Seishun Buta Yarou wa Bunny Girl Senpai no Yume wo Minai

The rare and inexplicable Puberty Syndrome is thought of as a myth. It is a rare disease which only affects teenagers, and its symptoms are so supernatural that hardly anyone recognizes it as a legitimate occurrence. However, high school student Sakuta Azusagawa knows from personal experience that it is very much real, and happens to be quite prevalent in his school.

Mai Sakurajima is a third-year high school student who gained fame in her youth as a child actress, but recently halted her promising career for reasons unknown to the public. With an air of unapproachability, she is well known throughout the school, but none dare interact with her—that is until Sakuta sees her wandering the library in a bunny girl costume. Despite the getup, no one seems to notice her, and after confronting her, he realizes that she is another victim of Puberty Syndrome. As Sakuta tries to help Mai through her predicament, his actions bring him into contact with more girls afflicted with the elusive disease.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Sakurajima, Mai Main

Seto, Asami Japanese

Azusagawa, Sakuta Main

Ishikawa, Kaito Japanese

Futaba, Rio Supporting

Tanezaki, Atsumi Japanese

Azusagawa, Kaede Supporting

Kubo, Yurika Japanese

Koga, Tomoe Supporting

Touyama, Nao Japanese

Makinohara, Shouko Supporting

Minase, Inori Japanese

Toyohama, Nodoka Supporting

Uchida, Maaya Japanese

Kunimi, Yuuma Supporting

Uchida, Yuuma Japanese

Kamisato, Saki Supporting

Akaneya, Himika Japanese

Hanawa, Ryouko Supporting

Aikawa, Natsuki Japanese

Kida, Kazuya Producer

Yokoyama, Shuko Producer

Kurokawa, Yuuichirou Producer

Masui, Souichi Director, Storyboard

Reviews

May 16, 2025

50Fiftillididee

Recommended

🐈 Harvey & Donnie Darko Meet Mai 🐰 Quantum Mechanics Even a 🦍 Could Understand °good° 💯%🔍

It's not a romance. Not really. It's not a coming-of-age or hangout with friends, either. RDNDOBGS is a power point exposition on puberty syndrome. They go cover-to-cover with it. The show is actually based on mental m@sturb@tion.

"So, you can see me?" Mai is in the school library in a Playboy Bunny suit: Black, satin, cheeks out, ears on head. She looks like a sex siren. Nobody's paying any attention at all, though! Sakuta thinks he must be dreaming, but then she strikes up a conversation with him. Naturally, given ... the context, things get weird pretty quickly. She's walking around in a bunny suit just to see if /anyone/ can see her, she explains. She's been experiencing times where no one knows she's there. As a celebrity, Mai had gotten tired of people always oogling her. She wished that she could disappear, and it looks like her wish might be coming true.

Based on the Hajime Kamoshida light novels, RDNDOBGS is a 2018 release that is rated 8.21 on MAL. It is 1 season consisting of 13 24-minute English subbed episodes. This is first of the Rascal series, related productions by watch order: Rascal Does Not Dream of a Dreaming Girl, a 90 minute 2019 film; Rascal Does Not Dream of a Sister Venturing; & Rascal Does Not Dream of a Knapsack Kid.

RDNDOBGS is a little bit like Scott Pilgrim Versus the World. Our ML encounters a woman who is probably out of his range, at least from a certain way of looking at things. Sakuta is no slouch, but on day-1, Mai is definitely above him - She's a popular actress, he's a fairly normal HS kid. He has a chance with her though, as the world seems to have conspired to bring them together. Almost immediately, the fickle universe seems to conspire to keep them apart, though. Scott Pilgrim only had to fight numerous powerful ex-boyfriends, while Sakuta must battle physics conundrums - and even worse, puberty syndrome, in order to conquer love.

Is it puberty syndrome? Hearing other people's thoughts, seeing another person's future, or swapping bodies with someone else, along with the everyday robust fantasy life of any 8th grader... it's all referred to as puberty syndrome, Chunibyo, or 8th grade / middle school syndrome, and it's natural home is found in manga & anime.

Apart from Mai, Sakuta and his little sister, Kaede, have suffered their own unexplained phenomenon. They bear scars from a strange internet curse. Their injuries appeared from "nowhere" during a time that they were being attacked online. They actually woke up in the hospital with no memory of anything that happened. Unexplained phenomena are just old news for them.

