Anime Like Is the Order a Rabbit

AKA: ご注文はうさぎですか? (Gochūmon wa Usagi Desu ka?)

Genre: Cute girls gag comedy

Length: Television series, 12 episodes, 24 minutes each

Distributor: Currently licensed past Sentai Filmworks.

Content Rating: 13+ (Some fanservice.)

Related Series: N/A

Also Recommended: Hidamari Sketch, Croisee in a Foreign Labyrinth, Aria.

Notes: Based on the manga past Koi, serialized in Houbunsha's seinen manga mag Manga Time Kirara Max.

Rating:

Is the Order a Rabbit?

Synopsis

Cocoa Hoto (hot cocoa) moves to a new town, and ends up living in a coffee house called "Rabbit'due south Business firm Cafe", endemic by the father of Chino Kafuu. (capuchino)

Review

Stig: Hmm. I remember having fabricated this joke before; where diverse girls' names are made upwardly to audio like various hot drinks. Now, where was that, once again? Hmmmm.

Eh, probably wasn't anything of import.

Tim: Terminate me if you heard this one, guys. A beautiful teenage daughter moves in to an Italian-esque village and works at a identify whose mascot is a white, fluffy beast that barely looks similar its species.

Oh hi, Aria.

Kidding.

Is The Order A Rabbit isn't too similar to that series outside of the fix-upward. For one, it's about waitresses, not gondola rollers. Two, information technology's more than, well, grounded in reality. And third, it'due south a damn corporeality cuter. (Saccharine even, I'd say at times.)

Anyway, what nosotros have here is a bear witness that for all the earth sounded an awful lot like another testify we reviewed late last twelvemonth that seemed to center about of its activity around the antics of MOE. Merely where Kinmoza!! ended up being a huge bore, Is the Guild a Rabbit? ended upwards being only occasionally boring, instead of nearly constantly.

Part of that could probably exist attributed to the incredibly cozy atmosphere. The testify is taking place solely in a town designed after Western European towns, with the settings mostly taking identify either exterior or in the various java shops effectually the boondocks, and for what it's worth, the groundwork fine art is gorgeous. The town is meticulously made, the outsides a lush brick-and-wood lineup of houses standing at attention on each side of a river, with narrow brick alley roads snaking between more than housing areas. In that location's lots of greenery along the streets, with detailed store signs, and... well, the whole thing is and so scenery-porn-y, information technology's as if the prove knew Stig's weak points much too well.

And while nosotros're non jumping all the hedges over the cast, they're still a damn sight improve than the ones in Kinmoza!!. But that might be because Is the Order a Rabbit? doesn't go for the rapid-fire joke approach, simply instead allowing itself to linger on a discipline for longer than ane infinitesimal. (And no damn jingles between them, either! - Tim) Almost of the episodes tend to center around two or iii main courses, and builds the jokes on superlative of that. Certain, the jokes are kind of hit and miss, simply in this prove you can at least choose to focus on the serious parts if the jokes doesn't float your gunkhole. That said, a lot of the jokes exercise hit the marks, fifty-fifty if we're never really sure whether they were meant to be jokes in the kickoff place. Some of them are obvious plenty, like the 1 where the girls' bread-making session ends up with them partaking in a nice option of bread and pastries that ends upward having horrifying downsides, while others are probably not meant as comedy. Having tanks and an most perfect replica of the F-xvi fighter jet equally latte art earned itself some laughs from at to the lowest degree one of united states due to its bizarre out-of-place application.

It'south a shame that Cocoa is such a colossal airhead, and not a particularly engaging 1 at that. She's kind of a MOEified extension of standard otaku personality behavior. She wants Chino to refer to her as "onee-chan", she squees over the cute stuff, and generally behaves similar she'due south in her ain little world. To counter that, Chino is a also-mature-for-her-middle-schoolhouse-age girl with a deadpan phonation, and Lize is the slightly taller tomboyish daughter who whips out a gun (hopefully a toy one!) at a moment's discover. And we don't even know whether or not everyone acting calm by this is a joke in and of itself. She whips it out inside the buffet - fifty-fifty in the presence of customers and she even whips it out in public. Are everyone used to all this? Must exist nice being in a rich family, because aye, she totally is.

