Coffee, Green Tea, And Rabbits — Why I Love GochiUsa So Much
Heavy Spoilers ahead for all seasons and OVAs of Is The Order A Rabbit?, as silly as that may sound for a slice of life anime.
As a young adult in 2014 I suppose you could say I was a pretty hardcore “anime-watcher”, checking out a solid chunk of what was airing in the given season. While I feel like I would be wasting far too much time doing that as a full-grown adult with lots of responsibilities and little free time nearly a decade down the road from then, I at the very least still watch things that interest me, though with the current isekai craze still going far too strong for how long it’s been the dominant genre in anime I don’t actually watch as much anime as saying “what I’m interested in” should otherwise imply.
Lately, my time with anime is mostly delegated to things I’ve read the manga for like the currently-airing SPYxFAMILY, Hitoribocchi no Maru Maru Seikatsu, the upcoming Chainsaw Man adaptation, new seasons of shows I’ve already been invested in from years prior like JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure and YuruCamp, whatever Studio Trigger is doing at any given time, revisiting old favorites like Violet Evergarden, or otherwise just piling things I think I would on-paper like to watch like Symphogear or SK8 The Infinity. And of course, I’ll always be watching the Gundam franchise (of which I’m working on a similar article to this for at the moment). I’ll take any excuse to rewatch Turn A, Zeta, or Unicorn.
So let’s take it back to 2014 again. I’m suffering from severe chronic anxiety a year away from finally realizing that that’s what’s going on and generally finding a lot of comfort in watching anime and kind of escaping my own body for little bits at a time. Among lots of trash in a pile (spring 2014 anime airing on Crunchyroll) I finally find a gem: “Is The Order A Rabbit?” as it’s now known in its localizations as, but at the time only known by its Japanese name “Gochuumon Wa Usagi Desu Ka?” or the more common shorthand “GochiUsa” (which I will be now referring to it from here on as).
I had always been a huge fan of the slice of life genre since I was a kid watching Haré+Guu on the Funimation Channel we had as part of our cable plan when I was in middle school, or from my brother showing me Azumanga Daioh! and coincidentally picking up the Yotsuba&! mangas that they for some reason had at my school book fair, or even earlier in slightly less strictly slice of life shows like one of my all time favorites, the original isekai and one of the only good ones if you ask me, .hack//SIGN (pronounced Dot Hack Sign) which aired late at night on Toonami. As I got older, I got really into K-On! like most other kids like me, finding a lot of joy in seeing a show with a relaxed pace all about kids around my age who also loved to make music.
So there was just something about GochiUsa that just clicked with me at first. Certainly it was the characters with big and hilariously sparkly eyes and pastel hair, but it was also the show’s aesthetic which escaped the understandably common Japanese setting of most slice of life anime. GochiUsa takes place in a French-inspired town (Colmar, to be specific, here’s a lovely article that details some of the references used in much of the anime’s key background frames) on nearly constant idyllic days, while the show never explicitly states that it takes place in France. This setting combined with many Japanese-named characters (despite the pun names, we’ll get to those later) has led to some crazy fan theories that it takes place in an alternate history where Japan won World War II and colonized France or others that claim it’s set in some kind of purgatory. While I personally reject all of these theories, I think it goes to show early on if you’re only just hearing about this show now that there’s a lot more than meets the eye with it; there’s an incredible depth to each of the characters and the otherwise inconsequential stories it tells about them despite a greater narrative thread pulling it all together off-screen throughout the series. My personal theory is it’s just an alternate world, plain and simple. No need to darken up a story this fluffy and innocent with any edgy bullshit.
GochiUsa starts with a doofy girl named Cocoa Hoto arriving in our unnamed Not-Colmar town for something like a homestay to attend school there and work in her homestay family’s cafe, Rabbit House. Chino, a year or two younger than Cocoa, is the only daughter of the Kafu family who own Rabbit House, works and lives upstairs at the cafe with her father and “pet rabbit”/cafe mascot Tippy. Cocoa takes a strong liking to Chino right away and insists that Chino look up to her like a big sister to an obsessive degree; we find out that there’s a real and genuine reason for this in the second season.