There is a romance, and this romance is cute. Reluctant, halting, and cute. Sakurajima Mai is our Bunny girl. She can't work because people no longer notice her. She's even slipping from their memories. Azusagawa Sakuta is our Rascal. He's a regular slub. He is also a Rascal. He's always coming on to Mai. He can /definitely/ see her, & she is warming up to him. She'll say things like: "You'd get ecstatic if I scolded you. It seems like no punishment is more of a punishment in your case."

Lil sis, Kaede, has been through drama, and though she's around 14, she perpetually acts 3 yrs old, squeaky voice included. I think her character is a drag on the show, not a boost. She is just too babyish. They get too weird with siblings in anime, across the board. Then there's Casino, the cat, who only needs a red collar to match the school uniforms perfectly. Futaba Rio, Sakuta's brainy friend, is skeptical of his complaints until her double sprouts up from thin air. Sakuta & Futaba will dissect the universe together.

They get into the mental exercise of Schrodinger's Cat. Per goog, it's "a famous thought experiment that demonstrates the idea in quantum physics that tiny particles can be in two states at once until they're observed. It asks you to imagine a cat in a box with a mechanism that might kill it. Until you look inside, the cat is both alive and dead at the same time." Hmm...
Not only is Schrodinger a horrible pet owner (why do they always pick on cats?) but not knowing something only creates the two states of existence in one's mind. It has nothing to do with actual reality. It's also playing on the concept that people "see" just what they want to see. This is true. But it has more to do with their interpretation not their visual acuity.

Sakuta is clever and figures out how to get people to see Mai, but puberty syndrome morphs into a new obstacle almost immediately: In Groundhog Day fashion, everyday he wakes it's June 27th. Japan has won the World Cup and he meets Mai for lunch. It's the day he intends to try and make it "official" with her.

The bespectacled Futaba Rio is where Sakuta goes when things get confusing. She'll break down the left brain side of things. "Perhaps the 'June 27th' that you've experienced several times was just watching the future from an earlier point in time.... I'm not talking about time travel, but more about predicting the future... Have you heard of Laplace's Demon? ...LaPlace thought of a fictitious being that has the power to instantly ascertain the position of momentum of every atom existing in this world, and from that, can instantly calculate the future..." "But I'm not such a shady demon," Sakuta points out. "Well then, you should go look for the real Laplace's Demon... wouldn't he be the only one who acts differently on a new 'June 27th' that's repeated?" Everything is simple for Futaba Rio.

Not for me, though. I decided to check out how Wiki explains it: "Laplace himself did not use the word "demon", which was a later embellishment... According to chemical engineer Robert Ulanowicz in his 1986 book Growth and Development, Laplace's demon met its end with... the concepts of irreversibility, entropy, and the second law of thermodynamics... Laplace's demon was based on the premise of reversibility and classical mechanics; however... many thermodynamic processes are irreversible... Chaos theory is sometimes pointed out as a contradiction to Laplace's demon: it describes how a deterministic system can nonetheless exhibit behavior that is impossible to predict: as in the butterfly effect, minor variations between the starting conditions of two systems can result in major differences." That's slightly better, but I won't claim to have a handle on it.

3D science cannot explain the world entirely. What we think of as the supernatural world is probably in comparison to our limited 3D perception of existence, which physicists now largely believe could be as many as 10 dimensions. Many of us have probably read or heard about fortune tellers or other seers who get it right. I've often thought, over the years, that if you know everything going on in the present it makes it quite easy to predict the future with a great degree of accuracy. How would fortune tellers know everything going on? They don't, but some seem to be able to brush up against powers that might, or maybe they're incredibly gifted mentalists. That's part of what LaPlace is asserting. Therefore, I think the concept is mostly true in that limited way, though I don't know why people feel the need to make it an all-or-nothing postulation. Left-brainers seem to need to have everything in a tiny little package to explain away it all from a 3D perspective. That outlook is limited and inadequate. Here's a good place to insert a quote from the excellent show, Archive 81-7.8: "I try to always leave room for the unexplained corners of the universe, but most likely this is anxiety." It's also a sign of anxiety if a person feels like they need to have everything figured out. Those people are just lying to themselves. Relax, there's a lot of things we don't know yet. Leave your mind open to the unexplained corners of the universe. Tear down that wall between what you think of as the supernatural and realize that it's probably just a multi-dimensional issue. Have proper respect, awe, and even fear for what's out there because all of us, in our hearts, have a sense that there's more. That's just what it is to be human.

