Mel Chang

BunnyTale is an anime TV series about survivor's guilt within the magical girl occupation.

Each episode of this anime follows the journey of a different magical girl who gives up her life as a magical girl: who she was, why she does it, how she comes to that conclusion, and who she becomes after walking away from her destiny. To do so, at some point, every girl in the show ends up at the BunnyTale Cafe for her own reasons to walk away from this life and resume her regular civilian life.

To the regular civilian, the BunnyTale Cafe is just a normal hostess club, serving tea, cake, and attentive conversation in a calm and charming nightlife setting. Hostess clubs are a common feature in East Asian nightlife where female staff are paid to cater to men seeking the platonic but attentive company they lack from the opposite gender, given their exhausting and busy lives (the reverse concept, called host clubs, exists as well). However, in the upstairs area, the staff of the BunnyTale Cafe provides a different kind of comforting and personally fulfilling service to a very different kind of client. Barred off by an enchanted rope, a staircase leads to the upper loft where magical girls can speak to a hostess about their dissatisfaction regarding the life and fate that has been thrust upon them. 

Orime Akemi

Sugi Toru

Hatomi Miu

Tsukiyama Noriko

The Bubblegum Rose stool is inspired by the sensation of chewing bubblegum and the feeling of smelling rosewater. The stool is made by pulling a pattern made of lycra laminated neoprene, over an additional layer of pink lycra, over a wooden spiky interior. Inside the wooden interior sits 9 inches of memory foam. The variety in fabric gives a variety in elasticity. Coupled with the memory  foam, the sensation of sitting mimics the way one feels a gradation in pressure as one bites and chews on bubblegum. BunnyTale Cafe's Decommissioning Coffee Tables are made of white oak and finished with a warm danish oil stain. The decorations on the base are 3D printed bronze pieces inspired by the architectural details seen on Asian temples.

As mentioned before, the objects presented in this project inspire the illustrated concept art pieces. The process started from the Bubblegum Rose Stool. I initially wanted to create a narrative based out of a very unique, feminine, and soft looking cafe. Thus, I based the stool design after its namesake. Once the stool was designed, the thought process begins:

A stool needs a table...
A table needs a function...
The set needs a home...
The home needs decoration...
The home needs inhabitants to decorate it...
The occupants need a personality, aesthetic, and a reason to be there...

That is how this narrative was written. In its preliminary stages, material choices and the presence of these objects therefor play a big roll in informing the way this world feels around characters and how they will navigate around it.

Episode 1: Hana is a 25 year old mother and magical girl from a team which fights with musically themed abilities. Had she acquired her abilities at any earlier time, this life would be a blessing but now it is a curse.  With her newborn as her priority, Hana’s ability to modify and hop time by “changing time signatures” and casting musical glyphs is often applied more to re-living the same day over and over again so that she can give her daughter the perfect upbringing instead of fighting the forces of evil. Her new powers only drive her mad and make her a terrible and impatient mother.

Episode 2: Isamu is a 17 year old girl who once trained to play in the women's doubles tennis tournament at the upcoming Olympic Games, but now plays it in space as a magical girl. She and her doubles partner were fated to meet and fight invading aliens together since birth, but her partner got eaten by a black hole last week.

Episode 3: Midori is a wealthy 15 year old turned magical girl. She finds all forms of fighting unrefined and tacky, even though her plant and princess themed attire and attacks couldn’t be more regal. Fighting monsters is simply unlady-like and is a distraction from her greater goals of being a famous CEO.

Episode 4: Shinju is facing a lot of anxieties regarding her first week in kindergarten. To make matters worse, in the same week, she discovers that her destiny has been intertwined with the fate of being a part of mermaid themed magical girl team which fights the evils which lurk underwater. With an intense phobia of water and fish, she is essentially a failed Batman tale.

In the style of this project, each of these girls were designed after their transformation trinkets were designed. Thus, their designs are inspired by their trinkets; ie: Hana's design is inspired by the sturdy base of her transformation trinket, in addition to the themes implied by it. Given this base and form, her design, personality/narrative, and stature and inspired by midieval paladins .

The plot of this narrative is born from the main marketing system of it's product line. Hana's Magical Transformation Trinket is an example of what a regular toy from this franchise might look like: colorful, and true to its animated/illustrated "origin," but plastic. In other words, keeping to the standard of pre-existing franchises that create similar products such as the previously mentioned merchandise driven animes and even male targeted franchises like Power Rangers and Transformers.  However, what is unique to this plan is that the designs would be compatible with both the mold making or 3D printing restraints of both plastic/resin and metal.

The narrative and marketing system surrounds this key principle:

When a magical girl deactivates her magical transformation trinket upon the Decommissioning Table, it loses not only its powers but also hardens into a heavy, cold, colorless form of itself. That is to say, it becomes a solid chunk of metal.

Hana and Midori's trinkets both originate from 3D printed Strong and Flexible plastic. Hana's is simply printed then sanded to 1200 grit and airbrushed with model paints, akin to those used for Gundam models. Midori's prints are wax casted in white bronze then assembled to lock a Swarovski crystal between its parts.

As an anime, the narrative of BunnyTale takes a great deal of influence from the 2011 anime Puella Magi Madoka Magica.  Commonly referred to as simply Madoka Magica, the TV series is a significant addition to the genre as it is a deconstruction of everything it attempts to represent. Where nearly every anime within this subgenre represents the role and destiny of a magical girl as a highly rewarding lifestyle filled with empowerment, friendship, and personal fulfillment, Madoka Magica exposes the reality of what it means to be a magical girl: a thankless job full of physical, psychological, and emotional agony where a positive and happy disposition is crucial to survival and success. Following in the footsteps of Madoka Magica, BunnyTale comes with the understanding that every addition to a genre expands the boundaries of what define it and further clarifies what already exists.  Thus, BunnyTale  expands on Madoka Magica's  narrative intentions to explain the realities of being a magical girl, particularly through tropes untouched by its predecessor.

As a project, BunnyTale attempts to create a framework and design process which creates a more symbiotic relationship between visual development/narrative construction and product design in the context of merchandise-driven media. Often the product is the afterthought of the show to further profit from pre-existing media, other times the cartoon is the afterthought, serving as a 11-22 minute long toy commercial.