At first I bought that myself but after actually watching the show I have to disagree. BGS is hardly different from a run of the mill romcom. We follow Sakuta, a character that’s supposed to be your normal relatable outcast with nothing special about him but shows his “amazing” qualities when he turns out to be the only one capable of saving the girl in every new arc.
This is where the only real gimmick of BGS comes in, the Puberty Syndrome. That’s what this anime calls a mental illness brought about by unstable and stressful life of a teenager but in reality is so vague there’s no point to see it as anything more than “dumb thing that tried to justify more dumb shit happening”. Think of it as oddities in Monogatari but if they were done extremely poorly, more on that later.
Whole show can be broken down into arcs, each revolving around a particular girl with their own problem. Not a lot of stuff carries over though and when one girl is “solved” they become more or less irrelevant and stop playing a meaningful role in the story. Even the titular Bunny Girl, Mai Sakurajima, eventually starts feeling like a background decoration that only serves as an excuse to shove in more perverted jokes or romance so basic and plain it makes Naruto seem like Anna Karenina.
With that out of the way, let’s get into more detail. I think for this show to be at the very least more than passable it needs to have either of two things: interesting characters that get fleshed out or developed over the course of the story or a strong gimmick with interesting mechanics that would serve as an excuse for some high concept scenarios that combine psychology and physics.
BGS has neither of those. Main characters alone are a good example, especially considering that they’re supposed to get the most attention.
Sakuta, our protagonist, is less interesting than a box with “don’t put fingers inside” written on it. At least with that box I wonder what’s inside and with Sakuta the answer is obvious from the start, nothing. He feels more like a self-insert for chuunis and other nerds rather than a real person. A lot, if not most of his dialogue revolves around perverted, low brow jokes that also make up 90% of comedy in the show. Telling a girl how his imagination is much more perverted than she thinks he is, how he’s gonna enjoy the sound of a showering girl or how he’s delighted to have a cute girl step on him. These remarks never lead to anything and girls just brush them off after providing some cliche “moooou yada ;///;” tier response cause he’s just such a charmer. There’s even an older lady reporter that just seems to want to fuck him for some reason, it’s less egregious in the anime but very heavy handed in LN.
When Sakuta is not a braindead pervert he’s somehow a warrior or justice. Telling off someone taking a photo of Mai without her knowing, beating up an athlete for spreading lewd rumors about Koga, threatening to call the cops on random pervert messaging Rio’s twitter account and in general going above an beyond to help out any woman he sees. This is all explained by him having empathy for people who are put in a situation where others can’t empathize with them, which just so happened to apply to every damsel he saves.
In the end, I think his characterization as both some selfless messiah going against flow and a horny worthless teenagers is a very incoherent combination, which is part of makes him feel like a self-insert. Characters like that are often flawed but those flaws are never acknowledged and more often made to seem as something charming. It’s a fantasy of being special without actually being special in any way, that’s Sakuta.
His girlfriend, Mai, will take much less words to describe because despite being the second most important character she has fucking nothing. Her whole issue was that she’s a super popular mega star and she wants to get away from that, wishing that nobody knew her. Because of this, people start forgetting her and become unable to see her. Some pseudo-science bullshit later she’s completely fine again and we get to know her for who she really is, a mild tsundere. She fires off your typical “I don’t like this but I actually like this” trite and constantly teases Sakuta. Maybe two or three times she shows some other emotions, hinting at some drama spicing up their relationship but every time it either doesn’t actually matter, or in case of the ending stops mattering after Sakuta accomplishes an amazing feat of going from point A to point B using public transportation, truly nothing is impossible when you’re in love.
Going over side characters makes things seem a lot more sad. Kunimi, Sakuta biggest friend is just there, he’s a nice guy who shows up a few times to do nothing.
At least his other friend, Rio, gets a few episodes but there’s the same problem of bad execution. We get a few scenes showing she’s loves Kunimi even though he already has a girlfriend and that causes her frustration and then show fucking jumps to “I took lewd pics of myself cause I wanted attention” which gets solved by Sakuta just hanging out with her and Kunimi riding a bicycle to her place after Sakuta calls him in the middle of the night.
Koga appears about as suddenly as she vanishes, she’s a village girl who changed herself to fit in with the city crowds and worries about doing something that would hurt her reputation, that’s it.
Nodoka admires her sister, Mai, but at the same time suffers from her mother expecting her to achieve the same success.