Anyway, the worst possible version of June 27th is the one that goes on the books. Sakuta thinks the day will reset, but when he wakes up, it's June 28th, and he's completely botched his relationship with Mai💔. "Out of 7 billion people in the world, how was I the only one sucked into that phenomenon?"

Next, there's quantum entanglement. It is a "strange phenomenon where two particles in separate places don't need any intermediation to instantly share information and move." Then it's the adolescent paradox of Qantum Teleportation ~> Mai and her teen-girl-group sister swap bodies. With 2 eps to go, lil sis Kaede, a previous puberty syndrome and current PTSD sufferer, loses all of her memories. The troubles won't let up. When is there gonna be time to just date!?

RDNDOBGS is a pleasant series. It's a great primer on puberty syndrome and that is a big chunk of the fun. It is missing the spark that would elevate it to the level of excellent and beyond. It's definitely high IQ and great for stimulating mental exercise. I like it enough to check out the sequels.

Watch to the B&W credits in the last episode.

QUOTES📢

Everyone says "I'm bored," or "Isn't there anything interesting?" like pet phrases. But in reality, none of them are really looking for a change.

Instead of confidence it was an inferiority complex.

If that's your goal you're getting further away everyday.

Now that you know of pain that others cannot understand, I'm sure you can become kinder than anyone else. And I'm sure you'll become the support for someone else.

Age 13+ Language: he!!, A boy asked an irritated girl if she's on her period. Rated TV-PG-13: Parents Cautioned

Re-📺? Right now that future is impossible to predict

Recs~Beyond the Boundary-7.4, Kokoro Connect-7 & Love Chunibyo And Other Delusions-8.4.

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

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Oct 27, 2024

terr-rawr-saur

Mixed Feelings

I found this so stressful to watch. The underlying paranormal stuff pulls the relationships in a much harder direction than your typical romance.

I think the story is fairly straight forward and predictable. Its nice to have romance where the characters get into their relationship quicker and we get to see them actually in it and building that relationship together rather than it just happening at the end.

Animation and audio is all pretty on point, no complaints there.

I sort of feel like this fits more in line with Steins Gate type of genre than most other romance anime. There's just too much of a scientific/paranormal ... undertone through the whole thing for it to be pure romance.

So if you are in a Steins Gate kind of mood, but want a bit more romance, then this is for you, but I would recommend putting it off for a while if you are just looking for some more straight forward lovey dovey type stuff.

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

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Apr 20, 2025

prakhargr8

Not Recommended

Well-written

Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai is a show that ambitiously blends a cocktail of psychological tropes under the guise of supernatural phenomena from time loops and body-switching to doppelgangers and the enigmatic “puberty syndrome.” While this amalgamation offers a bold narrative scope, the sheer volume of concepts tends to convolute the emotional arc rather than deepen it. The series appears to reach for profundity, but often risks feeling overstuffed, as complexity substitutes cohesion.

At the heart of the series is a protagonist cast in the role of the savior, persistently stepping in to resolve each anomaly with stoic composure. His relationship with ... the titular Bunny Girl, though painted with moments of intimacy and mutual gratitude, feels more performative than organic. There is a certain hollowness in their dynamic as if both are tethered to each other out of obligation rather than desire. Respect is mistaken for love, and compromise masquerades as connection. Their bond teeters between convenience and codependency, rarely feeling like a shared journey of growth.

The show’s thematic core is the exploration of identity, alienation, and adolescence. It is self-aware and artistically daring. Its animation is intricate, and its tonal experimentation commendable. Yet, despite its stylistic confidence and clever dialogue, the emotional chemistry between characters never fully settles. Conflicts are addressed, but rarely internalized. Characters strive to solve each other’s problems, but seldom integrate them as shared burdens, seemingly externalized than transformative

In the end, the anime is an intriguing exercise in emotional surrealism being layered and ambitious, but aloof. It provokes thought certainly, but doesn't grants emotional satisfaction. It is a story that reverberates more for the style than its soul.

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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