Throughout the early parts of the series we’re introduced to the rest of the main characters: the very traditional and idyllically Japanese Yamato Nadeshiko-type Chiya Ujimatsu who works at a rivaling cafe which specializes in Japanese sweets and green tea, the easily-flustered poor girl with sophisticated taste Syaro Kirima who works at yet another rival cafe that serves herbal tea, the tomboyish and mature beyond her years rich girl Rize Tedeza, obsessed with military aesthetics but secretly also a fan of the overly-cutesy (a perfect parallel to Syaro who secretly has a crush on Rize), Chino’s two best friends from school Maya and Megumi, as well as the elusive best-selling author introduced only by her pen name Aoyama Blue Mountain (literally: “Blue Mountain Blue Mountain”) who frequents the Rabbit House cafe to relax and strike up inspiration for her writing, among a handful of other small side characters who pop up here and there, though not nearly as frequently as this core cast of goofballs.
There are also three main rabbit characters who we see much of throughout the series, more than some human characters; the show is called Is The Order A Rabbit? for a reason after all; rabbits are a heavy motif throughout the series. For starters, there’s the main rabbit Tippy who appears in nearly every scene with Chino, sitting firmly atop her head. Tippy, once a Kafu family pet is possessed by the spirit of Chino’s grandfather, still able to speak in his own voice through Tippy’s mouth which Chino tries to cover up by pretending that she’s practicing ventriloquism with him whenever he happens to speak in front of other people. Additionally, the blank-eyed crown-bearing black rabbit Anko is Chiya’s pet who we often see at her place of work as Ama Usa An’s own cafe mascot. And finally there’s Wild Geese, who doesn’t appear as a main character until season two where he finally moves in and becomes Syaro’s pet.
While the original manga follows a loosely yonkoma style where each scene is set up and a punchline is executed by the end in just four comic panels with a little bit of overlap told as these sets of four line up with each other, the anime otherwise adapts the manga with a wider thread of consistency, though the occasional quick punchline is set up here and there despite usually not being very funny as there’s a specific, small, fairly Japanese demographic that would only find Chino’s constant quips of bewilderment genuinely funny or cute. For me, the show’s humor more often comes from things that aren’t intentionally set up as punchlines, for instance nearly everything Cocoa does as the airhead that she is.
Each episode will usually follow through on a single plot point with lots of wacky digression and hijinks between, but most of it boils down simply to the much-beloved anime idea of “cute girls doing cute things”. What makes GochiUsa special is the way that no matter what happens throughout the episode, no matter how silly or serious it gets, something always comes around by the end of each episode to tie it all together in an emotional or empathetic way with very little humor in the last few minutes of each story, just a warm-hearted resolution to each light conflict.
Take for instance “Bunnisode 10” (yes, the localizers even call the episodes “Bunnisodes”) of the second season, which sees a particularly excitable and obnoxious Cocoa throughout its second half simply looking to hang out and do something fun with literally anyone despite everyone she asks having some kind of prior reservation for the day. Up bright and early, we first see Cocoa up bright and early in a sundress — immediately implying what kind of day it is outside and even narrowing down that it’s probably July or August — ready to harass Chino into playing outside or go bug-catching. Chino however was, moments prior to this, dusting off a ship in a bottle kit that she had been saving to build on a day off, further narrowing down that it’s probably Sunday. She then comically pushes Cocoa out of the room after placing Tippy on her head and locks the door.
We then jumpcut to Syaro (as it’s properly localized, though many original fansubs had localized it more properly as Sharo, with many fans lovingly referring to her with a variable as Sxaro to poke fun at the debate between how to spell her name) nearly passed out in her bedroom after what must have been a long weekend of bouncing between several part-time jobs, only wanting to sleep the exhaustion away. Of course, Cocoa comes yelling outside her door only to scare herself away after hearing Syaro mumbling about how she’d die if she went outside, not actually knowing that Cocoa was there outside but referring to her exhaustion from work. Of course, Syaro lives directly next to Ama Usa An, the cafe that Chiya works at, so this is the next logical place we find Cocoa. Of course, Chiya is on the job and so Cocoa makes her way to Rize’s mansion where she’s also turned away by the butler who claims that Rize is busy working on something for the following day that she absolutely can not be interrupted from. Sulking her way back to Rabbit House, Cocoa encounters a desperately procrastinating Aoyama Blue Mountain — who we are now seeing for the first time as Midori, her real name that the girls managed to deduce earlier on in the episode — who initially appears ready to have play outside with Cocoa until her editor comes running for her, claiming that she’s been looking all over for her and that she is over two weeks late on her deadline.
