Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai is a supernatural romantic
comedy produced by Studio Cloverworks in 2018. Same production company
famous for adapting great romances of our age like...
Darling in the Franxxx.
Okay yeah, on second thought, that might not be the best way to introduce this.
Lasting for 13 episodes and one film that Aniplex might never release outside
of that one limited showing in theatres
(no, I’m not bitter),
Bunny Girl Senpai is a series that makes entertainment out of mediocrity.
It covers a variety of tales about a variety of characters,
with a supernatural twist to make it interesting.
You might say that you’ve heard that description before, and ...
well you’d be right because that could apply to a bunch….
But my goal here, as the series does, is to attempt to showcase the
uniqueness the charm, so that’s what I’m going to do.
Ladies, gentlemen and others, my name is Arkada and today on
Glass Reflection we are looking at Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai.
Let’s jam.
Bunny Girl Senpai follows the story of Sakuta, a very typical and
boring high school student, who just so happens to have a bit of
history with supernatural elements that rational people think are insane.
His sister lost her memory after experiencing episodes that caused wounds
to appear out of nowhere, and he himself got a gash across his chest
with no explanation as to where it came from. So you’d think he wouldn't
bat an eye at more surprising things happening in his life.
Which is true, until one of those things happens to be the
appearance of his senpai waltzing around in a bunny girl outfit.
Ignoring the title, as it holds little relevance outside of the initial arc,
the series continues to follow Sakuta as he continually comes into contact
with a phenomena that the show calls “Adolescence Syndrome” and also the
girls who suffer from it.
Adolescence Syndrome is where abnormal things happen to people during
puberty that traditional science can’t explain and most people don’t acknowledge.
The series doesn’t just treat it like some supernatural handwave though,
but rather as a phenomenon that greatly affects the “atmosphere” of the world around you.
The idea of this “atmosphere” is not the scientific atmosphere that surrounds
the earth which allows us to breathe, but a more social atmosphere and is
something that allows communication to proceed in natural ways.
There’s actually a phrase for this in Japanese, “kuuki yomenai” or
“can’t read the air”. In any social situation,
if you can read the room then you can adapt to the situation easily.
If you can’t though, you might end up making things awkward by rocking the boat.
This whole concept drives much of the show’s plot.
Early on in the initial arcs, the show focuses on interacting with this atmosphere,
and reading the room from a more subtle angle.
In the first arc, Mai finds herself unable to be seen by more and more
people as time goes on. This is because, as a popular actress,
her life is very public. She is seen by everyone and, subconsciously,
she wants to be left alone, to be invisible. So the show’s
adolescence syndrome makes that a reality.
It changes the atmosphere so that now interacting with her is almost like a taboo,
so no one does.
They are not being malicious they don’t even realize it, they are just following the atmosphere.
How the resolution to every arc works is just a matter of realizing
what exactly caused the atmosphere to be changed in the first place,
and then to either reverse or come to understand the greater problem.
With Koga time keeps repeating itself causing her and sakuta to relive
the same days over again in hopes of finding a happy ending.
Futaba ends up with a doppleganger, one who is far more is far more risqué
and bold with her choices and the two conflict with who is the genuine article.
Toyohama and her half-sister switch bodies and lives as pressure begins
to mount in her life for not being as successful as her sister is.
Even Sakuta’s sister Kaede suffers, as she was a victim of bullying from
her classmates that the atmosphere unfortunately turned into actual physical wounds.
Her only recourse was to shut down socially and become somewhat of a recluse,
unable to leave the apartment without suffering massive panic attacks.
It’s Sakuta’s job, to basically figure out the problems with all of his friends
and make the atmosphere revert to how it was, allowing the adolescence syndrome to pass.
He can do that because he himself is socially awkward.
He can’t read the room, so it’s much harder for the atmosphere to affect him.
That’s the polite way of saying that he can be a bit of a dick
and the story came up with a way to show that as a positive thing.
To be fair, this makes the show a tough sell.
