Anime 37450 Seishun Buta Yarou Wa Bunny Girl Senpai No Yume Wo Minai Reviews Filter Check 3

THIS REVIEW CONTAINS NON-CRUCIAL SPOILERS FROM ONE EARLY EPISODE

Raskal Does Not Dream of Copyright Infringement

There is going to be a lot of mentions of Monogatari series in the review, because you need to understand that this series is not just similar, or inspired, or derivative. No - it’s an unbelievably blatant plagiarism, it steals everything from Monogatari, and I mean EVERYTHING, except for a couple of elements stolen from Oregairu and Haruhi instead. Comparing it to the famous cases of literary plagiarism ruled by court (Like Harry Potter’s rip-off called Tanya Grotter), it would 100% be ruled a copyright infringement if Nisio Isin/Kodansha ever bothered ... to sue (and it baffles me that they didn’t). If you’ve seen Monogatari before, you might get a kick out of spotting entire scenes and minute-long dialogues meticulously copypasted word-for-word (don’t make it a drinking game, you’ll die) but there really isn’t much point in doing that over an actual rewatch, because production values are not as good as Studio SHAFT.

Well, one might ask, wouldn’t a carbon copy of a good series also be good? No, because there is another element in play - the author is a talentless hack. Something called “stupidity” manifests in multiple aspects of this story making it impossible to enjoy. Here are some examples:

1. Primitive surface-level copying results in nonsense. The best example is the show's title - it’s terrible for marketing purposes because it made many people believe this is going to be some ecchi harem. Well, the title comes from the female lead wearing a bunny-girl suit ...for approximately 15 seconds that basically amount to nothing plot-wise. You see, in Monogatari heroines have animal leitmotifs, and that got copypasted - except the writer couldn’t think of any actual reason for this inside the story, so it’s just an awkward non sequitur, sitting there, doing nothing except making the title stupid - and there are many other examples like that.

2. Insufferable protagonist. There is a certain trope familiar to most anime watchers - “badass loner”, aka “Gary Stu”, aka “Self-insert Jesus-kun”, aka “literally me”. Araragi from Monogatari looks like one - until he isn’t, because writing anime cliches as complex real people is what that series does. Hachiman from Oregairu is another take - he is also real, i. e. an awkward teenager who has trouble socializing. Being a talentless hack he is, the writer of Aobuta couldn’t do anything but write this trope completely straight. The MC is supposedly antisocial pariah, but he has social skills and confidence of a god. When some dumb females give him shit he just says “begone thot!” and they run away in shame, defeated by his awesomeness. He beats a jock twice his size in a fist fight by “outsmarting” him, nevermind a gang of jock’s friends standing there doing nothing. It’s just so cringy to watch. Kirito from SAO is a better protagonist, at least that guy farmed levels or something.

3. Idiotic non-logic. Monogatari has supernatural phenomena explained with ghosts. Aobuta has supernatural phenomena explained with quantum mechanics. That is, dumb and cringy “is math related to science?” level of quantum mechanics understanding. That’s not my point, pseudo-science is just a particular case of a bigger problem of nothing making sense. This is also better explained with an example. Spoiler ahead:

**Spoiler begins here**

Here is a conversation between two characters:
Person A: “I’m trapped in a day-long time loop.”
Person B: “That means there is another person also trapped in the same loop.”
Nonsense, right? Well the conversation is slightly longer but boils down to exactly that. Here is a full version with my play-by-play:
Person A: “I’m trapped in a day-long time loop.”
Person B: “What if you're not trapped, but instead perfectly predict the future, and experience it as an advanced form of jamais vu?” //How could this possibly be a first idea in reaction to the time loop? How does that work? Why is it a time loop that repeats multiple times instead of just being clairvoyant? You what?
Person A: “How so?”
Person B: “Laplace’s demon. A theoretical intelligence that can perfectly calculate position and behaviour of every particle in the universe, therefore, can predict the future.” //But why would it make a repeating loop instead of just being clairvoyant??? Why would Laplace’s demon be your first idea if it doesn’t actually fit the nature of the situation?
Person A: “But I’m not a Laplace’s demon, I’m a normal human”
Person B: “That means some other person is Laplace’s demon and they do the calculations. You’re quantum entangled with that person so you experience their time loop.” //Again, how could this possibly be your first idea? Other person being Laplace’s demon doesn’t actually answer any of the questions posed. Also, quantum entanglement... a) Is an actual physical phenomena, not a theoretical construct, and it doesn’t fit the situation at all, so it wouldn’t be a thing that comes to mind here; b) Doesn’t have anything to do with Laplace’s demon, so it wouldn’t come to mind based on that; c) DOESN’T EXPLAIN WHY THE TIME IS REPEATING IN A LOOP, INSTEAD OF TWO PEOPLE BEING CLAIRVOYANT.

**Spoiler ends here**

Notice the pattern? Wrong physics aside, none of the conclusions of Person B logically follow from the previously reached conclusions, it’s a bunch of random lines arranged one after another. Either the author is a moron and “lines arranged one after another” is his understanding of how logic works, or he thinks the audience are morons and he can scam them with this garbage if he talks fast and sounds confident. Incidentally, if someone tries “but that’s just Person B’s theory, it doesn’t have to be true” on you - spit them in the face because the characters act on those assumptions and they are proven to be 100% correct.

2/10 because this series provides nothing of value and has no reason to exist, except to give an answer to a weird thought experiment - what if some acclaimed series was the same, but written by an author 50 IQ points lower.

Bunny Girl Senpai is an anime about this famous child actress who turns invisible, a main character dude who doesn't give a fuck about anything, and his little sister who was verbally assaulted to a point that she started bleeding blood and became a shut-in. All of this happens because of some magic disease called a puberty syndrome.

The events include our main bro being some sort of women-helping Jesus except if the women are bothering him in which case he roasts them by claiming they are on their periods or otherwise strips in front of them to make them awkward blushy blush, because apparently, he ... is the only person in the series who doesn't get embarrassed over nothing.

Our series relies on certain levels of edge and apathy when it wants to, but usually these things are forgotten in 3 seconds when our main bro starts roasting someone. Be it him calling a dude who is using a camera a wannabe photographer or just appearing superior to anyone else for no other reason than others being inferior to him.

Nothing really makes much sense here. Our dude cares so little about anything that he can see the invisible bunny costume-wearing senpai and then they become friends or something and chat about the supernatural things that occur in this series with the same disinterest the main bro is already radiating regarding everything that exists because that's the sole point of his character.

There has been quite a few series that have dealt with similar themes in highly similar manner. These include Bakemonogatari, Oregairu and Suzumiya Haruhi. The problem here is that everything in this one feels forced and fake. The main cast can be believable and realistic at times, but most of everyone else isn't. Rather they seem to exist just for the main characters since they so often are some one-dimensional buttholes or angry lil girls who get served by the mc and then disappear. Especially scenes such as random girl appearing just to fuck with the mc's shit and call him a pedophile are cringe and feel nothing other than stupido filler.