Makinohara Shouko is not really a character. Apparently LNs do something with her later on but as far as anime goes she’s just some entity that shows up to motivate Sakuta.
Kaede, Sakuta’s sister is terrible too but there’s also another problem associated with her and a few spoilers so that’s for later.
Now, onto the second issue. The pseudo-science or bullshit known as Puberty Syndrome.
As dumb as it is I don’t think it’s completely without merit. If this part was actually developed I think the show would at least be able to invoke some curiosity simply by making you wonder what it will do next.
BSG as is fails to do that cause of all the supernatural things that happen, none of them get any clever use. I won’t even mention the mechanics of Puberty Syndrome in general cause those aren’t a thing. There’s no consistency to how it works or how effects manifest outside of all victims being teenagers with some frustrations or insecurities. Not like the show sticks to its own premise of Puberty Syndrome being a psychological issue because they try to explain everything with some of the dumbest faux-physics I’ve seen in a while.
People can’t see you? That’s because Observer effect, you know? It’s like with Schroedinger’s Cat you know? None of those things fucking fit the situation but author will throw out those concepts regardless, seemingly just to make it seem like the work is way more complex than it actually is cause he sure as hell doesn’t demonstrate any sort of understanding of the concepts he mentions. That is further cemented by the show usually forgetting it said anything about physics after initial explanation and going for a more supernatural take on things. With Sakurajima for example, this went from Schroedinger’s Cat and Observer theory to “she ignored everyone at school, not wanting to avoid the attention and that made other students become unable to see her and forget memories they had of her”. Sakuta at one points asks a fair question, if this is a problem with how she acts a school, why did it spread over seemingly entire country? To which the reply is something among the lines of people unconsciously carrying this “atmosphere” with them similarly to how there’s some social standards and norms that people might adhere to without realizing. A terrible explanation but at least it’s not as pretentious as trying to explain it with science.
After Mai fading out of existence, next story concerns what is by all means a time loop but wait, that’s too simple for BGS. This ain’t a time loop dude, it’s LAPLACE’S DEMON. Time isn’t actually looping, you’re just living in a simulation launched by a school girl who wants to reject a boy without making it seem like he’s trash, cause her friend likes the guy. Why does a simulation loop by the day instead of only repeating relevant window of time? Why is Sakuta in it? We actually get an attempt at answering the second question, apparently it’s because of quantum entanglement, just smash my head in this is dumb.
Other cases of PS aren’t nearly as severe. We get a body swap caused by jealousy/adoration, doppelganger cause by dissociating. This all feeds into the problem of these problems not only of the gimmick being rather tame but also them not being used well.
When people stop to see Mai the most she tries is wearing a bunny girl outfit to make sure someone will notice her but not only does she drop that after the first time you see it but she also seems to stop any real attempts to make people notice her until convinced to do so by Sakuta. Despite people not seeing or remembering her, they can still feel her physically. While it’s not a surefire way to make people remember her, it’s weird how they never even tried to convince people that she exists by having her move objects in front of them, pushing and pulling people or imprinting her palm or face on something. In the end it feels like author didn’t know what to do with it himself cause this is all literally solved through the power of love, somehow, Sakuta yelling about how he loves Mai gives people a reason why she would exist.
The apex of missed opportunities are the time loop episodes. Time loops are an excellent way to explore characters and everything resetting the next day is a really good excuse to mess with things. Look no further than Groundhog’s Day for an example of how much potential this premise has. So what does BGS do with time loops? Pretty much nothing. First episode only has things repeat a few times with Sakuta at most using it to change a few conversations and not by experimenting what response his words would get but using the conclusion of the original conversation to reach it faster. Then a classic misunderstanding happens and a guy Koga was trying to avoid thinks she’s dating Sakuta so the time loop breaks. After an episode of fake dating to keep the pretenses she falls in love for real and time loops again in hopes he will respond to her feelings. How does it go? Well, he just goes along with it and keeps doing the same shit until telling her “stop, I won’t change my mind” and tells her to be herself.
Doppelganger due to dissociating? Just be yourself. Don’t feel like going back to making movies? Just be yourself. Scared to do something wrong? Just be yourself. Jealous of your successful sister you can’t live up to? Just be yourself.
