Breihan of Stereogum wrote: "'Animal' rides some tremendous synth swells while still sounding intimate and scaled-down, and Sivan delivers its majestic chorus with arena-sized panache.