The small moments of the lives of these girls are explored once more.
What They Say:
It’s said that the best times always seem to fly by, and that’s certainly been true for Rabbit House waitress Cocoa Hoto. It seems like only yesterday that she arrived at the unusual restaurant/boarding house and made it her goal to become an “older sister” to the owner’s young daughter, Chino, and now Chino and her friends Megumi and Maya have nearly finished middle school and are trying to decide what high schools to attend!
Of course, there are tons of other events that will take place before those momentous occasions, and Cocoa, Rize, Syaro, and Chiya have plenty of adventures of their own to look forward to. From making it through busy holidays like Halloween, to just plain hanging out with best friends, the good times will always multiply like you know what in Is the Order a Rabbit? BLOOM!
The Review:
Audio:
The audio presentation for this release brings us the original Japanese language track only which is done in stereo using the DTS-HD MA lossless codec. The show is one that doesn’t have to stretch in the slightest with what it wants to do and you can imagine the mixing engineer dozing off while working on it because it’s so straightforward and simple. Like most slice of life shows like this, it’s all about the dialogue and some flashes of incidental music along the way that gives it a bit of life, but for the most part it’s a center channel based mix that doesn’t have a lot in the way of placement or directionality. Simply because it’s not needed with the way the cast stands around talking and mostly focuses on one person at a time. The mix is basic but it serves the show well and accomplishes its main goals of coming across in a clean and clear fashion with no problems during regular playback.
Video:
Originally airing in 2020, the transfer for this TV series is presented in its original aspect ratio of 1.78:1 in 1080p using the AVC codec. The twelve-episode series is spread across two discs with nine episodes on the first and three on the second. Animated by Encourage Films, the series is one that has a very good look about it with some very detailed and beautiful backgrounds that provides a look at the city in a great way. What also helps is that the interiors come across in a very lived-in way that’s authentic rather than just simple blank walls or some such. The result is that even though there’s not a lot of big animation to it in a way, it has a warmth and appeal about it. The character designs are nicely detailed without going too big as we get plenty of costume changes along the way and some good colors that let it be the stand-out material. Overall, taking the reins over here after White Fox and Kinema Citrus on the first two seasons, it replicates what we had before so there’s consistently and the end result is a pretty great-looking transfer that captures the material well and presents it in a good way. It’s been so long between seasons to really pinpoint how different it is in terms of visual production, but there’s a sense that this has matured up just a bit to being something even more what it was.
Packaging:
The packaging for this release is presented in a standard-sized Blu-ray case that holds the two discs inside against the interior walls. The front cover uses one of, I believe, the Japanese key visual pieces where the core group is together with all the cuteness as needed. The colors here look great with such a vivid feeling to it but not feeling like old-school digital paint that it’s easy to get lost in the overall design and look of it. It’s incredibly eye-catching and appealing. The back cover uses a soft purple for a lot of the background and keeps it solid with some of the deep purple framing similar to the front cover pieces. Within that we get a few shots from the show spread out as photographs and some nice if small character artwork pieces that break down the extras and episode count. The premise is kept to the middle in a clean and easy-to-read form that covers the concept pretty well without delving too deep. The remainder is the usual as we get the production credits and technical grid, both of which are against white backgrounds that make it even easier to read.
Menu:
The menu design for this release works nicely in general but also suffers a bit from the content of the show itself. The bulk of it is given over to a great image of the main cast of girls together with light and breezy feel to it that are set against a white background with some nice shades of color brought into it as well. Navigation itself is a breeze since there’s nothing here but the show and the special features menu which houses just their separate things in quick to load and access form. The second disc has a bit more with the extras on it which give us just a little bit more to work with.
Extras:
The only extras included in this release are the clean versions of the opening and closing sequences.
After getting into this anime adaptation of the manga back with the original 2014 series, I enjoyed the 2015 series a good bit as well, though it was clearly “more of the same” when you get down to it. It took a few years but the property came back for this third season in the fall of 2020 where we get twelve more episodes of simple and light goodness. I’ll admit, this series is pretty much like the other two when you get down to it and that’s a good thing. The series is one that enjoys the small moments, the simplicity of it all, and engages with the characters in ways that don’t involve anything dramatic or world-shaking. There’s something to be said for slice-of-life shows in general but I always felt that this one takes it a few extra steps in just how relaxed and at ease it truly is.
With manga still ongoing, albeit slowly, it’s at nine volumes at this point since getting underway back in 2011. At times, it’s hard to believe the ages of the characters because it’s the whole anime thing and scripting older for them, but we’re in this space where these middle school kids are getting ready to move to the next phase of their lives. And that does introduce some anxiety to things as you’d expect, but it also introduces ostensibly the biggest challenge for all of them in that where their high school lives will take them. This is mostly focused through Chino as she has to decide where she’s going to go as do Maya and Megumi. It’s amusing to see Cocoa getting excited about all of this, and rightly so in a way, because she’s hopeful that Chino will end up at her school so she can have her and possibly the others with her, even in different grades. It’s a challenging time for friends in this situation and I saw my own daughter go through it when she took the option to go to the regional technical school instead of the standard “elevator” approach to the town high school.
All told, a lot of this does make for some nice stuff in the series because it is that growing-up element they’re coming to realize and having to really make some choices. It’s definitely fun to watch it play out as it does here and the “struggle that some of them go through while all reaffirming who they are. The distance between seasons doesn’t help at first as it takes a few episodes to get back into the swing of things but it does largely come back quickly. The advantage of the show is that even with the school thing going on here it’s still really not about much of anything beyond enjoying those small moments. And here, we get a good bit of that but with a small change along the way as well as I looked back on things I wrote years ago about the series. It feels like part of the maturing of the series is that it also spread more love to the cast beyond Chino and Cocoa so that others like Rize and Maya and Megumi all feel like they’re a lot more foundational to things.
In Summary:
Between the episodic nature of the show and the very low-to-no-stakes aspect of each episode, there’s not a lot that really stands out in a sense to talk about it. This show is more about the feelings it generates than the story it tells because of the connection that viewers have forged with it over the past eight years. Coming into the show took some time to reconnect but that feelings of warmth and familiarity was completely there and made it so easy to slide back into engagement with the show. I really liked the visual design once again which as an animation fan just makes you fall in love with the show and the quality of the encoding here just takes it up several notches – especially if you have a large display and can just ease into this world even more. Sentai’s got a great release here and while I do lament that it still hasn’t risen to the level of a show that can warrant a dub, it’s one that delivers in all the right ways for the fans that have fallen for it over the years.
Features:
Japanese DTS-HD MA 2.0 Language, English Subtitles, Clean Opening, Clean Closing
Content Grade: B
Audio Grade: B
Video Grade: A-
Packaging Grade: B
Menu Grade: B
Extras Grade: B-
Released By: Sentai Filmworks
Release Date: March 1st, 2022
MSRP: $59.98
Running Time: 300 Minutes
Video Encoding: 1080p AVC
Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1 Widescreen
Review Equipment:
Sony KDL70R550A 70″ LED 1080P HDTV, Sony PlayStation3 Blu-ray player via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.
