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What's better, an anime with a completely original idea and premise, or one that's completely unoriginal anime that reuses ideas already done by previous anime? The answer is neither, what matters far more is execution. Many people use how original an anime as a means to either praise the series, or demean it, yet quality is not dictated by how original an anime is. There are quite a number of completely unoriginal anime that ended up being pretty fun due to how it was handled, and anime with the most unique premises that ended up being absolute garbage.

Bunny Girl Senpai, or BGS as I'll ... refer to it, sits around the former, with execution making it a much better anime than it has any right to be, but it's not nearly enough to look past it's flaws either.

Story (4)- This is probably the worst part of BGS. As you all know, this series is about the main character and getting roped into situations involving the mysterious Adolescence/Puberty Syndrome. It's absolutely nothing to write home about. It's fairly formulaic, there's nothing to really grab onto when it comes to the story. Many of these plotlines are things we've seen already, and thus makes them completely predictable.

It's somewhat forgivable for certain anime to forgo the story and focus more heavily on the characters, but despite being a character driven anime, what connects them all is said storylines present. This is the biggest problem this anime has, as you're forced to acknowledge the subpar story arcs. Don't get me wrong, the story has it's moments, but aside from those moments, the plot is just something you end up having to deal with just to get to what this series does more competently.

Art (7)- Art is pretty good, it's what you would expect from a light novel adaptation. There's nothing really glaring about it. The art style is great, and the animation is fluid enough. The problem is, it has nothing distinct about it. It does nothing to really differentiate itself from the rest of it's peers. The character designs are fairly standard, with only a few parts of their design really allowing you to differentiate them from others. It does not hamper your experience at all, but at the same time, it's hard to be content without wanting more from it.

Sound (6)- Basically the complete same situation as the art, in that it's there. There's nothing really worth criticizing, but nothing that really makes it a unique experience either. The opening is pretty generic, the ending song is a bit better, and is sung by different characters, which actually is pretty nice. Voice acting is good, nothing to write home about. The background music is completely forgettable, even those that watch this multiple times will not remember a single track. This is not an action heavy series though, so this is much more forgivable as the background music should not grab your attention and make it harder to pay attention to what's going on.

Characters (8)- This is the most important aspect of this specific anime. This is what elevates it from typical, low scoring garbage light novel adaptation, to moderately good. This is what people latch onto. The characters. They aren't incredibly unique, everyone fits some kind of archetype that has been done before, but the character interactions are done well. The conversations these characters have with each other somehow fit what their typical archetypes would talk about, yet also still contain it's own flavor, and all the tiny different details these characters have from others are reflected in the dialogue. The main character is the apathetic, unpopular type of main character that has been done before, but he actually has libido, and completely willing to admit it. The science loving geeky girl who is far more apathetic than even the main character and has a more monotone voice you'd expect of her, but is actually still interested in things other science loving characters just rarely care for. All of these minor differences seem irrelevant at first, but it allows us to relate far more to these characters, as they aren't just stereotypes, and this is reflected in the dialogue.

Even with that said though, they are still archetypes. You won't get anything incredibly new or exciting out of them. Like a pizza with prosciutto on it. Chances are you haven't had pizza with prosciutto on it and that'll be a somewhat different experience, but not that different of an experience since you've probably had pizza before. It's just a slight alteration on a formula that you're quite familiar with. How much you enjoy the pizza with prosciutto as compared to other, more normal pizzas is completely dependent on you.

Enjoyment (8)- How much you enjoy the dialogue is pretty much what will cement your opinion on this series. If you enjoy what they say and how they say it, it'll be hard not to like the series. If you can't stand it, on the other hand? It won't get better. It'll be the equivalent of watching a pure romance anime, yet not liking the chemistry between any of the characters. There are other things to glom onto instead of just the romance, but the romance is incredibly important in a romance-focused series, so you lose quite a bit of the inherent charm.

This series is not for those that want something new, it's for those that want something comfortable. For those that want something they've seen before, but with a little added flavor to it. For those that are already fans of this kind of anime, but have no more to watch. For those who can completely put aside their distaste for the generic, or didn't have that distaste in the first place. This is not a series to have high expectations for, and that's all some of us really need.

I was so excited for this. I read and loved the manga. When I heard about this, I was so incredibly giddy, especially seeing it get a well known director who has worked on Gintama, and that made it clear to me this would be good.

