Bunny Must Die

Chelsea must beat the seven devils to death!

Victory Pose!

Bunny Must Die: Chelsea and the 7 Devils is a Japanese Metroidvania indie game released in 2006 for Windows PC by Platine Dispositif, the creator of the Gundemonium Series. The game borrows many of the mechanics from Metroid and Castlevania as well as adding many new ones. The most interesting new mechanic in the game is the titular protagonist, Bunny's abilities to slow, freeze, or reverse time. There are also many other abilities, items, and weapons power-ups to play around and experiment with. As an added bonus, there's an unlockable character that offers a different take on the game's storyline.

The introductory plot is as follows. After being near a cattomic power plant explosion, poor Bunny has been cursed with a pair of cat ears. Soon, a "fat messenger of god" appears and guides her to the Cave of the Devils to help get rid of her curse. Unfortunately for Bunny upon entering the cave, the "fat messenger of god" gets attacked by some random steer, gets stabbed twenty four times by its horns and dies. Thankfully the steer just wanders off after killing him, but Bunny is now lost in the Cave of the Devils still needing to find a way to remove her curse.

An unofficial English translation patch of the game by Non-directional Translations can be found here (click on "1.1" under "Patch Version").

An official English release of Bunny Must Die: Chelsea and the 7 Devils is currently in the works by the doujin localization company, Rockin' Android, with optional remastered soundtrack (provided by Woofle, who arranged the soundtrack for the Steam Edition of Hitogata Happa) and updated graphics. It is expected for Summer 2012 release on PC and video game consoles via digital distribution services.

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Bunny's quest through the Caves of the Devils provides examples of:

