Bunnies for Cuteness

"BUNNYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!"

— Behemoth upon seeing the Easter Bunny, The Nightmare Before Christmas

With their long ears, twitchy noses, and rounded fluffy bodies, bunnies are often used in media to invoke feelings of sweetness, innocence, childishness and general cuteness. Real rabbits can be used for this, but so can stuffed rabbits or other types of toy rabbits or rabbit related accessories. Characters meant to be viewed as cute might have a rabbit-related Animal Motif. Very energetic personalities and Nice Guy (or Nice Girl) personalities are often common with these characters.

Stuffed bunnies might also be used to invoke the concept of children caught in a horrific situation if used in an Empathy Doll Shot. Contrast Hair-Raising Hare and compare Playboy Bunny.

See also Cute Kitten, Precious Puppy, Pandaing to the Audience, and Ridiculously Cute Critter.

Not to be confused with Bridge Bunnies.

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Examples

Anime and Manga

• Negima! Magister Negi Magi:
  • Negi Springfield wears a bunny costume during a part of the festival arc. While he is wearing the outfit, his normally serious behavior is replaced with childish enthusiasm, and other characters comment on how cute the outfit makes him.
  • Nodoka sometimes wears a bunny backpack as a cute accessory to her adventuring outfit.
• Ouran High School Host Club uses a bunny motif for the "Boy Lolita" character Honey to help establish his identiy as the cute character of the Host Club. He frequently carries a stuffed rabbit called "Usa-chan", uses a "bunny kick" as one of his martial arts moves, and is himself sometimes compared to a rabbit. He also has bunny patterns on many of his belongings, and a bunny background pattern is sometimes used in the manga in panels that feature him.
• Pita-Ten has an angel named Misha who wears bunny shaped hair decorations which signify her childish and cute characterization.
• Vivio in the Lyrical Nanoha series has a bunny motif associated with her, fitting her bright and positive personality. In Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha ViVid, even her Device is shaped like a bunny.
  • Vita also had a stuffed bunny, whose design can be seen on her nice hat.
• Bleach:
  • Standoffish and cool Rukia has a soul candy dispenser with a cute bunny face on it.
  • Lampshaded when Ichigo learns that Rukia was trying to get that one for him when she got Kon (who came in a duck-faced dispenser). He calls her on the cutesyness and, in a sort of nervous anger, she responds that she likes bunnies.
• In Nura: Rise of the Yokai Clan, Kana Ienaga has pink bunny decorations on her bag.
• The Happy Happy Clover anime and manga◊ by Sayuri Tatsuyama is fond of this trope.◊ Just about every rabbit◊ is like this.◊ Especially Mallow◊ and Clover.◊
• Fruits Basket has Momiji, who is possessed by the Spirit of the Rabbit. He's the only Member of the Zodiac who really embraces his Zodiac form, as evidenced by the bunny plushies, bunny hoodies, bunny backpacks, bunny stationary, and being the first male Juunishi to hug Tohru on purpose. Somewhat subverted, though, since he's actually one of the most emotionally mature of the Sohmas (even though he looks like the youngest).
• Bokko/Captain Bunny◊ from Osamu Tezuka's "The Amazing 3" is an older example in Anime/Manga going as far back as 1965. She was voiced by Corrine Orr in the English Dub.
• This is one contributor of Is the Order a Rabbit?'s cuteness; the town is literally full of cute bunnies. Businesses also often have "rabbit" in their names.
• Sanrio is fond of this trope. As of 2008, there are three anime shows that star talking rabbits. Such as My Melody, Ruby and The Sugarbunnies. In 2010, a new Sanrio character series was created called "Wish Me Mell"◊ which stars a friendly rabbit named "Mell" who is meant to be a character that expresses the feelings every one has, simply stating "Thank you", "I am sorry" or "I like you!", connecting hearts in the process. While the character hasn't gotten an anime series yet, she's pretty popular in Japan to the point that Sanrio even gave her an official a Facebook,Twitter, and Vine account. There's also BonBonRibbon◊ that was created in 2012. Who is another rabbit character. Let's just say, Sanrio really loves rabbits.
• Iyo one of the talking stuffed animals from◊ Animal Yokocho.
• Mimirin from Shima Shima Tora no Shimajirō. The only one word that can adequately describe her is Dawwwwwwwwww!
• From Jewelpet, there's Ruby, who's the protagonist, as well as Luea, Luna, Io and the non-canon, light novel only Lollip.
  • There are also the Sweetspets Eclan and Macaronia.
• Patty Rabbit◊ from the 1986 series Maple Town is a very caring and adventurous rabbit. She really cares for her friends and family, especially her baby brother and her best friend Bobby.
• Suzy's Zoo: Daisuki! Witzy: Lulla, who's a musical fluffy plush white rabbit. It doesn't get any better than this.
• In BanG Dream!, Tae Hanazono owns twenty rabbits, one of which she calls her "boyfriend" and whom she even takes to see her perform in concert. In the video game spinoff BanG Dream! Girls Band Party!, one event has a bunch of her school's bunnies escape, and she and her friends work together to get them all back, with the associated gacha cards featuring them playing with or trying to catch the shy critters.
• Deconstructed with Haru from Beastars. Because she's a rabbit, everyone treats her like she's an adorable, defenseless creature, and she hates it. The main reason she Really Gets Around is because she feels that people only ever take her seriously during sex.
• Lavie of Lapis Re:LiGHTs takes care of two rabbits in Flora Girls' Academy and in EP 3, her friend and fellow LiGHTS member Ashley uses a bunny patch to fix her PE uniform.
• Chapters 94 and 95 of 'Tis Time for "Torture," Princess are mainly an excuse to draw adorable rabbits (Chapter 94 sees Krall use one as the day's "torture", while Chapter 95 is Torture's perspective on 94's events).
• Hyakunichikan!!: Adorable five-year-old Chiho is often associated with rabbits, especially her expressive Girlish Pigtails. Later on she and Shuuto adopt a pet rabbit she found as a stray.

