An American Writer's Thoughts on Japanese Animation

I Did Not Sign Up For This Feels Trip – Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai Spoiler Review

“Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai”… The very title conjures a certain set of expectations, doesn’t it? Something seems very goofy about this. The perspective deepens when you hear the pitch, the show being about a more-or-less ordinary High School boy, Sakuta, helping a series of girls deal with strange phenomena caused by something called “Puberty Syndrome”. You can even start to watch the first episode, and it looks and feels a good deal like The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, especially when you have the main character being fairly deadpan.

That sounds really plausible. All together, you’re being told, more or less, that you’re in for a Haruhi-esque Harem/Comedy with a “zany supernatural elements in the real world” vibe. If that’s what you’re being told, though, you are being lied to.

Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai has exactly one part of that down: the visuals. In terms of the color and lighting, it does really resemble Haruhi, lending weight to the impression that it’s somehow similar at heart. I suppose this does some lifting; Bunny Girl Senpai (as I’ll call it for short) does manage to avoid being really dark, depressing, or miserable, and I’d say it has a mostly optimistic view on life and people. But for all that, it’s less like Haruhi and more like Bakemonogatari in Haruhi’s skin – so much so I’d almost say that Bunny Girl Senpai is to Bakemonogatari about what RahXephon is to Evangelion or Yuki Yuna to Madoka Magica. It’s not a true “Harem” show (it’s probably less of a harem than Chivalry of a Failed Knight, and about on the same wavelength as, well, Bakemonogatari), it’s got a direct romance and never really plays to Harem tropes. This is “mostly the real world with some supernatural elements” but they’re not “zany”; the occurrence of Puberty Syndrome are (like Bakemonogatari’s aberrations) usually heavy problems with psychological grounding. And if you couldn’t guess from that, even though there are some funny scenes, Bunny Girl Senpai is not a comedy. I hesitate to call it a “drama” but if you twist my arm to pick between Comedy and Drama, Drama it is.

So, getting into it, the structure of the show is strongly in arcs, each one dealing with a particular case of Puberty Syndrome. The first case is that of Mai Sakurajima, the titular girl, who Sakuta first encounters when she’s going about her business wearing a bunny girl costume. She is, as the title would suggest, Sakuta’s senior in school, and is also something of a famous actress/model. Why is she wandering around in a bunny girl costume, then? Because people seem to be losing the ability to sense her, causing her to dress and act in a way impossible to ignore in order to ascertain whether people can see and remember her.

The meat of the first arc is attempting to resolve Mai’s Puberty Syndrome before she vanishes entirely from the world. Helping Sakuta out is Rio Futaba, his classmate who can be roughly described as “Science Girl” and who offers explanations and possible solutions for Puberty Syndrome cases that, of course, have a way of working out.

In my mind, Rio’s normal usage (she has an arc of her own later, and is much stronger in it) is probably the biggest weakness in the show. The problem is not Rio herself, in particular, but the fact that Puberty Syndrome and all its incarnations are typically tied back to a layman’s understanding of quantum topics, somehow lensed through society. For instance, Mai is ceasing to exist because she’s not being “observed”, in this case meaning that a work-related failure to make a good High School debut causes her to, at school, be ignored rather than included in their society.

Now, I like a good bit of quantum insanity (Such as in Noein) but I don’t think it fits here. Every case of Puberty Syndrome has to do with the wishes or fears of the girl in question. Mai’s social isolation compounded with some degree of disillusionment with fame, for instance. This is a scenario where a more magical explanation, or at least one more rooted in psychology-based pseudoscience rather than physics-based pseudoscience, would have landed better. Naturally, I have to compare this once again to Bakemonogatari (I’m really am sorry I’m calling back there so often, but sometimes it needs to be said) and how the various apparitions are all in some ways reflections of the girls plagued by them, their needs and wishes and stress coming out in a supernatural form. That makes more sense, because we accept that the supernatural is receptive to human thought.

This doesn’t seem like the time for quantum physics; it’s more like Kyuubey is on the case than anything about waveforms or observers. If you’re going to have a “rational” explanation, this would probably be the time to bust out the good old “your mind makes it real” or “Only 10% of the brain” screed to explain how the subconscious of each girl is getting the better of them and breaking through their social and mental blocks can be the key to “resolving” the issue.

But, whatever, Quantum explanations for psychological problems. How does it play out?

