Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai

Episode 1,2

This show right now is a delicious stew comprised of Bakemonogatari, SNAFU, Golden Time and a few other great rom-coms.

Meaning I'm 120% in baybeeee :drink:

The fun/sad part will be finding out if the main character is a schizo or not.

The show is sort of skewing towards our bunny girl existing, but there's just enough ambiguity and awkwardness in the interactions that involve a 3rd person that it's possible we may get a fight club style reveal later on.

Not Real:

1. There was already a perfect girl in the MCs life who disappeared/didn't exist before.

Does Exist:

1. His little sister may have had some paranormal shit happen to her.

3. He may have had some paranormal shit happen to him and the chest scar sort of backs that up.

Unfortunately the two stories above are from the mc's mouth so if he turns out to be an unreliable narrator we may not even be able to trust his eyes.

Also the title seems to make a whole lot more sense if you think about the MC "dreaming" the bunny girl up.

Meaning, the intent behind the name could potentially be "Rascal is not making the bunny girl up" but I could be wrong here since this is just a wag on my part.
 
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SeiyaManG said:
Also the title seems to make a whole lot more sense if you think about the MC "dreaming" the bunny girl up.

Meaning, the intent behind the name could potentially be "Rascal is not making the bunny girl up" but I could be wrong here since this is just a wag on my part.
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I thought it was rascal can see Bunny girl because he’s enjoying shishunki.
 
SeiyaManG said:
This show right now is a delicious stew comprised of Bakemonogatari, SNAFU, Golden Time and a few other great rom-coms
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This!!!!!

Ep 2
Great episode. The progression of the plot has me worried that
he will end up being the one to disappear and not her. The fact that he's had someone in the past that he knew go, then kids who they couldn't see hurt him and his sister (they disappeared too) means that he can effect ppl around him. This has to be that this girl will cause him to disappear since she is sooooo involved with her.

Something has to give and I think it's going to be him.


SeiyaManG said:
His little sister may have had some paranormal shit happen to her.

3. He may have had some paranormal shit happen to him and the chest scar sort of backs that up.
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Remember that ppl can't see you if they forget about you. What if a group of kids where so bad that everyone forgot about them.but they figured out they could still cause damage until they fully disappeared?

Like he and his sisters where the only ones that could see and have an effect on.....holy shit. They see dead ppl. I got it!!!

These aren't syndromes. They are dead. That or he and his sister are dead. Oh shit!!!! Dead people!!! That's going to be the the big reveal!!!!!
 
Episode 1:

I don't think it's as clever as it thinks it is and it's definitely not on par with the shows its being compared to. However, the first episode was a pleasant exp
tcannon1 said:
Well, I'm surprised the Bunny Girl anime is actually pretty decent. It could be a lot better if there wasn't an aura of smugness that I caught onto. The insufferable protagonist feels like some kind of author insert character that "gets it, man", but I don't think the show's self aware enough to explore how absolutely immature he is. Like, he asked a girl if she's on her period to antagonize her, that's always shitty and misogynistic no matter how awful she is. If he acted more like a believable person and/or they explored his massive personality flaws I'd enjoy it more. Another thing I caught onto is the series might be trying too hard to be High IQ, especially after dropping an arbitrary Schrödinger's Cat reference, which is unnessisery since there's already some potentially great metaphor going on here. Let's just see where this goes.
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Yeah, this sums up my thoughts on the first episode pretty well. It's hard to do a cynical teenage protagonist like this and get it right. It's only the first episode so they could possibly break him down later, but for now it just looks like he'll be going around saving girls with his "understanding" of society.

Not that I want to rip on it too hard because this was an enjoyable first episode with some good quips and deadpan humor. Even if the writing isn't quite as clever as it thinks it is, it's still a cut above most other anime. There's still time for it to develop the premise more and maybe even live up to the shows people are comparing it too. Not that I'll expect it to rise to that level because that's just asking for disappointment.

Off to a decent start.
 
Episode 2:

While, I do wish entertainment would stop abusing Schrödinger's cat whenever it wants to sound smart, this was still a strong episode that hit the right emotional notes while still being witty. I'm really enjoying the deadpan delivery of most of the dialogue. It reminds me of old screwball comedies if a bit more subdued.

