Bunny Girl Senpai – 06 – Quantum Entanglement-by-Butt-Kickin’

On the eve of finals, Mai decides she’s used enough of the stick and whips out a carrot in the form of her bunny girl suit, which she wears while tutoring Sakuta. Why the change of pace? She witnessed him stand up for Tomoe at the station, and thinks better of him for working so hard even for a fake girlfriend. I can’t tell you how refreshing it is that Mai isn’t the slightest bit threatened by Tomoe.

The finals come and go, as does the last day of school and the start of summer break: July 18. Sakuta and Tomoe have been dating three weeks now, but Tomoe assures him she has an ironclad plan for the breakup. After a fun final date at the beach, she shakes his hand and thanks him for his help. She’ll simply tell her friends she dumped him when she realized he only had feelings for Mai—something that happens to be true.

But I knew, after that “final” date, there was no way July 19 would come. Instead, July 18 resets, as I predicted. What I didn’t expect was that Tomoe isn’t aware of the reset…or at least says she isn’t. They go on their beach date a second, then a third time.

Sakuta starts to suspect Tomoe may be lying about not knowing about the looping. It’s confirmed when she turns around and smiles at him during the principal’s address; something she hadn’t done in previous iterations. Not only does Sakuta know for sure that she’s lying, but he knows why.

On the fourth July 18 Sakuta throws Tomoe for a loop (for a change), taking her to Enoshima, the place they were originally going to go on their first date, but he’s making it their last. They climb the prodigious stairs to the shrine, and he fills out a votive tablet for good relationships. Tomoe thinks it sinful, since their relationship isn’t real, but he tells her that when they both agreed to do this, they agreed to to it all the way, even to hell.

Moreover, it isn’t sinful for Tomoe, since she’s actually in love with Sakuta. She plays dumb, but once they’re alone on the observation deck, he finally gets her to admit that she’s aware of what she’s doing, and why. Sakuta tells her flat out that whether she repeats time a hundred or a hundred million times, his feelings for Mai won’t change.

Tomoe counters that her feelings have changed. At first, she only meant for the fake relationship to help her save face. But every time she loops, her feelings for Sakuta only keep building up. A stirring monologue ensues, with Touyama Nao effortlessly bringing the feels. Finally, Tomoe does what needs to be done to move on: to stop lying to herself confess her love, clearly and loudly.

The next time Sakuta wakes up, it’s not July 18, or July 19; it’s June 27 (again). Tomoe sent them all the way back to the day she was asked out by the guy her friend likes. This time, she turns him down properly, resolved to face the social consequences…which don’t turn out to be that bad; her friends don’t end up ostracize her. Better still, she can still be good friends with Sakuta, which was always part of her plan.

As for Sakuta, he gets to redo asking Mai out, and she responds just as he’d hoped, as she steals a kiss to express how she feels about him. The next three weeks proceed as they did the last time, with the two differences being Sakuta knows what’s going to happen (even the exam questions) and he and Tomoe aren’t fake dating. They don’t have to.

It was, after all, nought but a simulation of the future, and yet still just as real as the future to come. In her traditional casual science-y explanation, Futaba surmises that Sakuta was drawn into the looping with Tomoe due to “quantum entanglement”, which happens when two particles collide. In this case, Tomoe and Sakuta kicking each other’s butts. Will this show’s delicious cleverness never cease? I for one hope not.

It certainly wastes no time getting the next arc started, as the episode closes with Sakuta meeting a middle school girl who just happens to share the name of his first crush: Makinohara Shouko.

Bunny Girl Senpai – 05 – The Penguin that Follows the Others

I can definitely see the similarities to Bakemonogatari and Sakurada Reset here, and that, readers, is not a bad thing, at least for me. Both of those shows could subvert the concept of a Tsundere Girlfriend or Jealous Little Sister without breaking a sweat, and so too does Bunny Girl. 

In a lazier anime, agreeing to fake-date a kohai would land Sakuta in some seriously warm water, but after he explains everything properly to Mai, she withholds punishment, claiming that’s its own punishment, but really it’s a gesture of trust. Sakuta was the one and only person who never forgot her, after all (except for one brief period).