Cocoa goes home only to once again be courteously turned away by Chino, who is now putting the finishing touches on her ship in a bottle, until she finally gives in and asks if Cocoa is ready for the following day. This is the second time this episode that we’ve heard something mentioned about tomorrow. We then cut to Cocoa waking up to the sound of people greeting each other outside Rabbit House, stepping out in her pajamas to see all of her friends dressed not too dissimilarly than she was the prior day. It turns out that Rize had invited all of them to go camping, explaining why she herself was so busy, why Syaro gravely needed some extra rest, and why Chino wanted to spend her day off crafting. This is the first time Cocoa has heard anything about this though, leading to what initially was actually a really heart-wrenching scene to watch until we find out that Chino found the unopened invitation in the pocket of Cocoa’s uniform. Truly a Cocoa Moment™ if I’ve ever seen one. The group all ruminate on their neglection of Cocoa the day prior and feel a little down about it, knocking on her door and begging her to come out forgive them in a scene that sees many of these characters out of their usual emotional comfort zones in some brief moments of vulnerability. Of course, Cocoa is just playing with them about being sad and soon comes bursting out of the door all dressed up and ready to go. All’s well that ends well.
While not the freshest or most unique form of storytelling, the way that GochiUsa tells a story with deceptively complex characters, interwoven narratives, light and fluffy humor, and emotionally-provoking endings is a rare sight in the slice of life genre, at the very least a rare sight when done this compellingly. There’s something that GochiUsa offers from episode to episode that isn’t found as consistently well-done in most other popular slice of life anime like YuruYuri, Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid, or even Azumanga Daioh!, and it shows in its memorable episodes and lovable cast of tropey oddballs who do a lot to subvert their own defining tropes. Syaro isn’t just your average tsundere, Chiya isn’t just your average Yamato Nadeshiko, Chino isn’t just your average kuudere. There’s a lot more to these characters that we get to see in bits and pieces throughout the show, and director Hiroyuki Hashimoto takes extra care to make sure that we get to see that throughout each season.
There are a lot of quotable moments throughout the series as well, with perhaps the best-known one being a scene from Bunnisode 10 from the first season where Cocoa and Chiya invite Syaro to come help them keep from distraction while studying for their English class, contrasting the two biggest airheads with the show’s most level-headed (or at least logical) character, a similar balance to Japan’s most infamous form of comedy, manzai. What ensues is — as expected — distraction as they pronounce every word unbelievably wrong except for “coffee” and “green tea”, to which they begin giggling and saying over and over again at the expense of Syaro’s sanity. It’s a scene that even those who haven’t heard of GochiUsa but like anime have still probably seen floating around the internet, and for good reason — it’s fucking hilarious and perfect material for shitposting.
GochiUsa has the rare honor of having three full seasons despite its genre, on top of a manga that’s been running strong for almost 10 years of nonstop annual compilation, a music-themed OVA, an hour-long OVA film, and dozens upon dozens of tie-in songs, two full-length double albums, and frequent fan events in Japan including an annual tea party thrown for fans and even an orchestra concert.
So what about all of these narrative threads I’ve talked about in GochiUsa? Well, for one, it unravels a lot of things you wouldn’t expect it to do based on the first season from 2014 by the end of the third season which aired at the end of 2020. The first season introduces us to a world where the only characters we really see are our main cast of girls, the three pet rabbits Tippy, Anko, and Wild Geese (who doesn’t get properly introduced until the second season), and the only male character we’ve seen up until this point, Chino’s father Takahiro the majority of whose screen time is only seen after the credits in the preview for the next episode; Takahiro turns Rabbit House into a low key and sophisticated bar in the night time.