Actually – and this is the strength of the show – very well. We get a slow-burn emotional build as Mai fades from most people and Sakuta tries to hold on to her, having gained quite an affection as he helps her out. Eventually they work out that people seem to forget Mai as they sleep, and even Sakuta might not be immune. He does everything to stay awake, to remember Mai, but as she sees how much he’s hurting himself, she accepts her fate and sees him off to sleep… after which he does, for a time, forget. This leads to a great tearful moment (even if only made honorable mention) when Sakuta finally remembers, reminded in essence by his past self, and runs out into the yard to scream where the whole school can hear how much he loves her. The confession, of course, forces the student body to acknowledge Mai’s existence, which brings her back from whatever Shadow Realm she was banished to in order to accept Sakuta’s feelings with some trademark snark.

Which brings me to the other big topic that really rules Bunny Girl Senpai: the relationship between Sakuta and Mai.

On a surface level, this is rather similar to the relationship between the leads in Bakemonogatari. Both feature a deadpan male lead with a somewhat unhealthy instinct to help the supernaturally troubled girls he runs across paired with a girl who has a very sharp tongue that she doesn’t hesitate to employ. Both see the main pair established fairly shortly, kind of numbing the perception one could hold of the show having “harem” elements even though the other heroines do feel (at least in some cases) like other Harem contenders. After the main girl’s arc, the relationship grows slowly over the other arcs, as we see them interact more and continue to progress even as we deal with the other girls.

However, the difference in the on-screen chemistry between the couples is massive. In Bakemonogatari, the leads rarely show much affection. When it comes out it clearly is there, but the degree to which it comes out in most of their interactions is fairly limited; this was, while redeemed by the end, one of my problems with the show. In the case of Sakuta and Mai, even when they’re verbally sparring, it’s framed and arranged in such a way that it’s easy to “read between the lines” and see that they’re getting along well, even arguably flirting. And, when their relationship has problems along the way, they’re shockingly mature problems and come across as being handled by two fairly adult people who want this thing to work and know where they can and can’t bend. Bunny Girl Senpai dispenses with the the typical adolescent misunderstandings and drama to instead give us a very legitimate and mature relationship with some of the best “couple” chemistry you’re liable to see. In short, not at all what you’d expect from the title and pitch of the show.

The second arc concerns Sakuta’s underclassman, Tomoe Koga, and everyone’s favorite supernatural plot device, the Time Loop. Mercifully, the show doesn’t go Endless Eight on us, but Sakuta does end up as one of only two people aware, at first, that a day is repeating. Koga is the other, and seems to be the source of this distortion, specially with regards to the fact that she gets asked out by the boy her friend is crushing on, and is unable to accept any response she could give, causing time to reset. With Rio’s advice and much to Mai’s chagrin, a way out is found with the ruse of Sakuta pretending to be Tomoe’s boyfriend. This gets them out of the day but not out of the woods as Tomoe’s nervous nature causes her to put off giving the “all clear”. The situation is forced, and the two of them have to carry on the deception until the end of the term.

Over that time, Sakuta (though not particularly pleased with the arrangement) still does his best to treat Tomoe right, earning her affection through several good scenes, which in turn jeopardizes the ability of the cast to exit the deception, since Tomoe’s stress could cause another time loop if she’s unwilling to accept losing Sakuta. This even nearly occurs, but Tomoe ultimately pulls through on not wanting to ruin Sakuta’s happiness. She doesn’t just let him go, she rewinds to the first loop, responding to the jerk who asked her out (he was proved a jerk later) properly and preventing the deception from ever happening.

The next arc is Rio’s, but before getting into her, it’s time to bring up the “extra” girl, the mysterious Shouko. Shouko is a figure in Sakuta’s past, who, when he was dealing with his own case of Puberty Syndrome and at a very low place in life, helped pick him up and give him the confidence to move on. This mysterious lady (she both appeared and stopped appearing with little explanation) could be considered Sakuta’s first love, and Mai is a wee bit jealous regarding her (no more than is reasonable). Shouko is also a cute little middle school girl who Sakuta finds at this point, and who he offers to take care of a stray cat for. Their name is exactly the same, down to how it’s written, and Little Shouko, though younger, does bear quite the resemblance to Big Shouko. How the two of them might be connected, though, is something of a mystery that isn’t solved until the movie.

