<Contains Mild Spoilers>
2018 is indeed, a strange year for anime. Stretching from the melodramatic effect from Violet Evergarden, high tension of Megalobox, and goofy comedic aspect from Hinamatsuri, it sure is a bizarre phenomenon that captures most of our heart. While entering the last 3 months of its legacy, a wild, eye-catching, and fluffy (if you want to call it so) Bunny Girl appeared with a solid promise of 13 episodes. Hyped by some but unknown by the other, Rascal Does not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai (or I’ll just call it ‘Bunny Girl Senpai’) seems like your typical high school romance anime that repeats every year with the same plot all over again. Fortunately for Bunny Girl Senpai, that was not the case.
Bunny Girl Senpai is one of the most, let’s say ‘influential’, anime of 2018. From the poster itself, resembles an ambiguous and obscure description of the series’ entirety. One would probably judge the anime by its poster, and reach a conclusion that this is a harem anime. Let me convinced you that it wasn’t like that, in fact, Bunny Girl Senpai doesn’t even bring that subject at all. It was a bouncy ride at first, but if we zoom out our vision and understand it from a bigger scope, I believe that Bunny Girl Senpai can deliver us to a satisfying journey.
There are some arcs in this anime that really caught my attention, one of which is the Koga’s Arc (the part that Koga and Sakuta tried to solve a problem together). From my understanding and point of view, Koga’s Arc resembles problems and delusions that teenagers are facing nowadays, and they use a very good interpretation to express the following case. I was completely flattered and it reminds me of my days in high school when I did something similar to the main protagonist’s doing. It was a sad moment.
Another example of Bunny Girl’s advantages is that it stays on the structure of puberty and adolescent problems. Other anime may differ to a different angle of the story after a few or more episodes, creating unbalanced and undecided move to direct the story afterwards. Although it combined supernatural (some will call this science fiction?) elements to it, I think Bunny Girl’s story is still acceptable and pretty enjoyable at its core.
Moving on to my next point, some people are complaining that some arcs are not that great. For me, it was Nodoka-Mai’s Arc that bored me the most. I mean, it’s not a bad arc, it was decent with some pretty shaky and surprisingly good ending to it, but I think the placement of that arc is a bit misconducted. Bunny Girl only had 13 episodes and I just can’t find a good excuse to put that arc in a -near end- tight spot. I understand the possibilities for season 2 and the movie in the future, but I consider that a bleak direction to make.
After finishing the whole series, I sat on my couch for a moment and then reflected of what just happened in the series. Like, it explicitly mentions some great issues, such as puberty or adolescent syndrome (not the real name, but you get the point) and how the people around us still haven’t realized how bad it is. I don’t know about you, but this series touched me in a different way from the other series. Overall, I will say that Bunny Girl a binge-worthy anime with some slight issues that are probably overlooked by its deep and emotional adventure.