...but it's not. It suffers a lot from a ton of pitfalls many other comedy anime have fallen into.

Story (7) - the story of Grand Blue is incredibly irrelevant to the show. It's like a lot of comedy shows, it's merely there to serve as the basis for jokes. Which is fine, we don't need some epic drama, or some ... insanely serious story for a comedy. It's serviceable, non-offending. It does it's job. It can get quite a bit repetitive though, with the joke being basically

Iori and Kitahara don't wanna do a thing, usually involving alcohol -> their upperclassmen make them do the thing -> something bad happens due to the thing, usually because they're drunk

Not the worst, but it's enough to not rate the story any higher.

Art (5) - now we're getting to the first reason of why I don't like this anime that much. First part of this, the characters. The anime's character style is fine. Characters look nice, the exaggerated faces that people have aptly named Titan faces is still there, and is very well done. The character art is pretty solid, but my god, the animation. There are so many scenes in the show where it's just a still image, with the characters donning their titan faces, with nothing really happening but them talking, and some crazy graphic going on in the background. It's like the art director thought people wouldn't understand if something was a punchline unless they could make the punchline flashy, with Newgrounds level of animation. It's absolutely, and completely jarring, watching them walking and talking with decent animation, to these sudden jump cuts.

Sound (4) - just like art, there are parts of the sound that are well done, but then completely undone by something else. The voice acting in this show is pretty good, the VAs do a good enough job with these characters. The ending song is fun, and the opening is incredibly catchy. Despite all this praise, the sound is still a 4 for me. Why? Because literally everything else about the OST is so completely basic. Almost every scene that isn't a punchline has the same dumb track that's like nothing but a flute repetitively playing the same 5 or so notes. It's so completely uninspired, and they use it so much, except for those jump cuts I said earlier. Those suddenly have this crazy, and loud electric guitar that, like the crazy jump cut graphics, seem to be there to try and emphasize the punchlines way too much, but end up being way too distracting. This along with the stillness of these punchlines make them feel like they belong in some completely unknown, 7 minute short with a $6 budget that is always at the very bottom of an anime season preview, complete with low resolution images as a poster.

Characters (6) - they're fine, or fair according to the 6 rating here on MAL. They have their own typical archetypes, but are handled well enough that they don't seem generic. The biggest problem is the fact that these characters are completely tied to the comedy. The show bungles the comedy more often than not, and that adversely affects the characters. The lolicon otaku has jokes involving him being an otaku. When these jokes land then it's pretty easy to forgive how generic that sounds. If these jokes don't, then you just can't let it slide that easily. It's still not horrendous though. There's also a fair bit of subversion as well, which keeps the characters from being generic. The characters are serviceable.

Enjoyment (3) - the enjoyment of this anime is based on it's comedy, and this is what hurts me the most.

Comedic timing is something this anime bungles terribly. These punchlines are supposed to be funny when they're abrupt and sudden, yet they don't feel sudden or snappy enough to surprise us and catch us off guard, and they linger for too long. It's like a punchline that lasts for 10 seconds, even though you already got the entire gist of the punchline in 5. If the punchlines are clever enough then that amount of timing doesn't matter much, but these punchlines are not clever.

Even just a couple of seconds can ruin a good joke. Imagine if the punchline of a joke is a character being slapped randomly, and with one of those good slaps that just sounds painful. In the right circumstance, the snappiness of the slap as a response can be funny. It won't be as funny if the character gets slapped, but the reaction face of the character being slapped lasts for 3 whole seconds. Doing that kills the abruptness of the punchline, which is something Grand Blue's comedy hinges on.

This anime is like a server, in charge bringing the food you ordered to you, except instead of bringing it to you, he brings it halfway, and you're expected to get up and go get it. It's not the absolute worst thing you'd have to do, but the fact that you have to meet him halfway already makes him worse than other potential waiters you could have gotten. You could have gone to a restaurant that instead of making you work for that product you ordered, could have just given you what you wanted. That's how I feel about Grand Blue. It's probably not the worst anime out there when it comes to it's comedic timing, but you need to meet it halfway way too much to get any ounce of enjoyment out of it, when you can instead watch other comedy anime that don't have these glaring issues.

Keep it on your plan to watch list, and watch it if you absolutely have no comedy anime to watch, and are desperate for some more. If not, take a pass on this. There are better, more competently directed comedy out there