I think melancholy, vanity, disinterest and in generally being the outcast offer incredible potential under these settings, but I fail to see what makes Bunny Girl a good exemplary of these. The best thing about this series is how familiar and welcoming it feels, but unlike so many other series similar to it, it seems like a good example of a series that is not living up to its potential at all. Real zero effort stuff. I also feel physically ill from the existential philosophies presented in the series. I feel like this series is disrespecting its audience. It's like asking philosophy student "know who Sigmund Freud is?" The dialogue can also be pretty meh seasoned with lame. Lewd and sexual remarks presented in a highly teenage manner and not with the level of maturity and awareness that is usually seen in the dialogue of similar anime series. I'd much rather have the cast hit the tarantino-effect instead of this nonsense.

Despite this series promoting itself and its characters with the "I am not like all the rest" -attitude, what I am seeing here is pretty much like most of the rest: A completely average anime series, soulless and empty version of what it could have been. Attempt to make the next big hit under these settings, but failing to see what made any of the earlier ones worth of praise in the first place. I give this a 4 instead of a 5 just to show how little effort it takes to be as edgy as the mc.

This review contains some light spoilers.

Oftentimes the word “pretentious” is thrown around to criticize shows with complex plots or extravagant visuals with the assumption that calling the anime “pretentious” with no explanation of how that detracts from the quality of the show is a valid criticism in and of itself. However, in the case of “Bunny Girl,” Kamoshida’s pretensions are detrimental to the quality of the writing to the point that the incredibly simple ideas presented in this show become unnecessarily difficult to understand solely so Kamoshida can stroke his ego.

The first arc of Bunny Girl is dedicated to Mai Sakurajima’s case of adolescence syndrome. ... This syndrome caused Mai to turn invisible and made everyone forget except for the Sakuta (the MC) and his friends to forget that she exists. While I think this is all fine, the issue arises from Kamoshida’s attempt to explain this simple concept using Schrodinger’s cat. Not only does Kamoshida fail to explain Schrodinger’s cat correctly, but it isn’t even an accurate representation of Mai’s situation. There is a much simpler and more widely known thought experiment that goes: "if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" If no one perceives Mai, does she exist? The tree falling thought experiment reflects Mai’s syndrome so much better that it is just dumbfounding that Kamoshidadecided to incorrectly apply Schrodinger’s cat to the situation instead. This is just terrible writing. Kamoshida takes a concept that could easily be understood with little explanation, and then makes it as complex as he possibly can for no reason other than to show of his poor understanding of Schrodinger’s cat. Unfortunately for us, this isn’t the last time Kamoshida shoves his lack of knowledge of quantum mechanics down our throats.

The second arc of the series focuses on the Sakuta’s underclassman whose case of adolescence syndrome created a time loop that caused everyone to relive the same day 3 times. This isn’t a complicated or novel idea. Hollywood movies like Groundhog Day and even children’s shows like Cardcaptor Sakura have made use of time loops. Of course, Kamoshida decides to make it as convoluted as possible by using Laplace’s Demon to explain this simple plot device.

For an anime to be be pretentious in the way it is written, it has to present itself as being deeper than it actually is. I don’t even think that’s inherently a bad thing While I think this word gets overused as a lazy criticism to describe any “smart” anime, in the case of Bunny Girl, Kamoshida’s pretensions significantly diminish the quality of the writing. Kamoshida takes straight forward ideas and makes them unnecessarily complicated by introducing unnecessary quantum mechanics that he doesn’t even fully understand. But if you think this is the end to the terrible writing present in this anime, you’re dead wrong.

Every line of dialogue in this anime sounds as if it was painstakingly crafted by the author to sound as clever and witty as possible. Unfortunately, Kamoshida is neither clever nor witty and the dialogue just ends up feeling incredibly stilted. The dialogue is composed of the kind of lines that people wish they had said when thinking about a conversation they had minutes ago. No one speaks like this! It’s unnatural and unrealistic. Everything that comes out of Sakuta’s mouth is just an obnoxious one-liner. Kamoshida clearly doesn’t even understand the most basic rules for writing passable dialogue, and the fact that it’s the primary point of praise for this show is astounding.

Although less bothersome than Kamoshida’s sheer incompetence as a writer, the fan service in this show is almost offensive because it’s the kind of fan service that thinks it’s not. I don’t mind fan service or being blatantly pandered to as long as the show is honest about it, but Bunny Girl tries to justify its fan service in the most pathetic ways possible. The worst example of this is in the beginning of the series when Mai dresses as a bunny girl to test whether other people can see her as if that’s the most logical thing she could do. It’s not reasonable, it’s just a pitiful attempt at disguising fan service because Kamoshida thinks he’s above it.


Sakuta is a bit more cynical and edgy than most generic self-insert main characters. Mai is slightly more understanding than most tsunderes. Those are the only things that make the characters in Bunny Girl unique. If you’ve seen a light novel adaptation before, you’ve seen these characters before.


There isn’t much to say about the art, it’s just very average. If Cloverworks didn’t take every available opportunity to assault my eyes with a mob of hideous 3DCG background characters, I would give this category a 5/10.

Enjoyment: 2/10

The writing in Bunny Girl is just godawful and nothing else about this anime is really worth mentioning.

“I’ve seen enough Pornhub videos to know how this series is going to end.” — Krunchyman

This series truly speaks to me as a fellow “puberty syndrome” sufferer, as I use to “baste my ham” five times a day on a regular basis, and let me tell you something folks: rug-burn is an inconvenient truth. But enough about my own troubles, because this anime is troubling enough in its own right.

First of all, allow me to propose a theory that I kicked around in my head since viewing the first episode. The Bunny Girl Senpai, otherwise known as Mai, is simply a figment of ... Sakuta’s imagination, brought about by the “puberty syndrome” phenomena that he has superimposed on her to convince himself that she is in fact real. Given that Sakuta has yet to experience a sexual relationship (as far as we know, at least), he envisions a girl in a scandalously lewd outfit in a public library. Despite having a golden opportunity to live out his lustful fantasy, he decides to slow play his hand, by initiating a methodical, emotional approach to getting into Mai’s pants. If you wish to deceive yourself into believing a fantasy girl is “real” — like Sakuta was attempting to do — then she has to seem authentic; otherwise, the imaginative experience will fade away into the ether (just like their first encounter).

If you think about it, the concept seems plausible from a demographic perspective. Many of the consumers watching this show are young, adolescent boys who have yet touch a girl. And what is abundantly clear about male, anime consumers from the various salacious photos posted on their profile’s? They fantasize about provocative senpai’s, whom they will never meet in their lifetime’s. Literally every anime fan has this phase in their lifetime, but, unlike most people, Sakuta had the courage to sprint toward his convictions, and make his fantasy become a reality.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you: the Tyler Durden theory.

…….<ahem> Welp! Episode three blew that theory out of the water, back to the drawing board.


Quick recap: the series is banal, the character’s are ill-explored, the character designs look remarkably similar to one another, and the entire concept is so uninteresting, that I concocted a version of it in my head to maintain my level of sanity. The scene where Sakuta started screaming towards the school, professing his affection for Mai was the lone bright spot, because I nearly fell out of my chair from laughter. That being said, the entertainment value for Bunny Girl Senpai is noticeably absent, and I would ardently recommend that you look elsewhere for anime-related amusement.

Contrived, school-aged bullshit; nothing more need be said. “Then why did you write the review in the first place,” random MAL user — because, silly billy, hateful comments recharge my power crystals.