• One Hundred Percent Completion
• Action Girl: Bunny.
  • Dark Action Girl: Chelsea subverts this trope as she's actually a heroic Action Girl.
• Another Side, Another Story: If Bunny collects seven time power ups and beats the game, it unlocks the mode Chelsea and 7 Devils, where you play as Chelsea to see more of the plot.
• All There in the Manual: Full names of most bosses can only be found in manual and Achievements list.
• Beehive Barrier: The walking machines with the big cannons use one to protect themselves when hit.
• Berserk Button: Bunny strongly objects to being called a cat.
  • The first boss, El Bobomboi, also takes her role as the First Devil very seriously. It's possible to get to the second boss and beat it first, but if you do this, El Bobomboi gets pissed and opts to attack at full power, making the fight against her several times harder.
• BFS: Bunny's weapon, the Faust Samurai.
  • Which, notably, makes it Bunny's Faust Samurai.
• Bizarre Sexual Dimorphism: Based on the time controlling powers of her race, Bunny's apparently an actual bunny, and not just a girl in a suit. The game also features male bunnies, which are distinctly more rabbit-like. So it seems to be that males of the bunny race are actual bunnies, while the females are mostly human-looking girls.
• Breast Expansion: Bunny gets a special suit which grants the ability to increase her bust size, weapon power, and ability to take less damage at the cost of her agility. Bunny's default posture is actually a little bizarre until she gets this upgrade, when suddenly the pronounced backward slouch counterbalances the prodigious mammaries in front.
• Black Magician Girl: Chelsea
• Bullet Hell: One of Chelsea's modes as a boss, as well as the seventh Devil whom Chelsea fights.
• Cast from Hit Points: Inverted; there's a time power that gives you life in exchange for time.
• Continuity Nod, or perhaps Mythology Gag: If the Achievements screen is to be believed, the scythe wielding girl that appears right before Baron Vladmu's boss area is named Selena Millfall. Is this a mere coincidence, or could she be connected in some way to Eryth Millfall?
• Cosmetic Award
• Cute Kitten: Nuko Do Maron, the third Devil, is a giant kitten.
• Demonic Possession: Chelsea's final bosses include Bunny being possessed by Dechronos.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?
• Double Jump: One of Chelsea's spells.
• Edge Gravity
• Eleventh-Hour Superpower: Bunny in her invincible gold suit comes in to rescue Chelsea immediately after Chelsea loses a Hopeless Boss Fight.
  • Arguably, the time ability Alternative.
• Eloquent in My Native Tongue: While Bunny can never understand what most of the bosses are saying, Chelsea has no problem communicating with them (except the pumpkin girl boss, who's to shy to carry on a conversation anyway).
• Essence Drop: Enemies will drop Time Crystals when Bunny kills them, refilling her time meter.
• Everything's Better with Princesses: Chelsea, the elf princess.
• Evolving Attack: Chelsea's shot becomes more powerful when she defeats a boss.
• Excuse Plot
• Expy: There's a female Shinigami as Death and the boss, Baron Vladmu, is a highly bastardized version of Dracula from Castlevania.
  • There's also one boss who's pretty much identical to Seven Force from Gunstar Heroes.
• Extra Eyes: The boss Eyes of Thirteen Sages is nothing but eyes. It shoots fireballs from its eyes.
• Faceless Eye: Moon's Shadow Endymion, who you fight before Nuko Do Maron, which is just a large floating eye. It also shoots fireballs.
• Faking the Dead: The "fat messenger of god" is shown to be alive and well after Bunny's playthrough.
• Forehead of Doom: The first boss, El Bobomboi, has a large forehead. If you Sequence Break and fight her after the second boss, you can see this is her Berserk Button.
• Fragile Speedster / Mighty Glacier: Bunny can change outfits later in the game. In her normal outfit, she is a Fragile Speedster, while in her busty outfit, she is a Mighty Glacier, with improved attack and defense but lower jumps and moves slower than normal.
• Gainaxing: Bunny in her busty outfit.
• Guide Dang It: "It's not a bug?"
  • Also, to get to the final boss Chelsea And The Seven Devils, you have to break into the Very Definitely Final Dungeon ahead of time, via a secret entrance that not only wasn't necessary at all in Bunny Must Die, but is not revealed when Chelsea uses the Eye Of Truth (which reveals pretty much every other hidden block or gate or item), and then use the "Wrath Of God" power to break into the final chamber. There's really no indication that the secret entrance is one, either.
    • It's slightly easier to figure out if you actually went back to the area as Bunny (ostensibly to get the Green Orb door) after triggering the flags that cause Chelsea to spawn - the gate that once blocked the Time upgrade is broken, so Chelsea must have passed by to get to the final area, since gates she destroys are gone for good, and only gates that she needs to destroy to get through her route are broken in Bunny Must Die. After you figure that out, you just need to search past the upgrade for it.
  • It's impossible to know the requirements for unlocking Achievements. The only way to get them is to stumble on them by accident or save scum once you discover the existence of the "Defeat boss X with weapon Y" Achievements.
• Goomba Stomp
• Gratuitous English: The Dracula knockoff speaks in English, much to the Japanese-speaking Bunny's dismay. Specifically, he speaks entirely in Zero Wing quotes. In the English patch, he instead speaks in Gratuitous German and says, among other things "Ich bin ein Berliner".
• Hartman Hips: Bunny, without the Breast Expansion-inducing suit.
  • Hourglass Hottie: Bunny with the Breast Expansion-inducing suit.
• Heart Container
• Hopeless Boss Fight: Chelsea gets stomped by the final boss.
  • And then the trope gets inverted when Gold Bunny comes to her rescue and uses the superpowers it gave her while she was possessed to kick its ass in return. It's impossible to lose this fight.
• I Love Cattomic Power: Well, okay, Bunny doesn't, because of her new cat-ears, but one of the game's levels suggests that Cattomic power can be used to make Catgirl Super Soldiers.
• Instant Death Radius: One of Chelsea's final bosses has this ability.
  • Another boss fight takes place in a room full of time-switch columns, meaning you can't stop time or else you'll suffer instant death by reason of being stuck in a solid wall.
• Improbable Weapon User: One of Chelsea's most damaging attacks is a ladder, and it's her only way to deal damage above her.
• King Mook: One of the levels involves fighting with a series of boss versions of the flying pumpkin enemies, with a Moe Antropomorphic version.
• Lethal Joke Item: The aforementioned ladder. Seriously, that thing is powerful!
• Let's You And Her Fight: Bunny and Chelsea.
• Little Miss Badass: Bunny, Chelsea, a couple of the devils and even some of the Mooks.
• Marathon Boss: The final boss fight for both characters (fights plural for Chelsea) have seven different phases plus one fight that you can't lose. Thankfully for Bunny, if you use a Bunny Doll after you die, the game picks up from the form you were at last, restores your HP and Time gauges, and allows you to walk back to the previous room and switch weapons.
• Metroidvania
• Mutually Exclusive Powerups: Bunny can use several different weapons, but only one at a time.
  • Self Shooter: Rapid-fire throwing knives. The default weapon.
  • Spike Hammer: An Epic Flail. Does massive damage, but is hard to control.
  • Faust Samurai: A Laser Blade. Supposedly possessed by a demon.
  • Black Wing: Precision Guided Boomerangs. Can return to Bunny or orbit her.
  • Roppongi Missile: Weak homing missiles that choose their own targets.
• Nice Hat: Chelsea's hat
• Nintendo Hard: You will die, many, many times and the game keeps track (The death counter is located near the spot where the yellow and white maps are next to each other). There is an achievement for dying 1000 times, as well.
• One Curse Limit: One boss attempts to curse Bunny in his death throes. It doesn't work, because of this.
• One-Hit Kill: Two bosses have these: Baron Vladmu has his flashing attack (which can be avoided by looking away from him when he does it), and Chelsea's third form summons gigantic crosshairs to chase the player around and shoot at her. If it grazes you it does minimal damage, but if it's dead-on, BAM! HEADSHOT!
• Our Time Travel Is Different
• Our Vampires Are Different
• People Jars
• Petting Zoo People: Some of the Mooks. Bunny herself one ups the standard version of this trope as she is both a Catgirl ("I'm not a cat!") and a Bunny Girl.
• Playboy Bunny: Bunny's outfit as pictured above. A few of the Mooks wear one too.
• Reset Button: The final time power, "Alternative". Bunny instinctively activates it when Dechronos is trying to kill her. It rewinds time back to the beginning of the story, and lets you play as the "alternative" protagonist, Chelsea. Chelsea's actions are different this time around (for one, Bunny doesn't beat Bobomboi before she gets a chance to), so the power ends up creating an "alternative" history.
• Running Gag: Bunny being unable to communicate with any of the bosses.

