Eromanga-sensei

I don't normally tend to point fingers at people, but just this once I feel like I need to get some things off my chest here.

Almost every single season nowadays, it seems there has to be a scapegoat. An anime which you are somehow obliged to publically hate on or you'll be looked down upon by the community and no one will take you seriously. I'm honestly sick of this kind of group pressure/bandwagon mentality. We're now halfway through the year 2017 and yet hating on popular stuff over the internet is somehow still considered to be the coolest and best thing since sliced bread. ... *Especially* when it's gross, creepy and immoral shit made for closet pedos, am I right? Shows like this really bring out the most toxic sides of the anime community.

When you have an anime which totally wears its heart on its sleeve and doesn't try to hide its true intentions in any way, why is it that so many people seemingly insist on still making themselves watch it even when it's clear as day that they're not going to like it and that they're not part of the target audience? Eromanga-sensei is one of the most blatantly polarizing series in the last few seasons, and quite frankly you should be able to easily figure out whether you will enjoy it or not just from reading the synopsis and by considering the fact that it is written by the same author as Oreimo.

In short, Eromanga-sensei features the following:
- A glimpse into the life of a young, aspiring light novel author in Japan
- Lots of references to other anime, light novels, the industry itself and more
- Pseudo-incestuous relationship themes (they're not actually blood-related)
- Somewhat trope-filling and eccentric characters
- Cutesy moe-style heroines
- Frequent suggestive shots of various middle school girls
- An abundance of romcom clichés and sexual gags
- Memes
- Cameos of characters from Oreimo
- The perfect setup for providing tons of juicy ero-fanart and doujins

Now if you have a problem with several of these themes, you don't need to watch this anime. It really isn't any more complicated than that. It is clearly not for you, and you don't need to go out of your way to force yourself to watch it just so you can go on a lengthy rant afterwards about how trashy it is, how it is "pandering to otaku", label it as "pedo-bait" or anything along those lines. If you're not even part of an anime's target demographic then quite frankly you have no business trash-talking it for not adhering to your own standards—the problem lies entirely on your end in that case. Criticizing an anime for its execution is logical—criticizing an anime for merely belonging to a certain genre is not. You don't need to go on the aggressive from the safe place behind your monitor just to feel better about yourself. If your sole reason for watching an anime is to make fun of and insult the people enjoying it, you really need to get your priorities straight. Even more curious are some comments I've seen basically saying "i-it's not like I enjoy watching this terrible anime or anything, don't get the wrong idea, baka!", as if implying that either their morals or the group pressure is preventing them from admitting to themselves that they actually like it. Give me a break already.

On the other hand, as someone who actually does enjoy those kinds of themes and absolutely loves imoutos in general, Eromanga-sensei is a pretty solid anime that does just about all the simplistic things I could ask of it. It's cute, light-hearted, decently funny at times, has a lot of sexy shots of ero-kawaii and energetic moe girls, and is just plain fun and enjoyable in general. And as a result, what you have is a thoroughly entertaining anime despite everything. Yes, that is in fact all that's needed, as shocking as that might be for some people to believe.

In short, Eromanga-sensei follows the lives of a high school light novel author named Izumi Masamune and his hikikomori little sister Sagiri, who somewhat secretly works as an erotic illustrator for his novels amongst other things under the pen name Eromanga-sensei. The story follows both their struggles with their respective jobs as well as their relationship with each other as step siblings. There are also a number of other girls involved in one way or another, primarily the eccentric Yamada Elf who is also a top-selling light novel author, as well as the even more successful Senju Muramasa who on top of being an author is also Masamune's biggest fan. There's also Sagiri's pushy classmate Jinno Megumi who keeps trying to find ways to convince Sagiri to leave her room and go to school for once. It's a simple setup overall, but it serves as an easy way to get the protagonist and the various girls intimately involved with each other on both a personal and professional level, which is a good thing since the main selling point of Eromanga-sensei is the characters' interactions with each other.

As you can probably tell, it is all quite similar to Oreimo in not just the incestuous themes but the type of chemistry between the main characters and the side characters as well. And as it happens, they generally fulfill somewhat similar roles too. Just like Kirino, Sagiri is here the otaku imouto with a rather perverted hobby who is also quite obviously in love with her Onii-chan. In terms of personality though, they're very different from each other. Whereas Kirino was an outgoing honors student and a rather extreme tsundere, Sagiri is shy, reclusive and more of a dandere than anything, and she gets embarrassed easily whenever she's not hiding behind the mask of her online Eromanga-sensei persona. But perhaps most importantly, just like Kirino, Sagiri is incredibly sexy. The vast majority of the show's fanservice is centered on her in the form of various suggestive shots of her inside her room, but it's done in a rather smooth and natural way so it doesn't feel out of place. It's the type of eroticism which greatly enhances an anime's enjoyment value in my mind; the kind that makes you repeatedly pause the video to rape the screenshot button for academic purposes. I appreciate it quite a lot. It's no wonder that Sagiri has already been crowned the clear ero-fanart queen of the season by the Japanese portion of the internet, as is quite evident if you go visit just about any major anime image board at the moment (which is also a bit ironic considering that drawing such pictures is literally what Sagiri does for a living herself).

Similarly, if Sagiri is supposed to be "the new" Kirino, then you'd also have to argue that Elf is the new Kuroneko. Elf is the energetic and weird yet funny girl of the show, being an immensely talented writer but also a rather lazy one who only sees her work as a hobby, and thus only writes whenever she feels like it, much to the dismay of her editors. Furthermore, she's also a bit of a chuuni nutcase who consistently does stupid things for the amusement of all. As a result, while she's not quite as sexualized as Sagiri is, overall I would still say Elf is the most likable and entertaining girl of Eromanga-sensei due to how enjoyable her personality is. In other words it's pretty much the same story as with Oreimo where (in my opinion) Kuroneko was ultimately the best girl even though Kirino was sexy as hell. For all the old Ayase fans out there though, I'm sorry to say but there isn't really a replacement for her in Eromanga-sensei. Instead we have Muramasa taking the role of the third love rival, but she's not particularly similar. If anything she's the most publically affectionate towards Masamune out of the trio, but for rather... questionable reasons.

As far as the story itself goes, the viewers are pretty much told from the beginning that this will eventually head down the pseudo-incest route as Masamune and Sagiri are evidentially in love with each other and Masamune makes it quite clear on numerous occasions that she is the only girl he has eyes for. While he is still a little bit dense at times, Masamune at least has the guts to confess that he is in love with Sagiri from quite early on in the series, which is pretty commendable considering their relationship. However, it will probably take a while before that ship really sets sail, because in this (first?) season alone, there isn't really much in the way of romantic progression beyond that confession. It is more of a standard romcom in terms of execution thus far, but certainly not a bad one. Meanwhile we also have the ongoing subplot of the siblings trying to create the supposed "greatest light novel ever" together where Masamune writes the story and Sagiri draws the illustrations. It reminds me a bit of Bakuman in that sense, but of course it's not quite as forefront about it here. However, this subplot is most certainly something that really asks for a sequel one day.

Perhaps the biggest problem with Eromanga-sensei though is that despite everything, Masamune and Sagiri aren't actually blood-related. The main appeal of incest in anime to me is the general taboo feeling of it, you know: "it's forbidden, therefore it's exciting" and all. Making them step-siblings instead is thus both a bit of a boner-killer as well as a cop-out move by the author, and it kind of feels like the anime goes out of its way to remind the audience of this annoying fact a few too many times. However, if you're familiar with the infamous ending of Oreimo and more importantly the backstory behind why that happened in the first place, this was most likely a conscious decision by the author in order to make sure the same thing won't happen a second time around. Oreimo was kind of ruined by its terrible ending, so having the knowledge that at least Eromanga-sensei won't suffer the same fate is a bit of a relief. I just wish he didn't have to sacrifice part of the show's main appeal to ensure this part, but I guess SJWs are unfortunately just that powerful in today's society.

You probably shouldn't compare everything to Oreimo though—after all this is just as much of a standalone work as that was—but considering that even the main characters of Oreimo makes appearances in Eromanga-sensei, they're not only similar but evidentially also take place in the same universe and time span. For what it's worth though, minus its ending I would still probably say Oreimo was slightly better not only because of the blood-relation issue, but there was also more of a struggle there due to Kirino's conservative father being fully against her otaku hobbies, whereas in Eromanga-sensei, Masamune's parents are both conveniently absent from their house. It all feels a bit easier in Eromanga-sensei, which is not inherently a bad thing mind you but I think it makes it a little bit less unique. Then again, as they say: "if it ain't broke, don't fix it".

As far as the production values goes, the animation (done by A-1 Pictures) is... okay, I guess? Nothing out of the ordinary but enough for the girls to always look attractive, which is about all that's required in this case. On top of that, both the OP and ED of Eromanga-sensei are honestly great; they're both incredibly catchy tunes that easily stand out as among the best from this season.

Overall, Eromanga-sensei is a simplistic, cliché and quite lewd romcom which will surely turn off a lot of people due to its themes, but it excels at doing the exact things it sets out to do for its own specific target audience, and thus at least for me it was one of the more enjoyable shows of the season.

I also find it a bit ironic how other shows like New Game for example (which I also really liked) get to receive general praise from the community for doing nothing but showing cute moe girls working in the entertainment media industry, mixed with comedy and fanservice, yet Eromanga-sensei is receiving so much hate for doing basically the exact same thing? Hypocrisy at its finest. Are the incest themes really *that* big of a deal? Or is it the supposed ages of the girls? I mean really now? I can't help but feel legitimately sorry for people who let something like that ruin their enjoyment of an anime.

For better and for worse (mostly worse), Eromanga-sensei is the successor to OreImo and its themes of sister-banging. But where OreImo had some interesting things to say about the otaku community, Eromanga-sensei possesses nothing, and is nothing, puerile and creatively bankrupt.

Eromanga-sensei in many ways represents everything that is bad with light novels. It is a story (I guess, if we put aside its flagrantly incestual nature) of a group of twelve-to-fifteen-year-olds who are famous artists, as if adults do not and cannot exist. If Eromanga-sensei was taking inspiration from the scribbles of a bunch of middle school students, its rubbish writing would actually make ... a great deal of sense.

Stop me if you've heard this one before: the protagonist and a sexy lady, both being inexperienced in the affairs of love, try to imitate romantic situations with one another as a source of creative inspiration. No? How about the protagonist's rival conveniently being revealed as a cute girl who is desperately in love with him? Or the heroine angrily retreating to her room and screaming "bakaaa!" as the camera pans away? See, Eromanga-sensei isn't an anime that is particularly concerned with sharing anything you haven't already seen in dozens or hundreds of other equally brain-dead romantic comedies. (And seriously, if I have to watch another anime with a hikikomori heroine who is portrayed as some goddess of attraction, I'm going to have an aneurysm.)