This is my first and probably last review on MAL. I think there are a couple of things to say about this anime which are not said yet. I don't want to go to much into detail so it would be better you have watched the anime before reading this.

This anime is a fanservice trash anime that pretends to be not trashy nor fanservice and attracts all people who love trash and let them believe they have found a superior good and deep anime which is at the bottom of it's heart as stupid as SAO or any other harem ecchi anime out there.

I ... don't want to offend anyone. I also enjoy those kind of anime like yamada kun for example. But this anime is on the one hand stupid as hell and on the other hand every single charakter and problem is a 1 by 1 copy of bakemonogatari.

Main charakter: He is absolutely one dimensional. He has no emotions and acts indifferent to everything what happens arround him but at times he make some couple of unfunny sarcastic jokes and tries to solve the problem of the girls from his harem (which gets bigger by almost every episode).

Sakurajima mai: Maybe the waifu of the year. The relationship between her and the mc is fanservice at it's finest. You have a celebrity good looking and cute girl who is attracted by the lowkey lowlife loser mc, which maybe represents the average consumer of that kind of anime. This is maybe why this anime gets such high ratings. Because this kind of relationship satisfies the needy needs of the male consumers.

(Apart from mai you have all over the anime those ecchi moments like panty, boobies and so on)

Futaba: Honestly this anime is not that bad but also not that good but this character wants me to smash my head with lightspeed against the pyramids of gizeh.
Everytime our beloved main character is confronted with the puberty syndrome he has no idea what's going on because he is stupid. This often take a couple of time until he realizes it and than goes to futuba who is supposed to be the smartest person in that anime. And wow every conversation between them which is about the puberty syndrom gives cancer to my ears. He tells her that person xy has problem z. She responds with some pseudo sientific and deep answers which contains some phenomens of the physics. Those responses are totally random and make absolutely no sense. This is how a conversation between her and me could be:

Me: Futuba-chan my stomach doesn't feels so good
Her: Have you been to the toilet today
Me: Eeeeh no?
Her: Well i think this is because schrödingers cat.-blabla explains it- and so is your stomach. The answer to the question what's going on with your stomach is that you have constipation and diarrhea at the same time.

Really those conversations are so boring and stupid. If you are not familiar with quantummechanics or physics at all this might sound very deep and intellectual to you but trust me. It's just shit.

And the last point is really everything of this anime is equivalent to bakemonogatari but only like 10 dimensions worse and boring.

Sakuta = araragi (both lowkey and lowlife persons)
Mai = hitagi (one is a soft tsundere the other tsundere and yandere in one person)
Futaba = meme oshino (mc come always to them because they have no idea about their mysterys)
Nodoka = nadeko

And the rest of the characters are almost the same

At last i want to say is something good. If it comes about teenagers and their problems in that school age this anime has it's strength. Most of them feel very realistic and autehntic. If the mc wouldnt be that one dimensional the relationship to mai would feel a bit refreshing because their contact feels alive and not that exxegerated. But the anime deals it very bad or with other words it packs it in a very shitty way.

All in all this anime is a bit disappointing to me. It had much more potential if the writer would have been courrageous and made something independently and not that trashy fanservice copy of an anime.

Seishun Buta Yarou wa Bunny Girl Senpai no Yume wo Minai/Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai is a light novel adaption. And like many light novel adaptations, it's a rather uninspired attempt to sell more copies of the source. And it's possibly as bad as Cloverworks last badly made project Persona 5 The Animation. The Opening is objectively the worst Opening I've seen this year, consisting people running, poorly edited out of context pictures of the heroines, horribly blended in CGI, lifeless backgrounds. Which is actually a good indicator for what the show actually is.

A self inset ball of snark has monotone banter ... with main heroine and becomes popular among teens. Is a quote that can also be used to describe, The Monogatari Series, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, Oregairu, Hyouka as well as a few other popular shows. However where those shows had strong writing, visual direction, or well thought out characters to work with, it becomes obvious that Bunny girl is just a weak imitation. Even this could be forgiven if it weren't for the standard animation, lazy background art, terrible CGI and half-assed scene transitions that plague this show. I've heard people saying that they haven't noticed these issues but I'd ask them if they were being too focused on the subs to notice what's actually happening on screen.

This is the worst anime I've seen so far this season. Don't get me wrong this does have strong emotional moments. But you need to ask yourself if a few emotional highs are worth trudging the anime through.

As a finishing note I'll just leave an example of how this anime copies a far better show poorly.

Mai's backstory is a complete parallel of Hitagi from the Monogatari Series. Only difference is Hitagi's made sense.

Both have abusive mothers but while Mai's mother is just a lazy asshole, Hitagi's mother turned abusive because she got roped into a cult. Their breaking points happened when Mai was forced to do a swimsuit scene and Hitagi almost got raped. The interesting bit in monogatari is that Hitagi's mom got into the cult because it "helped cure" Hitagi in a prior incident. This complicates their relationship. Meanwhile Mai's mom is just an asshole.

Both girls instantly fall in love with their saviors. However in Bunny girl this is played lazily as possible Her savior is her romantic interest and the show pretty much forces them into a relationship instantly. Though they have good banter. Similarly Hitagi also has good banter with her Savior. Except Monogatari puts more thought into the actual concept. Instead of Hitagi being stuck into a relationship with the first person who showed her kindness and all problems being solved instantly, she doesn't end up with Kaiki. Instead she actually learns to deal with her problems and moves on.

Bunny girl senpai took Hitagi's entire character arc and just made it bland. And this is just what the show does with everything.

The amount of high scoring reviews for this anime blew my mind, so much so that it drove me to writing my first review on this site. While yes, only 3 episodes have aired at the time of me writing this review, my main problems with this show will surely not change since the show would look entirely different if that were to happen. Before I start, warning there might be some slight spoilers for the first 3 episodes.

A lot of people are comparing this anime to Bakemonogatari or the Monogatari series in general and while I can sort of see the comparisons with the ... 2 main characters and the fact that there's a lot of talking, what makes Monogatari great is severely lacking in this show.


Story: 5/10

The only solid aspect of this show. Our MC and his close friends are the only ones who can see or remember who Bunny Girl and MC and Bunny Girl fall in love yada yada. It's fine as a story but there are some plotholes/questionable events which can possibly be cleared up in future episodes.

Art & Sound: 3/10

This is where 'Bunny Girl' starts getting very lackluster. If you want to make a story that is heavily based on dialogue, then you better have some amazing art and sound or I might as well have just read the damn source material. Everything from the setting to the animation to the character design is so boring and uninspired it's just uninteresting to look at. The sound does not help either as it being just boring light piano music is just as boring and uninspired as the art. Please take the time to just go and listen to any great soundtrack(Monogatari Series, Cowboy Bebop etc.) and then listen to the Bunny Girl OST and see how boring and bad it is in comparison.

Character: 3/10

We have all seen the characters in this anime before. Our MC is just a normal anime dude who has brown hair instead of black hair, which is fairly common but nothing out of the ordinary. Our 'Bunny Girl' is just your standard anime black hair girl except she has a bunny hair clip. The other characters so far are nearly irrelevant. Our MC's friends are basically just there to confirm Bunny Girl actually exists and he's not crazy. Scientist lady is also there to conveniently explain some things..

