Bunny Girl Senpai is an anime about girls suffering from a supernatural disease called "puberty syndrome" and a boy trying to help them. The disease can cause pretty much any supernatural effect on the person such as turning them invisible or creating a doppelganger of themselves, and the way to stop it is discovering what is the cause it and solving it. It's all good so far, the premise is interesting, but it gets stupid when the author try to use science to explain the events instead of simply going with the imaginary approach. It's even worse when the science concepts used to explain the events are things like quantum physics which is not something expected to be known deeply by the average viewer. That results in extremely half-assed explanations and unnecessary hazy dialogues all over the series. I would guess this was an attempt to make the viewer feel smart when they heard about physics concept which they may know superficially and pretend it makes sense in the context of the anime. In the very beginning of the show, there's a scene of Sakurajima Mai, the main heroine, walking around with a bunny girl outfit, and the reason for that is because she has become invisible and is trying to get attention to see if anyone can see her. This is why there's "bunny girl" in the title and Mai wearing it in the pictures of the anime. It's all a bait, it's is not even something relevant in the anime and you quickly forget why the anime is even named like that. Now, I don't mind much fanservice and baits like a girl using skimpy clothes, but when it's excused as being necessary to the plot, it's just cringeworthy. It just happens that the main character, Azusagawa Sakuta, is the only one who can see her. The plot evolves from that, they try to find the reason for the disease and eventually solve it. All the next arcs in the anime are the same, Sakuta finds a girl with puberty syndrome, finds the cause, usually by simply talking to her and solves it. An anime with this setting could be compelling, but Bunny Girl is not, the characters are plain, annoying and dumb, the dialogues are pretentious and dull, the story is just not engaging at all. The romance aspect of the anime is awful. Despite being a romance anime, there's no development in Sakuta and Mai's relationship, there's no reason for them to like each other, but somehow they seem to be in love since the beginning of the series, there's a scene of Sakuta declaring his love in one of the first episodes and that's it, there's no build up. I feel like their relationship is in the exact same spot in the end and the beginning. It's also important to mention that this is a harem anime, all the girls fall in love with Sakuta, and he reciprocate sometimes, despite having a girlfriend. If someone thinks the romance in this anime is good, I can only guess the person is a self-inserter who identified with Sakuta for being a dull character and they are hoping they will find a beautiful girl in real life (maybe even wearing a bunny girl outfit) who will like them for no reason. The comedy is another bad point, it's nonexistent. It's hard to know when something said was a joke or something serious. Firstly because they are not funny, and secondly because the characters are inexpressive, specially Sakuta who is usually the one telling the bad jokes. The jokes are often offensive as well, the author tried to give a blunt and ironic personality to Sakuta, copying other popular characters who are like that, but it didn't go well, mainly because the things he say are not witty, he is just stupid, dull and offensive for no reason. During all this anime, the only scene I found fun was the one he shouted he was a virgin, probably the best scene in the anime.
The characters are probably the worst thing about this anime. I can't find one single endearing character on this show. Sakuta is dull, lifeless and awful, I can't say a good thing about him, I just don't know why anyone would like him. Mai is an attempt to create the perfect waifu, stoic, diligent, smart and perfect. Her kind is pretty common in this kind of stories, but she is just a worse version of all the popular characters who are like that. It is pretty clear that the two protagonists and even the anime itself are rip-offs of other shows and characters which I will not mention, but it's not hard to guess. Futaba Rio is the aloof genius girl who is there to explain everything that is happening using science, she is the less annoying of the characters, but her dialogues with the mc are the main reason this anime is so pretentious, all of these dialogues have the goal of showing how intelligent she is and how brilliant is the plot. The other girls are only relevant in their respective arcs, other than that they become forgettable side characters. They are extremely dumbed down to create a dependency of Sakuta, since they can't solve their problems themselves and have to resort to the smart and dependable boy.
The art is subpar. I couldn't even enjoy the good visuals and ignore the plot, the animation is not attractive at all. The characters design being so bland doesn't help. Sometimes I wondered if the characters being so expressionless was because of the art being so bad or that was how it was intended. I didn't read the light novel, so I don't know, but it really feels lackluster.
The sound was the saving grace. It has a really good cast of voice actors. The opening and ending are catchy and memorable, the ending theme is sung by different voice actresses of the girls as the arcs change, which is a nice touch. Other than that, the ost was ok. Overall it was definitely the redeeming feature of the anime, but it can only do so much.
I didn't enjoy this anime. I really like romcoms and I wouldn't say I am picky with the anime I watch, but even so I couldn't enjoy it, the anime is just that bad. My emotions oscillated between being bored and being annoyed. I only finished it because it is so well-regarded, so I kept waiting for the good part to come so that I could understand the hype and make my time spent watching worthwhile, but it never came.
Bunny Girl Senpai is overrated. I don't see why it's regarded so high, except for being a bait for self-inserters or people who think the plot is smart because of all the gibberish to explain the puberty syndrome. I would not recommend it to anyone. Instead, I would recommend other romcoms which are so similar to this one, but much better. This is not even the best work of Kamoshida Hajime if you ask me. It's sad how this show resembles so much other famous and good animes of the same genre and still ended up being so bad, or maybe it is because of it that the show is soulless and uninteresting.