I suppose the difference here is that Eromanga-sensei is neither romantic nor comedic. It sure as hell is not funny (unless you are the type who thinks burping is the pinnacle of comedic genius), and its 'romance' is merely a thinly-veiled attempt to make it seem somewhat less like masturbation fodder. Fodder which, by the way, has a regularly sexualised heroine who is only twelve-years-old. Let that sink in for a second: twelve-years-old. She is twelve, and the anime frequently displays detailed shots of her ass, her panties, her naked body, and so forth, and even thinks it is amusing to have her friend (who is the same age, by the way) howling about how she loves penises. Yeah. Really.

Even if lolicon pornography does not bother you, it would be an impossible task to claim this contributes to the story or the characters in any meaningful way. It actively sabotages whatever emotional value it tries to create between Sagiri and Masumune's relationship, and makes it impossible to take seriously anything that happens or could conceivably happen. For example, the anime will reveal Masamune's tragic past in the span of about one minute, and then immediately open the next episode with a girl clad in her bikini and flirting with him. Eromanga-sensei doesn't even do the incest part right since it is more concerned with creating some periphery harem for Masamune than it is with developing his feelings for Sagiri beyond "hey I like you lol." It is stupid on the level of KonoSuba and yet has the audacity to pretend without a hint of sarcasm that it is some touching story. No.

It is actually a fairly sad result when compared to the author's previous work, OreImo. OreImo, flawed and infuriating as it was, actually put a great deal of time into making Kirino and Kyosuke's feelings for one another feel meaningful. Kirino was no doubt insufferable, but by the end, you could at least look at her as something more than an assortment of tropes and incest appeal. Likewise, it also went into a fair amount of detail with regards to the life of a stereotypical otaku. It represented Comiket, eroge, offline meetings, and the conflict people can have when they possess hobbies they are ashamed of. It was no Genshikan, but OreImo did at least try to contribute something to the industry with more appeal than "well, gee, banging your sister sounds like a fun idea."

The same cannot be said for Eromanga-sensei, which does and says nothing about the industry. Any moment when it does display the struggles of Masamune's career, it is extremely, unbearably dull, and often propelled by silly plot devices like one of his love interests offering all their royalties in return for Masamune becoming their slave. The whole premise of being a light novel author is an accessory that may as well not even exist. If you stripped all the fanservice away, all that would expose is the show's unsightly skeleton.

I can't think of any situation where Eromanga-sensei could come as a recommendation. It is asinine dreck, without so much as a modicum of creativity. I suppose its colourful art and catchy opening animation may lead some people into thinking the anime is more than it truly is, but it is best to be honest: the sole reason anyone likes this show is because they want to bone the twelve-year-old heroine.

Now how much merit is there in a story like that?

I'd wager not a whole not.

Something I find hilarious is that no one can explain why Eromanga Sensei is a good show. I see people giving this an 8-10 rating and saying it's a good show, but not once I've seen anyone mentioning any legitimate good quality about Eromanga except for: "it's cute", "Sagiri is so cute", "it has cute girls", "incest is wincest". This may be unfair since I shouldn't be trashing on anyone's likings and I believe people have the right to enjoy whatever the hell they like, but I cannot shake the annoyance that some people are just satisfied with anything at this point. Trust me, I ... like cute girls and lolis as much as the next guy does, but somewhere somehow we need to draw the line and notice when our intelligence is being insulted. Does the only thing that an anime needs is for it to have cute girls, some type of incestuous relationship, a copy/paste generic protagonist (that took no effort to create), a bunch of terribly forced memes and loli fanservice for us anime fans to be all over it on social media and be supporting this garbage? If this isn't an insult to the viewer's intelligence then I don't know what is.

For those of you who do not know, this story was done by the same people who made the highly controversial Light Novel (later adapted into an anime), My Little Sister Can't be this Cute (better known as OreImo). Apart from targeting a niche audience with the sibling romance subplot, OreImo is infamous for receiving harsh backlash from fans upon its completion for its trash ending. Details were revealed that the LN editors did not allow Tsukasa Fushimi to go through with a full incest ending.

Keeping this in mind, it becomes very apparent that Eromanga Sensei is trying to be OreImo. Not only does this series do a terrible job at copying all the elements that made OreImo successful, but it makes sure to establish the single fact that led to the downfall of the show. It utilizes one of the most used loopholes sibling romances do to get away with what they're doing by making sure everyone knows that the two main characters ARE NOT BLOOD-RELATED. Did you hear that? THEY'RE NOT BLOOD-RELATED. The previews make sure you know this, the manga makes sure you know this, the anime makes damn sure you know this.

I find it hard to believe anyone genuinely thinks Eromanga Sensei will not have the brother & sister get it on at some point. It only takes a fraction of knowledge about the author, OreImo and its history to know this has been created just because the author hasn't gotten over his sister fetish. Even so, there are a bunch of other female characters (not)worth mentioning. The thing is, none of these characters seem remotely interesting or feel like real people. They're walking anime tropes that will only exist for the purpose of having the main guy hang around with other girls than his sister and to let the audience have a bit of variety. I have checked the manga and there is no indication they will get interesting enough to carry this bad comedy.

I found it very sickening how cynical and shamelessly Eromanga Sensei tries to bait the siscon/lolicon audience. Countless promising shots of the girls (especially the FREAKING 10-YEAR-OLD) are shown to obviously excite the viewer and trust me, I don't want to be the normie guy who trashes the sexualization of kids in anime, but these are literally middle schoolers. Like, this show is WAY too in your face with fanservice shots. Only 4 episodes in and we've basically seen the little sister naked at least 3 times already. It doesn't even try to hide the fact that they want to attract "that" type of audience, and what bothers me is that they're so out of place. Eromanga Sensei does this so much I'm kinda creeped out that full grown men have such cynical mentality to attract people into their mediocre show with a few ass/breast shots of little girls (if this was an ecchi series I could understand, but Eromanga is not). Every episode gets so much worse with the fanservice it reaches to a point that is just absurd, even for modern anime standards. I honestly feel like I need to call the cops ASAP while watching Eromanga Sensei, just for witnessing the amount of pedophilic vibes this series gives off. If you're into that stuff, then knock yourself out I guess...

Let's talk a little bit more about the characters: they all suck. Every single one gets on my nerve, and the one who doesn't (the black haired who works as a librarian) is so uninteresting it's shocking. First off, the main girl is the lolicon's/siscon's dream imouto, a ridiculously cute, empty shell of a girl who's only noteworthy characteristics are that acts like a tsundere, refuses to leave her room and draws porn for fun. The main guy is generic MC #198,567 (he's voiced by Kirito ffs) who has a terrifying obsession with his sister. People accuse Kyouske of being a terrible siscon, but Masamune is on another level. When he's not screaming, he's ranting on how beautiful his 10-year-old sister is and you can just feel this guy wants to bang her brains out. OreImo at least had the decency to slowly develop the sibling romance, and most of the side characters were interesting and felt like real people (Kuroneko alone makes OreImo a better show btw). The other characters in Eromanga Sensei are stock templates and not worth mentioning.

People criticize OreImo for being a bad anime with nothing new to say, and solely aimed at the siscon/lolicon otaku audience. I find these allegations funny because I've seen those same people dare to claim this is better than OreImo. Unlike Eromanga Sensei, OreImo HAD something to say (nothing that hasn't been explored, but nevertheless it was something). In part, OreImo's first season had a couple interesting themes like the exploration on otaku culture in Japan, the difficulties of liking something that is heavily looked down upon in society and those around you, and the evolving friendship (ultimately romantic interest) between two different types of siblings. Eromanga Sensei, on the other hand, is a soulless, empty copy of its predecessor that could only appeal to the type of people it is obviously intended for.

One of the things that bothered me the most about Eromanga Sensei is that it tries so damn hard to create memes. This show is just asking, BEGGING to be the next meme on Twitter. From having a character's first trait being that "SHE LOVES DICKS", to having the main loli have a cute (completely out of character) dance at the beginning and opening themes that is begging you with red letters to make a gif out of it and share it with your friends. The show constantly has looping, cute or "funny" moments that are obviously intended to be the laugh of the week (this isn't Konosuba, so it doesn't work). Since the show is trying so hard to be a meme, I propose we treat it as such. The meme of the season.

Well, I have nothing more to say in this unorganized rant. I really needed to get this anger I have towards this show off my chest somehow and hopefully open some eyes. If you have nothing to watch this season, maybe you would want to check out Eromanga Sensei. Watching one episode a week is more easy to pass than when a series is completed (it's the only reason why I might watch some more; also to possibly rant about it some more in the future). However, expect a "moe-blob" of a series that shamelessly copies its big brother and all the cliches of the industry. As I indirectly suggest throughout this review, if you want to watch a similar show done by the same people and with the same ideas, watch OreImo if you haven't and do not waste your time on this. It has a more refreshing and interesting cast than Eromanga, it connects much better with the ideas it's trying to present and is overall more presentable than this garbage. The thing that bothers me the most is that Eromanga Sensei is becoming extremely popular amongst anime fans. To my understanding, it has been very successful in preorder sales in Japan and it is very talked about in online communities. Yes, all those meme attempts have been working so far, and people are loving the ass shots of Sagiri and Megumi saying she loves dicks. This motivates the industry into producing more of this quality of anime, and we all know anime deserves much better. All I can say is that I really hope Eromanga Sensei gets forgotten after the season ends and it's remembered as the cheap theatrics it is, or at least I hope so.

This series is my proof that every day we stray further from Kamisama, and that Miyazaki-sensei was right about anime all along.

Eromanga-sensei is a culmination of everything I hate in lazy, insipid, vacuous, pandering entertainment. Now, to clarify, first of all, I don't believe that just because an anime, or any piece of entertainment, panders towards a certain demographic, that it is inherently bad necessarily. There has been plenty of anime that pander towards the otaku audience while, at the same time, remaining fun, and some instances, good shows, but Eromanga-sensei is not such an example. It's a show that lives by the convention in terms of its plot structure, comedy, character archetypes and dives head first into trashiness at any moment it can get. What ... could have been an interesting look into why and how people who shut themselves inside their homes live on a daily basis, akin to something along the lines of Welcome to the N.H.K or something, the show just decides to opt out instead for loli fan-service instead, ditching anything that made Oreimo, somewhat enjoyable, and, in some parts, decent. Before I continue, I'd just like to clarify that I am not hating on this show just because the original creator also created Oreimo. As I just said, I found that show to be decent (until the ending anyway) but it also had a few things that I could appreciate when it comes to meta humour about otaku and the anime industry as a whole. Eromanga-sensei has none of that. It's pointless, empty and has no value as a show at all. It's trash in every sense of the word.