Overall: 4/10

"Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai" is, in short, wasted potential. If this show was done without a small budget and time constraints it could genuinely be a great anime, but right now what we have is a rushed show with nearly nothing redeemable outside of the story filled with question marks and plotholes. This is anime is the epitome of mediocrity and probably as close to a standard anime you can get. Go watch something genuinely amazing instead, it's a better use of your time.

"Check this; once upon a time, Oregairu and the Monogatari series had an unwanted child. Traumatized by what had occurred, Monogatari fled, leaving Oregairu as a single mother. Eventually, Monogatari found out that Oregairu had been sleeping with The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, and even had a one night stand with Kokoro Connect. He took one look at the child, and realized that he looked a bit like all of his possible parents. However, realizing that no matter who the real father was, he had some incredible genes passed into him. With a smile, he walked away, knowing the child would grow up to do ... incredible things. That child then proceeded to grow up and accomplish nothing."

"Sounds awful."

- Two random guys on the internet.

Jokes aside, comparing Bunny Girl Senpai to its predecessors or even straight up calling it a carbon copy rip off is an overdone meme at this point. After all, it clearly didn't copy any semblance of good execution, or any deep and fleshed out characters. All Bunny Girl Senpai did was cram a lot of content and ideas into a 13 episode show, and with anime accelerating its advancement into the main stream around the time of its airing, Bunny Girl Senpai is the first experience that the majority of new anime fans have with this sort of show, and you can't really blame them for being impressed with all of these themes placed in front of them.

*There's mild spoilers.*

As it goes without saying for this type of show, the characters make or break the entire experience. They are the story, they are the atmosphere, they are backbone, muscle, and skin. They are the contributors of the beginning, middle, and end, and they are also the receivers. So it's quite obvious that the characters are what drag this show down.

Surface level likability is fine and all but sticking to it is shallow and leaves little room for any development. Thankfully, Mr. Sakuta is anything but likeable. You ready for a hot take?

Sakuta is kind of an ass.

Imagine finding this teensie little short kouhai hiding under a desk, she's stuck in a time loop and is clearly confused, distraught, and upset. This is only your second time meeting her, your first meeting consisting of actually kicking her butt full power, so first impressions aren't exactly in your favor. So clearly the best thing to do in this situation is call her useless and snatch away her phone, which also happens to be her strongest stress reliever, like some sort of tiger mom angry that her son didn't get an A on the recent biology exam. Truly through these incredible displays of showmanship and charm is the cute little kouhai really able to trust you. And she does!

Well, not like Sakuta was set up to be some charmer and nice guy anyways. He's clearly the dry "omg so savage" type. His responses to anything that annoys him are lines that a middle schooler would imagine in his head that he would've said to his bully if he could rewind time. That's right, it's wish fulfillment savagery. He's the "I would've totally been like that guy" character that all the outcasts daydream about, except they never become that guy because newsflash; people don't act like that. And it's pretty obvious that's all there is to Sakuta's character, which makes in cringey instead of cool. It feels immature, it feels like fan fiction. He's anti social but he's also very socially adjustable and interacts with people no problem when he isn't being an ass, he's so cool that a simple "NO U" deters all aggressors.

Mai Sakurajima is the perfect girl that can do no wrong. She's able to deal with Sakuta and aid him, has a flawless body and knows it, is multi talented and able to do anything and everything asked of her. She's super nice, there's nothing really unlikable about her. For a lack of a better term, she's "flawless."
Well, the truth about Mai is that she's the safe girl. The show doesn't so much make her as likable as possible, more so it tries to make her as unhateable as possible. They took no risks with her character, she's essentially the same flawless self from beginning to end. She's inhuman, there's no room for a genuinely deep connection to her character. All she has is the surface level likability and that she's a dream girl people wish would exist in real life. Her dialogue with Sakuta is commonly referred to as the best part of the show, yet its fairly basic back and forths as well being pretty repetitive. They talk about their relationship and the current events of whatever arc they are in, it rambles on to Sakuta saying something lewd and/or Mai berating him or stepping on him, rinse and repeat.

Tomoe is the most human of the cast, and thus wins the arbitrary title of best girl. She isn't trapped to the confines of just being a likable waifu, she deals with actual problems that bring out a flawed side to her, something for her to work on. She has room for genuine attachment and is someone you could possibly want to root for, and her arc is arguably one of the better aspects of the show, even when its just Endless Eight Lite Edition. Even so, the way her development played out ended up less about her getting over her problems and more about her getting attached to her senpai, which then so happened to solve her problems as a side effect. Love can solve all sorts of things, its just that my suspension of disbelief is at risk when Tomoe is probably the most common victim of Sakuta's shenanigans. He's just mean to her a lot of the time, even if you justify it as "he's just joking, and they are friends," they haven't been friends for long and the things he says to her are just downright creepy and/or rude. A few minutes later, Sakuta is throwing all of his pride into the ground just to help her. Well at least this time, he was being an asshole to an even bigger asshole, so that evens it out I guess? Still quite the display of inconsistency on Sakuta's part.

Oh yeah, the opening skit mentioned a bunch of supernatural shows, there's a supernatural element to this show, correct? Indeed there is. Surely there is some sort of explanation for it, correct? Indeed there is, this show presents its supernatural phenomenon with the bullshittery that is Rio. She's this girl in glasses and the only member of the science club, who likes books and is anti social, so she's obviously smart! So logically, the best way to explain these supernatural phenomenon is to pretentiously lecture us about quantum mechanics and physics and all these totally not pseudoscience conclusions about these unexplained supernatural occurrences. Also if you couldn't tell, I was joking. These supernatural phenomenon are not explained at all! Not like it necessarily needs to be, but when it results in padding episode time with unnecessary bullshit explanations, even though the quantum mechanic stuff Rio brings up isn't even anything particularly advanced, all to paint this girl as super smart and reliable, I'd rather the show just come out and say that its all weird teenage magical powers. "Haruhi is actually god!" See, that was easy.

Doesn't help that Rio herself is also insanely bland as a character, as a large portion of her screen time outside her own arc is just her playing this "scientific" crap. Her personality is somehow even more nap inducing than Sakuta's. I'll admit, I'm still a sentimental boi who's able to get emotional at all the arcs of a show such as this, even if I am bashing on it quite heavily. Well, all the arcs except Rio's. In the end, the lack of impact that her arc brought to the table was due to how they treated her throughout the story before that, just a boring "smart" girl totally "explaining" the plot with quantum mechanics that everyone either already knew about or couldn't care less about.

Nodoka is also a fairly human character, relatively speaking that is. In the end, all she really has is the most basic form of inferiority complex. She's not as good as her sister, all she wants is for her mother to praise her instead of just her sister, you know the deal. What else does she have other than this basic plot point that has been done to death over and over? Well uh, she's an idol I guess? There's basically nothing else to latch onto. Her arc was also concluded rather anti-climatically, it felt like it essentially went nowhere. All we know is that apparently Mai and Nodoka are on better terms, except we don't see the effect that this fix in their relationship has as Nodoka is essentially shelved for the rest of the series, much like every girl except for Mai is after their arc.

