Seishun Buta Yarou wa Bunny Girl Senpai no Yume wo Minai

The rare and inexplicable Puberty Syndrome is thought of as a myth. It is a rare disease which only affects teenagers, and its symptoms are so supernatural that hardly anyone recognizes it as a legitimate occurrence. However, high school student Sakuta Azusagawa knows from personal experience that it is very much real, and happens to be quite prevalent in his school.

Mai Sakurajima is a third-year high school student who gained fame in her youth as a child actress, but recently halted her promising career for reasons unknown to the public. With an air of unapproachability, she is well known throughout the school, but none dare interact with her—that is until Sakuta sees her wandering the library in a bunny girl costume. Despite the getup, no one seems to notice her, and after confronting her, he realizes that she is another victim of Puberty Syndrome. As Sakuta tries to help Mai through her predicament, his actions bring him into contact with more girls afflicted with the elusive disease.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Sakurajima, Mai Main

Seto, Asami Japanese

Azusagawa, Sakuta Main

Ishikawa, Kaito Japanese

Futaba, Rio Supporting

Tanezaki, Atsumi Japanese

Azusagawa, Kaede Supporting

Kubo, Yurika Japanese

Koga, Tomoe Supporting

Touyama, Nao Japanese

Makinohara, Shouko Supporting

Minase, Inori Japanese

Toyohama, Nodoka Supporting

Uchida, Maaya Japanese

Kunimi, Yuuma Supporting

Uchida, Yuuma Japanese

Kamisato, Saki Supporting

Akaneya, Himika Japanese

Hanawa, Ryouko Supporting

Aikawa, Natsuki Japanese

Kida, Kazuya Producer

Kurokawa, Yuuichirou Producer

Yokoyama, Shuko Producer

Masui, Souichi Director, Storyboard

Reviews

Dec 26, 2018

Rylston

Recommended

‘I live life everyday hoping that I’m a slightly kinder person than I was the day before’ - Makinohara Shoko

If you thought this show was about literal BUNNY GIRLS, boi should you be prepared to be bamboozled by the most misleading title that you mightve ever come across. I was watching the first few minutes of the first episode expecting something probably as ecchi as it seems on the cover art, but hot damn did I got hooked by the quirky characters, mainly the interactions between our main protagonists. This show within the first episode reminded me of Bakemonogatari, which till this date I ... still think has one of the best monologues and dialogues, and now at the end of it, I think we have a great contester to dethrone the monogatari series, and here I present you, Seishun Buta Yarou wa Bunny Girl Senpai no Yume wo Minai.

Story / Character -10-
Revolving around the idea of ‘Puberty Syndrome’, this story mainly focuses on how our male protagonist, Sakuta settles this problem for the ones undergoing this syndrome. Albeit totally supernatural, there are sufficient backstory and explanations relating to quantum physics and what not (if you can understand that is), in which I think is always a great touch to the story to not let the audience sit in confusion. Puberty Syndrome is where you might find random bruises or cuts throughout your body, or having a juxtapose of yourself that takes your rightful place etc. However, because the setting of this story is actually in high school, it can be very relatable to some due to the fact that the problems usually are involved with gossiping, bad mouthing or simply falling in love. Consequences of not properly solving Puberty Syndrome can lead to severe problems, just like in real life, one wrong move and it might cause you the win or lose.
Now moving on to our protagonist, ladies first, and it is our best girl Sakurajima Mai senpai. Humorous, bold, outgoing, what more can one ask for, it’s an all in one package here for your service. Sakuta, again humorous, kind, and mostly perverted. With the encounter of Makinohara Shouko, Sakuta starts to treat others kinder and is the core of why Sakuta helps (perpetually) everyone out throughout the story, because he wants to be kind. As of the side characters, imouto, kouhai, thicc af girl IN LAB COAT, theyre all really great and likeable characters, with each of them having their own unique personalities. They also contribute a lot to the story, making this entire show a very wholesome one. Catchy settings and directing is what makes this anime stand at the top against the others this season, maybe even the year of 2018, you get so invested into the characters by the first episode it is hard to just not love this anime.