Now, before I dive into the numerous reasons as of why I believe this show to be as poor as I think it is, let's discuss the plot first of all. Masamune is a somewhat successful, trashy light novel author who has been writing for several years now to support his younger step-sister, Sagiri, a shut-in, t, who refuses to go out and stamps on the floor of her bedroom whenever she wants anything. While Masamune writes these books and even has illustrations done for him, he doesn't actually know who this illustrator actually is, who goes by the name 'Eromanga-sensei' who actually turns out to be Sagiri herself! That's right! A 13-year-old girl draws erotic pictures! Oh boy! Anyway, the rest of the show sees Masamune and Sagiri begin to bond and grow closer together, while splicing in some romance between the two (because that's needed between siblings, am I right?) while Masamune is challenged by numerous other light novel authors in the business for slots in magazines, eventually becoming their friends and going along their merry way. The show's narrative is incredibly simple and boring to boot since there is no objective or even direction in the story. It moves awkwardly from scene to scene with no sense of flow or reasoning behind any of the characters and the entire show just feels like one big filler arc from a long-running shounen series or something. Now, I'm not saying that all anime need some kind of story, especially if it is going for comedy, but Eromanga's comedy in itself is poor, repetitive and so predictable, mostly derivative from seeing characters becoming embarrassed at removing their clothing, or from juvenile misunderstandings. One such example is a joke centred around a gay misunderstanding, in which another light novel author believes that Masamune is gay and has the hots for him, resulting in some of the most dreadful gags in the show. It feels like a 14-year-old wrote the entire thing, which is ironic, considering that I can only imagine that demographic finding this sort of weak comedy actually funny.

Sagiri's problem of being a shut-in was the only, the ONLY thing that the show had going for it and it throws it out so fast! I was genuinely interested to see what the show may do with this element; perhaps comment on the bigger picture of shut-ins in Japan perhaps, or delve into the psychological reasons behind this character's reasoning for why she has to say inside, but nope! They ditch this element and Masamune doesn't even try and help her with this issue at all and instead panders towards. He doesn't try to make her see why this is a problem, nor does his try to help her go into the outside world or anything. Sagiri is there just to be cute and that's it! We hardly learn anything about her as a person and she is such a brat that I can't stand every moment that she is on screen. Like most bad shows, the anime attempts to throw incest into the mix, and it comes across as so forced and disgusting. As someone who has three little sisters myself, one of which isn't actually related to me by blood, the thought of Masamune and Sagiri entering into a romantic relationship generally disgusts me to no end and all I hear people shout is "INCEST IS WINCEST" constantly, actually hoping the two will get together in the end. I also just hate the general excuse of "oh! They're not related by blood, so it's fine!". No, it's not. It's just as creepy and strange. To me, this aspect of the show baffles me, and I've never understood the appeal of little sisters in anime. This problem is also highlighted by the fact that we have young 13-year-old girls proclaiming that they love dicks out in public, just for all of the filthy weebs to rub their dicks at the thoughts of seeing this in action or something.

One of the things the show has received a lot of flak for is the excessive amounts of loli fan-service all around; most of the cast consists of young girls, who are consistently put into revealing swimsuits or underwear. Now, I don't necessarily have any problem with fan-service in a series, as long as it serves some kind of purpose or is not intrusive on the narrative at any point.
It feels like Eromanga-sensei's fan-service scenes were made for the sole purpose of padding the episodes out and the whiplash from seeing a bunch of kids half naked, to a heartfelt speech about love is so jarring that it makes each one of these scenes an absolute chore to watch since you know that nothing is happening and is just killing time. Not only that, but the situations the show sets up for its fan service feels just as equally as contrived and weak, and it's not like the fan-service by itself is even that alluring either as the animation and art style is rather generic and uninspired. While not a good show by any stretch, the currently airing Sin: Nanatsu no Taizai, is a much better example of a fan-service vehicle since it is full frontal with its trashiness and doesn't try to hide underneath the pretence of being any more than that like Eromanga-sensei does with its terrible attempt of sounding more emotional and deep. The show has a plethora of more emotional moments and speeches between each of its characters, all of which are generic, but the main problem is that they feel like a cheap attempt at making these characters have more depth than they actually have. Nowhere is this more evident than in the penultimate episode of the show, where we learn that Masamune and Sagiri were contacting each other over the internet even before they met and formally became siblings. This twist feels needlessly convenient and lazy. That's the best word I can use to summarise this show: it's lazy.

Speaking of the characters, every single one are essentially archetypes of already existing characters that have been done to much better effect in the past. As such, I often inadvertently find myself comparing them to similar characters, even when I dislike doing so as I wish to treat each piece of media as its own thing. Masamune is your generic main lead, who has a kind soul, is a hard, earnest worker, has a soft voice while getting embarrassed and flustered whenever a girl is revealing any clothing within his proximity. Oh, and every girl falls in love with him, just because the plot demands them to do so! Sagiri, likewise, has very little to offer in terms of character or personality. As I have already mentioned, I disliked this character, with a burning passion! She is so selfish, and acts so much like a brat, screaming "ONII-CHAN IS A BAKA!" at the top of her lungs that I feel like reaching through the monitor of my laptop and slapping her in her face. While, yes, she does warm up to her big brother to a certain extent (a little too much if you know what I mean) her character is just incredibly stale and unoriginal. She has no merits at all, and as I have already discussed, any possible potential for her development in regards to her shut-in problem is thrown completely out the window because the show is too lazy to even have one decent idea. We do learn the back-stories to both Sagiri and Masamune, something I can appreciate, it feels so tacked on and forced that it leaves no impact, and, instead, feels like, again, a lazy and cheap way for the audience to care about these two without building up their characters at all. A sad and tragic back-story is a good way to make a character feel tragic and helps the audience empathise with them, but the character also has to develop too and, at the same time, be well written, which this show fails at.

Despite my hatred for Sagari (and little sisters in anime in general), even she is nowhere near as bad as Yamada Elf! She is another light novel author, only this time, stuck up her own ass, believing she is the greatest thing that has ever walked on the planet. She is also extremely selfish, but also EXTREMELY annoying to watch, due to her actions and her voice actress. Hell, one of our earliest introductions to her character is when she is playing the piano in her house while also being completely naked at the same time! Thanks, Eromanga-sensei, I am, as everyone else is, now on the FBI watch list. Oh boy. While her character does eventually confess her love for our dry-as-wood main protagonist, her character arc (or lack of character as a whole) goes nowhere. Her only point in the narrative is fan-service, and that's it. She is not interesting, fun to watch and every scene she was in only drew me closer to kicking the chair from beneath my feet to taste the sweet release of death from this shitty world. The only somewhat decent character is Muramasa, another girl who falls for Mr Light Novel Guy (our protagonist) and the only character who has some reasoning and justification into her love for him. As a whole, the characters themselves are very weak and the comedic chemistry the show attempts to build between them doesn't work at all, and, again, feels so trite and forced to boot.

The overall aesthetic is just fine, very typical of what you'd expect from A-1 Pictures. The character designs were somewhat cute (so much so that one of my friends said he would 'destroy' Sagairi if you catch my drift) but it just feels so mundane and 'safe'. The same thing can be said about the music too. While the opening and ending track were both fine (especially the ending track which was both catchy as hell, and, admittedly cute seeing Sagairi dance despite how much I hate her) the music as a whole is horribly generic, which, at the very least, is consistent with the show.

Now, one thing people may say in defence of the show is that you're supposed to just enjoy it and not take anything seriously since the show doesn't really take itself seriously at all. With its outlook on the workers of the light novel industry, it presents its characters as all being rather incompetent and it seems to acknowledge, to some degree, that these writers are indeed bad, but tries to excuse and justify this by claiming that the stories are interesting to read. This philosophy presented in the show may also arise in arguments in favour of the show, which, I guess is fine, but I didn't find anything about this show interesting at all, and certainly not entertaining. The comedy is extremely weak, the characters are boring archetypes that go nowhere and the entire show sexualises young girls to ridiculous degrees. Yes, the show is somewhat self-aware of how trashy it is, but just because it is so, doesn't make the anime any good. In fact, it only makes it worse since it does nothing else to subvert or go against these troupes presented in the show, and instead decides to go down the lazy route, and just appeal to the lowest common denominator. Now, I want to make it clear now, that I do not begrudge anyone for actually enjoying this show, as the tone in this review may suggest otherwise. I honestly am glad if you managed to find enjoyment in a show that I found so repulsive, and more power to you because of that. But, for me, this show was abysmal in every possible way, and I'll be seeing you all in prison when the FBI eventually tracks us all down...

[1/10]
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Oh no. Oh no...

I was holding off on publishing a review until I finished watching. Not for any hope that something like this would get better, but simply due to the fact that I couldn't bring myself to write about whatever this is. Eromanga-sensei is everything wrong with the anime industry. And you know what? That's not funny. I see so many jokes about that concept. How viewers laughingly remark about this series' and how horrible it is but eat it up regardless, promoting this utter shit until it becomes the most popular non-sequel of the season.

And it is. Eromanga Sensei is the most popular ... non-sequel in Japan. Can you believe it? A show about a fourteen year old trying to fuck his twelve year old sister while she molests other twelve year old girls is the most popular program in Japan. It is probably the most popular program amongst western anime fans too. It baffles me. Coming from a western background, series like Game of Thrones and Breaking Bad steal that limelight. Sure we have duds like The Walking Dead drifting about with their cable appeal, but even that is understandable to me. At least that has elements of redeemable quality.

Eromanga has none of that. Eromanga is the mutated lovechild of everything that's hate-able about this industry and the sole reason why anime series' won't ever be taken seriously. For every angered fan of anime that realizes that their favorite show or non-ghibli film will never see the light of day in any extended theater run or any major awards show; this is why. Eromanga Sensei is hopefully the worst series I'll watch to completion. That's because as a viewer I've mostly stuck with some of the most popular anime. I've made my way through the highly-touted projects and ignored the seasonal popularity. Well, this is my first time delving deep into it and it yields an unforgettable, but totally forgettable product that fails at even the most basic storytelling.

This will have spoilers. If you are reading this and haven't seen the show, good. Don't watch it. It isn't worth it. It's not funny, or engaging, and the memes you have seen about it don't give a holistic representation of the insane tedium which this show revels in. This show isn't "so bad it's good." Far from it.

Eromanga-Sensei is just fucking garbage.

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[A Dancing Girl and a Pedophile]


This series follows a harem protagonist on a mission to fuck with a plethora of forgettable girl archetypes that you've seen a million times in a million different anime. The girl that he will end up being with is Sagiri, his twelve year old NEET sister who has not left her room in years. He also happens to write shitty light novels, much like the ones this series is based on, and his artist just so happens to be the twelve year old non-blood related sister living upstairs. What a coincidence! And of course he finds out and helps her hide her identity.

Then we meet a few other girls who are also light novel writers and play no role other than to create fanservice scenes that aren't just of the main girl. Honestly, the first ten episodes of this series really don't matter. The eleventh episode provides some much needed backstory which just renders the rest of the series up until that point completely useless. Anyway, Eromanga is just a series of empty husks waddling around on screen. It is a collection of sexual gifs that patrol the internet. From the totally inexplicable character writing to the horrendously boring direction to the non-story that is told throughout this series, Eromanga struggles to get anything right.

