We wave the girls goodbye as a season of cuteness comes to an end.
What They Say:
Bunnisode 12: “For You, I Can Sleep Late”
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
So, it’s wintertime after Christmas and the girls go out on the town. And apparently all of the girls have smells (Cocoa smells of bread; Chiya gives off the odor of warmth (whatever that is); Syaro gives off the scent of herbs; Rize, of course, reeks of gunpowder). Or so in Cocoa’s imagination.
Back at the Rabbit House, Chino is all alone and a change has occurred over time as we can now see: she has become comfortable with Cocoa and even misses her when she’s not around. Cocoa is taking long to get back from her errand since she and the other girls have basically taken a nap on a bench. And all of this is before the opening animation.
Megu and Maya come by to work on a school report, asking the employees at the Rabbit House what it is about their jobs that makes it worthwhile for them. Tippy gives a long and quite good answer…which everyone thinks is Chino using ventriloquism as usual. They also go to Ama Usa An and Fleur de Lapin to ask Chiya and Syaro about their workplaces. There, we learn that Chiya’s secret weapon is karaoke (to counter Chino’s dad being able to play jazz). Syaro has a special service pose. While Aoyama Blue Mountain’s secret to her work is…peeping. Yeah…
And that was all just the first half. In the second half Cocoa catches a cold and gets all sorts of…assistance from her friends. Syaro also has a cold and Chiya comes to take care of her, in the same crazy way she tried to help Cocoa. Things come to a crisis for Cocoa, as she develops a high fever and Chino is forced to brave the heavy snow in order to get medicine, as they are out of it. Fortunately, Chiya is a walking pharmacy, so Chino’s mission is a success. In the end, Chino winds up geting the mumps, so Cocoa has to take care of her. We end with a special ending song to a montage of scenes involving all the girls. After the credits, we get a very special scene where Cocoa finally gets one of her wishes.
It’s much easier to show than describe what happens in this show, since it’s largely focused on cute visuals and fluffy jokes.
Series Retrospective:
Taken as a whole, Is the Order a Rabbit? is a soft and light confection, somewhere in the range of cotton candy. It is sweet, on occasion cloyingly so (like cotton candy), but its bright and cheerful visual palette (also a trait of cotton candy) and light and lively humor were mostly balanced just about right. It’s not groundbreaking. It’s not special. It displays little imagination. What Rabbit does do right, however, is deliver a dependable dose of cuteness on a regular basis in a predictable, but comforting, way. It’s formulaic, but a reminder that formulas done correctly can be very successful, as Rabbit is.
The balance of characters, from moe-inducing objects (Chino and Syaro) to quirky sidekicks (Chiya and Rize) to our plucky “heroine” (Cocoa) to just plain weird in a cute way (Aoyama Blue Mountain), was just right. Enough to play strengths and weaknesses off against each other, but without the overlap or repetition that can weaken similar shows, if the creators try for all “Daww, aren’t they cute?” all the time. Where too much of a good thing will rot your teeth and not enough will leave you craving more, Rabbit provides the right amount of sweetness. Slightly saccharin, but not nausea-inducing.
As I have said before, in some ways it is difficult to discuss the show in writing since so much of what it does best is simple visual humor. The cutaways and odd imaginations of the girls provided a good number of smiles and laughs. As we say good bye to the girls, we do so having had a pleasant time. If you are in the market for gentle humor told through pleasing character designs with little investment required for thought, Rabbit will definitely fit your bill.
Episode Grade: B+
Series Grade: B+
Streamed by: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Apple iMac with 4GB RAM, Mac OS 10.6 Snow Leopard