No experimentation, no depth, no creativity. If not for the two elements I talked about already, maybe in its intention to solve common insecurities of teenagers, BGS would get some points for a sincere attempt to explore these issues, but no. Psychological element of BGS is an anime equivalent of a facebook motivational pictures that recite shallow quotes of unknown, kitchen philosophers in fancy font on top of a pretty background or twitter posts that tell people that drinking water and working out will cure their depression so depressed people have no reason to whine about it. None of the issues present are shown with any sort of nuance. It’s almost insulting how casually author used real things that can actually fuck people up for cheap tearjerkers while pretending that there’s something more to it.
This peaks in final episodes relating to Sakuta’s sister and I’d consider what follows a spoiler if it had any impact behind it. Kaede was bullied online for not leaving a reply from her group of friends on “read” and not replying. I know, sounds dumb but we’re talking about dumb teenagers so it wasn’t too hard to accept that something like this was traumatic for her. Either way, the trauma of it makes her faint and lose all prior memories which takes a toll on her mother who straight up goes insane. Don’t worry, BGS doesn’t actually show the parents perspective or explain why daughter’s amnesia made her mother spill her marbles, it’s just there for you to feel bad about the whole thing. Sakuta keeps his cool though and comforts Kaede, telling her not to worry about who she was and thinking only about her current self. He encourages her to keep a diary and write down her thoughts, limits her from interacting with outside to avoid trauma and brings her some books and movies to keep her entertained. Until the end of the show he does pretty much nothing to fix her problem with going outside or interacting with people which lasted for TWO years until she herself wants to fix the issue due to… Sakuta bringing a bunch of girls to their apartment. Little by little she starts to push herself. Answering the phone, going a few steps outside and gradually taking it further. This actually proves effective and after fainting again she wakes up with her old memories intact but without memories of her last two years of being a shut-in. How does Sakuta react? He tells her he needs to go take a piss and books it the hell out of the hospital, crying and yelling, acting like she literally died. Not even a trace of being happy for his sister can be seen even after he more or less gets over it. What the actual fuck is this? How is your sister remembering her formative years and all the other important memories such a gigantic tragedy? I get being somewhat sad that last two years were erased but this is too much. Go and see videos and interviews of people who lost memory at older age. They don’t know who they are, who people around them are. They don’t know where they live or really anything around them. They look at their own photos without a shred of nostalgia simply because they have absolutely no context for them. Imaging that all the memories you hold dear and everything that formed your identity just disappearing. That’s a very tragic and traumatic thing in and of itself and Sakuta acts like his sister fucking died when she gets those memories back and then we even get a montage of his sister talking as if she died too and framing her path towards recovery as some form of suicide. It’s incredibly distasteful. What makes it even worse is that in the post credits sequence all of this supposedly dramatic shit is gone cause when she reads the diary she gets the knowledge of what happens and her slightly different personality is implied to have gone back to the way she was shown before. There was nothing to stop the author from setting up her past as being something she might be best off forgetting in which case a switch from positive improvement and being happy back to painful memories would be easier to see as something troubling. Why even pull this whole “I cry every tiem” tier shit when you’re gonna act like everything’s cool the next day? That’s not even me decrying morals of the show but a glaring inconsistency for the sake of having manipulative melodrama.
Now, it’s not wholly bad. I’ll admit it’s somewhat easy on the eyes. Not too pretty and character designs are very forgettable but there’s some nice scenery here and there and a few cases of good animation. In general it’s very average but at least that means it doesn’t get add to the garbage fire. Voice actors deserve some praise for the work on this series. If not for their heartfelt voice acting it would be impossible for me to even remotely sympathize with these poorly written characters.
While show is chock full of holes it at the very least is not another case of a terrible adaptation. I’ve read the first volume before watching to make sure that it’s not fault of the show of not being faithful to the source material. If anything it makes it better by cutting enough excess to fill in a few extra episodes that added nothing to the narrative. At times it becomes a bit too fast in places but that’s a minor flaw in the big picture. My biggest problem with the pacing was that it often didn’t give any breathing room for characters to get along and make progression of their relationship more gradual but to some extent this still applies to the light novel.
Hard to say to what extent Bunny Girl Senpai nailed what it was going for considering how many people enjoyed it for it’s melodrama and bargain bin Monogatari elements but I think it failed on pretty much every front. It doesn’t have a single well written character, supernatural or paranormal parts of it are tame and left unexplored, melodrama constantly shits on common sense and even comedy is gets stale. That’s a hard pass.
