This show uses several cheap hooks that regularly appear in garbage shows, as the sugarcoating for the actual drug. For example the MC wakes up to his sister sneaking into his bed, a classic siscon hook even with hints of incest for people into that stuff, but that's not at all what this sister character is, it's all just a misdirection to grab attention. Another example is the bunny girl costume in the title and poster, this show has absolutely nothing to do with bunny girls or bunny girl costumes, it's just there to get pervs like me watching.

Instead this is a dead serious, realistic and heart felt show about psycholocial truma and challenges faced during teenage life. Each new girl under the guise of an attractive harem stereotype, are in fact patients who desperately need help for totally legit reasons suffered by many real life teenagers all over the world. These mental illness also manifest supernatural physical consequences like for example someone suffering from dissociative identity disorder physically splits into two people to heighten the drama to excellent effect. Although I find its attempt to explain these with "quantum mechanics" technobabble to be awkward and totally unnecessary.

All this facade of a garbage show almost got me at the start, even the protagonist gives off a "too cool to mingle" know-it-all best-at-everything kind of guy, complete with this badass claw mark on his chest as if he's fought and killed a mecha T-Rex during his secret child soldier training montage. I couldn't be more wrong, while Sakuta is more mature than his age, he partly serves as an audience stand-in almost as if you're playing a visual novel and choosing what you think might be the best path forward. In addition his self-control and calm personality makes perfect sense when events prior to episode 1 are revealed, almost like a magic trick.

Mai the bunny girl on the poster is also surprisingly compelling of a character. On the surface level she's that too good to be true wish fulfillment fantasy girlfriend any high school boy would die for, but somehow we discover she's BOTH a grounded person, AND better than what meets the eye. Again it's a magic trick, like you see a book that promises you the world on the cover, you're like, sure yea like that's gonna happen. But you read it and find out it has the whole universe in it and actually is totally legit. Mai's celebrity status is of course attractive but also brings depth to her character, you find many reasons why it may not be such a good idea to get such a girlfriend, but also just how much personal strength it takes for her to live this life, and yet with the MC's help she somehow excels at it.

In a garbage show, random nonsense stories are mushed together as excuses to give you fan service and wish fulfillment. In a masterwork like this, the fan service and wish fulfillment are excuses to give you a real story about real characters with real struggles. While the case studies are obviously exaggerated, most people aren't going to get a celebrity girlfriend like Mai or wake up to your little sister crawling into your bed, the principles of engagement are exactly the same. Empathy, authenticity and diligence, with that, the people you love in real life will be just as lovely as the anime girls in this show.

The quality of animation is consistently high for a TV series, but there aren't any eye popping impressive or dramatic shots, nor is there a unique ED for each episode kind of thing going on so it's not that impressive of a presentation.

2 bonus points for role model couples relationship between Mai and Sakuta.

I know a lot of the elements in this show are borrowed from Suzumiya Haruhi and the Monogatari series. I have seen Haruhi but only the first of the Monogatari series. I don't think there's anything wrong with being derivative, I prefer this over Bakemonogatari because the less extreme supernatural dramatization grounds the characters better as being real people. You could also view this show as Haruhi but every girl is Haruhi, and honestly some of the supernatural stuff don't make nearly as much sense as Haruhi. My opinion is just that none of this matters, because the show is about the characters and their psychological needs, how exactly does a person physically split into two and re-combine? Doesn't matter because the point is, you can talk to the two distinct personalities as if they're separate people, the supernatural split is just a vehicle to make that dialog happen.