Kaede is melodrama porn. They really just said "fuck it, let's just try to make people cry over dumb shit again" with her arc. The gimmick of her arc is that she's trying to fulfill a set of wishes and goals before a certain "end" that I will not go into detail. Hmm, maybe Angel Beats should join the opening skit? Either way, this sort of thing definitely has the potential for a massive emotional punch at the end, it's a classic technique of building up the happiness meter so that you can smash it at the end to make everyone cry. Unfortunately, Kaede's arc takes shortcuts. A lot of Kaede's goals are just skimmed over, and the ones that do take the spotlight only have their progress marked by the date going forward and Sakuta narrating "and the next day, she did this." When Kaede gets near the end of her list, she still feels like the exact same character, as if she never developed at all. All they did was change the scenery and the reason why she's here is because Sakuta told you in his narration. Then the big twist happens, and all of a sudden the normally dry Sakuta is wet as hell, crying his damn eyes out. For what exactly? We barely saw what happened. Sakuta is crying because he's the big brother so it makes sense, but why should we cry? We'd only cry because seeing Sakuta cry is a break in character and thus "extra sad boi hours" but we weren't exposed to the proper build up of the arc. The arc was essentially told, not shown. This is not how you successfully write good melodrama. Doesn't help that they also shoehorned a dumb "it's just a misunderstanding" drama tidbit alongside it for basically no reason.

At the end of the day, despite the bad writing and execution, Bunny Girl Senpai still has a load of stuff in it. And with a load of stuff, there's going to be at least some moments or aspects that make the show watchable. Tomoe wasn't a bad character, sometimes Sakuta can be kind of amusing when he wants to be, the character designs are great, and the soundtrack is nice. Sure there's also stuff like those goddamn CGI crowds and cars that stick out like a sore thumb, but after watching so many crappy japanese cartoons you get used to it. It's got a lot of themes and ideas while not being hard to understand, which is appreciable. It is definitely not an intolerable experience, and has things to like, especially for newer anime fans.

Just keep it away from me.

Bunny girl senpai is a master of hiding that fact that it is just another generic light novel adaptation through a thin layer of vague pseudo-science and an attempt to appear deep and complex when it ultimately amounts to nothing.

Bunny girl senpai revolves around the mysterious condition known as “adolescence syndrome”, what is “adolescence syndrome” you may ask, well I would like to know to. What I think the author was going for was a criticism of Japanese culture of having to ‘read the air’ by making a character who can’t ‘read the air’ but no “adolescence syndrome” is instead used to conjure up magical ... scenarios with different girls so our protagonist can then save them and build up his harem in full light novel fashion. Speaking of characters let’s have a look at them.

Sakuta is a deadpan and cynical asshole who manages to look like a well written character by being a bit of a dick, there is no subtly or reason behind his actions he just is a sarcastic asshole for no reason yet all the girls love him. Sakuta is paired up Mai Sakurajima, the titular bunny girl which is essentially a female copy paste of Sakuta with the snark turned down a bit. This has cursed the show to have every line of dialogue (and there is a lot) to be cursed to not end unless there has been some sarcastic or vulgar remark, all delivered with the monotonousness of a text to speech generator.

Every arc follows the same boring formula, a girl has a supernatural problem, (which are all suspiciously similar to other anime arc’s) our protagonist ponders about it for a while and then ask the big boobed science girl who will then spout some quantum mechanics to fix the problem. You’d think this would give the show some much need complexity but no, the specific examples given are so tripe and overused that it becomes painfully obvious that the show is trying to look smart but just ends up falling flat on its face.

People often praise this show for themes, a person disappearing from your memories, bullying, anxiety, an eternal time-loop that repeats the same days and so on. Conceptually these might be interesting, but they are explored with all the depth of a puddle. Then when something anything with actual stakes is presented it just resolves itself after some exposition and moves on to the neatly move on to next arc and leave no lasting impact. Although here is one arc where our exposition machine is affected by “adolescence syndrome” and with no way to dumb exposition that the author found on the first 2 lines of Wikipedia? The answer is they don’t, it just kind of solves itself and leaves any relevant themes by the wayside. All in time to crash and burn at an overly melodramatic conclusion filled with lot of forced drama and lots of excessive crying.

Bunny girl senpai also suffers from light novel syndrome where it is just walls of text, normally this can be saved having interesting dialogue, or swapping dialogue for visual storytelling or even interesting direction to keep our interest up throughout the shows run time. What does bunny girl senpai do? Nothing, most episodes are characters talking to each other about the problems with some melodrama sprinkled in just to be repeated constantly throughout the shows run time.

Do you want interesting themes explored in a dialogue heavy show with many girls? Watch the monogatari series. Or how about a series with romance an apathetic protagonist? Watch oregairu. Do you want supernatural series with light romance? Watch kokoro connect. Or do you want to see some of this animes arc explored in a better show with a similar protagonist? Watch haruhi. There is nothing of value here.

I don't understand the hype for this one.

Bunny Girl Senpai is full of the same issues commonly criticized in most light novel adaptations, so why does it get a free pass? Harem tropes, waifu bait, incest teasing, thin characterization, vague pseudoscience, and an asshole deadpan protagonist who solves a bunch of girls’ problems for them. Most of all, the art and sound are incredibly mediocre excluding the many moments when CloverWorks chooses to bend over and spray shit in our eyes with its abundance of hideous CGI crowds.

First and foremost, I hate the writing in Bunny Girl Senpai. Consider the '4' points I rated the ... show overall to be a generous acknowledgment of its basic features. It was painful to watch, but not irredeemable. The story follows Sakuta, a second year in high school, as he tries to help girls afflicted by a supernatural phenomenon known as Adolescence Syndrome. If that sounds like a psychological disorder concocted by a pretentious teenage boy trying to sound smart, that’s because it is. If a character suddenly becomes invisible or if everyone is trapped in a three-day long time loop, then the author will call it Adolescence Syndrome and leave the rest up to our imaginations. In other words, it's the author’s way of masking a cheap plot device. Rather than giving us a coherent explanation for the syndrome, the author just handwaves it with common quantum mechanics like Schrodinger's Cat and Laplace's Demon. It’s loosely defined as a supernatural affliction that manifests in people who are going through severe stress, whether it be cyberbullying causing physical cuts, or going invisible because you’re sick of attention. To the show’s credit, as a plot device, it is used to craft some empathetic struggles within the characters and even a little bit of relatability. However, these conflicts aren’t executed nearly as well as they could be. The story is told through five parts, each with a new girl for Sakuta to help and flirt with. This standard harem setup is so unbearable to watch play out because Sakuta is just an awful protagonist.

Sakuta is the average deadpan, cynical, uncaring protagonist, except he’s also an unlikable asshole. His one single tone of voice is monotonous boredom, and he almost never wavers from it for the entire series. Keep in mind, this show is FULL of dialogue, but it has no goddamn clue how to make any of it seem interesting. Sakuta’s dialogue isn’t witty or clever like you would expect from a deadpan character, it’s just vulgar, gross, and obnoxious. Deceptively, treats everyone like crap and hides behind irony so that people don’t think he’s that bad of a guy. However, everything he says is actually unironic, there’s no nuance, no punchline, he’s just a bad person. He is never punished for being an asshole, sometimes girls might comment on his behavior if he says something especially inappropriate to them, but right away they move on and act like he’s Jesus-kun again. For example, when a girl says something rude to him he fires back with:

“Are you on your period or something?”