The other thing I like is the show isn't going too heavy handed on the social commentary. It's something that's definitely present, but the focus is mostly on the characters and their interactions. It's doing a good job of fleshing out the characters to make me care about them. Mai's experience with the bathing suit photo shoot is horrific and even more so because it's the type of thing that really does happen in the real world.

Glad this episode didn't disappoint.
 
Episode 2
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It's the season for ultra violence.

This episode was more subtle than the first one, and I liked the back and forth snarky exchanges between Sakuta and Mai. If only if it weren't for the blasted Schrödinger's cat experiment.
 
Teophan said:
Man, I never realized Schrodinger's cat was such a hot topic. How many other shows used the cat theory?
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All of them because it's a simple to understand thought experiment that still sounds really smart. The problem is most of the time it's used it's a stretch to fit the situation.

It's kind of like how some people take the Bechdel Test as some kind of litmus test for movies when it was just a joke to prove a point. The Bechdel test was just meant to pick fun at the limited role women have in movies as a whole, not to determine a movies quality based on whether it can pass or not. There are actually tons of movies that would fail the shit out of the test, but still represent females really well.
 
ZetsubouKaiji said:
All of them because it's a simple to understand thought experiment that still sounds really smart. The problem is most of the time it's used it's a stretch to fit the situation.

It's kind of like how some people take the Bechdel Test as some kind of litmus test for movies when it was just a joke to prove a point. The Bechdel test was just meant to pick fun at the limited role women have in movies as a whole, not to determine a movies quality based on whether it can pass or not. There are actually tons of movies that would fail the shit out of the test, but still represent females really well.
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This reminds me of how I had to take the wonderlick test for a job.
 
I remember vaguely reading this as a manga. Interesting to see it animated since when I went back to compare some chapters there's a noticeable difference in how it's presented.

Still a mediocre anime at it's core skeleton as far as I can tell, but the director is making up for it as best as they can. They make it seem all mystery/serious drama without making it over the top and that's like really good considering how bad and silly some of the things happening in this show are if you look at them objectively.

Props to the director. They tried, but this anime is 2.5/5 at BEST is my prediction.
 
Wakasagihime said:
They make it seem all mystery/serious drama without making it over the top and that's like really good considering how bad and silly some of the things happening in this show are if you look at them objectively.
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I loved Samurai Flameco so what I read was "you are going to fucking love this".

50 out of 5
 
oh well at least it's a bunny girl, but the rest is sort of bland to me. kids should be seen not heard, but to run with a cartoon into that direction where kids get to a stage that no one notices them, meh. however it's interesting to see they ran with the "cat in the box" version, that's not seen much.
 
This has won my heart and it’s only episode two!
Such strong dialogue while beautifully paced and gently delivered, making for such interesting characters that I just want to hear more from as a “fly on the wall”. But, can we address the elephant in the room about that swift kick to that girls hiney?!
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I just caught up with this. And...gosh, yeah, I'll take that any day, let me tell you.
Boy, I had a good time with this show.

I absolutely love the characters--all of them, honestly, but especially the chemistry between our leads, who have that ineffable immediate comfortableness with each other--and the pacing is probably exactly right for the amount of ground they want to cover (particularly with the maybe too-slick cleverness it uses to cover said amount of ground), slowing down when it's best to focus on something and skipping forward to the next necessary beat without ever making it feel like some part of the story has been left behind. Add to that the mystery of it being both interesting enough and sort of hidden away enough (behind the compelling teen romance) to make me genuinely interested in what's going on.

And did I mention that I love the leads? Because I do. They're delightful to watch.

Too bad he's gonna wake up sometime next episode and forget she exists. (Y'know, like it shows us at the start of the first episode?)

Definitely jumped up to my top spot, this season. Which I would not have thought.

Let's see if it holds.

Not that it particularly matter to weigh in on the "this show is like this show" question, but I do see the bits and pieces of the shows everyone is mentioning in Rascal Flats v. Bunny Girl (...that's close, right?)--but I don't know that that comparisons overall are entirely accurate. Not in terms of quality level, exactly, given that we are only two episodes into this series, but in terms of overall feel.