As with Araragi Koyomi, Mai can see her would-be-boyfriend is trying to help someone in need, and doesn’t judge that someone’s choices that led to them needing help. Instead she gives Sakuta her blessing, serves as the first person other than him to interact with his shut-in sister, and then bids him a good night.

However, she does warn him not to let “pretend” turn into “serious”—not to betray the trust she’s putting in him—and he laughs it off too casually for her taste, as well as mine.

The next day Sakuta is ready for his fake date with Koga Tomoe. She’s late, yawns on the train, and can’t keep her hands off her phone (he has neither smart nor flip, the damn hipster). 

When she lists the reasons for her fatigue (group chatting till 2AM; watching funny animal videos; preparing for the date “a bit”), Sakuta starts to get to the root of Koga’s frustration that led to her becoming an all-seeing, all-knowing Leplace’s Demon: She must be informed. She must join in on the conversation. She must be liked, and not seen as a loner or weirdo.

This point is driven home at the aquarium as they watch penguins: she deems Sakuta to be the penguin whom the others laugh at but doesn’t care, while she’s the penguin who follows the others in lockstep. Later, Sakuta gets more insight: Tomoe was once a “country bumpkin” from Fukuoka (hence her adorable lapses into drawl), but began a regimen of thorough reinvention and improvement to become the stylish and proper-speaking person she is.

Sakuta can surmise that she feels guilty about “abandoning” the person she is and wondering whether who she is now is who she really is, but he considers that kind of thinking “immature.” He assures her that who she is now is who she is; the culmination of choices she made and hard work she undertook. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.

Sakuta also shows Tomoe a few things, such as when they spot a classmate of hers from a group further down her class’ pecking order. The two of them help this classmate find a strap she lost on the beach, despite her feeling “unworthy” of someone of Tomoe’s stature wasting their time on her. Sakuta isn’t the kind of person who ranks people by their social stature; all are equal as long as they are virtuous.

When Tomoe catches a cold from falling into the water and spends a day in the nurse’s office, she asks Sakuta why he’s gone along with her “unreasonable” requests. He states it’s because she seemed desperate when she asked. Their differences in how they see the world are laid bare: she wants everyone to not hate her, while he wouldn’t mind if everyone hated him as long as there was One Person who needed him.

That one potential person Mai checks in with Sakuta on his land line phone, and he is honest about having enjoyed his “date” with Tomoe. Her nonverbal response is an enigma; is she intrigued; disappointed; neutral? She’s in Kagoshima on a TV shoot, and casually asks him to “bolt out of his house” to see her, but he doesn’t.

Futaba (who has unrequited feelings for his friend Kunimi) tells Sakuta that since Tomoe is satisfied with her current condition, there’s no need to relive it; the “demon” has found its desired path. Kunimi’s girlfriend Kamisato once again confronts him about spending time with her squeeze. Kamisato is another who only sees a ranking number hovering over someone’s head; if it’s not high enough, she wants nothing to do with them.

Sakuta tells Kunimi about the second fight picked by Kamisato, and it leads to Kunimi informing him of untoward rumors about Tomoe being loose/easy. Despite Tomoe’s efforts and veneer of satisfaction, her relationship with Sakuta has brought a different kind of unwanted attention. When Mai leaves a message on Sakuta’s phone, he moves to call her back, but stops. He has work to do.

Again, like Koyomi of the Monogatari series, Sakuta is going to perform the task he volunteered for to the best of his ability. He may not be the strongest or smartest, but that doesn’t mean he can’t outsmart someone who can easly outstrong him. As Tomoe already starts feeling the fallout by being left out of her friends’ conversation, Sakuta puts his plan into action.

That plan is nothing more than defending the honor of someone who doesn’t deserve the nasty rumors being told about her. He does so by letting the jock (who I believe originally tried to ask her out) come to him, provoking him into punching him, then getting back up, presenting himself as someone ready to throw hands, then kicks him hard in the shin.

