Story (6.45/10): The story of Saikin follows the story of Mitsuki, a 15 year old girl, who gains a stepfather and a stepbrother named Yuuta as a result of her mom marrying another man. It is from this point where Mitsuki hates her new life, and one day, when crossing a bridge, a ghost that goes by the name Hiyori tackles her and she blacks out. After a whole set of circumstances, Mitsuki finds out that this ghost, Hiyori, is possessing her, and that she must fill this heart gauge that is on the chastity belt that she is required to wear, with various, lustful actions with her older brother, whom she hates, in order to satisfy Hiyori's final wish, (which is basically having sex with Yuuta), and move her on to heaven. (You know, you would think that god or whoever's in charge would condone such sinful actions. Oh well, it's anime after all.)
Normally with incest animes, the story is a run of the mill one that would consist of 2 siblings, a brother an a sister, where the sister, (normally little sister), has an intense brother complex, and therefore would be in love with her brother, and it would stem off from there. Saikin, as I like to refer to the show as, has a unique twist to this "idea."
Compared to "normal" incest animes, the female loves the main male lead. This is not the case. The fact that I get to see a different approach in this genre, was enough for to see how this went, as Mitsuki seemed like a normal person, being unwilling to do something undecent, as well as having a moral compass, as well as an acurate interpretation to how a normal person would react to the situation. As far as a base idea goes, the series gets a plus, seeing as how the normal format on how the plot was written, was somewhat different.
In terms of pacing, the series never really felt too rushed. It had a rather decent pace that I could follow, and the series never felt overflowed with useless plot points and rushed areas of explanation. (There was still a complete filler episode that I thought was completely unnecessary.)
On the other hand, we still get that sort of incestuous relationship that you would get with an anime like this. (Bear in mind, these characters are siblings by name, not blood.) As the series goes on, the development for the series started to become what you would normally see. It was nice to see the characters develop a bit more, as Mitsuki started to be "ok" with having an older brother, but there were a few things that bothered me as the series went on. One, they don't explain anything. Saikin has an absurd amount of plot holes, ranging from little unexplained things, to an entire potential backstory being completely underminded, and even a whole character who's purpose I feel isn't completely explained.
Overview
+ Different approach to the incest genre, (sort of)
+ Decent pacing
- Unexplained plot points
- Generic story development as series continued on
- Side story and generic episodes (beach episode, hot springs, etc.)
Characters (5.78/10): When it comes to characters, this series has a wide array of them, most of the falling into the supportive and basically non-existent role, all of which have varying degrees of development and actual characteristics.
First off is our main character, Mitsuki. (At least I think so.) Mitsuki, is a very interesting character. Compared to what a normal female protagonist is in a romance anime, she doesn't really follow a standard troupe as one might think. At the beginning of the series, she is shown to be quite an independent character, not needing really anyone in order to be around her or be with her, as well as developing a stand alone personality. As the series goes on, she starts to learn more about this new brother that she has acquired, and starts to get closer to him with each passing episode, as little as it may be. (While also doing a bunch of things no real girl would ever do, or be caught doing.) She is more or less the most interesting character in the series, and more or less carries the show with her stand alone personality and originality as a character. Beyond that, it's downhill from here.
Yuuya, the main male is one of those guys you would want to punch in the face. Like any main guy in a romance anime, the godforsaken density of his mind makes for the most absolute infuriating and completely pointless and redone characteristics ever. (Seriously. Why the hell would they NEED to make the main guy so fucking oblivious to everything? It doesn't even make sense in a romance anime for the guy to not know there's a girl crushing on him, or something like that.) Apart from his sheer density, Yuuya is more or less a caring sort of person, having concern for his new sister and being as nice of a person as he can be. In my opinion, it was nice to see him as such a nice character, but his obliviousness was extremely facepalm worthy.
