Once known as a bustling and chaotic city of youth, Shibugaya has become a ghost town ever since man-eating rabbits took up residence underground… But in the face of such danger, wolf girl Izuko, with her bunny girl friend by her side, arrive on the scene to take on the underground!

Thus Spoke the Rabbit has story by and art by Satori Kōnosu. English translation is done by Meredith Singer. Lettering by Byong Je Chun. Published by Yen Press (September 22, 2026). Rated M.

Jean-Karlo Lemus
Rating:

Thus Spoke the Rabbit has a pretty simple premise, but that doesn't work against it. Rather, the simplistic characters do. Protagonist Izuko works with the loser-rabbit Kyouka to hunt down all of the killer rabbits that have taken over the fictional Shibugaya Station. Izuko is exactly as she appears: she's a gruff girl with wolf-ears who's out to rescue her missing senpai from the rabbits. Meanwhile, Kyouka is a hapless girl-failure who can't be trusted as far as she can be thrown. Half of the fun of the series is in seeing these two at each others' throats. But there's not much in the way of forward momentum in that regard.

Volume 1 has a much more interesting sub-plot in the form of Banri and Inaba, a human and human-rabbit specifically who bond over their love of maps and liminal spaces. There's a bit of pathos here, since we know that Inaba is responsible for a lot of dead humans... and yet, we sympathize with her and Banri, even though much of their friendship is implied behind the scenes (and in the between-chapter four-koma comics). It's disappointing that Inaba has to be taken out of the story so soon, but this also leaves Banri as potentially the most interesting character in the story. What'll happen when she's reunited with the girl who killed her new friend?

The real star of the manga are the backgrounds. Mangaka Satori Kōnosu took the pains in really bringing Shibugaya Station to life, basing off of the real-life Shibuya Station. Banri waxes some philosophic on the appeal of liminal spaces, and the background really sells that: nonsense rabbit signs, arrows pointing to nonsense locations, an actual café tucked away within a maze... There is plenty of humor about Shibuya Station constantly being under construction, it's nice to see that manifest with a constantly-expanding labyrinth of a train station. Great pain is taken to draw the paneled walls and tied flooring at every opportunity, selling the vibe of Shibugaya as a sterile, alien place where humans really shouldn't be.

The fights in Thus Spoke the Rabbit are brief but creative. I do take issue with the manga spoiling what Inaba's tools do long before Izuko ever meets her, but at the very least they're extremely creative—such that Izuko's ostensible victory over Inaba feels rather arbitrary. There is some humor to be had with the killer rabbits, being that they exclusively speak in signs and carry out silly tasks like wearing hard hats.

The artwork thankfully doesn't go for the obvious angle of gore, opting for people to “petrify” when bitten by a rabbit as the rabbits nibble on your broken-off bits (and it's apparently a reversible process).

Also, there's a great deal of variety with the rabbits even before the human rabbits are introduced. There is some light suggestiveness in the artwork, like Kyouka groping Banri's boobs or two panels on one page that really lavished attention on Izuko's hitherto-unseen panties. I give Thus Spoke the Rabbit a mild recommendation. The individual parts are charming and memorable, but the overall package is missing just a bit from it all. But—this volume does leave off on a very effective cliffhanger, so I can see folks getting hooked on this.

Bolts
Rating:

What if rabbits were taking over the world? That sounds very silly, and a majority of this story is, but the idea of a zombie apocalypse action story revolving around rabbits instead of zombies does put a smile on my face that I admittedly was not expecting. A young girl named Izuko with wolf ears has vowed to kill every rabbit that she comes across, whether they're normal-looking rabbits or humanoid rabbits. These rabbits have more or less taken over the world and are attempting to tear apart humans everywhere. Despite the huge stakes, the world-building is still kept intentionally vague with an air of mystery that I do find refreshing. There's a good balance here between delivering on an action-adventure story while building up the mysterious circumstances that volume one doesn't completely give away. Everyone has their own agenda in this story, and that leads to some interesting and ominous character interactions.

Some of the characters are a bit boring, but I appreciate how kinetic and fluid the fight choreography is. For a story that basically boils down to girls with animal ears fighting in an abandoned subway, the art direction and framing do carry a lot of forward momentum that makes this very easy to breeze through in a quick afternoon. There is a solid contrast between how edgy some of the characters act and how overly cute a lot of the premise is, but I think that disposition is part of the appeal. Everyone in the series is taking everything so seriously when I, as a reader, find at least some humor in what is literally going on. It is a decent twist on a very tired idea that gives the story a little bit of mileage.

I at least was able to finish this first volume finding things solidly entertaining, but I'm not quite sure how well that mileage will carry beyond this first volume. Even if I learn more about the world, so far, a lot of the characters are very simple, with a promise that things will get more complex as the story goes on, which makes it hard to judge things now. This is a competently put together setup, and I want to believe that this is building to something noteworthy. Where did the rabbits come from? Why do some girls have animal ears? Who is going to betray who? On its own, this is an entertaining first volume, but you might want to wait a bit before sinking your teeth in if you're looking for something with a bit more rabbit meat on its bones.