The jock protests that Sakuta isn’t being “fair”, but…c’mon; pot, meet kettle! Sakuta ensures the exchange takes place on the train platform where the maximum number of peers watch how pathetic the jock is, giving him the negative attention he foisted upon Tomoe and then some.

In that moment, Sakuta was Tomoe’s boyfriend. She felt it; and surely he felt it too. They may not have spend much time together, but they both have a pretty good idea of who one another are. At her darkest hour, when it seemed everyone was ready to hate her (and indeed when it seemed she’d reset time to before this all happened), he was that One Person for her.

The person who’d go maybe too far to help her. The person she needed. You know…a friend! Hell, he announced in front of half the school he was a virgin for her sake. He’s a stand-up dude, and she couldn’t be blamed for falling for him right then and there.

Whether that’s precisely what happens, it’s without doubt a nudge in that direction; two people becoming a little closer through shared experiences, the most recent of which were fraught enough to require him to take her by the hand and run away, and the adrenaline of which caused them both to laugh uncontrollably as they ran.

Tomoe now understands a little more what Sakuta meant about his “One Person” position, and asks how she can repay him. Sakuta—ever classy yet also a bit arrogant—tells her she can be his friend “when all the lies are over.” The thing is, the lies may already be over, and Tomoe may just want something more than a friend. Why else would she frown at the sight of one of Mai’s TV commercials on her phone?

As for Sakuta…while he fought hard for Tomoe, there’s no overt indication he’s doing anything more or less than what he deems to be his duty, as he promised to be her boyfriend for the first term. As such, Mai may not have anything to worry about.

But he got awfully into the role on that train platform. He showed Tomoe that she only needs one person, and so far that one person is him. Can Mai—can we—trust that he’ll be able to extricate himself from a Leplace’s Demon so satisfied with him as her boyfriend?

Bunny Girl Senpai – 04 – Full Circle to Acceptable

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.

Sagrada Reset – 15

Katagiri Honoka has gotten to a state where she’ll soon stop using her ability, essentially rejecting her “Fake Eden”, an action akin to suicide. The Stray Cat House Man is awake, but insists to Nonoo that she carry on and not worry about him; he doesn’t mind being alone.

Kei calls for a Reset, but before doing so, asks Haruki if there’s anything of note she told Chiruchiru. She lies to his face that there’s nothing, despite the fact the talk with the fake god led to the discovery of her true desire: to “grow up” and become the person with the “greatest worth” to him.

Kei knows she’s hiding something, but lets it go, and the Reset happens. Kei and the others go back in, and Kei tells the Michiru who greets him he wants to help her find her blue bird—her real blue bird.

With the help of Souma, Kei gets a meeting with Chiruchiru and informs him of Katagiri’s impending rejection of the world and the steps that need to be taken to save her—part of their deal where he helps with Michiru’s problem and Chiruchiru will lend him a hand with his “Souma Exit Project” research.

Meanwhile, Nonoo meets back with the STHM and they talk again of friendship, specifically the role of friends: to rid one another of their loneliness. As she asks him for a favor, Michiru, who ran away from Kei, is chased by the monster, only to be rescued in heroic fashion by…Kei.

It’s all part of Kei’s plan to show Michiru, or rather Katagiri Honoka, that the “One Hand Eden” will never be as stable as a “Two Hand” one, of the kind that can only be made and shared between friends, not on one’s own.

While Kei carries out his plan, Haruki has nothing to do so she confronts Souma on a rooftop, asking her her objective (a secret), whether her actions will sadden Kei (maybe, but so be it), and whether she’s Kei’s enemy (she’s not). Okay then, glad we had that little chat! I tell ya, this is one bizarre love triangle…

Kei bows out and is replaced by SHCM, who tells Michiru he was sent to help his friend’s friend who was crying. He talks of the difference between gods (smile for others) and demons (for themselves), and that he considers her the god of this world.