To exemplify more of GochiUsa’s clever and more serious narrative interspersed between the humorous nonsense of each episode, in the middle of Bunnisode 7, we see Chiya arrive late to school with a rip in her stockings, to which Cocoa offers several solutions for (though Chiya ultimately settles on her own idea of just…not wearing stockings for a day). Later on in the episode, Cocoa makes her way down to Ama Usa An only to find Syaro curled up outside the door looking a little sad. In another scene of sincerity and vulnerability, she recounts to Cocoa of how before school she and Chiya had gotten into an argument which lead Syaro to take off and run right to school with Chiya following behind trying to defuse her, leading to her tripping and falling. Cocoa remarks to Syaro how Chiya seemed really upset all day at school but couldn’t get her to tell her why. Cocoa offers to go in with her while she apologizes, wondering if she’d feel less embarrassed about it if she had some emotional support.
As this is only halfway through the episode and not our emotional climax at the end, instead of a full-on emotional confession we then get a quick joke about how Syaro wasn’t embarrassed to go inside and apologize, but instead terrified because of Anko the rabbit who lazily sits all day on the podium up front inside of Ama Usa An — Syaro is terrified of rabbits ever since she was “attacked” by one when she was a child, which we find out in an earlier episode was actually the rabbit Wild Geese who simply wanted to play with her. In season 2, Wild Geese takes on a main role by becoming Syaro’s pet after somehow finding his way into her house and refusing to leave, much to her outward disinterest despite caring for him deep down; she ultimately accepts him both because she deep down does like rabbits but also because she wants to use it as an opportunity to get closer to Rize, who she has a crush on. Rize named him that, too.
In another quick goof, we find Cocoa and Syaro walking in together with Syaro wearing a paper bag over her head to disguise herself from Anko and Cocoa holding what we can assume is probably an airsoft gun borrowed from Rize who throughout the series is shown to love airsoft guns. After Chiya remarks how she hasn’t eaten a thing since breakfast, Syaro plans to make up with her by cooking her dinner, ripping the bag from her face to reveal herself to Chiya who has obviously already realized it’s her, however Anko had not and immediately gives chase to the kitchen. Returning to the more serious note (with a few goofs between), Cocoa and Syaro end up cooking miso soup for Chiya as she apologizes to her for her actions in the morning.
And mind you, this is all a side story told throughout the episode’s main plot of promoting a bread festival that Cocoa is planning for Rabbit House, which as usual sees lots of hijinks including Cocoa in yet another Cocoa Moment™ accidentally writing “Rabbit Horse” instead of Rabbit House on the flyers she has everyone hand out. The episode rounds back to Syaro towards the end, where she attempts to get over her fear of rabbits as well as accidentally revealing to the group that she’s not actually a sophisticated and rich lady, but in fact lives next door to Ama Usa An in a cramped apartment as part of a school scholarship program. Of course, this doesn’t change anyone’s feelings about her despite her embarrassment in the moment. At the tail end, Takahiro reveals to Tippy that he’s replaced the portrait of him on the wall above the counter with a new portrait of a group of 5 bunnies who all bare striking resemblance to the main cast of 5 girls, which Tippy is understandably upset about first until he settles down and sees the symbolism of it.
One thing that GochiUsa establishes quickly to demonstrate its uniqueness and generate curiosity for later episodes is how it implies very early on that Tippy is not just an average female angora rabbit, but that her body possesses the soul of Chino’s late grandfather. While the anime never gets around to explaining this and the manga will likely explain as it approaches its ending, it’s heavily implied that it has something to do with a chance encounter years prior with a younger Cocoa, as seen in Bunnisode 9.