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[Visuals]


The visuals are probably the most positive aspect in this series, and even they are incredibly uneven. You see, A-1 hired a unique key animator for Sagiri, the little sister, and only Sagiri. So her animation is often much more fluid than the rest of the characters. This creates an animated whiplash of epic proportions. You go from a well-animated movement to a seizure-like stutter within the same scene. So even if her animation is good, this show has a tendency to skimp out on everything else.

Some highlights are absurdly off-model characters that kind of look hilarious. Really egregious oversights, even in the shows forgettable OP. A-1, like they do, put the minimal effort required into making this show palatable to look at while forgetting to actually give it direction. It looks like any generic as all hell sitcom. Bad.

Every episode is mostly just a compilation of characters sitting around talking exposition for minutes on end before they get to the two minutes of fanservice that peppers the internet for the next few days. They virtually just include the last eighteen minutes for no discernible reason. This could've been just two minutes of soft-core porn and I think the fans would have been just as happy, if not more so, with this series.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________

[Sound]


It's bad. The OP is forgettable but not painful, the ED I already forgot. The show has a seasoned atrociousness, as it's unfunny and bland writing is often back-ended by painful background music. Now this ranges from "fat guy walking" tuba to "Squidward playing the clarinet" and it was initially funny that this series had such abrasive background music. But it got tedious really quick and ended up just making me angry by episode four.

What can I say. This show sounds horrible.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________


[Characters/Story]


Now lets get to the meat. And by meat, I mean the meat of a bunch of underage girls that are endlessly used as tools to turn on a bunch of creepy fucking virgins watching this series to get off. I get it, it's okay to imagine children naked if they are fake. And i'm a supporter of the notion that thought-crime shouldn't be illegal because it doesn't harm anyone. I don't honestly care what you think about on your free-time and I care even less if it is totally fictitious and not exploiting anything.

So my problems with this series isn't that it sexualizes kids. That's nothing new in anime (as disturbing as that is) and it is far from its biggest fault. It's pedophilic and gross, and I often felt ornery watching this series due to the kind of framing devices it used to express its sexuality. For example, instead of diagetically forcing fanservice on us, the director made the 'brave' choice of literally just having shots of characters from below. It felt like a pedophiles hidden camera every time a character was talking.

Whether the show is being serious and dramatic or light-hearted and unfunny, the fanservice never ends. Character is being cute? Show them being cute with a below-the-skirt shot. Character crying? Have it framed so their still developing tits take up half the shot. It's cringe. It is a repulsive way to shoehorn this nonsense into your show. But on the other hand, this is the only thing this show has going for it anyway. It is riddled with plot-holes and totally clueless characters that defy any logic whatsoever.

In one scene it is established that Sagiri cannot draw girls with big tits. Why? Because she uses herself as a model for all her drawings and she is twelve. So her brother, being the great, enabling guy he is, tells her to look up idols on google to discover how to draw big tits. It works! She can now draw big meatsacks. However, two episodes later she regresses back to not being able to draw titties because... a girl showed her, her panties on skype. Let me get this straight, seeing panties made you unable to draw tits.

But it gets better.

The way she says she can resolve this issue is if her brother literally lures girls into her room and has them show her their panties. Not only is that fucking creepy, but more importantly, how does drawing panties even relate to drawing tits? Why are glaring issues like this not resolved in the initial adaptation phase?!

This would be fine. Well, no it actually wouldn't, but not as bad if it didn't lead to one of the most genuinely disturbing scenes i've seen in anime. Now i'm not one to be disturbed, although I am definitely one to cringe. But her brother does it. He finds a girl and drags her to her room, ties her up and blindfolds her and has Sagiri draw her panties. But get this, Sagiri, the twelve year old girl, rips that other twelve year old's panties off. She literally molests another girl. And it isn't really played as anything either, that girl is genuinely uncomfortable and so was I. Get this. They become great friends afterwards too. Talk about Stockholm syndrome.

I wish this was the only ridiculous inanity that occurs, but it isn't. A character called Elf exists. She has pointy elf-ears for literally no reason. It is never explained or mentioned. She just does. Her characterization is as confusing as she is repulsive. Very much so. She shifts between big-sister-esq and comforting to childish and annoying to a complete tsundere from episode to episode and it makes virtually no sense. She is also a part of our protagonist's harem.

Which leads me to the third character. Muramasa. Who's probably the most well-designed of the bunch, but has the personality of a grapefruit. She's a best selling light-novel author yet it is revealed that she was inspired by our harem protagonist's work ever since she was young. Well, younger. This was an element I guessed the second I saw the character simply because you can't have a character in a harem that is better than the male protagonist. You just can't. This is a power fantasy series for lonely kids and adults that want young girls to flock all over them in their dreams. So you can't have them be worse at anything. You need them to be virtually perfect. And our protagonist is.

These days, i'm developing a blase attitude towards the inherent sexism showed in anime. Which is a bit sad because I do love me a strong female character who "don't need no man". But you know, when the entire medium is marketed towards teenage boys it kind of makes sense to have every male be the best and every women be a toy to be played with. Even if it is obnoxious and kind of distressing.

This show is obviously not any different. In one titular scene we have our protagonist chat with the big brother of Elf, and when he discusses the great things about Elf the only thing he can say is, "She's nice and is a good cook." Wow. What a charmer. And this isn't even played off as a joke, this was a genuine scene with sappy, saccharine music in the background.

This kind of character writing extends throughout the series, too. The character writing is so bad that it feels like our protagonist is maliciously playing with these girls, since he's shown to be so oblivious that it becomes hard to believe. He rejects a girl, but obviously she keeps pursuing him, but then he proceeds to invite her to plenty of social events, as if it won't be awkward as all hell for her. It truly is a baffling kind of attitude.

I get the excuse, too, that he's just a "stupid teenager", and he is. But you know what? Using character stupidity as a plot contrivance isn't good writing. It doesn't make the protagonist or the story any better knowing this dude might actually be handicapped. It just makes it even more frustrating.

We are getting front row seats to this idiot fucking with these girls. And it isn't funny. Whether he understands that he is doing this or not, it's happening, and it is the least funny thing in a show that is already aggressively unfunny. If it was well-written comedy then it could be played as dark humor, but it isn't, it's just a bunch of girls yelling "baka!" really loudly.

To refer back to that scene of our protagonist talking with Elf's brother, who by the way asked him to marry her in that very scene. Get this, marrying a fourteen year old. He says that he would if he wasn't in love with someone else, referring to his twelve year old sister. However, the episode before he actually told the sister he would be with Muramasa if he wasn't in love with 'someone', as he puts it, since he's unable to admit his love of his sister, sometimes. So this entire scene played as a total contradiction, unless the protagonist was supposed to be a total lying scumbag fuck. I don't think that was intended, though.

...

When it comes to script writing this show is a masterpiece. Much like a Michael Bay script, Eromanga has a tendency to describe everything that is shown. I'm not talking about emotions, i'm talking about literally shown. In one scene they are goofing off instead of working, and when the brother of Elf walks in to catch them in the act of goofing off, Elf stands up and literally explains what he is seeing. It is this baffling mixture of having to exposit a moment and also badly adapting dialogue from the light novel.

You are seeing everything she is saying. It isn't even the whole "show don't tell" rule, that doesn't apply. That's a criticism for bad writing. This isn't bad writing. This is like the a new universe of writing. It is so abysmal that it bore it's way out of the crust of her earth and floated off into space. This kind of writing extends to multiple different episodes too, often times characters restate their purpose multiple times and it still leads to nothing. For example, the entirety of episode ten was about how Muramasa loves the protagonist, but that's been established since her second introductory episode. She literally just reuses the dialogue she used that episode. It is a special kind of absurd.


...


[Speed Round : This show is shit!]


* After a one-episode tournament-esq arc finishes, there is an after party to which everyone who participated in the competition established gets to come. Elf ends up going, even though she wasn't in the competition and this wasn't addressed at all. It was just an excuse to bring all the girls together.

* Everything ties back to the MC for virtually no reason but to make him the focal point of every characters lives. Every character backstory has something to do with our main character and it might be the most contrived bullshit I've ever witnessed on screen. And I watched the entirety of SAO.

* The backgrounds lack any detail whatsoever. We are in a character's room but their room doesn't have any personal mementos or knickknacks. In fact, the only room that has detail is Sagiri's, but she's a NEET with the cleanest room I've ever seen.

* To piggy-back off that. She's a NEET hikikomori, stating she hasn't left her room in years. Yet her room is perfectly clean. There is also no bathroom in her room. How does this even work? Does she shit out of the window? This entire show plays this seriously negative affliction as totally okay.

* Uninspired character designs. The parents of our two protagonists are virtually just the same characters but aged up. It is lazy as all hell.

* This show lacks any timing whatsoever. Not only for it's comedic punchlines, but for its fanservice as well. Fanservice can strike at any time and it is distracting and undercuts any potential catharsis this show is trying to establish.

* Episode eleven changes the entire story of the series and renders the past ten episodes totally irrelevant to where the conclusion is heading.

* The finale was completely and utterly pointless, playing more like an OVA than a finale. It was nothing. Much like the rest of this series.

* Girls get embarrassed for virtually no reason. As in, in one scene our protagonist is getting hit on by Elf on the beach as she asks him to spread some sunscreen on her back. Then once he repeats her orders she gets embarrassed about it. Why? Why is girls being embarrassed about inane shit such a cliche in anime?

* In one episode of the series Sagiri makes Elf and Muramasa her models so she can draw them in revealing positions. Yet, to describe the positions, she draws them. So they are models she already had drawn... so why did she even need them to model in the first place? It made no fucking sense.

* Muramasa was often played as the really "cute" one, as in, the characters acknowledged how pretty she was. However, since she has the same kind of body-type as any other girl, apart from bigger tits, it wasn't convincing at all. The usual anime presentation of "same-body, different standards" that makes no sense.

* If you've noticed I haven't actually said what our protagonist's name is, and that's because it doesn't matter.

* Every girl is a fucking slut.

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[The state of anime]


My biggest gripe with this show isn't that it is bad. Well, it is, it's abhorrent in every way. But the biggest problem, and perhaps the most upsetting issue, is that it is so incredibly popular. It is, undoubtedly, in the mainstream. A show like Eromanga is the mainstream in anime. That is so fucking confusing to me. I tried to explain this earlier but the people who genuinely love this show seem incredibly insecure about their love for it.

They explained to me that I'm simply being bias and that I'm "trying" to hate this show. When that isn't true at all. I actually discovered this show through a meme, which is ironically why it is popular in the first place, because it's made to be a meme, and I thought the meme was kind of hilarious and I decided to watch the series. Sure, once I realized it is awful I went into every episode expecting nothing but terrible nonsense, but that's logical. You shouldn't go into a snake pit, get bitten, and then go into a snake pit again expecting not to get bitten. Maybe i'm just a masochist, but I feel like I needed to finish this series simply to experience the most awful possible thing.