Rounding off the primary cast is Chiya Ujimatsu, a "proper Japanese lady", and Sharo Kirima, whose big joke is her plain besides acting similar a proper lady despite living a very thrifty life due to being poor. Which begs the question: what is information technology with Japanese and their jokes near poor people? Considering how loftier the poverty rate is in Japan, it's something a little difficult to express mirth about at face up value. Fortunately Is the Order a Rabbit? doesn't practice a whole lot of that, and the consensus among the girls is that, despite Sharo'south fears and panic attacks about her situation, the other girls basically states that she shouldn't worry about it.

There'southward too the grapheme of Chino's grandfather, who was... reborn? ...in the body of a rabbit that looks more than like that true cat in Tamayura; a round ball of fluff with ears and a face up. The evidence never really go into whatsoever details about information technology, and so we're pretty much left to wonder. The rabbit'due south proper name is Tippy, which never fails to summon the line "It'S TIBBY!" in Tom Servo's voice, which adds another layer of unintentional humor. (Which will only work if you've seen that one MST episode, but hey...)

And that, alongside its more coherent narrative, is why this evidence comes across as far more endearing than its cousin Kinmoza. Is The Club A Rabbit'southward girls might be a fairly typical lineup of MOE stereotypes, but the things they do are more often than not quite endearing, and its first episode doesn't stop up beingness a simulated indication of what to await. In fact, a lot of the later episodes of this show ends upward being the best ones. The one centered around assembling a puzzle being the one that stands out the clearest, only it fifty-fifty has the nerve to have one of the all-time Christmas episodes we've seen in just nearly any anime. That'due south non easy to pull off!

Sadly, the show isn't entirely consequent, so all this goodness unfortunately comes with a few downsides. A lot of the dialogue tends to be awfully asinine, with dialogue that seems added for the sake of filling 11 minutes of episode with. And while the testify is usually squeaky clean, in one case in a while there's some surprising detailed shots of the girls' curvy bodies (mostly from Lize, but a later bathing episode shows Chiya and even Cocoa has some curves!). The jokes also could accept been a bit more focused. That would probably alienate the target audience, though, which neither of usa are.

Stig: For all my complaints, I have to say that I kind of enjoyed Is the Order a Rabbit? The show really does have a piddling more good than bad, and information technology's a real shame that the catastrophe episode was every bit underwhelming equally it was, because the overall package was pleasant.

Tim: It'southward definitely no Aria, that'south for sure. It also starts off very tiresome, and the graphic symbol designs (Lize's aside) are a bit as well cutesy to me. But I still liked Is The Order A Rabbit? enough to proceed it every calendar week. Of the terminal few years' "plow off your brain to lookout cute girls practise stuff" anime, it's probably the one I enjoyed the most later the Hidamari Sketch seasons. And the scenery around the girls is gorgeous indeed.

Occasionally dumb, but often atmospheric, Is the Order a Rabbit? is definitely worth it for the discerning MOE fans, who tin add stars at their leisure. — Stig Høgset and Tim Jones

Recommended Audience: For being a relatively innocent show, it'due south quite generous with showing the girls in their underwear or swimsuits. Lize in particular gets the underwear handling, equally that's how you showtime encounter her. The show is fairly innocuous about information technology, though; nobody ever leers at the girls or come with whatsoever inappropriate comments nigh it, giving the testify itself the aforementioned kind of split-feelings sense about it that Strike Witches had.

Version(south) Viewed: Digital stream on Crunchyroll, Japanese with English subs.
Review Status: Total (12/12)
Is the Order a Rabbit? © 2014 White Fox.