Art -10-
Cloverworks ( A-1 Pictures) nailed the crap out of it this time. The art style is really smooth to the eyes, and looks a lot like Oregairu (which is definitely an extra point), animations are fluid and some compositions are seriously on point. Subtle emotions are well laid out on the characters and they really add up to the feelings and they convey well to the audience.

Sound -10-
Another big part that contributes to the wholesomeness of this show is the voice acting and the OSTs. The opening which at this point everyone probably knows how to sing, is hella catchy, and is like a blackhole sucking you in, once you heard it, theres no turning back. Same goes for the ending, every character had their own uniquely designed ending, just like how the monogatari series has the VA sing the OP for their respective arcs (in which case is the same here). Voice acting is top notch, whats better than having a quirky conversation? A lively and energetic one. And its all here in this show, cocaine for your ears my buddy.

Overall -10-
Definitely my top pick of this season (year as well), if you haven’t watch it, please do so already, you really don’t want to miss out this show, even if the cover art turns you off (or the otherwise ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) You want some fun time watching some slice of life-y anime? Check! You want some home hitting feelings or tear jerking moments? Check! Having doubted this anime at first was my single worst mistake Ive ever made, because this series has proven itself worthy of being one of the best animes possibly out there. With an movie adaptation for another arc in the future, I can safely say that everyone should be looking forward for that, just like how Sakuta looks forward getting teased by Mai everyday.

Reviewer’s Rating: 10

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Dec 26, 2018

RiverRode

Mixed Feelings

The challenges we face during our adolescence may be irrelevant in the grand scheme of things, though their magnitude in the moment can feel overwhelming. It's no surprise then that media which intensifies these issues through supernatural phenomenon would be popular, since teenage audiences feel as if the weight of their problems is understood. However, does this media actually help its audience to overcome their problems, or is it merely wish fulfillment to escape from them? Seishun Buta Yarou may have something compelling to say about the adolescent experience, but it's unfortunately buried under layers of tropes and cliches.

But of all the elements of the ... show that feel superfluous to the narrative, the protagonist Sakuta sits at the top of the list. Unlike the girls of the show, he doesn't undergo any development over the series, and only exists as the self-insert lens through which we view their arcs. He hardly exists as a character, and his only trait seems to be his tendency for frequent dehumanizing sexual harassment directed at basically every girl he meets. He's presented as the catalyst that instigates the girls' growth, but instead he just comes across as a plot device that knows exactly what to do to solve their problems for them.

Speaking of, each arc of the show is modeled after a classic thought experiment, and wow do I wish they hadn’t done that. Not only do these allusions not add anything to the narrative, but their integration feels completely unnatural. (“Surely you’ve at least heard about the cat in the box, right?” a friend asks the protagonist, nearing the end of the first episode) Seishun Buta Yarou is hardly the first series to have pulled this allusion, but at this point, referencing Schrodinger’s Cat seems like shorthand for a light novel thinking it’s smarter than it is, and I can’t think of anything else that had the audacity to follow it up with “Have you heard of Laplace’s Demon?” three episodes later.

As for the contents of each arc, the conflicts that the girls deal with mostly come off as artificial. Still, even if the substance itself is lacking, I can’t fault the presentation. The animation and vocal delivery is expressive, and it’s also neat how there's some overlap between events that help to make each one feel less like an isolated incident. However, I think that Seishun Buta Yarou’s most compelling asset is how the characters behave outside of the central narrative. Despite everything else, it’s fun to see these characters relax and bounce off of each other. It's a shame that the show's best feature is also its least central.

My feelings towards Seishun Buta Yarou are conflicted. I went into it expecting a cross between Monogatari and Oregairu, and that’s not really what I got. It took a while for me to accept the show for what it actually was, but once I did, I was able to find a genuine emotional core underneath all of the light novelisms. Ironically, I think the more interested you are in this genre, the less likely it is that Seishun Buta Yarou will appeal to you. It leans hard into its genre trappings, and your enjoyment will be largely determined by your tolerance of them. Still, if you're a fan of deadpan loner protagonists, you could do worse.

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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Dec 26, 2018

ExemplarCayman

Not Recommended

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.

Reviewer’s Rating: 2

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