Understanding Of The Bunny Suicides
I ran into this track a few years back while digging through anime OSTs, and it stuck with me more than most songs in that genre tend to. It's by Elements Garden, featured in the visual novel and anime series Sakura Taisen. Specifically, it's tied to the character Sakura Shinguji and carries that signature Elements Garden blend of orchestral sweep mixed with J-pop sensibilities. The full title is "Sakura Taisen: Of The Bunny Suicides" and it functions as an insert song within the franchise. If you're looking to download or find it, the easiest route is standard streaming platforms — Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music all carry it. The original album release was on the Sakura Taisen music compilations, specifically Sakura Taisen Kaitou Sentai Benimaru Gundan no Theme or the various game OST discs depending on which release year you're tracking.
What Makes Of The Bunny Suicides Actually Work
Most people dismiss Sakura Taisen music as campy or overly theatrical, and sure, it has those elements. But the arrangement on this particular track is genuinely well-constructed. The brass section carries the main motif, and the orchestration layers in strings that escalate through the bridge before dropping back into the vocal delivery. It's the kind of thing that sounds simple on first listen and reveals its structure on the third or fourth playthrough. The trick with the Sakura Taisen score is that composer Toshihiko Sahashi and arranger Atsushi Enomoto from Elements Garden both operate in a space between classical composition and anime pop. They write themes that are meant to be heard over battle sequences and dramatic cuts, so the dynamics shift quickly — sometimes within a single measure. When you're trying to learn or arrange this piece yourself, that's where people get tripped up. The tempo stays relatively steady, but the time signatures and accent patterns shift around the vocal lines. I tried transcribing the piano version once and kept miscounting the bar lengths because the orchestration accents don't always land where a pianist would naturally expect them. The workaround I ended up using was isolating the bass line first, mapping out where the harmonic changes actually sit, and then layering the melody on top. It took about three hours to get a clean transcription instead of the forty-five minutes I was hoping for.
Where People Go Wrong With This Track
The biggest mistake I see is treating it like a straight J-pop song. It isn't. The intro has a brief classical passage that sets up the key change, and if you play it too casually you lose the tension that resolves when the full ensemble comes back in. Another common issue is the vocal range — the melody sits comfortably for a mezzo-soprano but dips into a lower register that casual singers tend to rush through, making the verse feel undersold before the chorus hits. Also worth noting: the studio recording uses a lot of reverb on the strings, which masks some of the counter-melodies. If you're listening to a compressed or low-bitrate version, you might miss entirely harmonic layers that are clearly present in the full mix. I'd recommend finding the FLAC or at least a 320kbps MP3 if you want to hear what's actually going on under the main theme. Of The Bunny Suicides isn't the most famous track from the series — people usually gravitate toward "Guren no Hana" or the main theme — but it's one of the tighter compositions in the catalog. The arrangement doesn't waste any notes, and the structural choices show someone who actually understands how to build momentum over a two-minute window. That's worth paying attention to if you're studying anime music arrangement at all.
Get the Full Details
For practical listening, I usually queue it after one of the heavier orchestral tracks in the OST just to hear how it contrasts. The shift from full ensemble battle music down to this more intimate, character-driven piece is where the franchise's musical identity really shows through. It's not trying to be profound. It's doing exactly what it's supposed to do and not overreaching, which honestly is harder to pull off than most people realize.