As such, he asks the god to do something about the monster, which destroyed his house…and she does. Katagiri has her real blue bird back and now accepts who she is. The monster is gone, SHCM’s house is back. It would seem Kei has fulfilled his end of the bargain, which means now Chiruchiru will help him with his Souma experiment.

Only we don’t see Chiruchiru again, and Souma herself doesn’t actually want to leave Sakurada, ever. Furthermore, as if twisting a knife, Souma casually points out what Kei erased in the last reset: a Haruki on the cusp of escaping her own One Hand Eden and becoming the “normal girl he had wanted two years ago”.

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Ouch. Of course, that’s not to say she’ll never reach that point again; just that it took a unique individual like Chiruchiru to bring it out there and then. And the fact remains, no one is affected more by a reset than Haruki herself.

By resetting again and again, one could say she is going two steps back after one step forward; forever the ideal, perfectly “pure good” human that would otherwise be impossible. And Kei is the one directing those resets.

That final jab by Souma—both its implications for Haruki’s growth and its role in bringing into focus what kind of character Souma has become (or always was)—was compelling, but I’m not sure four episodes of dream world lead-up were quite worth it.

Rather than crescendo, this arc was pretty steady and level throughout before falling off, groaning under the weight all of its plot machinations. I’ll also admit to having not gotten much out of the B-plot involving Nonoo and the SCHM.

Sagrada Reset – 14

As was fairly evident the first time we entered Michiru’s Dream World, said world is a kind of prison (or birdcage) isolating her from the outside world and from any connections to anyone.

Ukawa, who can alter anything that’s not living, decides this isn’t any kind of world to live in, and so, by placing a ring on her finger and activating her ability, erases all of the buildings in the world in an effort to “rectify” it.

In doing so, Ukawa doesn’t really destroy the dream world but only the buildings, but hopes that the shock will drive Michiru to remember that she’s Katagiri Honoka.

As Urachi uses abilities like Ukawa’s and Kagaya’s to further his goals, he tells his underling Sakuin that it’s good that she hates her ability, because all ability users should hate their own abilities. It makes me wonder what, if anything, is Urachi’s ability…beyond being an ominous jerk.

But hey, at least he doesn’t follow through on his desire to “snuff out” a troublemaker like Kei…at least this week. Rather, he pretty much leaves Kei alone, and Kei capitalizes by figuring out that the inverted world they’ve been in is actually a world within the dream world, which isn’t inverted.

Approaching the wall of white wind with Haruki (who describes the building-less place they’re in as looking “like the end of the world”), Kei appeals to Chiruchiru for an audience, and a hole in the wall appears.

Kei and Haruki go through, and after jumping on a bus with a destination marked “Chiruchiru” find themselves at school… another Monogatari quality to go with all the lengthy dialogue.

In a dark classroom, Chiruchiru, fake god and creation of Michiru, isolates Kei and Haruki, and tries to play some mind games with both, perhaps to test their mettle. He hits a lot of nails on the head with Haruki in particular, even taking her form, resulting in Haruki debating with Haruki the merits of—and threats to—her special relationship with Kei.

While it’s clear she just plain likes the guy, it’s never been as explicitly stated what her situation is than by Chiruchiru: “strongly tied down by one boy”; a “facade of not wanting anything”; “two contradicting selves” (hence the two Harukis); the thought of Souma Sumire dominating Kei’s attentions; “the possibility that [she] personally might not be making Kei’s happiness [her] top priority”; hating “the geeling of wanting to keep him all to [her]self”…

“Chiruchiru Haruki” tries to make the argument that Haruki, like Katagiri Honoka, created an “easygoing paradise”—the titular “one-handed Eden”—but Haruki is never all that fazed by her pseudo-self-grilling, adamantly standing by her man; abiding by his decision, and claiming not to let jealousy or some perceived competition with Souma play a factor (Souma is notably absent all episode).

As for Kei, he turns his one-on-one with Chiruchiru into a negotiation; the “god” doesn’t take his form. Chiruchiru admits “the true objective [he] was meant to fulfill” is the only one he never can…but Kei believes he may be able to. Michiru wants to connect with people, but having created a god—and a monster, something the god must protect her from—has had the opposite effect.