However, to many people from what I've seen, this is far from the most awful possible thing. I was constantly told that this is just a "mediocre" show. That i'm over-exaggerating it's awfulness. To that I say, if this is mediocrity to you, then you might have the most incredibly low standard for television. If this is "mediocre" for anime, then anime fucking sucks. If this is "mediocre" for anything, then that anything is the worst.

It is paramount we criticize it too. Supporting a product like this will help fuel more products like this. In 2014, Miyazaki said something incredibly poignant about anime as an industry, and the fans, instead of taking it seriously, decided to take it as a joke. He made it clear that as an industry, anime is spiraling out into nothingness. There is an endless loop of self-inspiration that will never actually prompt original or groundbreaking content.

As an industry, anime is otaku driven, and as a people, according to Miyazaki, otaku's aren't usually capable of understanding how people work. And if you are writing characters to represent people and don't understand how people work, your characters will take roles that are wholly unrealistic. We already see this in anime constantly. Completely stupid character archetypes that simply don't exist in the real world, from Tsunderes to the concept of a pure, yet sexual girls that seems to inhabit essentially every anime with inherent, childish sexuality in it.

So when these totally unaware shows become popular and are roots for inspiration, they spawn more shows like them. Much like SAO did, much like Re:Zero is doing, much like Eromanga sensei will do, and it is a constant loop of something getting worse and worse. It's not funny. It isn't worth joking about. It genuinely makes this industry look awful. I care because I love animation, and while anime and I have mixed feelings about each other, I can't help but support animation as a medium and I want to see it succeed and be utilized to its full potential. But as it stands, anime is hardly scratching the surface and it will continue to scratch less and less as this loop of uncreativity continues. Which is deeply saddening.

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[Conclusion and Criticism]


Criticizing something is important. Critics help spur movements and change notions and promote something of quality. Look no further than the French New Wave, the most influential movement in film history which was spawned in the palms of upset critics that wanted to change the status quo. This movement permeated throughout the world and ended up inspiring the greatest films and directors in of all time. Without the French New Wave, some of the greatest anime wouldn't even exist. Satoshi Kon wouldn't have edited like he did. Monogatari wouldn't have its signature style. At its base, this starts with a criticism. Bringing attention to something. It is incredibly important to fight for the kind of television you want to see.

I get it, though, not everyone wants this in their television. Some viewers just want to see cute girls prance around on screen saying random shit and yelling "baka!" loudly. I get it. Some people don't care about a narrative, or characters, or even visuals half the time. This show being popular makes that clear. However, on behalf of everyone that does care. That does want television, specifically anime to push itself further away from the stigma regarding the quality of the medium, I ask you to perhaps watch a series with cute girls but in a narrative that actually exists. Characters that are actually there. And there are plenty of shows like that, too. You don't have to settle for something like Eromanga-Sensei.

Kyoto Animation specializes in cute girls but with engaging characters, exceptional directing, and spectacular visuals. If you are looking for porn, look up porn. If you want to watch a series, make the sacrifice of watching something that at least has an element of positivity past sexualizing its objects. This'll promote series that will actually create maybe something a bit more interesting and original.

Eromanga-Sensei is genuinely a saddening experience. It is so incredibly bad in just about every way, yet people really love it. It is so popular that it will spawn plenty of sequels and shows copying its already cliche formula that it truly makes me upset. An industry that is already a mecca for unoriginal concepts that virtually just copy one another will just continue to be an industry of looping inspiration and nothing to break up the tedious formula.

Eromanga-sensei is truly the worst.

Introduction:

Yeah, I know I'm WAY late to this party. A friend requested a review though, so why not? Eromanga Sensei made quite the splash online as THE bad anime of 2017. Gigguk hyped it up famously as "The perfect bad anime" and "The ULTIMATE bad anime". He made it seem like it's so bad it's amazing and hysterical. Sadly, I must disagree. Eromanga Sensei is NOT "The Room" of anime. It isn't uniquely bad or uniquely depraved. It's just an amalgamation of the shittiest cliches and tropes from other bad echii anime.

Background:

Art in general is highly subjective, but what qualifies as "So bad it's ... good" is especially fuzzy. For me personally, the best examples either display extreme technical incompetence where the creators clearly didn’t know what they are doing, or batshit insane projects that beat all the odds by somehow getting made in the first place. Let's look at a classic bad movie with Dolemite. I’ve never seen a film where the director gave less of a fuck. The lead actor flubs a line? Who cares! Keep shooting. The sound equipment AND crew are visible? Who cares! An actor wasn’t ready and has to run to his cue at the start of a scene? Doesn’t matter. Every fight scene is our overweight protagonist awkwardly lifting his leg in the rough proximity of the bad guys and them hurling themselves backwards. The writing is astonishingly bad throughout. On a purely technical level, Dolemite makes The Room look like Citizen Kane. It’s that perfect type of mesmerizingly bad where it’s impossible to tell what was intentionally funny and what was honest incompetence.

Now let's look at some underdog stories that beat the odds just by getting made. Look at every movie made by Troma entertainment. Lloyd Kaufman graduated from Yale and had the intelligence and the right friends (including Oliver Stone) to be a major Hollywood director. However, he hated that movies were greenlit or denied by a board of executives based on how well they were projected to sell. Kaufman rebelled and founded a studio based entirely around producing the ludicrous shit that would NEVER get greenlit elsewhere. Most of these movies were indeed horrible like “They Call me Macho Woman” and “Surf Nazis Must Die”, but Kaufman’s middle finger to Hollywood gave him cult status as a kind of anti-hero. It’s thanks to people like Kaufman that we get rare indy gems like “Six Stringed Samurai”. That’s a movie about a katana wielding Buddy Holly! He’s on a quest to find the last American city after a nuclear war and claim the throne from Elvis. The soundtrack couldn’t afford to use Buddy Holly or Elvis…so they found some random Russian band called the Red Elvises, who were willing to do the soundtrack for free. The Red Elvises specialize in playing 1960s Surf Rock and Rockabilly using a balalaika instead of a guitar! Six Stringed Samurai is the kind of insane shit that SOMEHOW exists and should be celebrated for that reason alone!
Now let’s get back to Eromanga Sensei. Eromanga is perfectly fine on a technical level and was made by people who although lazy, knew exactly what they were doing. The series knew it had an audience based on the success of Oreimo and sure enough was a decent hit in Japan. It was no mistake that Eromanga got made, rather a cynical decision to milk some cash out of the lolicon otakus. Eromanga in my mind is NOT worth celebrating.

Story and Characters:

The story is about a light novel author named Izumi. He’s still in high school, but only cares about being a successful writer in the world of ero LNs. Izumi is extremely hardworking and prolific but is unfortunately a terrible writer. Izumi kind of acts as the avatar of series writer/director, Tsukasa Fushimi. Izumi’s novels only sell as well as they do thanks to his mysterious illustrator, who specializes in drawing lewd imagery. It turns out that this illustrator is Izumi’s obnoxious little step-sister named Sagiri. It ALSO turns out that their next-door neighbor is his arch rival in the world of erotic LNs. Izumi must try rise to the top of the ero LN world while also struggling with feelings of love for his step-sister. Basically, if you’ve seen Oreimo, you’ve seen Eromanga Sensei. If you’ve seen any of the dozens of shitty sibling incest echii, you’ve seen Eromanga sensei.

Overall:

Eromanga Sensei isn’t funny. It isn’t erotic. It isn’t unique and amusingly bad. It’s just trite, boring, garbage. Well, at least it’s scratching an itch for loli lovers, right? Surely it features the most naked little girls of any anime in recent memory! Nope! Thanks to changes in Japan’s censorship laws over the last few years, there is no full-frontal nudity or unobscured rear-view nudity in the entire series. If you were hoping for something uniquely perverted, this isn’t it. Go watch Aki Sora instead. I have nothing further to say about this pile. It’s just this utterly mediocre echii with no reason to exist that you shouldn’t watch under any circumstances.

Okay I'm going to be the saving grace of the MAL entry.

Everybody only really likes to see positive and negative reviews. So this is going to be a pretty niche one. Kinda why every review for this show is less than a 3 or more than an 8 and I'm going to be the confuting force and say they're both wrong because it's not good or bad. It's the purgatory of mediocrity that is not bad enough for hell but isn't good enough for even a taste of heaven.

Now I understand why people give this a high/low score
1) They thoroughly enjoyed it
2) They ... instantly liked the characters so all the interactions were good for them
3) The anime didn't impress them and usually people don't know how to react to something so middle of the road, so since it didn't impress them it was an instant fail in their book.
4) Every video about this show is like a rant, or a about why it's trash but they love it.

I will bring up Oreimo. As the shows have some relation and are made by the same author. I wanna be constructive and see if you can see improvement of the authors work. So there's the preface. Let's get to review.

Story: 2/10

The story is just used to get the characters into an entertaining situation. It is stuffed with episodes that have the theme but a shred of the plot. Like this is nothing to write home about. I am extremely happy this slice of life refused a school setting though, as theyre usually pretty boring and extremely cliche.

The premise is the lead male, Masamune is a light novel writer who collaborates with an artist he discovers is his shut in step sister he very rarely interacts with. His step mother died and the father is out of the picture. Which gives him a feeling of loneliness. This makes Sagiri and Masamune basically two kids who just happen to live in the same house. Masamune has had very few interactions with Sagiri.
Which makes it easier to stomach than Oreimo's romance between siblings. You see with the removal of incest this show loses a very prominent theme Oreimo had which was; what is deemed taboo by society and morality and accepting yourself for who you are and wanting to be what you want. Now I actually like that this theme was removed because even though it gave point to the blood related relationship and the exploration of otaku culture in Oreimo... Kirino and Kyousuke's relationship wasn't written interestingly and felt more like pandering to fetishists. Now the pandering part is debatable BUT Kirino and Kyousuke's romance was unfortunately poorly written. And since Kirino and Kyousuke were so poorly written and unlikable it makes you root against their relationship. As its seen as a very toxic thing that emotionally wounds the cast. It could've been handled so much better.

Something about the story that I actually think is good for now is that Sagiri and Masamune don't get together and that creates more opportunities to expand on the dynamic of the relationship. While Sagiri was cute and they could've focused the show on them working their relationship out. I find the route that was taken to be an entertaining one to an extent. Its not always I get to see a seasonal or light novel be ballsy enough to not force in a romantic relationship that is weak and underdeveloped or not have it happen by the end of the show.

The reason the story still gets a low score is because despite its premise. The love rectangle(?) is the only thing tying the story together. They go to the beach, there's like a one episode long light novel writing tournament, the plot isn't weaved together very well after episode 6...

The drama of the show is kind of forced. For example, Sagiri should cry when opening up to Masa about her mother as she's never let it all out before. Its a sympathetic backstory that justifies why Sagiri lives with Masamune and why she's so shut in and emotionally reserved. It's not handled that well though.