Asian Animation

• Pleasant Goat Fun Class: Miss Earth, the rabbit who guides the goats around the amusement park rides in the season The Earth Carnival, is a pretty adorable and nice little rabbit.

Fan Works

• In the Total Drama Island reimagining, The Legend of Total Drama Island, the gentle and inoffensive D.J. finds and adopts a bunny during the camping challenge, as per canon; but where the original played the trope more or less straight, the reimagining subverts the trope when the bunny's grisly demise triggers a conflict storyline.
• Khilari's Everything's Better With Bunnies is based off this trope: it's an AU where Loki involuntarily shapeshifts into a bunny whenever he's upset.

Films — Animation

• In Rise of the Guardians there is Bunnymund, which is reverted to the size of an adorable little rabbit, once children all over the world stopped believing in the Easter Bunny.
  Jamie: What happened to him? He used to be huge and cool, and now he's cute!
• Deconstructed in Zootopia. In Zootopia, this is the widely acknowledged stereotype of bunnies, though only other bunnies can call bunnies cute, and Judy gives the Innocently Insensitive Clawhauser a friendly reminder of this. Fans speculate that non-bunnies calling bunnies cute means their personal merits, their intelligence in particular, aren't being valued.

Films — Live-Action

• In 8 Mile, B. Rabbit's friends insist that his name is because of his speedy rapping and promiscuity, but it's later revealed to be the pet name his mother gave him for his big ears, buck teeth and extreme cuteness. Later in the movie, she gushes over his cute face and tells him that he'll always be her little bunny rabbit.
• Cool World:
  • Double subverted with an unnamed bunny character seen gambling with Holli's goons. He/she is one of the only doodles who look sane compared to the others, but does go Hair-Raising Hare mode on the doodle police officers when they ignore seeing him/her cry about getting cheated by said goons. By climbing up on one officer's face. The bunny then goes "Pretty Please", starting the chase scene with the cops and goons.
  • The mother bunnies children also fit this trope, despite only having a brief scene prior to Holli and Jack's sex scene.
• Roger Rabbit from Who Framed Roger Rabbit can be this sometimes, especially in his cartoon shorts, but you don't want to get on his bad side when something personal happens.