Hiyori, as the aforementioned ghost in the series is a rather "interesting" character. For starters, she died, painfully. Because in her life, she loved Yuuya, she attempted to confess to him, only to be run over by a drunk truck driver, never to breathe or confess to her one true love ever again. So, as the law of ghosts go, a spirit must be able to fulfill his or her last wish in order to move on to either heaven, or hell. In this case, it's to have sexy time with the dense guy mentioned above. Throughout the series, Hiyori is a mystery. She is constantly being mentioned to have amnesia of her past life, as well as being able to be seen by random characters here an there. Neither of these plot points, which would've added SO much to the story, are fully explained, and it made me mad, seeing as how they mention it, but forgot it in the series much later. Most of the time, Hiyori is this fun little character who can get a bit annoying at time, urging on Mitsuki to do things, so that Hiyori can move on. That's pretty much it.
In terms of supporting cast, we have what you would really expect in a show like this, one-noted and terrible character, aside from Yukina. The supporting character really weren't that terrible, but didn't add much in terms of development of the plot and really were just fodder to explain that this show has more people than the ones of the cover art. They're not fantastic, and mostly boring, (except Neko, who's purpose is a freaking mystery since she seems to have some sort of plot importance, which was never explained), and really are only just, there.
Overview
+ Decent female lead
- Another addition to the super dense male lead army
- Completely pointless supporting cast that didn't add much of anything
- relying heavily on the main lead for any sort of development
- Completely unexplained character that was teased to have plot significance. (i.e. Neko)
Art and sound (6.98/10 and 4.78/10): In terms of art, the actual animation in fairly decent. For one thing, the characters aren't overly moe and they have a very crisp looking design to them. Personally, I like the look of these characters and the way they were designed.
A little segment I do whenever talking about an ecchi show is to actually talk about the ecchi, since it does sort of fall into the art category. Saikin has an outstanding amount of ecchi, most of it coming from showing the chastity belt on Mitsuki, which is completely pointlessly covered up by an ornate heart-shaped censor bar compared to a normal black bar. This is something that made me a little upset. For starters, if you're going to make an ecchi show, you show the panties, like what most ecchi show does. To put in the effort of censoring it with your own censor bar, which is probably wasted money due to the fact on how ornate it was, seems like a waste of time to me.
The sound is completely generic and forgettable. It's your average happy-go-lucky sound which you'll forget about within a month unless you're like me, and watched the series week after week for the new episode.
Overview
+ Good character designs and artwork
- Completely unneeded ornate censor bar
- forgettable soundtrack that you probably won't bat an eye on
Personal Enjoyment (6.76/10): While for the most part, the show was terrible, I somehow enjoyed it way more than I should've. Because the exposition was somewhat intriguing, I continued watching it and wanted to know if it went anywhere, if at all. In the end, what I received at the end of this series, was an anime that more or less was what I expected, a generic mess that was somewhat different than what I had watched prior. The show does have a redeeming feature with what I feel like is a better female protagonist, but the rest of it was as dead as Hiyori, being just this loop of never-ending formula of the same thing, that was less than satisfactory.
A huge critique that I would give the show, is its lack of any real plot explanation. Throughout the whole anime, it was focused solely on the idea of making Mitsuki orgasm from her brother, in order to build stairs of light up to heaven for Hiyori. What made the show worse, was the addition of plot points and potential mysteries, that actually made me a bit more intrigued, as the story looked to be taking a different turn that actually seemed interesting. But in the end, those plot points were completely disregarded, and tossed to the side, making me wonder how the show would've turned out if it followed a different path. (i.e. both Mitsuki's and Yuuya's past, as well as how other people other than Mitsuki can see Hiyori)
All in all, Saikin was a rather interesting take on the incest genre, which ultimately, failed to grasp any favorites from fans like its predecessors. It had less than good writing, generic character, and a forgettable soundtrack. Personally, I feel like this show isn't as bad as it seems, but it is still pretty terrible nonetheless. If you're an ecchi fan, you might actually like this. Other than that, I would highly suggest you stay away. This really isn't a show for everyone, since it's mostly about boobs and a chastity belt that looks like it was bought from a pleasure place.
Overall Score: (6.40/10) Seriously though, terrible plot explanation.
