The first season of Is the Order a Rabbit? is 12 episodes long and based upon the 4-panel manga of the same name. It is set in a fictional town inspired by French design. Despite the Western look, the culture is a mixture of Western and Japanese, such as the cast wearing kimonos, visiting hot springs and Japanese food. The anime starts off with the main character, Cocoa, arriving at the new town to attend school. She stumbles upon Rabbit House cafe, where it turns out was where she was going to stay.
It's established early on that Cocoa has a love of rabbits, which is perfect for her since the town has wild rabbits in the parks and streets. It just so happens that Chino, who is the daughter of the owner of Rabbit House, has a rabbit, although this rabbit is not like any other that you've seen. It is a ball of white fluff, and can talk, but hides this fact against everyone else. The other thing Cocoa has a fixation on is having a younger sister. She frequently spends time to try and convince Chino to call her "onee-san" but does not succeed which forms the basis of many gags. Chino is cold towards Cocoa on that front but she likes Cocoa's company.
While unassuming, Cocoa actually has decent skills such as making latte art, baking and mental calculations. She's mainly shown as clumsy and carefree though so these talents never get appreciated by the other characters. Rounding out the trio is Rize, who works at Rabbig House as well. Note that they are all working on a part time basis as they all need to go to school. Rize was trained as a soldier when she was young and had an interesting introduction where she pulled a gun on Cocoa thinking she was a threat. Rize is a bit rash on the outside but is a friendly and kind soul.
The plot is focused on slice-of-life within a cafe making it a relaxing anime as there is nothing intense going on. Cocoa will meet various other girls that attend at her school or one of her friend's schools, who might also coincidentally work at another cafe. Heaps of characters are introduced in the early episodes which make it hard to keep track of who is who, and what their relationships between each other are. Once it stabilizes towards the halfway mark of the season, their personalities start to shine and they gain memorable characteristics.
Unfortunately, this means that there is no clear objective of where the plot is going and events can seem like they're not going anywhere at all. Each episode is fairly random in its contents, one would have Cocoa and Chino struggling to overcome their dislike of certain foods, another would have the group going to a hot spring / swimming pool, while others have Cocoa and Chino arguing against each other.
It's interesting to see that the three different cafes that the cast works at, will occasionally swap their workers around which can seem random. Granted, two of the cafes are owned by the cast and so they are employing friends, even if they worked at a rival cafe it isn't too out of the question... Therei's a clear mystery surrounding Chino's grandpa as the weird looking rabbit that always perches on Chino's head though. It continues through the whole season but we get some hints on what had happened. Overall, Is the Order a Rabbit? is average. The season just kind of ends with no bit resolution making the final episode seem like another everyday episode. However, the final scene between Chino and Cocoa was perfect and fitting.
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