I'd say since its a comedy and comedies stories shouldn't always be the breaking point but it's all very cliche in how it plays out and how Masamune rejects other girls and says he loves another. It's not just a comedy, it's still a story and the plot doesn't really have a statement, the story arcs are usually episode length, the pacing is too fast, and gets side tracked a lot. The finale could've also easily have been the story of Sagiri and Masmune's meeting online or could've been the resolution to the climax which was their meeting but the build up falls to nothing and dents the story very heavily. Feeling empty and giving the story no conclusion. With fanservice filler being disappointing finale. It is just an episode of the girls playing lewd twister for Sagiri and them trying to unclothe Masamune. Like I said this show cannot escape the purgatory of mediocrity. And it is because of the botched final episode.

Art: 7/10

The palette is a very pastel. It's pretty. The art is important to the comedy as the facial animation on the comedic contortion is executed well so the quick sharpness of the visual reaction is funny. The animation is good and it's very clearly made by A1.

A1 is a double edged blade though. As the direction for the scenes and the art sometimes gets cringe worthy. Some of it just being BORINGLY simple. And some of it making me scared someone was gonna walk in. Of course even though I have not fully read the source material, I know these scenes were there so by adapting some of these I cannot blame A1. To get to it... there are several angles that do nothing but show of the bodies of the characters. They sacrifice legitimate scene direction WHICH THEY ARE CAPABLE OF for a nice shot of a girls ass.

It's fan service I guess. I'm not gonna not bring it up too much because even though it is a problem, its clearly intentional. Sometimes the direction is unintentionally lacking too but it's not gonna put you to sleep.

The character designs are all distinct and some give you a bit of a look into the character's persona. Such as Sagiri herself and Elf Yamada.

Sound: 7/10

The voice actors were surprisingly good. Yoshitsugu Matsuoka the voice for characters like Kirito , Otau from Galko, and Hanazawa from Mob Psycho shows how good he is at leading. His acting is great, he's emotive and fun to hear. Akane Fujita despite not having too much experience does great in this role and I'm glad to see her career is only growing. Minami Takahashi is really good to hear again. She's a great actress and I'm glad to see her as a lead in more seasonals. Saori Oonishi was good as Muramasa. (Man its so weird how like all the leads were characters in Galko)

Now to the music:
Eromanga Sensei has a great op and ed. The Op has good direction, good animation, charm, and is very catchy. The ed while not being directed that well and is just Sagiri dancing is a very high energy, cute, and is honestly a catchy song. Like even if I hated this show I'd still dig the music of the opening and closing.

As for the the soundtrack of the show... it's kind of forgettable and repetitive. They have this same song that they always play when it gets "wacky" and it is not enjoyable the 100th time ( and after ) you hear it.
It's played sometimes twice an episode. It doesn't help that the other slower pieces aren't half as memorable as this. There's no flavor to the slower energy tracks. It's very standard for the most part. There are exceptions but stick to the op and ed if you wanna listen to music from this show.

Characters: 6/10

Every good comedy depends on its characters so I feel like this could have broke Eromanga Sensei's back. The main male lead, Masamune is irritatingly dense and it leads to the plot solely being changed from its route because of his irrational ignorance. His dynamic of not wanting a lover but a family is pivotal for the show and makes Sagiri desire to be more sisterly and put her crush on him to the side to make him happy. We understand he wants a family after he believes he is rejected by Sagiri because of his brother status. He sees how unimportant a sweetheart really is to him in this period of loneliness in his life. Although this makes his motivations very confusing and contrary. As he continues saying there's already a girl he loves to characters like Muramasa and Elf Yamada, referring clearly to Sagiri. But I just came to accept that he wants a step sister who is a sister more than a girlfriend.
Masamune himself does have an arc but he begins to stagnate after this and is used more as an outlet for other characters development rather than being his own fully fleshed out lead. It's good the other characters are always more enjoyable than him outside of a comedic situation plus the other characters were also my motivation for continuing the show anyway .
Sagiri Izumi, the female lead, is a good character. Nothing truly groundbreaking but her character does have depth. She's lonely and she's had a crush on Masamune since discovering his self insert story when she was young. She hit up Masamune with fan art and he asked for more. She found the positive reassurance in her art from someone she liked to be very motivational. The conflicts in Eromanga Sensei are handled well when they're not forced in cheap drama. Like Sagiri's mom being dead and her lack of an emotional reaction (like tears) when opening up to Masamune about it. Also I guess Sagiri's perversion is entertaining because you wouldn't expect this young girl to be so hardcore about the woman's body and know nothing about the males. Sagiri also does try to improve herself as an artist for her step brother after seeing he needed an illustration of a voluptuous girl. Since didn't want to lose Masamune, she worked hard on illustrations for him. Therefore in her own mind she won Masamune back.
Sagiri has a few conflicts with Masamune. She hates death because the person she likes isn't around anymore and she'll never see them again. This is clearly because of the loss of her mother. Though never directly stated. To relate this she spites Masamune for killing off one of her favorite characters in his novel. She learns to accept the character won't come back but it encourages Masamune to strive to make a happier ending for the characters. Because in the end death does not mean permanent unhappiness.
She also shames him every time she feels his affection for her is based off physical appearance as her love for him is personal. Sagiri is also immature, she gets jealous and insecure when she's scared Masamune will leave her alone again or move on from her. So her calling out her step brother and wanting his attention may be irritating but it's an understandable and an established part of her character.

In conclusion, Sagiri and Masamune are significantly more likable leads than Kirino and Kyousuke. As they are less tedious to watch, less selfish and less destructive to the more likable characters around them (like Kyousuke was to Kuroneko). Sagiri also on her own is a likable character. I literally have not met a person online who didn't love seeing Kirino get punched.
The most irritating aspects of the Izumi's characters is that Sagiri is easily made jealous but it is justified as she is an insecure 12 year old and Masamune is a contradictory dumbass. A dumbass you understand and sympathize with but still a dumbass. The relationship here is less awkward as they are basically just roommates. But even though Kirino and Kyousukes relationship was poorly written, the sacrifice of blood relation basically makes the only point of the story to be Masamune waiting to get a gf/family.
I want to reiterate while it's on topic... It doesn't have a statement or a controversial theme like Oreimo. Which makes this whole anime blend in to everything else and just feel like there's really no point.

Time for the other leads:
Elf Yamada is the pretentious, eccentric writer of this show and she was incredibly enjoyable. She rarely opens up to people and has developed a crush on Masamune even though he's the one who looks up to her. She is very supportive of him and even though she will still compete for affection she wants Masamune to be happy. Even if it means she loses the love race. She's a character that wants to show her love but will go with the flow if she's losing the race. Despite being rich she really isn't selfish.

Muramasa Senju is secretly a huge fan of Masamune and is introduced during the Light Novel Tenkaichi Budokai. Unlike Masamune and Elf who write for their fans, she writes for herself. The lack of pandering is likely why she has the biggest following of all the main characters. She insensitively intimidates and riles up Masamune in order to get him to write a novel she wants to see him write. She apologized and gives up the competition despite having the bigger following as she understands how much the competition meant to Masamune. She had developed a crush on Masamune and competes for his affection. While she was a cute character she was not as layered as Elf or Sagiri. She didn't get as much exploration either. She has her role in the plot but shes the least fleshed out. Or at least she would've been...

Nothing about this character is likable. She could easily be written out entirely. Megumi is the worst part of this show. She has an incredibly poor introduction that I wish I never saw and she wants to manipulate Sagiri just because she wants more popularity. She acts like she is a whore for popularity sake and talks about how much she loves dick.

Which brings up the last problem and segment of this show and my review.

Comedy: 5/10

The comedy is really trashy. Joking about pornography, and penises, and boobs. And since all the characters are teenagers and Sagiri is a preteen it makes it even more wilder of a ride. This could turn peopple off or since the characters subvert the creepy old male pervert trope in a very basic way it will not effect you. Girls and boys get stripped by a 12 year old pervert girl. This shit gets intense. Now the voice actors make the reactions to a lot of different scenarios funny but the amount of raunchy humor is overwhelming. Like to the extent where you just strap in for the ride. When in the incredibly sexualized situations you'll feel awkward or aroused if that's your thing, I'm judging the anime not you. At least it only happens like once or twice in a single 22 minute episode though. So that's a relief. the voice acting makes the other jokes very entertaining though. It's not all just dirty. But when it wants to be dirty it gets rough.

Enjoyment: 5/10

My personal enjoyment didn't matter in this review. Maybe you'll be more adamant with your dislike of something and it'll ruin the show for you. But personally I enjoyed it sometimes. I like some of the characters, music, character designs

Conclusion: 5/10

I feel like this is probably the most fair and in depth review of Eromanga Sensei you can get. I'm not saying other reviews are invalidated by mine. I'm simply saying I don't feel like anyone has cared enough about the show to write this thorough a dissection. The shows not good but it's not half as bad as people act like it is. I wanna see it get better. It's a perfectly mediocre show. It could've potentially been one of the best of the season or one of the worst. Beneath the lack luster of the show it has some solid characterization, concepts, art, and amazing voice actors. That's about it though. So even though it was flawed it was nice talking about it. Let's all hope that inevitable season 2 gets even more depth or gets even more memorably raunchier.

Personally, this anime is actually pretty decent when it first started, but when I try to compare its later episode, where are of his harem came together, It became quite uninteresting, and even, unengaging when a certain episode is dedicated to a certain girl in his harem. Though, if you are going hate this show for its depiction of lewd 2D girls, who are obviously premature, then hate all the show that's out there that does the same too. Even if that includes your favorite show. Konosuba is one, they lewd Megumin. Tbh, it should be pretty normal to see such a thing in this ... community that you've gotten involved in. You may also hate this show for the somewhat revolutionary idea of romance of legal incest story, that being said, no one are going to make an actual romance of that IRL, so what's the big deal. I live in the same circumstances as this, not blood related sister and shit, if you see her as your sister, no sane person (ones that have a sister) who even want to hook up with them as a lover or as a love interest. That's only in anime and stuff from the ancient times, where King arthur fall in love with his mother without both knowing that they are related, and got kill for it or something along those line. Or, tribes, emperors, king practicing that lineage thing, where only blood related sibliings or descedent can make love and reproduce in order to keep that, idk, snobbish tradition of treating a certain blood as a part of the royalty, or being special and superior in a way from other human beings. And ofc, Eromanga is different because she's not blood related, but the general theme of the genre is the same.