You could watch the first episode of the series, realise that with every
new arc you are going to have this almost generic guy just fall into the
lives of these attractive women who need help that only he can provide,
and roll your eyes back so hard you break your own neck from the contortion.
And to an extent, that’s still a problem. The trait of harem protagonist x
has been a mainstay in many anime for years, but while the writers offer
little more than a shrug as they dump Sakuta into this situation,
I still feel like he as a character makes the best of it more than most.
Many times characters in his situation are excessively dense, impulsive,
or both. But when you are dealing with scenarios that the writers
like to attempt to explain in scientific fashions, through Futaba in this case,
Sakuta needed to be at least halfway intelligent to understand what’s
going on and empathetic enough to want to help those he runs across without
bleeding too much into loving or lusting after his charges.
With the exception of Mai, of course.
Sakuta’s greatest asset is as a builder, not a solver.
It’s easy to say that he’s the one that comes into the lives of these girls
and solves all of their problems, but he can’t solve their problems.
He can only help to identify them so that they can solve the problem themselves.
WELL, DOESN’T THAT SOUND FAMILIAR. WHERE HAVE I HEARD THAT BEFORE?
Sooooooooooooooo, this also ties into what could be Bunny Girl Senpai’s biggest problem.
Let’s take a step back for a moment and run a quick comparison.
I’m sure you all know it. Let’s see how this show compares
to that of another of the same genre.
I am, of course, talking about…
The World God Only Knows.
What else could I be talking about?
Both protagonists have roughly the same goal.
Both are charged with saving the lives of girls who are afflicted by an
outside supernatural influence beyond their control.
But, since their situations are very similar, I wanted to bring up one interesting fact.
Who talks about God Only Knows anymore?
After completing a variety of story arcs, the anime hasn't seen a resurgence
in public consciousness since the airing of its final arc in 2013.
It was an enjoyable experience, sure. I even recommended it back when it aired,
but eventually people forgot about it. Why is that? My take?
Because while both shows are entertaining, their biggest problem is that
it’s possible for one to look at them and only see the stories that came before,
which doesn’t make the memory of them last very long, unless the stories do better.
This brings us back to Bunny Girl Senpai.
Mai’s arc is like Fuko Ibuki from Clannad, Koga is Haruhi’s from Endless Eight,
and heck the amount of people who have drawn comparisons to Monogatari
and SNAFU might have a point, even if those comparisons
are far more negative than I think the show deserves.
Like, I bet almost everyone who has watched Haruhi and then saw Bunny Girl’s
second arc about Koga and her problem with repeating time then thought,
“HRM, ENDLESS EIGHT?”.
The premises of both are identical at the start, hence the comparison,
but thankfully their resolutions are completely different.
That's the point.
I learned things about Laplace’s Demon that Haruhi never talked about and,
hey, it didn’t suck my life away by watching the same episode 8 FREAKING TIMES!
This is what I mean by changing the story for the better.
It’s in the changes to the story that make it most interesting.
People claim that Monogatari is original, when it itself leans heavily
on tales in folklore from Japan and other cultures.
But most people don’t care because of the way that Monogatari adapts
its stories to be better or at least as entertaining as those that came before.
It’s not THAT it’s similar that is the important part or is to be
taken as a negative, but rather that it differs.
If done well, this then makes it a positive, which is something I believe
Bunny Girl Senpai succeeded with. But while I may enjoy these unique factors a lot,
it also matters whether or not the anime community as a whole does too.
This brings us back briefly to God Only Knows, an example of a series that,
while entertaining, faded from public consciousness for not being
unique enough to stand the test of time. This is a possible future that
Bunny Girl Senpai faces. If its legacy is a constant comparison to other shows,
it’ll find it hard to stand out. And its success or failure relies on how
similar the viewer found it to the other work and if they view that to be positive or not.
Personally, I view it as a show that stands on its own two feet.
