Should Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai Have Ended After the First Arc?

Summary:

• Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai is getting more animated content, but some fans wish it actually had less content.
• After the first arc, there’s less focus on the romance in the series, something people may find disappointing.
• The anime wouldn’t work so well if it was just the first arc.

Just a few days ago, Rascal Does Not Dream got an announcement of another arc being adapted into anime. The franchise is decently popular both in Japan and in the West, and the fans are happy to receive more of it. They just hope it will be a TV series again — after three movies, which are quite a restrictive format. However, there is a point of view some viewers share that perhaps the series should have ended after the first three episodes.

A perfect romance show?

The crux of the argument is: the first arc is a largely self-contained teenage romance with a proper setup and resolution. As so, fans that watched the series for the romance only already got it covered, and felt that the series didn’t really need anything else. While the later arcs are not worse (and some may argue, even better) than the first one, they shift the point of the series away from Sakuta and Mai’s relationship, something that romance fans may find disappointing.

Further arcs’ genre shift

Further arcs of the anime stray away from a simple romance formula and focus more on exploring the psychological problems of various characters — and the supernatural events caused by them. In that sense, Rascal Does Not Dream is very similar to the Monogatari series, to the point where it is considered its spiritual successor nowadays.

It’s also not that different from The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya (Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu), which popularized the format back in the day — although Rascal Does Not Dream is definitely more similar to Monogatari with its harem elements. Funny enough, some older fans, who probably watched all of the aforementioned shows, share the sentiment, considering the anime to be too similar to others — which is not exactly true, because it has its own, very unique cast.

What would happen if the anime, theoretically, ended after three episodes?

If the series were to end after the first arc, it wouldn’t be a series at all. While the first arc is, in a certain sense, iconic and definitely kickstarted the anime’s popularity, it wouldn’t really work as well on its own — or at least, wouldn’t grab the same audience. It would also have to be a standalone movie, not a TV anime — and who knows how that would have affected its popularity. In the end, if you don’t like the direction the series is going, you can just stop after the first episodes and pretend it ended there.