Bunny: Aww man, this guy doesn't listen to anybody either!

• Secret AI Moves: Bunny and Chelsea as bosses have attacks that you can't ever do.
• Sequence Breaking: Lampshaded by the first devil, El Bobomboi. If you sequence break and get to defeat other devils first, when you have to forcefully fight her to progress with the game, she gives you a convo about how she was supposed to be the first boss you fought, Turns Red, and gives you one hell of a fight. This is needed to get an achievement.
• Shaggy Dog Story: By the end of the game, Bunny still hasn't gotten rid of her cat ears.
• Shout-Out: At least a few.
  • Weapons, time, and mana can be found in destroyed torches ala Castlevania.
  • The boss Baron Vladmu fights very similarly to Castlevania's Dracula. He talks entirely in Zero Wing quotes.
  • The doors near the final boss area are a definite homage to Metroid.
  • The opening textdump is an almost line-by-line parody of Fist of the North Star, down to obligatory setting of year 199X.
  • Bunny's ability to stop time and throw knives is very much an homage to Dio Brando and Sakuya Izayoi. There are also yukkuri enemies.
  • One secret area shows a character having an epileptic fit in front of a TV showing a mouse-like thing on a blue and red flashing background, a reference to an infamous Pokémon episode.
  • The Seventh Devil, Septentrion Pleiades, is a nod to Seven Force.
  • The Shinigami miniboss looks just like Eryth Millfall from the Gundemonium games by the same creator, though she also bears resemblance to Elly of Touhou. She also throws scythes around in a way that much resembles Death from Castlevania.
  • Chelsea's third phase summons sniper crosshairs to shoot at Bunny, and when they're first summoned, Golgo 13's face appears on the screen for a brief second.
  • If Bunny manages to piss her off, El Bobomboi will say she'll write her name in a notepad. The translation will blatantly point this out.
• Spread Shot: As Chelsea defeats the Devils, her attack becomes a more and more powerful Initial Burst.
• Sword Lines
• Talking Is a Free Action
• Timey-Wimey Ball: As Bunny's time abilities all tend to work very differently.
• Too Awesome to Use: Chelsea's Elixirs.
• Treacherous Advisor: The "fat messenger of god" is actually the traitorous devil Dechronos.
• Unusual Ears: Bunny's cursed-on cat ears, in addition to her usual bunny ears. She's a little touchy about it.
• Unwitting Pawn: In Bunny's part of the game, she's being used to further Dechronos's selfish plans.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential: Unlike all of Bunny's other bosses, Chelsea stays on the screen, out cold but alive, after you beat her. And you can keep attacking her after she's already down. And the game rewards you for this by giving you Time refill gems each time you hit her.
  • You can do the same to Bunny as Chelsea, but there's no reward this time around.
• Wall Jump: One of Bunny's gained abilities.
• Wave Motion Gun: A lot of enemies shoot continuous beams, but the large walking turret enemies probably count the most. Probably the worst example is the first stage of the Chelsea fight, where she shoots massive beams that chase Bunny down and absolutely wreck her HP if she gets caught in one of them.
• White-Haired Pretty Girl: Bunny
• Widget Series: If the plot didn't convince you, some of the bosses may. One boss is a giant photorealistic cat that shoots "Cattomic" fires from his paws. Another is a Dracula knockoff who speaks in Gratuitous English (or German in the English patch), has guns built into his giant pompadour and his... well... elsewhere, and can kill Bunny instantly by flashing her. Oh, and you can fight exploding yukkuris and get abducted by a hidden UFO. Yup, this game is weird.
• You Gotta Have Pink Hair: Chelsea. Some of the devils and Mooks also have odd hair colours.
• You Have Researched Breathing: A rather tongue in cheek usage: Bunny starts the game without the ability to turn around and thus walk right. Barely one screen to the left of your starting point is the Gears of the Past, the item that gives you this ability. The game even adds a fancy color effect every time Bunny turns around.
  • This serves mostly as a shoutout/parody of the original Metroid, where the Morph Ball was similarly just left of the start, and was necessary to get any further in the game. The game's creator seems to be poking fun at the idea of not just starting you with an ability you will spend no part of the game without.
  • Interestingly, Bunny does start the game with the ability to dash backwards a short distance, and the Jump Physics also allow you to move backwards while airborne, which means it is possible, though quite inconvenient, to move right without the powerup. Needless to say, there are people who have finished the game without this powerup. In fact, if you're going for a low completion-rate, skipping the Gears of the Past may be a good idea.
• Zero Effort Boss: The very, very final boss of the game has you playing a super-powered Bunny throwing BFSes and auto-parrying all attacks.