She does, however, have some impact on the rest of the show going forward. But, for now, the enigma of Little Shouko comes on scene about as we have Rio face her problem, which is specifically that Rio has separated into two copies of herself, one the closed-off and prudish girl that she normally comes off as, and one who acts in a suggestive, inappropriate, or even sexually forward manner like Rio Proper would want to with her crush. Naturally, some amateur therapy from Sakuta and a little quantum babble from the Rios sees her (them?) overcoming the inner turmoil that spawned the Puberty Syndrome event. I know it probably seems like I’m skimming over this, but Rio’s arc in particular feels like an “Extra”. It takes only two episodes, doesn’t get full focus for all of that time, and is fairly indirectly related to Sakuta and Mai compared to the other arcs. It’s not exactly filler, but it’s not exactly main either.

The next one, while similarly short, is a little more core. The main girl is a newly introduced one: Nodoka, Mai’s half-sister and a minor pop idol jealous of Mai’s fame and success. Her puberty syndrome causes her and Mai to swap bodies, meaning that Nodoka has to live Mai’s life (and the other way around) until the situation can be resolved. This, of course, has to come in the form of Nodoka realizing that she can be her own person, and doesn’t need to be Mai in order to be successful. You know, the usual. Along the way, we get a better picture of how the relationship between our leads has developed.

That, however, brings us to the final arc, which revolves around Sakuta’s little sister, Kaede. Kaede is a cute little girl who lives at home alone with Sakuta because of the two symptoms of her Puberty Syndrome, which first emerged some time before. For one, the emotional bullying she suffered at school manifested as physical damage, such that she can ‘get hurt’ interacting with anything school related. Second, she suffered total amnesia at a point in the past, and is no longer exactly the same person she was before, which her parents couldn’t exactly deal with.

In the final arc, Mai and Sakuta try to help her. She’s a good girl, and she wants to open up, but she’s going to need some help and care along the way. They try hard to rehabilitate her, convincing her to first take baby steps out of the apartment, and eventually to visit school grounds at night, without her suffering phantom injuries or panic attacks. It plays as a very real rehabilitation, but there’s a dark mark at the end: as Kaede recovers from her Puberty Syndrome, that also means that she’ll leave the fugue state she’s been living in, reverting to her old memories and personality, the “Kaede” that Sakuta got close to basically dying off as her old self replaces her. Kaede realized this, and basically made herself a bucket list that the group unknowingly worked to fulfill… but Sakuta doesn’t pick up on the consequence until the hour is late, and he has to come to terms with losing his sister in order to save her.

As Sakuta breaks down and Mai can’t be there because of her demanding work, Big Shouko mysteriously appears, taking care of Sakuta at his lowest moment, and then vanishing as mysteriously as she arrived… but not without evidence of her passing. Mai is torn up, not because she thinks Sakuta would be in any way unfaithful, but because it was someone else and not her who was able to offer him comfort in his hour of need, after he’d done so much for her. All the same, they patch it over, and come to the conclusion that they can move forward from here, the incident seeming to provide closure even as Kaede has to be met all over again, with only the faintest echoes of her fugue self present.

And, for the show itself, that’s the note we go out on.

Written out, the plot doesn’t sound like much and frankly that’s because it isn’t very much. Bunny Girl Senpai is not going to hook you on the mystery of what’s going on or the intricacies of the story like its antecedent, Bakemonogatari, does. Instead, it aims to drag you along and earn investment through raw human emotion, especially painful emotions.

And that’s what Bunny Girl Senpai does best. It makes you feel, particularly, sad. You understand, deeply, Mai’s isolation, Tomoe’s desperation, Rio’s self-loathing, Nodoka’s insecurity, and finally Sakuta’s own agony and loss. For a show where almost everything (and everything until the last arc) basically works out, it really knows how to make you fear that maybe this time is when it won’t.

It’s a singular skill, but a fairly welcome one. Managing the fear, pain, and catharsis without feeling deeply manipulative in the moment is the key to effective emotional drama (or at least one possible key) and Bunny Girl Senpai has it in hand, unquestionably.

And that, on its own, earns the show an A-. I would strongly recommend Bunny Girl Senpai just for how it pulls on the heartstrings. If you’re looking for something with a more intricate and absorbing plot, you want Bakemonogatari, but if you want something more accessible and human, that’s Bunny Girl Senpai. Different people are going to like one or the other more, but for my part I think each one has its place even if I do have a marked preference for the original.