In the episode’s cold open, we see an old man place Tippy on a park bench before sitting down next to him, lamenting how he had finally opened the cafe of his dreams but business isn’t doing so hot, looking at Tippy’s carefree nature as an innocent rabbit and wishing he could be like that before we see two small hands reach out and pick Tippy up. As the camera goes back from the old man’s bewilderment, we see Cocoa as a young child plop down on the bench with Tippy in her lap and begins to chat with the old man. Cocoa, in her childish innocence, casts a “spell” on the down-on-his-luck barista to turn him into his rabbit, initially a little shocked that she seemed to have read his mind. As she leaves, we see her meeting up with her older sister Mocha, who we don’t see again until the middle of the second season when she comes to visit Cocoa for the rest of the season in Not-Colmar.
As we find out through Mocha later on in the second season, Cocoa’s obsession with being an older sister figure to Chino stems from both her inferiority complex when compared to her own big sister Mocha while growing up, but also to cope with the loneliness of not being around Mocha anymore, as moving to Not-Colmar was the first time Cocoa had ever been away from her home in the Not-French countryside.
I feel like this is also a good time to talk about the names as well. Cocoa and Mocha Hoto? Pretty crazy, right? Well, almost every character’s name in GochiUsa is a pun on some type of cafe drink. Cocoa Hoto comes from Hot Cocoa; who’d have thunk? Mocha is also fairly self-explanatory. In Japanese, given and surnames are read the opposite as they are in English, so in Japanese, Cocoa Hoto’s name is actually read as Hoto Cocoa, or “Hot Cocoa”. Using this reading, we can now deduce that Chino Kafu’s name being read as “Kafu Chino” is like “Cappuccino”, Syaro Kirima’s name is quite a stretch for Kilimanjaro, the coffee blend. An even sillier stretch is Rize Tedeza’s name being a unique reworking of thé des alizés, a peachy type of green tea. Chiya Ujimatsu’s name comes from Uji Matcha and likely chia seeds, Maya Joga’s name is a reference to Jogmaya tea pearls, Megumi Natsu (under the nickname Megu) is a reference to the way Nutmeg is pronounced in Japanese, and Tippy is a nickname for his full name Tippy Golden Flowery Orange Pekoe which is a type of darjeeling tea.
The third season as well as the OVAs bring the narrative to the furthest reaches we’ve seen in the anime so far, as it poses even more questions further that some of us may have already had on our mind — where is Chino’s mother? We’ve seen Takahiro and Tippy throughout the entire series and we saw a single frame of her at the very end of the first episode of season two, but we’ve not seen a single mention of her mother at all otherwise. The OVA (bonus episode) Sing For You features another brief mention of her and how she was a singer who performed with her band quite often at Rabbit House. The ending sequence even shows a brief flashback of her singing for a young starry-eyed Chino.
Towards the middle of season three however, we finally meet Saki in-person…sort of? In Bunnisode 7, aptly titled “We Shall Dance With Ghosts Until Dawn On This Halloween Night!” Cocoa is on a mission to perfect her magic tricks in her magician costume on Halloween to impress Chino and all of their friends. After getting lost while looking for Tippy on the way to meet up with everyone in town, Cocoa has a chance encounter with a glowing woman in costume on the veranda overlooking the town, with a more feminine-looking Tippy (likely the real, unpossessed one) in tote under her hat.
She cheers a distraught Cocoa up and shows her a variety of magic tricks before her final trick, where she dissipates into the night with a sparkling stream of light that beams to the sky, leaving the “real” Tippy we know once again possessed by the soul of Chino’s grandfather to suddenly appear behind Cocoa. In the one cut away from the middle of this scene, Chino is seen spacing out from the group, clearly feeling the presence of her mother’s spirit. There are very few “serious” plot-driven anime that have ever made me feel as emotional as this scene did, so for a scene this beautifully directed and honest to come out of such a silly show, it really hits hard.
In the final *ahem* Bunnisode, Cocoa’s mother and Mocha get in a Hoto Family Moment™ where Mocha teases her mother about looking at one of her school yearbooks that she found. As they play tug-of-war with the book, Mocha finally quips “fine, I’ll let go!” but doesn’t give her mother enough time and ultimately sends her flying with it. As they sit down at a table after, Mocha remarks how her mother can be such an airhead sometimes (guess it runs in the family) and she deflects by saying her childhood best friend in the yearbook was the real airhead. She reminisces on her old friend Usagi, which was a nickname based on her real name Saki Kafu. Saki was both a singer and a magician and she and Cocoa’s mother were as close as sisters. She remarks how she has “gone far away now” and leaves it at that. The scene cuts to Chino looking at the same picture, recognizing the uniforms they were wearing in it as the same one that Cocoa had received in the mail as a holiday present from her family.