Sure, it's a little Hachiman/Yukinoshita if they were flirtily roleplaying as Araragi/Senjogahara, but I don't think the show feels like those other shows. Rather, to me, I think this is more of a KyoAni show that is being done by people who are not KyoAni. (And not just because it's vaguely Chuunibyou.) It's the character-focused, connection-centric storytelling, the management of the pacing and transitions from scene to scene, and even the dialogue-driven character development.

...is my two cents on the matter.

PandaBeard said:
can we address the elephant in the room about that swift kick to that girls hiney?!
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Sure can! (Though...is it an elephant? No one's talked about it, yet, but I don't think it's because people are actively trying to ignore it, right? I would think the non-discussion would be from the fairly minor role this moment had as a character introduction for a girl who will only matter later on and how easily it was drowned out by the Rascal/Bunny stuff that followed it.) Frankly, I'm just glad it broke up the possibility of a stupid "let's look for your mom!" sequence.

But, yes, I am totally down for spending more time with Egalitarian Abuse-chan.
 
PandaBeard said:
can we address the elephant in the room about that swift kick to that girls hiney?!
rascal-does-not-dream-of-bunny-girl-senpai-ep-2-3.png
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Since this is an anime based off a LN, my guess would be that it's just something thrown in to make the act of him being late less boring. There is nothing significant to it and it had no other purpose than being cheap entertainment.
 
MC guy is pretty cool. Sure, he's a complete and utter jerk, but that's kinda where he gets his humor from. (The humor's great, by the way) And he actually feels like a person! Just a regular person, in an irregular circumstance. I love it!

Maybe I've been watching the wrong anime, where this is enough to get me happy. I dunno. I just like how interesting this is so far.
 
Wakasagihime said:
Since this is an anime based off a LN, my guess would be that it's just something thrown in to make the act of him being late less boring. There is nothing significant to it and it had no other purpose than being cheap entertainment.
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There is, she's the star of the 'next story'.

I'm curious to see how many short stories this show will have, at the moment it really reminds me of the Monogatari series. Witty dialogue, character interactions, the concept of everybody having different unexplainable events happening to them.

Main protagonist has the scar, the younger sister has the cuts, Mai was becoming invisible, the old friend that also became invisible who he can't remember and now Tomoe.
She s introduced as the demon girl, after the credits of episode 3.

Actually keen to see what other adolescent syndromes they come up with.
 
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EP 3:
We're getting more and fresher teenager angst next episode
I wasn't expecting Sakurajima's arc to be this short; it was a decent ending though, that guy needs to chill, if it weren't for the sleeping pills he could have died, but he prefered staying awake to prevent forgetting Sakurajima, that was sort of romantic...?
Bebx said:
And he actually feels like a person! Just a regular person, in an irregular circumstance. I love it!
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YES! I totally agree he's not the typical stereotype of the anime guy, he is chill and natural (not an Emo/Dark boi, intense pervert, otaku/shut-in, Gary Stu) and that makes him very likable
 
The way the mystery concerning Mai senpai’s symptom was sort of resolved and the emotional peak mid story made me feel like I was watching the last episode. But there are other people’s symptoms to solve so the story continues.

At this point I‘m actually starting to hope there is going to be a plot twist, or an explication other than the Cat Box theory to explain for the symptoms because I don’t think the theory satisfactorily explains the symptom (?)

- Because according to the Cat box theory, it would make more sense if the students in the same box were the only ppl who could recognize Mai senpai.

The cat box theory is better left as a metaphor for the turbulence of puberty which appears to be the very cause of the symptom.

Now for the satisfactory explanation/hint Futaba gives:
- Human cognition is so limited that we don’t see or recognize things we don’t want to see. ← the premise
- Human cognition, especially that of kids in puberty, is affected by the general want to conform to the environment (aka “reading the atmosphere”/Kuuki wo yomu). So if people are subtlely ignoring Mai senpai then you read the atmosphere (or are taken into the atmosphere) and do the same (subconsciously). The end result is that you somehow stop recognizing the person being ignored.
Smooth as always.
 
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