Jokes

• Defied in this one which borders on Black Comedy: a little girl walks into a pet store full of bunnies and asks the clerk in a sweet, kiddy voice, "Exc-kuse me, mither, can I have have a widdle bunny?"
  The clerk, seeing a Cheerful Child in his shop, decides to entertain her. "Yes, sweetie, of course. Would you like a cutie bwown bunny, or a little fuwwy white wabby, or maybe a bushy gwey wabby with a cute widdle pinkie nosey?"
  At which point the little girl replies, "I don't fink my pet pyfon gives a thith."

Live-Action TV

• In The Jim Henson Hour, Bean Bunny's role as the Ridiculously Cute Critter is repeatedly lampshaded.
• On Psych, Gus attempts to use bunnies to break the news to Shawn that he has a secret girlfriend. It doesn't work. Then it does.
• In M*A*S*H, the resident Country Mouse owns a bunny named Fluffy. Said Country Mouse is one of the most innocent people in the series.
• The live-action edutainment show geared towards infants called Harry The Bunny stars a cute young bunny named Harry.
• Schitt's Creek has an In-Universe example when Alexis sets up a bunny cam in Kindly Vet Ted's office to help adopt out the animals. However, Ted ends up giving some accidental Fanservice to the bunny cam viewers by getting undressed in front of the camera after his run.

Literature

• Beatrix Potter used this trope many times in her children's books, like The Tale of Peter Rabbit and The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies. The bunnies were always presented as cute and adorable.
• The little-known Emily the Rabbit books by Claire Masurel and Susan Calitri has the adorable-beyond-words titular character. No relations to D.W.'s classmate who shares the same name and species.
• Pat the Bunny by Dorothy Kunhardt—which most people have at least read once in their childhood.
• Guess How Much I Love You by Sam McBratney and Anita Jeram—another childhood classic.
• Abigail from Hallmark's line of Interactive Story Buddies toy and book series.
• Rosemary Wells is fond of bunny characters in her books. Max and Ruby, Bunny Planet, and Read To Your Bunny are great examples.
• The covers of some editions of Watership Down may have vaguely implied this. The actual story, on the other hand...
• The Velveteen Rabbit is a stuffed rabbit, but still evokes this.

Music

• Doctor Steel flirted with adorkableness once; after visiting a music website whose anime-inspired animation seemed to consist of "Tiny Little Bunnies Eating Hamburgers", he wrote a song about it.
• In the video for Ladytron's Ghosts, many rabbits add cuteness to imagery that would otherwise be quite dark. It's in context a Shout-Out to Watership Down, as one of the lyrics alludes to "prince of a thousand enemies".
• Snuggle Bunny (Schnuffel) is one of Jamba!'s more well-known mascots. He's a cute little gray and white lop eared rabbit who sings adorable, Chipmunks-eqsue songs, many of which are very catchy.
  • A few years later, Jamster created a second bunny character named Snuggelina (Schnuffelienchen) who is Snuggle's girlfriend and both really love each other.◊ There are two songs by Snuggelina that mainly focuses on her relationship with Snuggle both in German and English while one is her singing about a Butterfly.

Pinball

• In Slick Chick, the various Playboy Bunnies are accompanied by a distinctively cartoonish rabbit.

Toys

• The mascot for Mattel's "Miracle Baby" is a cute female bunny.
  • Mattel also used to have a line of baby toys called Angel Bunny[1]^note No relations to Fluttershy's pet between 1984 and 1985. The titular character is a cute little white bunny.
• One of the main families in the Sylvanian Families (Calico Critters in the US) franchise is rabbits. In the OVA, Western Animation, and the 2010's animated shorts and short films, one of the main protagonists is a girl rabbit named Rebecca Sweetpea. Starting in the mid 2010's, the main protagonist of the franchise is a female rabbit named Bell Hopscotch.◊ (or Freya Chocolate, if you're getting the European version of the shorts)
• The Precious Moments gift and toy range often also has cute bunnies.
• All of the bunnies from German toy brand "Magiki Bunnies" are adorable looking.
• In the Tamagotchi series, the Tamagotchis are ridiculously cute aliens that resemble Earth animals for certain breeds. Two breeds in particular, Mimitchi and Lovelitchi, have white coloring and long ears that make them look like White Bunnies.

