(or just Ore no Imouto, for simplicity's sake)
When I entered the aniblogosphere in November, I commented somewhere that most posts seemed dedicated to OreImou, and even in retrospect, it's true. So when I finished up Shiki and figured I may as well just marathon a short series for the rest of the day, this was the obvious choice—I wanted to see what the big deal was!
The Basics
Episodes: 12 Genre: Comedy, Slice of Life Aired: October 3, 2010 to December 19, 2010 Directed by: Hiroyuki Kanbe Producers: Aniplex, AIC Build Opening Theme: Irony by Claris Closing Theme: Imouto Please! by Ayana Taketatsu / Shine! by Ayana Taketatsu
Review
The Story: OreImou revolves around Kyousuke Kousaka, a perfectly normal high schooler. He shares a pretty typical relationship with his sister Kirino, which is to say, they don't really speak to each other. Not out of outright dislike or anything, they just have different things going on. This changes one day when Kyousuke comes across a DVD case and instead of the magical girl anime the cover promises, there's an eroge inside...not just any eroge, but one involving little sisters.
Turns out it belongs to none other than Kirino. And it isn't her only one. No, she has an entire collection of eroge involving little sisters. Makes you wonder right there, doesn't it?
The series follows Kyousuke as he does his best to support his sister's hobby, even when he's completely freaked out by it. He helps her make friends who share the hobby, lies to their father for her, lies to her non-otaku best friend, and even plays some of the eroge when she orders him to.
The Characters: There's actually a pretty small main cast of OreImou, and I was grateful for that—easier to remember everyone's names that way, hehe. Now to be perfectly honest, I wasn't all too impressed by the main cast. I liked them fine, they just weren't anything special. The big brother seemed pretty typical. Kirino was entertaining just for her otaku-ness, but beyond that was unexceptional. I like Kuroneko and Saori but, again, weren't special.
To me, the most interesting character was actually Ayase Aragaki, Kirino's best non-otaku friend. It was seeing her reactions to Kirino's otaku side that really got me. Her disgust, her fear, how she still loved Kirino as a friend but couldn't bring herself to accept the hobby. And then, once she had accepted it, I thought it was quite wonderful how she did her best to ignore her feelings about anime and the like and went to quite a lot of trouble in order to give her friend a wonderful gift. I don't know, to me it was just a wonderful show of friendship.
And also, Kyousuke is a huge dumbass for not realizing his childhood friend is in love with him. I do not understand how men can be so oblivious.
The...Non-Incest?: Going into the series, I wasn't at all sure what to expect from the Kyousuke/Kirino relationship. The blog posts had me baffled, and I'd avoided reading posts regarding the final episode. Having watched all 12 episodes, I can say I didn't think there was really much of a big deal.
Yes, there were awkward parts (some unintentional groping, for example) and I'm pretty sure the two were in love even if they didn't want to admit it (the final episode suggested this to me), but there was no outright incest. Not in the way that some things have done it—in Angel Sanctuary, for instance, Sarah and Setsuna have sex in the third volume. OreImou was pretty tame in comparison.
I guess what I'm saying is...it was non-incest, seriously. And it wasn't a big deal to me. Not half as weird as Kirino's thing for playing little sister eroge.
Conclusion?: I don't really get what made OreImou a big deal. At all. To me it just wasn't anything new, nothing spectacular in any way. It had its moments of entertaining, and yes, the unintentional groping was pretty iffy, but as far as anime standards go...what? I must be missing something.
Still, if you want a series that you can watch without putting much thought into, you'll probably enjoy it. I do recommend giving it a watch if you haven't, just to see what you think. It's not a bad series or anything. And it earns points for the lols, and for Kirino's pretty awesome otaku-ness.
My rating: 7/10. Like I said, not bad, I just didn't think it was anything amazing. Besides that, I just wasn't a huge fan of the art. It could have been a lot worse, though. The characters could have been bland and annoying as all hell, which I sort of expected.
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