I know it to be a series capable of standing outside of the shadow of others because,
being perfectly honest, half of the comparisons I’ve mentioned in this video
didn’t even come to mind when I watched the show. It wasn’t until afterwards,
while writing this video, that most of those similarities started to jump out in my mind.
While I don’t want to completely disregard the similarities between
Bunny Girl Senpai and other stories, I do believe that these comparisons
are the shackles of the show.
If you don’t see them, if you don’t know the other shows, if Rascal is
the first story of its kind that you’ve come across, that shackle just
disappears and the things that make Rascal unique
will be an added bonus to the overall story.
Many people can easily draw other comparisons between Bunny Girl Senpai
and the Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, as while the reasoning behind
events in the shows are different, the results are very similar.
Both Sakuta and Kyon find themselves having to deal with a variety of
supernatural situations revolving around the characters of the show and,
using their logical ability and endless amounts of snark,
they eventually solve the issues that plague the world.
But it’s been almost 10 years since the last mainline Haruhi entry,
and the archetype that Kyon filled needed to be updated.
Some would say that he was with Monogatari’s Araragi,
but I felt like that went a bit too far in the wrong direction.
Sakuta doesn’t purposefully shoot lewd eyes at every female character
for a chance with a panty shot. He makes inappropriate comments, sure,
but never in a tone that comes off as demeaning.
Like, in the case of interacting with Mai, most of his comments
are carefully crafted to help her overcome her self-consciousness
that might cause her to relapse.
He’s not perfect, and neither is the show.
There are plenty of times that Sakuta comes off far more as your everyday
boring protagonist, and his moments of individuality don't happen
as often as I would have liked. But I will still say that I actively
looked forward to more episodes of this series as I watched it,
I was delighted when I had a chance to watch the film,
and I was sad when it was all over, which is not something
that happens to me very often with shows of this genre.
On the surface, Bunny Girl Senpai seems like your run-of-the-mill
supernatural harem narrative that you might have witnessed more
often than you might have liked. And while I won’t say that those
elements don’t exist, because they do, the show never fully leans into them.
It's that difference that sets it apart from others of that vein
and made the series feel like a breath of fresh air.
If you are still on the fence, I’d say to just watch the first three episodes.
Those cover the show's first arc and are basically great as a
stand-alone film on their own. Beyond that, only continue if you
like what you see. But as far as I am concerned,
after meticulously considering my thoughts on the categories of
story, characters, animation, sound, and my own personal enjoyment,
which -- after constantly altering the flow of time until I was
happy with my thoughts on it -- has me awarding
Rascal Does Not Dream Of Bunny Girl Senpai with the
rating to Buy It.
And you can!
Now, the Blu-ray is an Aniplex release, but it’s only two-thirds
the cost of Bakemonogatari. As I said yesterday, they’ve learned a
bit when it comes to their pricing, but it’s still quite high.
However, I think it’s worth it to have the series on your shelf.
If you don’t want to go that far though, it’s also available for
streaming on both Crunchyroll and Funimation.
So, that’s a good secondary option if finances are a little tight this Christmas season.
Because that's not going to date this video at all!
As far as alternate anime recommendations, I’ll start with a dear classic
of mine and go with Clannad and Clannad After Story.
It’s now over 10 years old, but it’s still got it. It has a similar situation
with a protagonist who has to deal with supernatural elements and the girls
they revolve around. But if you want all of that and also one with more bunny girls,
then my second recommendation goes to The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya.
It’s another favourite that doesn't revolve as heavily
around multiple female characters, but is a classic in its own right.
Between those two, you should find something to your liking.
Lastly, I want to give a very special thank you to my patrons,
who not only support my work in general, but who also allow me to do what I do.
I love and appreciate you all. Specifically though, as I like to do,
I want to give particular shout-outs to patrons
Rune Jakobsen, Calhoonboy, Richard Emil Bradley, Hector Montemayor,
Siri Yamiko, and Ryefan Boneapart for being especially awesome.
You guys are great! And until next time –
ladies, gentlemen, and others – watch more anime
…and stay frosty.