Gochuumon wa Usagi desu ka? (Is the Order a Rabbit?) | Episode 1 | TFP Review
Momoka Kibi: This ended up being just what I hoped for. In any case, I love all three girls so far. Cocoa definitely makes for a pretty nice lead. I like the way she gets involved & interacts with them. Call her onee-chan! I mean wow just wow. Also, I think she likes Chino.
Sabure: Yeah, that’s what I thought too. Definitely fills the “cute girls doing cute things” category for the season. Cocoa and Chino are very adorable together and Rize is a pretty cool character. Plus Cocoa is apparently a math whiz so she’s certainly my type of girl 
EyeOfPain: Same here, and I’m fine with that. The girls introduced so far easily fit into a mold typical with these kinds of shows, but it’s still comforting to watch.
Buckeye: This show is insanely cute, and this episode certainly got me going here. I just love the characters, especially Lize and her soldier antics there. This should be great moving forward. The part where Lize shows up from the closet in her lingerie is just priceless. And then there is that talking bunny-thing that is just creepy.
EmperorBrandon: “The rabbit just rejected me in a man’s voice!” Haha… wasn’t expecting the fluffball to talk. And that thing is Chino’s grandfather(?). For some reason I’m kind of curious about it, and whether Cocoa will find out it was really talking.
Also, wasn’t the kind of show I expected a gun to be pulled on the protagonist, by a girl in her underwear no less. But I love Rize’s complex over wanting to be a cute, normal girl. Looks like Cocoa is going to be quite the sweet presence for both of these girls.
Sly05: It looks like this will fill my cute quota for the season. Cocoa is adorably bubbly and Chino is just plain adorable.
Hitsugi Amachi: I find Cocoa a little irritating, but overall the show does deliver cuteness. I may yet stick around for more of this.
Nork22: Ah good.. this is the type of show that fills in the cute girls doing cute things quota this season. Reminds me a lot of Kiniro Mosaic.
EmperorBrandon: And we also got a cute endcard this episode from the original creator of Kinmoza as well.
stardf29: Yeah; Cocoa reminds me a lot of Shinobu and how she dotes on Alice. And Lize is pretty much Aya’s lost twin, right down to their tsundereness, twintails, and Taneda Risa voice.
…
Is the order yet another awesome cute girls slice-of-life show? YES.
Couple things here beyond all the cuteness. First, I absolutely love the setting, with its European village feel. It almost feels like ARIA and Neo-Venezia; I mean, there was even a gondola!
Second, for all the cute floofyness of the show, there’s a surprisingly melancholic undertone here with the loneliness of Chino and Lize. Of course, Lize’s loneliness is pretty explicitly stated (tsundere-ness notwithstanding), but there’s also Chino and how she doesn’t eat dinner with her father–or anyone else until Cocoa arrives. This does seem to fit with the whole “rabbits die from loneliness” idea (not sure where that idea came from, but it’s one I’ve definitely heard elsewhere). While I doubt the show will get too depressing with this (impossible with Cocoa around), it does help make the show even more heartwarming than it already is.
And, of course, the girls are totally adorable. And LOL, the rabbit-thingy is Chino’s grandpa. Got some Vividred Operation/Servant x Service vibes there, for sure.
bctaris: Cute girl, cute setting, cute situation. Then the opening. There’s a point to the style and genre where it’s almost crass.
Which is why the curious and surprising humor in all of it is what kept me watching.
Not cute and ingratiating tee-hee-hee humor of cute girls being silly, or random and yet predictable anime tropes trotted out to fill a void in characterization. But kind of oddball humor that plays on the obviously strange underlying personalities of the characters. It actually could be a little subversive with the girls-doing-nothing genre, hinting at the neuroses that make cute girls in situations like this “cute”: The defensive, violent, deeply insecure, daddy-issues-having Lize; the closed off Chino who really you’re just not sure if she’s simply unemotional or just suppressing emotion, waiting to explode; and the most neurotic of all, Cocoa, clingy, possessive, shameless. The surprising Ayane Sakura as the last (taking a turn from other types in this class of shows, from Natsume in Non Non Biyori or Eno inLove Lab) does the best at hinting at the weirdness. Her unhinged delivery of “I’ll take THREE!” in response to Chino’s offer of glompng Tippy for a cup of coffee set the tone. Lize’s “not lonely!” line later on was equally fun. The random humor in-between, sweet (misattributing the coffee) to strange (Tippy’s true nature; Lize’s milk-coffee tank) kept the pace going better than I would have expected.
This could be fun, if it stays with this, keeping a skewed perspective on the cute in the fashion of shows like Yuruyuri, Love Lab, or Aiura. Doesn’t push it too hard, however, that it spoils the packaging. But nor is it ultimately sincere. (Series composition is by the same guy who did Muromi-san and Miss Monochrome among other curious things). Pleasant surprise that’s what it is. Because not sure I could tolerate it all if it wasn’t.