Video Games

• Jumping Flash!: Robbit himself. Because why else would you be a robotic space rabbit?
• Doom: Used for humorous effect in the episode "Thy Flesh Consumed". The finale of the original campaign saw Doomguy heading home to earth to find it overrun by demons. As if the invasion itself wasn't bad enough, they even killed his pet rabbit Daisy and stuck her head on a spike. And if you thought Doomguy was mad at the demons before...
• In the Touhou Project series, we have the Spin-Off Yonkoma manga Inaba of the Moon and Inaba of the Earth, which is filled with cute bunnies. This page is just one of the many examples.
• The Pokémon Buneary, Azumarill, Bunnelby, Scorbunny and Lopunny to an extent. Averted with Diggersby.
• In True Love Junai Monogatari, one of the items in the Hidden Shop is a rabbit pendant. You should buy it if you want to romance Remi Himekawa, who will ask for it if she sees it.
• Power Pete: The Fuzzy Bunnies, which escaped from a cage in the Stuffed Animal Zoo (which is in the Doll Department of the Toy Mart) and scattered throughout the store, prompting the title character to escape from his packaging and set off to round them back up and return them to their proper place.
• Reader Rabbit: Especially the late 90s redesign.
• Sonic The Hedgehog: Cream the Rabbit. Polite, shy and kind, it's no wonder that she has a Broken Base in the Sonic fandom- one faction loves her for her Moe qualities, while the other doesn't like how she ranks the cutesy factor off the charts.
• The Legendary Starfy: There's an entire SPECIES of them on Planet Bunnera. They even have magical shapeshifting powers!
• In Ensemble Stars!, this is naturally the theme of the unit Ra*bits, which has a cute, sailor-suited, youthful look. Nazuna in particular is associated with bunnies - the kanji in his surname means 'two rabbits' (he even draws them as bunnies in his signature) and he has pet rabbits at home - and he is often called cute by the other characters, much to his irritation given that he is a third year and would rather be treated as a Big Brother Mentor.
• The Mascot Mook for the World of Mana is a small, yellow, limbless lagomorph known as a Rabite. While adorable beyond measure, they are usually newbie fodder and don't pose much of a threat... so long as their fur isn't colored black.
• Snuggle: There's Snuggle himself, the rabbit with big eyes who always makes cutesy facial expressions.
• A bunny mask serves to help indicate Neon Violet from Neon White as a cutesy, upbeat, childish girl, in contrast to Neon White's demonic mask.
• The Galaxy Angel gameverse has space rabbits aboard the Elsior, which Vanilla often plays with. She even adopts one for herself though it sadly dies of old age, leaving her heartbroken.

Webcomics

• In AntiBunny at least 90% of the cast are bunnies.
• Blade Bunny - The title character has bunny ears. Why? It makes her look cute. And her name is Bunny.
• In Penny and Aggie, when Sara gushes over how "cuuuuute" she finds the title characters as a couple, dancing bunny faces appear around her head.
• A rare dramatic example in El Goonish Shive. At one point late into a story arc Susan angsts majorly and begins to awaken magical powers, which are about to go haywire. Jerry the Immortal manages to cast serenity magic to calm her down, which manifests itself as cute, fluffy animals surrounding her, two of which are bunnies.
• The whole point of Scenes from a Multiverse's Bunnies Planet, in the Zones of Adorable.
• In Unfamiliar, Planchette has a cute bunny familiar named Winston, who’s as adorable as he is a Deadpan Snarker.
• Some xkcd characters prefer to call them "buns". This comic has Cueball applying for a grant to introduce the pygmy rabbit to the eastern US — but not for any practical reason, just because they're adorable.

Web Original

• Doki and a few other rabbits from There she is!!.
• Hadriex has a baby bunny named Odin-ear as his "co-star" during Let's Plays. The little fellow got his name because he was born with only one ear.
• Comes up in Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series when Mokuba is upset that his brother Seto won't get him a pet rabbit. Seto would rather get him a tarantula.
  • In another episode, Mokuba goes through Japanese puberty, making him think he's a Pokémon. One of those Pokémon is Buneary.
• Oolong the rabbit, aka Pancake Bunny, is perhaps an earlier example of this trope. Tears were shed when he passed away in 2003.
• The 2016 animated short "Petals" by Krale Zero. Focuses on an unnamed yellow female bunny who tries to bring a flower petal to a park (where most of the trees and flowers had burned due to a forest fire) to start new life.
• Happy Tree Friends has Cuddles, who is one of the nicest, sweetest characters in the series.

