30 year old Daikichi Kawachi is living the dream... Well maybe not but hes living on his own terms. As a lifelong bachelor hes dedicated himself to his job and his free time to drinking smoking and complaining about his job. He hasnt bothered to keep in touch with his family but when his elderly grandfather passes away well certain family obligations override hedonism. Its at his grandfathers funeral that he meets a shy mysterious blonde child named Rin whom he soon finds out was his grandfathers bastard child a shameful family secret that nobody else at the wake wants anything to do with. An outcast himself Daikichi sympathizes with the poor girl and when the word orphanage comes up he takes a stand volunteering to take her in himself. This one act of kindness in defiance of all conventional logic would change both of their lives forever. Will little Rins new guardian be the unlikely ideal parent or has Daikichi just gotten way over his head on a foolish whim? It doesnt matter now because hes made his choice and all they have is each other. Bunny Drop is not your standard anime. It doesnt fall into any conventional genre categories at least not once you look below the surface. Its not some action spectacle or a some wacky gag comedy but whats even stranger is that I dont think it fully qualifies as a slice of life title either so youd have to imagine that any animation studio picking it up would have to think a little outside the box in terms of style and presentation. Luckily Bunny Drop is a Studio IG title and while directing duties were spread out across seven different people... No I did not stutter and you can kinda tell if you pay attention to the level of detail in the background from episode to episode... There clearly was a unifying vision. The direction is very lowkey and nonintrusive you never feel like the visuals are trying to distract you from anything and this gives the material a lot of room to breathe. Keeping in line with this there isnt a drop of fanservice on display... No beach or pool episodes one or two tastefully shot bath scenes... You occasionally see Daikichi in his underwear but even that is always played for laughs. The animation budget looks surprisingly high given just how little a money an anime like this one could realistically survive on but rather than feeling overanimated every cent they had went into character animation and while theres no real action to show off how smooth everyones movement is the characters also never feel stifled or awkward. Even the best looking anime will occasionally default to key frames with moving lip flaps and go lengthy periods without blinking but Bunny Drop doesnt resort to any of that. It captures even the subtlest of facial movements offering them all a wide range of expression. Im generally pretty good at picking out areas where a producer might have cut a couple corners to preserve money in the budget even when its done extremely carefully but I didnt notice a single instance of that in Bunny Drop. Character movements feel graceful energetic and completely unhindered from start to finish. Character designs skew mostly towards the norm its cast of Japanese characters sporting dark hair and realistic proportions facial structures that sometimes feel reminiscent of JC Staff and highly elaborate backgrounds that feel both worn down and inviting. The only exception is Rin herself the only blonde in a sea of brunettes although Im sure thats an artistic exaggeration of the slightly lighter brown hair some Japanese people have. Her hairstyle is unique but not overthetop or moe and while she does have large bright eyes and an occasional blush her cutest expressions are probably the ones she sports when she gets annoyed or upset where she scrunches her face into scribbles like an angry Peanuts character. The music is almost your generic slice of life background score but with much softer instrumentation full of comfortable piano and violin. Its the right kind of music for a slower more relaxed story and while it doesnt really sound like anything special out of context it meshes with the series nicely especially during emotional high points. Theres no dub but Ayu Matsuura was a legitimate child when she voiced Rin and as this wasnt her first role she did have genuine talent. A lot of the charm of the series depends on her sincere delivery. Hiroshi Tsuchida also does a strong job as an inexperienced but wellmeaning oaf doing his best to adjust to the unexpected turns his life is taking and his warmth towards Rin feels absolutely genuine. If theres one thing thats true of pretty much every form of media its that a good child character is incredibly hard to find. This is largely due to the fact that the people writing them are usually not children themselves and by that point in their lives theyre only familiar with children from at best a parents perspective. But even if they do understand kids on an accurate level accuracy might not always be the intention of their work. There are instances of child characters and even the actors who portray them being sexualized sometimes in obvious fashionsee basically any lolicon anime or on a more subtle and subtextual level. Even when presented in purely innocent fashion however child characters can still be written with the intention of manipulating the audience... Either to invoke a rosy saccharine sentimentality or to bash the viewer over the head with some kind of deliberate tragedy porn where theyre presented as the sweetest little moe mascot ever just to be killed off to