Amateur acting and unemployed novelists dominate this episode.
What They Say:
Bunnisode 09: “Aoyama Slump Mountain”
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Wait, where are the cute girls doing silly things? We open with a look into the past, with Chino’s grandfather (so we can assume) in human form sitting in the park with his pet rabbit. He muses about life being easier if he were a rabbit. He’s joined by a little girl who finds the rabbit cute and…sniffs the rabbit. Sniffing the rabbit. Sounds like a euphemism for something else. Where was I again? Oh, yeah, there must be some connection to what we know of the present and that occurs when the little girl asks the old man if becoming a rabbit would be his order (she asks it close to the exact title of the show) and then “casts a spell” on him, so that he can get his wish one day. Another connection to the present is when the little girl’s older sister calls for her…by the name of Cocoa. We end with the old man telling Tippy (which is the rabbit’s name) that it’s time to go home, otherwise Chino will get lonely.
Back in the present, we see Cocoa using Tippy as a pillow, a common occurrence we learn from Chino. In her reverie, though, Cocoa calls out to her older sister (who has been nowhere to be seen or mentioned for the most part). Are we going to get a serious episode?
No, we’re not. In the first half, we learn that Rize has been asked by her school’s theater club to help them put on a play, The Phantom of the Opera. She’s been cast as the leading lady, the elegant and refined Christine. Since that’s not exactly the kind of role suited for her, on Cocoa’s advice she seeks help in becoming more ladylike and refined from Chiya and Syaro…with predictably humorous results. Of course, all of this lead up to Rize wanting to be more ladylike is just to pull the tablecloth out from under us as we find out afterward that the theater club rewrote the role of Christine to suit Rize’s image better. So, this Christine fights the Phantom with a gun…and that’s all we need to know.
The second half sees Aoyama Blue Mountain usurp Cocoa’s place in the cafe, even wearing her uniform, when Chino comes across her and Aoyama tells her that she’s quite being a novelist. Cocoa goes into a panic but…of course it was all just a misunderstanding. Chino meant for Aoyama to wear a bartender uniform, not Cocoa’s waitress uniform. Since her writing is in a slump, Chino’s given Aoyama a job at the Rabbit House for the moment, where she serves as a barista and advice bureau at the same time (since she’s good at listening to people and their problems). No one seems to want to take her up on her office of counseling, however, probably because of the odd little booth Cocoa created for her. So, Syaro is enlisted as a guinea pig…customer, so that others can see that it’s safe to talk to Aoyama. They make the mistake of giving her coffee first, but it appears that different blends cause different intoxication effects. Rize’s blend of coffee makes Syaro into a sad drunk, not a hyperactive one.
The upshot of it all is that it appears Aoyama got into her writing slump when she lost the fountain pen she had received from Chino’s grandfather (the human version), which occurred when she first ran into Cocoa in the park (several episodes ago). So, the gang goes tot he park to look for it and of all of them, it’s Tippy who finds it. But Chino wants Tippy to come clean with Aoyama about who, exactly, “Tippy” is now. So, Tippy talks to Aoyama…but she thinks it’s a stuffed animal talking to her. We end with her getting back to novel writing.
Hints of seriousness crept in near the beginning, but the humor did not take second place in this outing. While they might be able to include something more serious without ruining the mood or the balance of the show, it still is strongest when it’s engaging in light banter and humor asides, especially the visual displays of Cocoa’s fertile imagination.
Transcription Note: In the subtitles now, the Romanization is firmly set as Rize and Syaro. I’m not exactly keen on this, since Syaro bears little to no relationship to a name that would make sense in almost any Western context. For Rize, there are actually good grounds for making it Lize, as the theme naming (based on drinks) of the girls has her named for Thé des Alizés. Syaro is a bit more complicated, since she’s apparently named for Kilimanjaro tea and neither transcription does a good job of making that connection obvious. But, it’s best to keep transcriptions the same as in the actual subtitles we see, so it will be Rize and Syaro from this point forward.
In Summary:
Rize is going to be a star in her school’s production of The Phantom of the Opera (original non-musical version). But she needs to be more ladylike so Cocoa suggests she learn how to be from Chiya and Syaro with predictable (and funny) results. Then, Aoyama Blue Mountain the novelist comes to work at the Rabbit House while in a writing slump with predictable (and funny) results. That sums of this show: predictable but sweetly amusing so the predictability is not so irritating.
Episode Grade: B
Streamed by: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Apple iMac with 4GB RAM, Mac OS 10.6 Snow Leopard