This gives us enough information to form a theory around how Cocoa was even in Not-Colmar as a child to meet Chino’s grandfather and Tippy in the first place, as it was very likely Cocoa’s unnamed mother was possibly visiting Saki who had probably not yet taken over Rabbit House with Takahiro just yet. Perhaps she was even there to help take care of or just meet Chino who was likely a baby at the time. Even more, it could be wholly possible that Saki was sick and Cocoa’s mother was in town to visit, take care of her, or even say her goodbyes to her.
GochiUsa also has a lot of running bits, my favorite of which happens to be from an April Fools Day joke from 2016 where the anime’s official website portrayed the characters took on rebranded personas as characters in a spinoff called The Phantom Thief Lapin (a very clear Lupin III parody). Nearly four years later in GochiUsa’s third season, the cold opening of Bunnisode 2 completely immerses us into the world of Lapin, featuring a slew of anthropomorphic bunny security force tasked with protecting a special ruby in some kind of museum-like complex as they receive a calling card from the phantom thief herself announcing that she will be taking the ruby tonight before they even realize it’s gone.
Of course, before they even finish reading it, Lapin has already stolen the ruby and begun making her escape in a brief moment of incredibly rare sakuga for the series. Before the opening credits roll, the camera pans away to reveal that it was a TV show all along that Cocoa and Chino seem to tune into every single week. Chino remarks that Lapin can even steal things that aren’t physical, which reminds a flustered Cocoa that she forgot to do her homework, running out of the room grumbling about how Lapin was able to steal her time as Chino addresses the humor of the situation to herself.
As we find out later on in the episode and throughout the season, the Lapin character is actually one of the many stars of the novels by Aoyama Blue Mountain which has recently seen a popular TV adaptation. It’s revealed that Lapin herself is very obviously inspired by Syaro from Aoyama’s experiences and interactions with her. Ironically, Syaro’s cafe is running a promotion based on The Phantom Thief Lapin and she must don the costume and play the part for all the kids that the promotion brings in despite not being able to get into the part and truly understand the character herself, leaving the kids disappointed. Coincidentally, when Cocoa dresses as Lapin, all of the kids are thoroughly convinced by her act. The character and concept of Lapin reappears again throughout the season, for instance in the previously mentioned Halloween episode where Syaro, Chino, and Chiya all meet up in Lapin costumes uncoordinated from each other by pure coincidence, with Rize being the only one in a different costume.
To me, GochiUsa is more than just a silly show about girls who serve coffee and tea. It’s a show about friendship, family, generations, definitely also coffee and tea for sure though, but also about an ideal perfect world and the things that make us human; the laughs we share, the moments of vulnerability, the moments of joy, the passing of the torch through generations. And it’s all carefully and subtextually knit into the easily-digestible surface of a silly show about girls who serve coffee and tea.
Admittedly, one of the very first things I did when I picked up Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 was fly over the French countryside from Monaco to Colmar as a sort of brief approximation of “virtual tourism” while stuck inside still during the height of the Covid pandemic. Being one of the first things I thought to do in a game where you could go literally anywhere in the world should be suffice to show my adoration and obsession with this stupid show about these stupid baristas. GochiUsa is one of my top 5 all time favorite anime series and for good reason. It’s as relaxing as it is emotionally provoking and humorous. Highly recommended watching for afternoons with an iced coffee or evenings with some herbal tea.
If you haven’t watched Is The Order A Rabbit? yet and this article piqued your interest in it even remotely, I’d highly suggest doing so. You can stream all three seasons now on Crunchyroll, however neither of the two OVAs are available to legally stream to my awareness, an unfortunate fact considering that they offer crucial bits of subtext for the overall plot. Click here to watch Is The Order A Rabbit? on Crunchyroll now!