Did a twelve-year-old write this script? Sakuta's shallow quips are always like this, juvenile and crass, and the rest of his dialogue is completely deadpan. He is rarely emotionally impacted by anything; very little makes him impressed or concerned. Viewing a story from the perspective of an uncaring asshole like Sakuta makes it impossible to get invested in anything, or even enjoy it. If the show had actually confronted him about his behavior and acknowledged how bad he was to his friends, then it could have been a character flaw and something to develop upon. But from what we saw adapted, his character development is satisfied with being permanently stagnant. He continues to hide his ugly personality behind a thick layer of snark and quips. Sakuta is just the rotten core of this story, surrounding him is the main attraction, all of the ladies who are strangely drawn to him.

Our first heroine for Sakuta to assist is Mai Sakurajima, the titular bunny girl. Somehow she makes the dialogue even worse, she is equally as dry and cynical as Sakuta. Throughout the series, the script parallels standard rom-com dialogue, except it is written to be as pretentious as possible with the pace cranked down to molasses. Rather than a simple sentence lasting a few seconds, it’s needlessly wrapped into a messy jumble of sophistry and weird unfunny jokes. Why can’t these kids just talk like normal human beings? That would sure as hell make them more engaging to watch, and you know, relatable. Mai is the typical tsundere archetype, with the intruiging bunny girl costume appearing the most in episode one, then rarely appearing for the rest of the series. The whole ‘Bunny Girl’ hook in the title is contrived for what amounts to little more than big budget clickbait.

There is one area which Bunny Girl Senpai is deserving of praise, its themes. At least from a conceptual standpoint, they add some nuance and relatability to cast. The execution of these themes, like the rest of the show, leaves much to be desired. Where we see the most intruiging themes on display is in Futaba's arc; she is introduced early in the show as more or less an exposition dumper with the sole purpose of lampshading plot conveniences. The relevant themes of insecurity and social anxiety addressed in her arc are muddled by the terrible hackneyed script. She is a scientist girl for the sole purpose of spouting tropey quantum theory pseudo-science to explain away everything that’s happening. It’s always painfully apparent that the author just read a brief summary about the theories he uses in his story in an attempt to seem intelligent, but it's so clear he didn't bother to fully research them so instead it makes him look stupider. These overlong, cringe-inducing, self-congratulatory ‘science’ scenes occur almost every episode.

Nothing in Bunny Girl Senpai feels real, it's all plastic. Mai and the rest of the girls don’t feel like fully realized characters either. They all experience some kind of turmoil yet this rarely shows through in their personalities. They are all plastic prepackaged moe archetypes, unaffected by anything they go through. Even if a character is visibly changed by their conflict after it’s resolved, it is usually undermined by the show’s terrible writing. For example one girl is affected by Adolescence Syndrome because she is so insecure with her body from how people have treated her, then after her affliction is resolved Sakuta interjects with another one of his crude sex jokes that objectifies her body and undermines everything the arc was building towards. Another issue is the lack of lasting effects to each arc. They are paced too poorly for us to see how characters are impacted, rather than a satisfying conclusion the story just moves on. When the author decides he’s bored of a girl he simply ends the arc, in favor of a new case of Adolescence Syndrome. Of course, with another stock standard girl taken off the shelves at A-1 Pictures’ waifu warehouse to become the show’s new main appeal for a few weeks, until she is inevitably relegated to the supporting cast in favor of a new poster girl.

It makes the author seem like an impatient teenage boy who just wants to shove as many beautiful girls into the arms of the cool guy bland protagonist. He pairs a girl with the protagonist and lets them flirt a little bit, and before he has to commit and actually develop said girl he gets bored of her. And writing a nuanced character is such hard work for him. So instead he just solves the issue by tossing aside the old girl in favor of a fresh new waifu to fawn all over his self-insert. This is, of course, a fundamental issue of most harem anime, a revolving door of waifus and a self insert protagonist. Being a light novel adaptation, Bunny Girl Senpai bears many structural similarities to a harem anime. Generally this is the reason why I avoid the genre, that and obnoxious fanservice which this series is thankfully frugal with. Eventually, it leaves off on a non-ending because this is an adaptation of an ongoing light novel. The show tries to wrap up the story as neatly as possible at the end of the last girl's arc, but it crashes and burns in its finale. The climax is a filled with overwrought crying, forced drama, and the cheesiest and most cringe-inducing writing in the whole show.

In a better series, this barren wasteland of a script could be saved by a larger budget, or a more experienced director. However, this show’s decidedly unimaginative directing style leaves much to be desired. The art is mediocre, it’s in no way vivid to look at, the directing fails to make the long stretches of dialogue remotely interesting. Aside from the abhorrent CGI crowds, it isn’t a visual disaster, it could be worse, but it could be so much better. Other dialogue heavy anime like the Monogatari Series utilize unique directing techniques and plenty of visual storytelling to engage the viewer in lengthy conversations between two characters. Strangely, Bunny Girl Senpai desires to be watched as a thoughtful supernatural character drama, but it plays out like a generic light novel romantic comedy, taking the worst aspects of each and failing to craft an original or worthwhile series.

Seishun Buta Yarou wa Bunny Girl Senpai no Yume wo Minai presents intruiging themes of how people treat and mistreat one another during adolescence. However, it fails to execute its best ideas successfully or in a compelling way due to terrible pacing, narrative structural issues, needlessly convoluted dialogue, mediocre presentation, and a thoroughly unlikable main character. If the author possessed half of the self-awareness he seems to think he has, this may not have been an overrated, cringy, bore-fest.

I’ll keep this really brief, since I just wanted to interject my thoughts on why I rated Bunny Senpai low:

Bunny Senpai peaks at episode 3. The show goes downhill after that.

The dialogue while witty, comes off pretentious and doesn’t sound like the type of conversations teens would say

The supernatural adolescence syndromes are poorly explained. They’re plot devices that happen so Sakuta can help each girl until they conveniently fade away after they’ve addressed their problems. Then afterwards his big tiddie science friend tries to link it to Quantum physics to again make it all sound smart, but is really just pseudo intellectual bullshit.

The show ... constantly depicts Sakuta as this ‘good person’, but most of the time he acts like perverted, sarcastic asshole that it’s hard to relate to him.

To sum up my feelings on this show: No.

I can tell the author has never spoken to a woman that wasn't his own mother in his entire life.The characters are bland archetypes, and the mc is absolutely unbearable. He is simply a garbage self insert and it pisses me off to no end. We don't need another show about a man fixing women's problems. All these girls fall in love with him despite his disgusting, pervy lack of a personality. I really don't want to waste anymore energy on this show it just literally baffles me that its so popular.

Bunny Girl Senpai had a pretty interesting start in terms of reception. It feels like many people dismissed it as yet another trashy ecchi/harem LN adaptation thanks to the name and rather erotic cover art. Yet, as more people got to see it, many were quick to point out how the poor Bunny Girl was misrepresented and how it’s not a generic ecchi show but actually a very thoughtful anime about problems people face during adolescence.

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.

I'll keep this short and not-so-sweet: Bunny Girl Senpai is the worst anime I've seen after School Days.

Story: It's s**t. They tried to copy the masterful storytelling of the Monogatari series but failed and it ended up being a clusterf**k. Some of the material - especially the quantum physics part - is so cringy that it could go on r/iamverysmart.