This quality of animation is undeniably of a pretty high quality. The characters are consistently well drawn, and their designs or character are detailed and consistent through and through (we barely see the camera angle zoomed, or angled from afar for a very long duration). It's hard to bring in subjectivity, the way you felt about the show, and lesser the quality of the art/animation through subjectivity, in order to justify a 1/10 or even lower for the art/animation of the show. In order to explain how shit this show really is. It's irrational to take irrationality (subjectivity) and apply it to rational things such as art. Art are obviously something that we all can agree on. If something looks good and well drawn, that's a good quality art. some people tries to bend logic or idea of artistic around, to push their bias view that pampered to their own irrationality and subjective feelings, over evaluating things with a certain degree of maturity and objectivity in it. The evaluation on the story are entirety subjective, though, it's hard to say the same if you are going to evaluate the external content of the anime, like the art, music, voice acting, animation (the amount of frame to frame picture that is drawn to make the animation looks smooth or not smooth) and so on. And some scene in this is actually smooth as hell. There are some cartoonish art style here and there to charaterized the character (like when sagiri do popeye looking mouth thing). And the lewd of fanservice is justified, look at the fucking title name mate.

Eromanga sensei is a very fun show for its early 5 episodes and so; though, I kinda lost interest once there's this trip event in the show, as the entirety of his harem grouped up, indicating signs of wanting to be his love interest to one another (basically to their rivals in romance). I mean, it's cool how at least this anime, unlike many other harem, are extremely honest about their feeling for the MC, and even be as bold to confess their love. And this is through the used of scenery, or subtle ways of confessing, and other dramatic elements to make that scene of the confession, less boring and more romantic than any other harem series that I've seen.

That being said, there are quite a myriad of negatives when it comes to the approach, the method of developing a character, and the overly clicheness of the anime, where the show tries to be different, but done it in a pretty half assed way.

As we all know, a cliche harem show is basically a show where there's only one guy with multiplicity of women, who are seeking to fight one another (though, they will still care about one another either way as a friend) just to hook up with the MC, depending on the route that the anime may take for each or all girls. I'm actually pertaining to the VN of any harem series, that tend to contain a harem route, or a route that solely focused specifially on one candidate of the MC's harem. This being said, the anime tries to bring in at least other male character that seem to have no interest in girls, or bring in some random dudes into the story, pretending to be different from other harem show that we've seen. The pretentious part here isn't the fact that this anime have other males in it, ones that who are close to the MC and in a position to communicate with people from the MC's harem that is. The pretentious part here is bringing him out of nowhere, be a part of the different event that they took place in (like the beach episode), then forcely or conveniently put him away, making his existence seem quite unneeded. It's as if he wasn't even needed in the show but they just decided to keep him there anyway. There's no point of having him take part in a certain activities with the MC and of his harem, when you're going to get rid of him during it anyway (talking about the King's game screen, the game where you draw a number, and tell them to do whatever you want).

The approach of the harem is done quite horribly, it's not to say that this anime is bad as a whole for creating this horrible harem after all of the harem are introduced. It's just their way of presenting and giving only a little bits of moment for the MC and the girl of interest for a very short moment. It doesn't progresses to anything much, though, it might have created a reaction from the MC, but that either stagnated just to add in some dramatic scene in the episode, or to make the girls became even more competitive in becoming the MC's love interest. And his love for his little sister is a barrier for the MC to not hook up with other women, just like the very popular meme, "I love emilia" scene, rip Rem.



On a side note, you also call any author of such medium like a manga writer, light novel writer etc as sensei in the otaku community (everyone calls them that, see the anime man interviews with spice of wolf author, or konosuba author, or shirobako and bakuman, an anime on the production making of manga and anime industry).

The actual story maybe about that rivaly thing in regards to being an author and all. So it's not weird for the story to be about it, but the anime neglected this aspect, and proceeds on towards the typical harem moment rather than focusing more so on the main aspect of the story, and that's, striving for success in the industry (mainly for the MC's case since other authors are more successful than him). And anime move the plot quite slowly as well, that's prolly a down side of the show if you hate seeing characters spending time together (having fun), and developing some kind of a relationship with those interactions. It's pretty slice of life-ish if I were to describe it.

The anime followed a typical template of a typical harem show, though that's not a negative of the show, since every story in other community does the same. Deadpool for example, it follows the exact same template like any typical hero shows, and the hero's journey (the infamous outline for hero's story that everyone accidentally followed). The matter of criticizing the show here is how it was done, and how do you like it personally. This part is really subjective to one's taste, since people expect different things from a story, and our definition of entertainment are never entirely the same.

And that being said, this show has a great start, the quality drops though from its early episodes once all the harem is introduced, however, this is not a bad show. There are a number of negatives and positive in this show. But tbh, this show is pretty cute and fanservice heavy it maybe, it's a fucking fanservice show on premature girls and that isn't new at all in the otaku community. It's for a very niche audience that likes it. If you hate people lewding premature girls, hearing them saying lewd things like, "I want to see your panties", "all girls my age love dicks" etc. This anime is not for you.

Everyone working on this show should be arrested and I honestly feel like I need some jail time just for watching it. I heard it was the worst of the worst so I gave it a shot and yup. It was. Ok so the premise of the show is this high schooler finds out his 12 year old sister draws erotica for him and so they fall in love. It’s a lot worse than it sounds. There are so many shots of her ass and thighs that just make me cringe and feel disgusting. So many shots of her panties or shots down her shirt. ... If she goes to change or take a bath you bet your ass we’re going to be forced to watch. They do this with the other girls as well with bikinis, lewd poses and such. Just please Japan, please stop funding shit like this. SHE’S 12! The writing is just a horny as well. In the first episodes this bitch Megumi said this guy's dick didn’t work because he didn’t immediately fall in love with her, someone 3-4 years younger than him, and then proceeded to say that all girls her age (12) love penises. I died inside when reading the subtitles for that. I had to pause and take a breather. It took me 3 hours to get through that 20 min episode. Later this 12 year old keeps on asking other girls to show her their panties, takes the underwear off of a girl nonconsensually and in the last episode she and another girl tries to forcefully remove her brothers pants and underwear because she doesn’t know how to draw a dick. IS THIS SUPPOSED TO BE FUNNY?! This is Weird! The only reason this show isn't at the bottom of the list is because the other girls are ok (not Megumi). They are actually Izumi’s age and work fine as love interests. They’re not good or anything but they were a breath of fresh air compared to the atrocity that was the main plot. Elf was annoying to begin with but got better and Senju was a lot of fun after she confessed. There were a couple episodes without Sagiri that focussed on these side characters and I was actually having fun. It still wasn’t good by any stretch of the imagination but I was enjoying the shenanigans. There was a running joke where this newcomer kept thinking Izumi was gay and not going to lie. It was a genuinely funny joke that made me laugh out loud. This show isn't completely irredeemable. If they literally just deleted Sagiri or maybe had her draw literally anything else and didn’t sexualize her, this show wouldn’t nearly be as bad. It would still be shit, don’t get me wrong, but it would at least be watchable. Stay away from this show at all costs. Morbid curiosity got the better of me.

This show exceeded my expectations in every single aspect. It was an enriching experience from start to finish and I can't advocate for your viewership enough. Don't misunderstand me; this show is absolute fucking garbage - but it traverses past the point of being an ironically enjoyable experience to a point of unironic, earnest enjoyment.

Slowly and surely, I began to board the bandwagon upon realizing this fact of life. At some point, you begin to accept that this is no mere sub-par show. You soon realize that this redefines what can be considered "bad". This show takes garbage to new territory.

Though, all bias aside, from ... a critical standpoint, the art is visually pleasing - it really stands above as a cut above the rest in terms of visually aesthetic and is lacking in flaws. The sound design and original soundtrack created for this anime worked to it's benefit and sounds quite nice, from the masterful opening that encapsulates the spirit of the show, to the ending that pumps you up for the next episode, and everything in between.

Continuing our critical analysis, the story is not the greatest - it has unique elements in the mainstream realm of anime but is nothing very special. It would stand at a solid 5 from a macroscopic perspective, assuming you only consider the overall basic, core plot. If you were to look at the more nuanced mini-arcs of this series, that perception would quickly fade, and you would soon realize that this show's plot is beyond the realm of a mere 1/10. It is much, much, much worse. They add in needless drama for the sake of extending the series and the flow is terrible. One might say - it is garbage.

But for a moment - indulge in the sheer beauty of this show through a perspective of how garbage this show really is - Eromanga-sensei stands to testify how an anime can be both objectively bad - but still be an immensely enjoyable experience. As to avoid spoiling any of the series, I will leave you with this final request.

Please watch the show.





This show is trash
and so am I

Eromanga-sensei is the portrait of an unusual comedy that plays with the morbid side of the mind. Moreover, the show salvages some ideas from other anime in search of acceptance. In the end, Eromanga-sensei only offers an unsatisfaction with an overused harem story and with some misleading sexual concepts.

The average: The anime started with a promising 8.23 and ended with a miserable 6.97. The 12 years old girl sexual behaviour. The silly and unrealistic story.

The good: Some hilarious moments and few characters.

Perhaps, the biggest mistake is the story. Even if we eliminate the infamous incest debate, we end up with an empty harem story. ... A laddie with a collection of girls between the ages of twelve and fifteen who fall in love with the protagonist, an overused story romance in the anime world. To deceive the viewer with a new plot, an erroneous perception is created in which this promiscuous group is as functional as any group of adults to the extreme where they are most successful and can take their own decisions that are not in accordance with their ages. No one has ever asked, ¿where are the adults in this series? So far you will notice two, but they are mere puppets who try to propel dysfunctional relationships. The show portrays three young characters (Masamune, Elf and Muramasa) who are famous light novels writers and a twelve-year-old lassie (Sagiri) who is an erotic sketcher known as Eromanga-sensei. The irony is that this lassie, despite her alleged inexperience has developed sexual tastes or fetishes out of nuffink that can not be explained logically and credibly. To play a little more with your mind, this lassie lives with the laddie. In addition, she is his sister, but with a small countermeasure, she is a step-sister. For some persons they can hook together for others could be a problem. It is up to you which one is your side.

Let's remove the sexual part for a bit because I need to be honest. The show is full of incoherency even for a comedy. ¿Are you going to believe that this little lassie locked herself in her room without any visual contact and this laddie never even bothered entering and see if she was ok? ¿Will you laugh after seeing a child, kid, youth locked in a room for several months without any visual contact? I bet that MOST all the persons will take the door down and see if the kid is ok or will try to seek help immediately. Don't play with our intelligence that argument is so lame that none will bite for it. Also, the irrational success case of the characters (they have published novels, and some have sold more than a professional writer).

Now the sexual part, the main topic of the comedy. In one hand, the relationship concept misleading the meaning of relationship or "romance" expressed in the constant sexual insinuation of a twelve years old girl. I need to repeat it, a twelve years old girl. The continuous story twist hidden under the timid face of a kid "Brother, you are an idiot and a pervert" twist "I want Elf's panties." Scenes that play with the morbid desires of the mind, pushed by every panty angle in search of spectators. Second, the sexual misleading "you are a pervert, but I like drawing erotic scenes" or "Can I see your penis?" Third, the overused harem concept. All these ideas continuously resemble the fetishism introduced in this anime, and if you don't like them, then you will feel this anime as an immediate failure. I am not saying that this anime is a total waste, there are some exciting scenes and they could have used that scenes a bit more (final episode 9).

