The Internet Lied to Me About Bunny Girl Senpai: Video Essay

Reese Grey Analyzes

The Japanese animation industry takes on some very mature topics. So, you’d see an anime titled “Bunny Girl Senpai” and immediately think…”fanservice trash”. But conceptually, the anime handles very complex themes such as depression, loneliness and struggling to find a healthy sense of self during puberty, and all in all had the promise of being a pretty wholesome and complex show.
Culturally, we’re taught to largely ignore emotional pain and scars. Many teens learn that in adolescence, you must simply endure emotional pain and not necessarily heal from it. Seeing the depth of these emotional issues manifested physically with scars and invisibility gives us perspective into the severity of emotional pain. I appreciate anime as a visual medium that can take those abstract feelings of loneliness and “feeling invisible” and personify them by physically effecting the characters bodies.

Though Bunny girl Senpai left a lot to be desired, I appreciate it. A lot of the time, in many different art mediums, we are used to seeing characters be blindly infatuated with one another with characters lacking chemistry and basically falling in love for no reason. However between Mai and Sakuta their connection and intimacy hinges on something as innocent and mundane as simply spending time together, and studying for a test. These simple and seeminngly mundane moments can leave us with something beautiful, intimate, and real. Though cliche, at the end of the day, appreciating simple moments of togetherness is such a special part about being human, and it’s these small shared intimate moments that makes us—-us.

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