Considering how often rabbits fall from the sky in this show, they should probably put up some warning signs in this town.
What They Say:
Bunnisode 06: “A Story About Telling a Story”
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
This time, we seem to be seeing things from Chino’s perspective as she provides us with the voiceover narration. What difference does that make? Not much at all. We do learn that Chino has a hobby that’s…unusual for someone of her age. She’s putting together a ship in a bottle, which is normally what you would associated with retirees, more male than female. To reinforce the point, Cocoa shows her utter ignorance (though perhaps Cocoa is never a good example to use of the average person) of what a ship in a bottle is for, thinking that Chino can complete it in the park and then float it down the river.
Ahh, Cocoa. You can hear the sound of the ocean if you place your ear next to hers, I’ll bet.
Cocoa drags Chino out to the park, where the find Sharo working at a crepe stand. As usual rabbits fall from the sky, well, specifically Anko, Chiya’s rabbit, falls onto Cocoa’s crepe (just as she was about to let Sharo have a bite, which would be a rare treat for our poor crepe seller). That means Chiya can’t be far behind. Comedy ensues.
When Cocoa runs off after a rabbit, however, things get more interesting as we see the mysterious woman who appeared briefly before in an earlier episode commenting on the girls. She is a novelist who goes by the pen name “Aoyama Blue Mountain” (which is repetitive, since ao yama means “blue mountain” in Japanese; the real connection to this show, however, is that that is a kind of coffee). She also wrote a rather strange novel that got made into a movie, about a barista who was turned into a rabbit. She’s searching for inspiration now.
Walking back into town, Chino and Cocoa come upon Lize…at least they think it’s Lize (it is, actually), though the woman they meet has a very different hairstyle and fashion sense. Tippy, of course, figures it out.
We return to the mid-episode appearance of the title card. After that, we have Maya and Megu, Chino’s classmates, reappear as help at the Rabbit House. Cocoa engages in her usual misunderstandings and strange fantasies. It seems that Maya is cut from a similar cloth, as she has some strange ideas about Lize when she comes in (though they’re not really off-base, thinking that Lize might be either an aspiring actress or a military otaku; that’s slightly better than the reality, when you think about it). What makes this at all of interest is that Megu takes an immediate liking to Cocoa as Maya does to Lize, looking up to them as older sisters. This makes Chino feel like the odd one out. She confides in Chiya, who realizes that Chino is feeling jealous, though Chino cannot understand it herself. She gets straightened out by the mysterious novelist, who just happens to be there at Ama Usa An.
So, we see that all the girls feel slightly jealous of each other in various ways, since they can’t see and know everything about the people they like.
A very Chino-centric episode, which at first might seem like not an easy thing to do since Chino is rather unexpressive and restrained, not the type who one would think could carry an episode by herself. It works out rather well though, since Chino is natural fit for the role of outside observer of the strange universe of people she is surrounded by. There was plenty of humor, with the best punchlines again tied to appearances by Sharo (who often seems to hold this niche in the show) as well as some nice sentiment, with Chino learning an important lesson about jealousy of others.
In Summary:
Chino gets some focus this episode as first we see her deal with Cocoa dragging her to the park and then the impact is has on her when it seems like her middle school friends Maya and Megu are getting closer to Cocoa and Lize and seemingly drawing away from her. Things are put in perspective, however, by a mysterious female novelist who has a tie to Tippy. Still plenty of cute girls doing silly things and fluffy, frothy fun.
Episode Grade: B
Streamed by: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Apple iMac with 4GB RAM, Mac OS 10.6 Snow Leopard
