Christmas has finally arrived at the Rabbit House, but Chino is over her head as Rize and Cocoa will not be able to work as much because of other commitments. Will help arrive?
What They Say:
Bunnisode 11: “The Cafe of Smiles and the Rainbow Magician”
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
As the season begins to wind down, we have an episode with an extra helping of heartwarming. Cocoa’s other job, selling roasted chestnuts in the marketplace, is proving to be too popular and she is having to work extra shifts, meaning less time at the Rabbit House. Rize, similarly, has been asked to help out her school’s Drama Club, who are shorthanded for their seasonal production. Chino maintains that she and her father can manage alone, but surely help is needed.
Help arrives, first in the form of Chiya and Sharo, whose work sync is perfect even if they are not in the same place in other ways, and then Megu and Maya, as Chimame-tai runs the cafe. All of this had been pretty much telegraphed……years ago, as we have seen all of the major characters of the show in Rabbit House waitress uniforms going back, I think, to the opening animation of the second season (I cannot recall if they were all there in the first season and I don’t think it’s worth checking. Manga readers, obviously, have known about this well in advance).
What marks out this episode as a touch different from the others was the slightly higher ratio of sentimentality to humor (though there is still humor…though perhaps a touch less quirkiness this outing). When Chino first finds out Megu and Maya are there to help her, she breaks down a bit (“I am not crying!”). We also have a moment where her father Takahiro and her grandfather (inside Tippy, remember) confer a bit about the lively and now overflowing with people cafe. The Master wonders if this is what Chino’s mom wanted. Both seem to come to the conclusion that the end result here has been even more than what she wanted. It’s pretty clear that Chino, prior to Cocoa’s bursting into her life, was pretty lonely, even if she has been very stoical about it all.
The menagerie of girls in Rabbit House uniform (including ribbing over Maya and Megu’s colors being variations of Chino and Cocoa’s) is played off as a joke, but is also quite serious. Chino now has the firm circle of friends (I’ll get boring here and insert the usual reference to nakama, the Japanese word for close friends or colleagues, very much a part of the collective mentality of Japanese society, where group membership is at a premium and overly indulgent individuality can be looked at askance) which she was lacking, at least as far as we could tell, at the start of the story. This band of sisters provides her with the group belonging she was missing. While this is not new to this episode and not something most of you don’t already know, here, I feel, we have had it expressed in its most open form.
There is still one more episode to wrap up the season. Again, there were some brief hints at the future, as the Secret Santa party gets underway and it sets up some jokes about Chiya and Chino trying to bribe Megu and Maya into working for their respective cafes once they are high schoolers and can legally work part-time jobs. It will be interesting to see what kind of note the season ends on.
In Summary:
Christmas comes to the Rabbit House and Chino is seemingly left on her own as Cocoa and Rize have other commitments. But with some timely reinforcements, the Band of Sisters manages to make it through the holiday rush, with lots of heartwarming on the menu. The season draws to a close and it will be interesting to see how things end.
Grade: A
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Apple iMac with 12GB RAM, Mac OS 10.13 High Sierra