Art: Boooooring and generic like every generic anime out there. The character designs weren't even appealing. Every time Mai appeared on screen I felt like punching her face.

Sound: Average at best. The opening works better as a meme: "KIMI NO GEI KIMI NO GEI UWU"

Character: This ... is what I hated the most. The MC, not-Araragi-kun, isn't lovable but instead is an unabashed pervert. The main girl, not-Senjougahara, is annoying in every way: looks, voice, personality. In a way she's perfect for the MC but whatever. I've never truly hated a character like this before. Mai "not-Hitagi-Senjougahara" Sakurajima is the worst anime girl of 2018 and you can't change my mind. The rest of the girls weren't even worth remembering. Fine, I don't expect something like the toothbrush scene but the characters weren't even memorable.

Enjoyment: I would give a 0 if I could. I cringed all the way through and I know, I really must hate myself a lot to have sat through the entirety of this anime.

Overall, Bunny Girl Senpai is the worst anime of 2018 imo. I strongly recommend that you do not watch it. If you want a good story, watch the Monogatari series. If you have a fetish for bunny suits then watching h****i is more productive than watching this trainwreck of an anime.

I honestly don't see where the hype for this series comes from.

Over 20+ years of watching anime and there's, if we're being honest here, nothing special about this anime at all.

The story line is dreadful. It's a simple concept that is painfully dragged out over 13 episodes. It was painful to watch but I wanted to complete the series, if for nothing more, so that I could write this review. There is no reasoning presented for the visible wounds, a dearth of depth in telling any of the character's stories, no build to climax, and no clear resolution as to why anyone ... was in their predicament. As others have asked "Did a 13 year old write this?"

Characterization is non-existent. At no time did I ever feel connected to any of the characters. No deeper inspection of the psyche or needs of them, their desires (besides the lust of a teenage boy), and no real bonding between them. Every character looked like another cardboard cutout.

The art is Fair - nothing to get excited about. By the end of the series the artwork looks rushed. As though even the artists were tired of these same characters. As an example - look at the last hospital scene, when brother and sister are leaving, and you can literally see bad lines and coloring.


Overall - there are so many better anime series out there than this piece of junk. This is like watching some of the horrible "filler" episodes in some popular anime titles.

Seriously... this one is pretty bad.

Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai is an arc based supernatural drama series that focuses on a harem lead solving the mysterious goings on of his eccentric female classmates. If that sounds familiar, that's probably because it should. I'm not going to be the first or the only one to tell you this, but Bunny Girl Senpai clearly rides heavily on the coattails of other, more famous Light Novel Intellectual Property. I won't go as far as to call it plagiarism, but the parallels between this series and those like Monogatari or Haruhi Suzumiya are glaring enough that you start to question where ... you draw the line between wearing your influences on your sleeve and just trying to be them.

On some level, I understand why people are enamored with the show, because not everything about it is terrible. The formula it's drawing on clearly works (otherwise why do it, right?). Unfortunately, I feel like most of the time the writer didn't understand explicitly what made those older series stand out to begin with and just pulled structural elements from them hoping that would replicate their success.

One of the big talking points I see brought up about the series is that it's got that snappy back-and-forth dialogue that a lot of people enjoy. If the protagonist is engaging with someone, you can be sure he'll have something dry and witty to say to them, and his dance partner will be more than happy to reciprocate. That's how the scenario is supposed to play out ideally in most encounters of most episodes. It'll be played for laughs and will be used to endear us to the characters; they're like us, they're young, hip, and have that cynical internet humor going for them. This really only works, though, if the characters are being genuine about it. In most exchanges, the conversations come off as a some type of low energy defense mechanism (if that's the right way to phrase it) for the protagonist to continually reassure us that he is in fact as cool and smart as he plays himself off to be, and no person or event can shake him from that. His lack of vulnerability and the need for him to come out on top of all the verbal tussles leaves him feeling less like an actual person and more like a self-insert character prop. Even in situations where he feigns defeat, it's a win, because his concession is usually to something like being very attracted to a genuinely attractive girl, so that he can catch them off guard with how blunt he's being and regain control of the situation. In similar IP, side characters would be able to take advantage of this, but because Sakuta is consistently portrayed as the most intelligent character in the show, none of them are able to do anything with it. There's no chemistry or authenticity involved in an interaction (at least when it's the only type of interaction) that's primary narrative purpose is to remind us how cool and untouchable we should think the main character is. Imagine the most lopsided game of cat and mouse you've ever seen, but the mouse keeps coming back to play in spite of the knowledge that it has no hopes of ever winning, and is just there to make the cat look cool in front of his friends.

And really, when you get down to it, how knowledgeable Sakuta is framed to be is the show's biggest Achilles Heel. In a narrative sense, there's very little dramatic tension involved in the specific supernatural trouble each arc centers around, because once we know who it's about and what their symptoms are, Sakuta is able to tell them roughly how they could go about fixing it during their first interaction to immediately follow. The arc only continues because the person being given the advice doesn't take it right away. Once they've come to grasp that exact same piece of social understanding that we've known since the outset, the arc comes to a close. This happens in 3-4 of the 5 central stories presented, depending on how you argue the Mai segment (the Kaede arc being the sole exception). You would expect, then, if there isn't a lot of tension surrounding that portion of the conflict, the vast majority of the substance would be related to the show's thematic core and the surrounding character drama.

The quality of that thematic cohesion in relation to the emotional payoff of each arc is pretty variable. Sometimes, the show will surprise us with segments like the Kaede arc, where she struggles for self betterment largely as an individual, and in a way that seems emotionally honest, providing us with what is probably the best character the show has. Her motivation and want to improve seems largely good natured, and she's willing to put in her own work with the help of those surrounding her without taking their instructions verbatim on how to get to the destination. Weird, I know, but the show is most successful when it lets the characters explore their problems to their logical conclusion in a way that doesn't feel like their hand is being held (which is especially ironic, given that Kaeda is the one that requires the most literal physical assistance of any of the cast). For every moment like this, though, we have things like the Nodoka arc or the Futaba arc. The former of which largely ignores what could have been it's most interesting narrative conceit in the exploration of Toyohama's relationship with her mother, and the latter, which undercuts any emotional payoff the viewer might have by letting Sakuta fix all of Rio's problems for her.

At it's core, Bunny Girl wants to be a show that has something to say about the subtle ways people interact with each other. It wants to say that you should try to strike a healthy balance between being honest with yourself about your feelings, playing an active role in how other people perceive you, and that remembering to temper those concerns with some degree of care, hoping not to get too swept up in the fleeting emotions of your peers doesn't make you a bad person. Because these things are told to us through the lens of Sakuta, though, the way they're discussed isn't especially nuanced. Often times his solutions to problems feel incredibly reductive and leave almost no wiggle room for the complexity of the emotions of the other involved party. A lot of it boils down to "just kind of be honest and get over it". Even late in the series, when we finally see Sakuta's armor crack a little, the tone of the scene featuring it soured the scenario for me a bit, as if to say that he can't feel those terrible sad emotions because it made him less cool, and stoic cool dudes don't feel those emotions, bro.

