Now that Mai can no longer sashay around in public as a bunny girl, what’s next for the show with the now-obsolete title? Well…
We may regard the present state of the universe as the effect of its past and the cause of its future. An intellect which at a certain moment would know all forces that set nature in motion, and all positions of all items of which nature is composed, if this intellect were also vast enough to submit these data to analysis, it would embrace in a single formula the movements of the greatest bodies of the universe and those of the tiniest atom; for such an intellect nothing would be uncertain and the future just like the past would be present before its eyes.
— Pierre Simon Laplace, A Philosophical Essay on Probabilities
…Oh dear. That sounds complicated! But really, it boils down to Sakuta seemingly reliving the exact same June 27th three times, similar to the plot of Endless Eight, in which some variable has to be satisfied in order to break the loop.
With Kamijou Touma-esque luck, this phenomenon occurs the day Sakuta finally gets a “sure, we can start dating now” response from Mai after a month of telling her he loves her (which she explicitly asked for). The “Leplace’s demon” turns out to be someone else who got a confession: Koga Tomoe (Touyama Nao), the first-year who kicked Sakuta’s butt (and whose butt, in turn, was kicked by him).
The problem is, Tomoe doesn’t want to be confessed to, because the boy confessing is the object of her best friend’s affections, not her own. While hiding from him with Sakuta inside a lecturn, Tomoe panics and knocks it over, and she ends up in what looks like in flagrante delicto. Not only does the guy see it, but so does Mai when she enters the room from the other side. This is the third repeat of the day, mind you, before he got her okay to start dating.
Because Tomoe is never confessed to, June 28th arrives, and Sakuta has a major misunderstanding to clear up with Mai. He returns to Futaba, who always lends him an ear, but to the show’s credit it finally gives her a chance to be more than that, as she is harboring unwanted but increasingly strong feelings towards Tomoe’s friend, who has a girlfriend.
But there’s yet another wrinkle here: Tomoe starts working at the same restaurant as Sakuta, and her three friends show up, both to support her and to warn Sakuta that he’d better not hurt Tomoe, or else. It turns out the misunderstanding that she and Sakuta are dating is something that works to her advantage, and she begs Sakuta to keep the lie going after work, at least for the rest of the school term.
It’s a twist on the usual “fake dating” angle, because Tomoe actually has a good personal reason for doing it: as someone who was uprooted after middle school (and her accent comes out whenever she’s excited), her high school friends are all she has, and she doesn’t want to lose them just because some guy one of them likes likes her instead.
Is this the best way of dealing with her predicament? I don’t know, and neither does she or Sakuta, but he is willing to help her out, at least for now, even as he wonders how the hell he’ll be able to explain all of this to Mai. To Mai’s credit, she’s willing to hear him out. He kept his distance, and then she came to him, wondering why he didn’t come to her at once. He may not have gotten her okay on the third June 27th, but she still likes him, and wants to know what the hell was up with him and that first-year girl. I recommend the plain, simple truth…even when it’s neither plain nor simple.
The show introduces a new science-y phenomenon with the same confidence and satisfying pace as the first one, and if anything, the interactions between characters have gotten even better. They’re very natural; despite their rough butt-kicking start, Sakuta and Tomoe can still be civil, cordial, even friendly to one another.
Similarly, while Mai has every reason to be mad and/or concerned, she reaches out when he doesn’t to get to the truth of matters. Everyone just seems to have a good head on their shoulders; a rarity in anime. Throw in clean, attractive character design and animation and understated yet effective soundtrack, and Bunny Girl Senpai is firing on all cylinders.
P.S., regarding the title of this post, I really Tomoe’s aside about Sakuta’s big bold public confession being the thing that brought him around “full circle” to being acceptable, at least to the first years, since such a gesture was regarded as brave and cool. Also amusing? His genuine reaction of surprise! Hang in there, Sakuta, you’re not so bad as that rep of yours.
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