Western Animation

• The Noops of The Dreamstone are basically green anthropomorphic rabbits, and the almost sickly sweet residents of the Land Of Dreams.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: Fluttershy, to emphasize her shy cuteness, has a pet rabbit (named Angel, no less), although he doesn't always act cute and cuddly. She also mentions "cute bunnies" in one of her songs.
• Subverted (in a non-Hair-Raising Hare way) in the South Park episode "Pip" (parodying Great Expectations). Pip tries to prove to Estella that she is not an unfeeling monster, because an unfeeling monster wouldn't hurt a cute little bunny rabbit (which Pip pulls from Hammerspace).
  ESTELLA: I told you, Pip. I have no heart.
  PIP: But you do! And I shall prove it to you once and for all! Look at this adorable little bunny.
  ESTELLA: Oh my. 'E's very cute.
  PIP: You see that? A heartless person wouldn't care at all about this bunny. They'd just as soon break its neck. Estella breaks its neck ...Oh. But look at this bunny. There. You see that? You have too big a heart to kill two baby bunnies.Estella kills bunny #2...Right...
  • Estella ends up stopping at 25 baby bunnies. Not because she felt bad, mind you, but because she got bored... and Pip takes that as evidence that she's got a heart.
• Winx Club: Bloom's kawaii pet rabbit Kiko is an example.
• Netflix cartoon Harry and Bunnie Has the titualur Bunnie as something of a subversion. Bunnie is nice enough normally, but he stole Harry's magic wand in the first place causing the whole conflict in the first place.
• The ChalkZone episode "Chocolate Brunch" has Snap finding some Easter eggs he was going to eat with Blocky, and chocolate bunnies end up hatching from the eggs. While Snap still wants to eat them, Blocky refuses as the bunnies are too cute. Eventually, Snap gives in due to their cuteness.
• Care Bears: Welcome to Care-a-Lot and spinoff Care Bears & Cousins has Wonderheart bear, who is already as cute as is. But her cuteness is enhanced by Floppy Bunny, her Companion Cube plush rabbit.
• Daffodil from Clifford's Puppy Days is Emily Elizabeth's first pet and serves a mother figure to Clifford.
• Disney's Bambi gives us Thumper and his little sisters and later the cream-colored bunny Thumper falls in love with who is named Miss Bunny.
• Beehonie from Kissyfur is a female bunny who appears to have a crush on Kissyfur.
• In the sequel to The Emperor's New Groove called "Kronk's New Groove", near the end of Kronk's story about the citizens getting tricked by Yzma for lying about the potion turning them young. Near the end of the chase between her and the angry old people, she turns herself into a cute pink bunny which makes the elders gush and start forgiving her until she gets grabbed by a bird and is later seen inside a bird's nest near the end of the film.
• The 2016 VR and "Interactive" short "Invasion!" directed by Dreamworks and PDI veteran Eric Darnell features bunnies pitting against aliens.
• As noted under Literature, subverted by Watership Down. While rightfully considered a classic of animated film, it has traumatized no small number of children since it's release in 1978 because of misinformed parents sitting them down to watch the movie about the cute, adorable bun—OOOOOHMYGOOOOD!
• One of the characters in the 1980's version of Strawberry Shortcake was an adorable bunny named Hopsalot.
• The 1991 direct-to-video film Timmy's Gift by Precious Moments stars a young angel named Timmy, who's following a light from Heaven. Throughout the film, he encounters various talking animals. One animal that he befriends is a timid white rabbit who becomes Timmy's travel companion◊. By the end of the film, Timmy and his animal friends encounter Mary and Joseph after Jesus' birth.

Other

• Some of the art by Penny Parkler has very adorable and cute◊ bunnies.◊ Especially the ones related to easter.◊
• The website "Bunnies By The Bay" which makes baby clothing and stuffed animals features adorable bunnies.
• Okunoshima is an island in Japan that's teeming with wild rabbits. For a fee, you can visit the island by ferry and bring optional snacks to feed the hundreds of rabbits that call the island their home.

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