A level of that attitude is to be expected, though, since characters like Sakuta are likely made to appeal to a common type of person in the anime community. High school aged guys who are kind of jaded and can't identify with the normal harem protagonist due to those characters' social ineptitude, but haven't matured enough yet to realize they aren't always the smartest or funniest person in the room. I tried to make that sound less insulting, but what are you gonna do, I guess.

At the end of the day, that's basically what this show is. It's average looking. It's music is mundane. It's character arcs are more miss than hit. And It's all told to you from the perspective of a guy you probably wouldn't want to be friends with because of how high he is on himself, even if he insists that he isn't. There was a lot worse you could have chosen to watch in 2018, but there was a lot better, too.

This show was a major disappointment. It was extremely difficult for me to pay attention to it, despite it only being 13 episodes. I found myself constantly pausing the show to do other things, simply because of how grotesque and unentertaining it was. The dialogue is absolutely appalling, some lines are completely inappropriate and out of place, and the adolescence syndrome is utter nonsense. The characters are predictable and boring, and the plot feels like riding a bicycle that has no wheels. It really saddened me to see how quickly the show shot down my expectations, and I really do not look forward to finishing ... it. I feel like the budget used for this show was a complete waste.


Edit:
After completing the show, I believe the last 2-3 episodes are pretty decent. I have upped the show to a 4/10. I still would not recommend this show to anyone.

Ok, imagine this. Think of the Monogatari series, a wonderful handful of stories with amazing storytelling about a boy who helps girls with apparitions, beings that latch on to other people and affect their personality and everything about them. Now take that amazing series and strip away everything good about it. Now you have Seishun Buta Yarou wa Bunny Girl Senpai no Yume wo Minai.

This series has basically the same premise as the monogatari series, but it isn't apparitions that affect people in this series, it's adolescence syndrome. This syndrome can do basically anything to a person. It can make them invisible to everyone, make ... them lose all their memories, make a clone of them, make them switch bodies with another person, make them the source of a time loop, etc. That concept is novel, but it just isn't right.

We get almost no information on this syndrome. The only piece of information we get that could be remotely connected with this syndrome is that it has to do with someone's mind. That's all. This super powerful syndrome that can literally make a person disappear from existence to everyone else on the planet has no information about it. We don't know a single thing about it.

Then we arrive at this series biggest problem. The filler. You'd think you couldn't put that much filler in a 13 episode anime, but you'd be wrong. The only important and necessary part of this anime is the first arc, episodes 1-3. After this arc, the rest of the series is ALL filler. It has nothing to do with the plot at all and is completely useless. If all this series was was the first 3 episodes as a movie and nothing else, i'd have given this a 7 or an 8. But no. They just had to make 10 EPISODES of filler in a 13 EPISODE anime.

So, basically what I'm trying to say is that this series is not good. Watch the first 3 episodes (I didn't even mention half the problems with this anime, so only even consider watching it if you're into garbage) and then stop. If you decide to watch this, only watch the first 3 episodes and then stop right there unless you like the series so much you're willing to watch 10 episodes of filler.

The first three episodes hooked me. The thing is, I didn't expect what seemed to be the central conflict to be resolved so quickly. I was hoping the rest of the series would revolve around our two main characters, the various shenanigans they would get up to with her randomly disappearing to those around her, and their fun, adorably written relationship.

But it is NOT our two main characters. Mai turns into a secondary character after her arc is completed and she peaces out for the majority of the anime. And this happens with EVERY girl we bump into because this show is actually, you guessed ... it! A fanservice harem with repetitive arcs. Sakuta meets cute girl, Futaba gives ridiculous "scientific" explanation (that I completely tune out for), Sakuta delivers blunt criticism to girl, girl's problem is solved.

I binged this series desperately waiting/hoping for more Sakuta x Mai but I was left feeling pretty disappointed. Giving it a 4 because I wouldn't call it BAD but. It definitely wasn't good either. It might deserve a 5 just for the enjoyment of those first three episodes. Just do yourself a favor, and skip the remaining 10.

In short, the reason i dropped this is that the only thing I actually liked about the show is Sakuta's banter with Mai but, that wasn't a good enough for me to continue watching.

Firstly, there is the entire reason I'm an anime fan in the first place. Animation is capable of conveying emotions in a way that live action doesn't. BGS however, uses the medium for one visually interesting scene in the first 5 episodes. Apart from this, there were no shots that i find even remotely interesting to look at, with directing that feels flat to me and character animation that fails to ... convince me of genuine feelings.

Good visuals aren't everything though and good stories don't necessitate impressive visuals to keep me engaged. Unfortunately, there are several aspects of Bunny Girl's plot and execution that didn't gel well with me. Most importantly, the solutions of Bunny Girl's supernatural problems aren't very compelling. Both Mai and Koga get saved from their problems by Sakuta and I don't like that. I find stories of how they overcome their problems much more engaging than a love confession and Sakuta beating a guy up (I know that's not the actual conclusion but, from what i heard the conclusion is even worse). At the end of the first arc, I asked myself: what have the characters learnt from this, how have they changed, what is the lesson? None of the answers I or people I've talked to satisfy me.

The pacing of the story also seems fairly rushed, as if it's jumping from plot point to plot point with no time for anything to impact me, particularly when Sakuta talks about his sister's syndrome it shows the only visually interesting scene in the anime and then goes back to what they were talking about earlier which was fairly jarring. I felt a slower pace to allow for more characterisation would have benefited the anime.

Another problem I have with the anime is with the pseudo-science. This often gets brushed off as one of Futaba's character traits even but, there is no indication that Futaba is the person who doesn't know what she's talking about and not the author. If I knew nothing about quantum physics then there is no clue that Futaba is misapplying the theories - there should be a better clue than Futaba just being wrong. It also doesn't help that her characterisation up to the point i dropped it is 'science girl', so it's a fair assumption that she's the author's tool for exposition.

This leads me on to my next issue: the characters.

Futaba is an extremely boring character with seemingly no depth (I've read about her later development and it's very much a case of "why would i care about the problems of a drawing that I didn't like in the first place"). She has a crush on a guy we know hardly anything about (that's already an overdone cliche) and that's everything.

Kuninimi (I think?) Is a bro, a one-dimensional bro that doesn't even have his name on Bunny Girl's MAL page or any real screen time but he's cool.

His girlfriend is annoying for the sake of it.

Similarly annoying is Koga who happens to be the kind of person I really don't like, so it was always going to be a task to get me to like her anyway.

Kaede is Sakuta's little sister.

Sakura himself is relatively smart, charismatic, witty, a nice guy, apparently good in a fight, gives great life advice, is smooth with the ladies, works part-time to help support himself and his sister, is the sole caretaker for his sister and lacks any convincing flaws that make him seem human to me. The story seems to be afraid to question his views and expose any insecurities or weaknesses he has. I've been told that he later gets called out on his behaviour but, the story hasn't given any consequences for this. 

A good writer, in my opinion, should put a character in a situation where we can see these parts of their personalities.

Mai is an Ok character. She's a tsundere pretending to be a kuudere but, there really isn't enough to sell me on her character. For instance, how did she feel when her mother forgot she exists? How does she feel about it now?

There are also two other aspects that fail to move me in this show. The OST exists, probably, I can't remember any of the music. Then there's the voice acting. I just don't like how monotone it is. It makes any lines that aren't best suited to monotone like sarcastic comebacks either sound boring or lacking in emotion.