the tune of her father/guardians mantears. Personally I see all of these routes as being entirely cynical and disingenuous but it is possible to swing too hard in the other direction as well. If you were to present a 100 accurate child character it would be very difficult for the audience to like them because for all intents and purposes children are more or less sociopaths. If you think back hard enough Ill bet you anything you did SOMETHING as a kid that was so heinous it would instantly get a sitcom about your life cancelled as the only defense you can make for yourself is that you didnt know any better at the time. Life isnt like a sitcom where kids can be reasoned with adults are endlessly patient and understanding and every major issue can be resolved in thirty minutes or less. You cant just leave a toddler home all day and expect them to behave perfectly without getting lonely only able to kill time by coloring and taking unaccompanied walks around the neighborhood. And yet nobody wants to see a yelling screaming nightmarish brat never receiving their comeuppance. The best thing about Bunny Drop and its biggest selling point by far is that it presents you with a child character who is written in a perfectly balanced way. Not perfect herself mind you just perfectly balanced. When we meet Rin she is immediately sympathetic. She was born into an unfair situation that she has no control over shes being treated as more of an inconvenience than a person and she faces this reality in a shy and quiet way that subtly suggests depression... That shes already tried to get some kind of love and affection from the family shes been left to and her efforts have been rejected on no unclear terms. This all becomes clear when after Daikichi takes her in she starts to come out of her shell and reveal her true personality... Shes bright sociable and naive to some aspects of the world but she still occasionally shows signs that she never completely got over the trauma of her elderly father passing away suggesting abandonment issues that Daikichi thankfully picks up on. I wont lie and say she isnt at least a little idealized as shes more friendly and well adjusted than most kids in her position would be but its never to the point where it feels unbelievable and she has just enough negative qualities to not come off as a MarySue. She can be bratty sometimes. She can be impatient sometimes. She can be insecure and dishonest but you never resent her for it. This isnt one of those weird stories where half the joke is how the child is so impossibly mature and precocious that they wind up parenting their own parents. Theres an episode where she gets sick and has to take nasty medicine and I cant count the number of anime children who would be like Its okay Ill take it I know youre doing your best... But no like a normal fucking kid she wont touch that shit unless you make it taste better. Same sister same. Also like a normal kid she has a strange imagination that leads her to make up games and activities that nobody else would understand. Again there is an element of idealization... She is impossibly cute after all... But it never feels like shes being sold to you on any level. Another thing that this anime does a great job of balancing is conflict. You may remember last year I compared Bunny Drop to Listen to me Girls I am Your Father and since they begin in similar fashion I feel compelled to revisit that comparison now. Both stories revolve around a single male protagonist adopting children who are in a dire situation and there are a few key details that work better in Bunny Drops favor. Not only does Rins situation feel a lot less forced making it feel more emotionally resonant but Daikichi is bringing one small child into a relatively spacey house rather than cramming three girls into a tiny apartment with him. But most important of all is where the conflict goes from here. One of my main criticisms with Listen to Me was that outside of the previous family drama the casts living situation was devoid of conflict despite four people living in a tiny space. To be completely fair there isnt a lot of conflict between Rin and Daikichi either... At no point does either act irrationally and turn on the other there are no forced misunderstandings to create tension... But there are still some small day to day squabbles and ultimately Bunny Drop takes the same approach as Kotourasan relegating all of the serious drama to the first episode and spending the rest of the series on recovery and growth. Where Listen to Me spent most of its time using a thin facade of sweetness to blatantly sexualize its minor characters and shipbait them with their guardian Bunny Drop focuses on building a strong realistic bond between Rin and Daikichi which stays completely innocent and sincere throughout. And sure when you hear that Daikichi was a hedonistic bachelor who takes in a little girl and had to become a single parent it may give you flashbacks to Ben Affleck exploding at a small child in Jersey Girl but Daikichi has two small advantages here. First he takes Rin in when shes six and he never had to experience her infancy or her proverbial terrible twos. Second unlike a lot of fictional characters stuck in the same situation Daikichi had a choice and goes into the changes in his life with an open mind. He gives up smoking and cuts back on drinking and he takes a less lucrative position at work for more reasonable hours and through it all he never shows any resentment towards Rin at all. He worries about his own abilities