During a rather uneventful Discord call, one of my friends joined and started posting a slew of images with minor commentary. Most of them pertain to cute anime girls like Shimakaze from Kantai Collection and some random fashion influencers on Instagram. While he posted these, he accompanied them with “goes hard” and “she’s cute, so it’s okay if I post her because I’ll probably never talk to her” and for the latter part, I agree. One image file from his flow-of-consciousness in #general depicted a bespectacled blonde (orange to some) woman donned in stylish attire. Posed with an emphasis on her face, she held a V-shaped hand sign and wore a wide smile, that smile of course being adorned with a flesh-colored “fang.” By all accounts, it was very moé.
As a slave to my desires, I humored him. “Who is that?” In which he replied, “That’s Kirino; have you not seen ████ before?” Me being the way I am, I naturally already knew who she was (who doesn’t), but I feigned ignorance in order to gauge something beyond. He went on about the series, describing it in ways I hadn’t heard before. Apparently, beyond its obvious title, it was centered around otaku and the subculture. Not as meta as the likes of the NHK or Genshiken, ████ just uses it for its setting. He then noted that it wasn’t remarkable by any means; it was just something of a good memory.
I wasn’t very interested in the series; well, it’s more like I’d rather not be caught dead watching an anime about a brother and his little sister, with the genre tags on MyAnimelist being comedy and romance. Normally, I wouldn’t mind watching something strange; in fact, I’d say it was a big part of my persona. I’m shameless enough to have shown my aunts and uncles my Dakimakura when they’ve visited. Even when I was still in my old religion, I explained the concept of “waifus” to younger and older members alike. I didn’t think I had a single bone in my body capable of shame… until I eventually heard of ████. Incest? Seriously? That’s just weird, man. Although I no longer live with my family, I guess it’s fine now. My sisters can’t barge into my room and force me to explain the anime currently playing on the monitor. Maybe, just maybe, in some twisted fashion, it could remind me of my time with them. (it didn’t and it shouldn’t)
the actual review part
Ore no Imōto ga Konna ni Kawaii Wake ga Nai, also known as OreImo, is a Japanese light novel series written by Tsukasa Fushimi. For the purposes of this review, I will be referring to the anime adaptation released during the 4th quarter of 2010. Oreimo concerns our main character, Kyousuke Kousaka, who discovers that his aloof little sister, Kirino Kousaka, is an Otaku with copious amounts of “imouto”-themed eroge. The distant siblings rediscover familiarity through “life counseling” and the often misunderstood anime hobbyists. During his sister’s immersion into the culture, she meets two otaku through a meet-up forum: Ruri Gokou, also known as Kuroneko, and Saori Makishima. Within Kirino’s posse is Ayase Aragaki, who is adamantly against the creepy nature of Kirino’s secret hobby.
The plot is quite typical for harem anime like Haganai, Hensuki, and Toubun. A helpful MC, cute girls, and high school. Much like the aforementioned series, Oreimo has a few quirks that set it apart in the saturated market of harem anime. One of them is its heavy emphasis on Otaku. The anime regularly references common aspects of the culture. From episode one, to further emphasize how deeply Kirino has fallen into the rabbit hole, the producers throw out a large amount of Bishoujo visual novels at the viewers. Later down the line, we get to see much more commonplace otaku events and behaviors. The other quirk is the importance of family relations with our two main characters. Without the life counseling, the pair would never have bridged the gap that they had just before Kirino’s confession (that she’s an otaku). On that same note, this anime gained its infamous status because it’s a romance between siblings.
During the first episode, Kirino was establishing an idea she had about the world and her hobbies. “But I know how Otaku are looked down on, too.” It’s an essential idea for the anime, at least at the beginning. Kirino is a normal girl with normal hobbies; there’s no way in hell that her current friends would ever accept her for who she is. It’s a plot point for sure, and I think it was a positive aspect of the show’s overall narrative. Ayase was a direct personification of Kirino’s worldview. Anime is evil; it’s perverted and weird, and the people who like it are creepy, balding old men. The siblings’ father also disliked the perverted, imouto-loving eroge she played when he found out. It’s cool and all, but I find it incredibly strange that so much of the praise the anime receives is based on that notion. Those are the only two moments in the entire show that actually hammer down its “otaku vs. riajuu” narrative, if you’ll even call it one. Instead, the writers of the anime decide that they would much rather take an episodic approach to its story. It jumps from one otaku subject to the next: comiket, cosplay, maids, and my most disliked one, the haphazard episodes about the anime industry. Or it jumps into romance.
I know “romance” is in the tags, but it doesn’t even feature any major themes of that until the OVA. That brings us to another point of contention: the romance in the anime is bad. Don’t get me wrong, I love Kuroneko. I am an abnormal single man, after all. But this show doesn’t even attempt to make the romance palpable; hell, it actively makes the show worse. My prime example is Ayase Aragaki.
At the beginning of the anime, she is depicted as a strong and possessive tsundere-type girl. But for some reason, she kinda morphs into a yandere type character who suddenly has feelings for our MC. I know the light novel eased in her feelings for him, but they didn’t even try here.
YOU KNOW WHAT’S EVEN WORSE? Kuroneko. I’m not even going to say anything. Just Kuroneko. Everything that happens between Kyousuke and Kuroneko is just a marketing tactic to make people read the spin-offs and the VN. I read the Kuroneko route in the VN, by the way; don’t be fooled. There were no hidden gems. No cute, fluffy romance. It was nothing.
Oh yeah, let’s also not forget that it ends in incest, which everyone thought it would, but they made sure to ruin everything in the show before they pulled the trigger. They didn’t even marry each other. They didn’t commit to the taboo after all of their efforts. I seriously hate Kirino.
Not even the characters themselves know what they want. This show is terrible.
But I didn’t hate it. The production quality was there, and when I wasn’t being pedantic, I thought some of the drama was fun. It was only fun when I turned my brain off, but fun nonetheless. The show is objectively bad from a story and character perspective. But it certainly made an impact with that ending, there’s a reason why it’s still relevant in the otaku consciousness. I guess my friend was right. It was just something of a good memory, and it’ll likely be something I look back on fondly.
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