It’s hard to believe that I so easily forgot that this series was written by the same person who wrote the The Pet Girl of Sakurasou but these last few episodes really gave me a solemn reminder of that. The Sakurasou series had a pendant for serious melodramatic antics and while I did appreciate the series putting forth the solid truth that hard work does not trump talent, I found the characters to be too emotionally unstable to truly care for. Bunny girl doesn’t quite fall down that far but we do have moments of rather forced dramatic reactions. I can understand Sakuto being devastated at the loss of someone he came to care for after two years but I can’t quite understand the compulsion to start screaming his head off and running around town the minute he leaves the room. I would at least think he would get out of earshot of his father and sister first.
We have two arcs to go over, that being the arc of two sisters of the main characters. Mai’s sisters arc was pretty weak as the cause behind her adolescence syndrome was blatantly obvious from the start, as was the solution. I do appreciate that the story itself goes to show that the sisters envy is pretty justified in that Mai can literally do everything that she can, only better. But more focused on the massive pressure that Mai has to deal with on a regular basis. I like the implication that the phenomena may have been caused by both sisters being envious of each other, Mai for her sisters lesser responsibility and her sister for Mai’s inherent talent. As well as the odd relationship sisters can have of not necessarily liking each other nor hating each other either. But overall the arc just felt like a small clock ticking down to when they just decide to resolve things and there was a serious lack of stakes due to how little either person cared about the situation. To Mai and Sakuto it was just another odd situation they have experienced before and everyone pretty much agreed that it would resolve itself given time. So much like Koga’s arc, the story was carried by the character interactions. But thank god this arc managed to defuse that situation of Mai not being allowed to go out with anyone by having her publicly confess to having a boyfriend and the staff backing her up. I was very worried about it being used as a plot point to split them up.
The last arc however definitely brought something interesting to the table. It started with the idea of rehabilitating Kaede so she could attend school again and I was somewhat dreading this girls inescapable arc for Kaede was certainly the weakest character of the whole show. In a show with at least fairly believable characters, Kaede was that typical anime imouto through and through who stuck out like a sore thumb sorely warning of a potential incest affection. But damn if her arc didn’t take her character and have it make a whole lot of sense. The author pulled a long con with this one and it paid off. The big reveal being that Kaede has dissociative amnesia due to her traumatic bullying she experienced and while I shake my head at the old amnesia trope at first, I found it fascinating when they established that the amnesic girl had a completely different personality from who Kaede was before. What broke down her family and wore her down was the constant expectation that she should be like the old Kaede when she simply wasn’t. Suddenly all those annoying anime quirks like her referring to herself in the third person make so much more sense and take on a more depressing angle. The big trouble of this arc wasn’t so much solving Kaedes amnesia but rather Sakuto’s moral dilemma that if his real sister comes back, then the Kaede he came to care for now will disappear. It’s a strong arc to end on and one that brings things back to the main character of the series but admitly the ending doesn’t quite give a satisfying conclusion to the series as a whole. This is remedied by the confirmation that a movie will continue the story but right now much like Made in Abyss, it feels the story just stopped rather than ended. With the particular loose end being the matter of the mysterious older Shouko though here she is used as a nice factor making Mai concerned over how she may never top Sakuto’s dependence on Shouko when he is truly lost.
As final thoughts I will say that out of everything this season, this was the show that surprised me by being better than I initially estimated and one that I looked forward to checking out each week. I would be remiss to say it was a show that blew me away as it is a very low key show with it’s premise but it is one I will remember. In a season of not much to look at and whatever standouts slowly disappointing as the continued this show was a constant good watch for me. Though reception from what I can see seems to be a bit mixed on it with some still touting it as light novel trash trying to put up pretense of being something better. I don’t really agree with that as I feel this show made more of an effort to be its own thing rather than a derivative of the ten billion light novels about faceless nobodies getting all the chicks and superpowers. At its worst it’s a Bakemongatari clone without headache inducing dialogue nor pretentious presentation and quite frankly that’s better than Bakemongatari to me.
The movie “Rascal Does not Dream of the Dreaming Girl” will cover novel 6 & 7, and it’s about the mysterious character Shouko. It’ll be shown sometime later this year.