So Kei tells Chiruchiru he’ll come up with a way to solve Michiru’s problem and erase her lonliness, if Chiruchiru helps him with Souma’s case, using the dream world as his testbed.

The dream world isn’t just Katagiri Honoka’s birdcage…it’s Katagiri Honoka. The buildings, the white wall, Chiruchiru, even the monster, it’s all her, because it’s all her dream. The monster represents the part of her that is sad, alone, and lashing out at world she’s made, which is a poor substitute for the real thing at the moment.

We’ll see what Kei manages to come up with. Whatever it is, Haruki seems sure to abide by it, while Urachi will continue to sneer at Kei and possibly even try to undermine his efforts. Just one episode left in this four-episode arc, which is already Sagrada’s most dense, ambitious, introspective, and intriguing.

Sagrada Reset – 13

After seeing the monster, and being told the monster is a monster by Dream Haruki, Kei wakes up…and that’s it for the monster this week. After a new, jauntier OP with a latin-inspired beat (replacing the old whispery one), the story jumps from place to place and opaque, metaphor-laded conversation to conversation seemingly involving everything and anything but the monster.

Kei talks with the revived Sumire about how he’s happy in the current situation (what with her being alive), but due mostly to his retained memories of the process by which she returned, it still doesn’t feel real to him, and he doesn’t see how he can stay living in that kind of world forever. Sumire reads it as a kind of rejection.

There’s also precious little Michiru in this episode, as Sumire visits her in the dream world and talks about things she’s not that interested in, and which Chiruchiru (in blue bird form) warns Sumire not to bring up around her. Chiru wants to protect Michiru by not upsetting her with things like the fact there’s a way to save her from her present state.

Rather than Michiru or the monster, Kei, Haruki, and Nonoo investigate the “Stray Cat House Man” (SCHM) who, the way he’s described, is nothing less than one of the most powerful beings in the world, as his ability is to write “The Script”, which governs all people, things and events in the world, even resets and predictions of the future.

He’s even ahead of the Witch or Sumire in that their ability is governed by his. There’s also the fact he’s more of a humble vessel for the ability than an arrogant braggart; after all, the pen in his hand moves on its own, filling books. His physical body has deteriorated to the point he can no longer write, so starting with Book No. 852, he’s worked in the dream world exclusively.

Nonoo remembers him (and he her) from their interactions about five years ago, when she was the only visitor to his house, and whom he tried in his own small way to guide her on how to exist, live, and be happy in the world. In the present she tells him he “saved” her, because now she has people like Kei and Haruki she can call friends.

Kei goes through the manuscripts for The Script, but can find nothing before No. 852, while Sumire instructed him to find and carefully read No. 407. That, and all manuscripts before SCHM entered the dream world, are in the possession of the Bureau, members of which arrive to basically cordially kick Kei out of the SCHM’s house.

Once Kei leaves, the leader of the Bureau members there isn’t coy about his true feelings about Kei: he thinks his ability is a nuisance, especially when used in concert with Haruki or others, and he’s generally an eyesore he’d like to “snuff out” if necessary. Who knows what that entails (he joked about stabbing him in the heart, but was that just a joke), but it’s clear this cour has a more reliable villain than Oka Eri.

Like many earlier episodes of the first cour and a few there in the middle, I only really understood a little more than half of everything that was said and done, but as I refuse to let my enjoyment of this deeply intriguing and offbeat show be governed by my level of understanding, that’s not really of great concern.

Still, moments like Kei calmly pointing out to Haruki and Nonoo that they should pay more attention to the fact they’re wearing skirts while crawling through a drain to get into the SCHM’s house, or Sumire’s apparent displeasure with how things are with Kei (hinted at in the new ED as well), are easier to understand and appreciated.

With all the different players and agendas in play, combined with the new dream world setting, Sagrada Reset is poised to have an even more ambitious, and possibly more baffling, second cour. I’ll be here to attempt to make some kind of sense of it.