and if hes making a mistake but with Rin hes never anything but warm caring and as responsible as he knows how to be. Hell Rin even manages to bring Daikichis estarange family together despite them being on kind of cold terms at the beginning and thats just the tip of the iceberg in regards to how much these two characters improve each others lives. This isnt a story with high stakes... As I alluded earlier the only part of the series that you could consider a climax is when Rin catches a mysterious illness... And theres no real driving tension or forced conflict to shake things up. The plot of the story is Daikichis evolution as a parent and you spend the series rooting for him to be the best legal guardian he can because he and Rin are both just so impossibly charming together and you have no doubt how much they care about each other and you want them to have the best lives together that they can so they can keep giving you that warm and fuzzy feeling. Its one of the simplest stories Ive ever seen and yet its every bit as engaging as the most exciting scifi epics. Bunny Drop aims to be nothing less than heartwarming and it pulls this off with flying colors making it something of a masterpiece in its own right... Or it would be if it werent for the ending. So this part of the review is going to get into some very mild spoilers and while I am going to paint with extremely broad strokes this is going to be kind of an unavoidable topic. Still if youre looking to go into this series completely blind I wont fault you for skipping the next few paragraphs. To put it in the vaguest terms possible the anime has an open ending... Its not so much a cliffhanger as it is an emotional sendoff regarding the future of these two characters. Its by no means the worst nonending in the world but it does create a very unique problem. Youve heard the term a read the manga type ending before right? Some anime do tend to conclude prematurely which is considered acceptable by studios in such cases as the anime was created to advertise its source material. When it comes to Bunny Drop however this is where everything goes wrong. For those who know what Im talking about you may also be aware that generally speaking there is an unwritten rule among most Bunny Drop fans... If you know someone who is about to get into the series then you have to choose to either warn them about the ending and prepare them for what they may find if they choose to venture further or somehow convince them that the manga doesnt exist. The actual ending to the story as originally presented in the source material is indescribably terrible. Learning about it in any way whether by reading the manga yourself or hearing about it from an outside source is the definition of cursed knowledge. This isnt like some bad story arc that you can improve your experience by skipping... Its a lot more insidious than that and when you hear that the original manga author had that ending in mind from the beginning it retroactively takes something that was previously wholesome and turns it into something sinister. To illustrate the exact gravity of this remember Stephen Kings It? You know that one scene thats exclusive to the book that everybody talks about? Nobody was talking about it in 2014. A Stephen King rennaissance was just around the corner at the time but in 2014 I had no warning going into the novel and it hit me like a fucking brick wall when I got to that part. Just like the ending of Bunny Drop the sewer scene is a famously controversial moment that the author genuinely didnt think anybody would mind and which youd have to be clinically insane to include in an adaptation. Granted the ending of Bunny Drop probably isnt as bad as the sewer scene but at least Stephen King had the excuse of doing more drugs than the entire nineties cast of Saturday Night Live. I guess its not entirely fair to hold the flaws of the manga against an otherwise stellar anime but when you get this invested in a story that leaves you hanging you will have the urge to find out what happens next and unfortunately for Bunny Drop youre better off not knowing. Bunny Drop is available from Viz Media. It comes with a handful of OVA bonus scenes that are entirely adorable. The original manga is available stateside from Yen Press. A live action drama is not available stateside but just like the anime it ends pretimeskip. I feel like the best thing that could possibly happen to Bunny Drop and which would bring its score up to a 10/10 in my eyes would be if it were to receive a second season or even just an OVA that completely ignores and rewrites the future events of the story. That way it could have the satisfying conclusion it deserves without shooting itself in the head at the last minute. Im not going to tell you whether or not to seek out the ending of the manga all I can do is give you my best advice... Watch the anime go no further and just be happy with the story as is... But it is ultimately your choice and all I can really hope is that Ive given you the best possible guidance to help you figure out what the right choice is for you. On its own Bunny Drop is a near masterpiece. It knows what it is it knows what it wants to be and it pulls off everything it can gloriously under those parameters. You know an anime is special when it has the power to make you cry during the first episode on your third rewatch and while it may be forever haunted by that one glaring caveat it is still an experience that I would highly recommend seeking out. I give Bunny Drop an 8/10.