About the characters, nothing is relevant. A guy and lots of lolis that love him or want to have a relationship with him. Most all them are more successful than any adult, and some have unexplained sexual desires. If we let Sagiri's relation out of the spectrum then we can appreciate some characters like the promiscuous and introvert personality of Elf Yamada to the timid and polite nature of Muramasa but sadly if we add Sagiri to the equation, Masamune's relations are unbalanced and in some cases forced.

The art isn't bad. The definition of the characters was good. However, you will enjoy it just if you like the story if not the art will be irrelevant.

The OP and ED songs are good. The OP was part of the J-Pop Billboard and the Oricon ranking. About the score, it is simple and matches the comedy moments.

Finally, I don't suggest this anime for kids. It has some sexual concepts that aren't explained and can lead to a misconception if you don't understand the difference between the joke and the reality.

I somehow watched Eromanga Sensei to completion, including the OVA. Here are my thoughts:

Basically, this anime has a ton of sexualization and not much else. If you want ecchi cumbrain garbage, here's your jerk material. There's no other major selling point here.

Most of the main characters in this are writers or content creators in some form – I thought this might be an interesting dimension to explore. Unfortunately, this show does not deliver any kind of interesting story whatsoever. The supporting cast, despite being composed of artists, are mostly treated as sex objects, and the scriptwriting reflects this accordingly. I was initially hopeful for the ... content-creator perspective of this story, but they never really provided anything substantial in this regard. The male MC is a writer, but otherwise he is a spineless idiot with zero personality, as usual. In fact the entire cast is unlikeable for various reasons, as well as lacking character development in general.

Eromanga Sensei has very little entertainment value besides arousing your poor abused weary foul fap-blistered septic basement-dweller chode. When people say they hate anime, this kind of show is what they are thinking of. Frankly, it's the textbook definition of garbage. It has plenty of lewd content though, so it may be able to assist in draining your sweaty hairy sensitive delicious lustful intoxicating voluminous nutritious testicles, which perhaps is an advantage depending on your perspective. There's not much else of value here. Of course, there's nothing intrinsically wrong with that; boys will be boys ;)

Seriously though, there are some funny moments, but I wouldn't recommend watching this unless your primary motivation is sexual in nature. This anime really is shameless cumbrain material. Some of the (usually sexual) comedy did get some laughs out of me. Also, if you're one of those people obsessed with shipping and who wins the MC's affections, or someone who sees love triangles as a glorified horse race to place bets, then you might personally find this show entertaining. There are multiple female candidates vying for the male MC's attention. The OVAs in particular focus on this aspect of the story.

I can see why this show spawned so many memes. Unlike the characters themselves, the meme material is quite fertile. There are also a lot of screencap-worthy facial expressions. In some ways, this anime feels engineered to be shitpost material.

Although the soundtrack is nothing special (aside from maybe the OP/ED tracks), the voice acting in this is not bad – I thought all the female leads were distinctive and performed their roles well.


My personal overall rating: 3/10
Eromanga Sensei is utter garbage but it did occasionally get some laughs out of me. Above all else, this is a highly sexualized anime meant to arouse the viewer – if you're into this material then feel free to shamelessly enjoy; I'm not judging anyone. There is also loads of sexual humour in here, which some people may find appealing as well. Furthermore, this show has a lot of fertile meme material and this is probably a major reason for its infamy; all publicity is good publicity I suppose.

Eromanga Sensei is an anime that undoubtedly caught me by surprise. From its vibrant storytelling to its captivating humor, this series effortlessly won me over. As an anime enthusiast, I found myself thoroughly immersed in its world, eagerly awaiting each episode to unfold.

The show's strongest suit lies in its well-crafted comedy. Eromanga Sensei seamlessly weaves witty banter and hilarious situations, keeping the audience chuckling from start to finish. The comedic timing is impeccable, and the quirky interactions between the characters never fail to bring a smile to one's face. It's rare to find an anime that consistently delivers laughs without feeling forced or overdone, and ... this one truly excels in this regard.

Furthermore, the characters in Eromanga Sensei are incredibly endearing, each possessing their own unique quirks that make them stand out. The development of the main protagonist, Sagiri, is especially commendable, as we witness her growth throughout the series. Her dynamic with her stepbrother, Masamune, is heartwarming and adds an extra layer of charm to the narrative.

The art style and animation are top-notch, showcasing beautifully rendered visuals that enhance the overall experience. The attention to detail in character designs and background art elevates the anime's aesthetic appeal, making it visually delightful.

Though the anime may be lighthearted and fun, it also touches on themes of artistic passion and the complexities of family relationships. These underlying themes add depth to the story, making it more than just a typical comedy.

In conclusion, Eromanga Sensei is an absolute joy to watch. Its well-crafted humor, lovable characters, and exceptional animation make it an outstanding addition to the anime world. I wholeheartedly recommend this series to any anime enthusiast who seeks a fun and heartwarming experience.

Rating: 10/10

What is a manga?
What is a sensei?
Who is the ero?
These are the thought-provoking questions the viewer is given when watching 'Eromanga Sensei'.
As Shakespeare said himself, '14 year old girls, find attractive, you should.'
'Juliet I am the Romeo'

Eromanga Sensei is a clear continuation of Shakespeare's highly intellectual literary works, on the basis that it too, places underaged women in more mature circumstances and situations. As we can see from one of the most critically aclaimed plays of the 16th century, it is apparent that women such as Juliet (or in this instance, Sagari) are pushed into forbidden love at the tender age of 13. This is ... clearly something that should be encouraged - we can infer this from Shakespeare's own perspective.

In Eromanga Sensei, we can see how inspired and thoroughly enthusiastic the author was - it is evident that this forbidden love trope has shone through in the anime itself and is parallel, to a significant degree, to the masterpiece of Romeo and Juliet.

Thus, it can be concluded that, owing to the forbidden love nurtured in Eromanga Sensei, it too is a masterpiece on the same intellectual playing field as Romeo and Juliet.

10/10

This anime is one of those anime that isn't meant to be taken seriously. It's one of those that is meant to make you relate to the characters and/or give you satisfaction. A very similar anime to this is Himouto! Umaru-chan.

Plot: 5/10
The plot of it is that the MC has been writing a light novel where the illustrator is some unknown person that goes by the name 'Eromanga'. He doesn't realize that Eromanga is actually his little sister (which is not his biological sister). I won't be talking about what happens later because it's kinda spoiler filled. The story focuses on a couple of ... characters who are all either otakus, authors, publishers or illustrators. Honestly the concept of having a story focused on an otaku character has been done before and is slowly becoming more common. The story is easy to understand (at least for anime fans and/or manga fans) but that's cause it's not complex. I do feel like it has been done before but not in this way (???). I would also like to mention the fat guy that runs between the transitions each episode, I thought that was a nice thing they keep. I gave it a 5 (mediocre) due to it not being something unbelievably original but still not something that's overdone.

Art: 9/10
The art in this is actually very well done. Although due to the art and story most of the time when I was watching this (especially at the scenes when one of the authors is bragging) I kept thinking how the animators felt. I mean they did have to animate this series which makes publishing a work and drawing seem so easy (I mean Eromanga is like 12 and can draw that in like 5 minutes) while the animators probably can't see their family most of the time and almost never get recognition.

Sound: 8/10
I'm not a musician but I do have to admit that the music is quite good. I know it's not Yuri on Ice levels or Your Lie in April levels but is quite fitting for the series.

Character:5/10
The series has quite good characters. Their biggest fault is usually that they are unoriginal or simply unrealistic. When reviewing anime you have to realize that it is animation, so they make everything quite extra (face expressions, emotions, voice acting ect.) to make stuff entertaining. But seriously Eromanga is 12 and can draw that well?! Elf-Yamada is like 14 and is one of the most successful authors in upcoming light novels ?! And how does the MC keep his writing on check and his school life on and manages to have friends?? I feel like this is due to the writers of the show being too old to understand the stuff you can and can't do at a young age. I'm around the age of the characters and I do feel like this is too extra.

Enjoyment:5/10
If it was any other anime I would of dropped it already. But their is after all something pulling me to watch one more episode if you know what I mean. I honestly think it's the hangcliffs at the ends of most of the episodes. BUT HOW? I don't feel attached to the story nor the characters. How is this possible?

BRIEF HISTORY:

pros:
-you might relate to the characters if you're a writer or any type of artist
-the animation is great
-the music is fine
-you get attached to the series somehow
-if you want to get to know anime and manga this might be good for you
-overall it seems like a weird concept but it is pretty relateble to some people

cons:
-the story is pretty boring for the first few episodes
-characters are bland
-honestly if half of the characters weren't lolis this would be such a flop

Now listen up. Eromanga is no Akira and I want to be clear on that. This is not a new or original anime. But ask yourself this: Why in hell would you expect from a light novel adaptation to be the second coming of Hayao Miyazaki? What drove people in this community to the point where they can't genuinely enjoy anime for what it always was: perverted and weirdly funny?

Let me back up there and start over. You watched Chobits didn't you? You watched Chobits and Gurren Lagann and lots and lots of over top shows with lots of 'plot' in them didn't you? Did ... it not occur even once to you that it's over-sexualized? That's one of the things that divides anime from western cartoons: it's liberal approach to show sexual content. They even have a genre for it: hentai. And it's fine. You watch it if you want, if you don't like it, you don't watch it. However there's no denying anime always included more 'plot' than was necessary. And we loved it for it. In the minds of conscious people, there is a barrier between fantasy and reality. You don't expect or want the two to mix. You don't expect naked girls jumping on you in real life, because it would be messed up? Why are they doing it? Are they crazy? Is this a prank? Am I being recorded? Those would be things you would be asking yourself in those situations. In fantasy, it makes complete sense. That's how the story is set up and you suspend your disbelief - you roll with it.

Let me back up even further. Let's talk about this fake-sister incest bullshit that has been going around in anime and light novels too. Did you actually ever consider why this is a thing? And why people are attracted to this trope? Do you think people desperately want to fuck their relatives? Do you want to fuck your relatives? The reason why this pops up is Freudian. Simply put, from a story perspective as an author you want to set up an already intimate scenario between two young people. That's not something that normally just occurs in nature. You want them to trust each other and have a strong bond. So you leverage something that you know provides that bond. Family. It's an easy explanation that a human mind accepts casually for an answer to 'why are they comfortable around each other'. Why do they care about each other deeply? Why at all?

Then you want to make that a romantic scenario and that's the difficult part, because normally this is not romantic at all. Is it romantic that a father cares about his son? Is it romantic that a mother tucks her daughter in at night before going to sleep? Is it romantic that two young siblings bathe together? Or is it just practical? Not making it a 'weird thing' to have siblings bathe together as otherwise you would have to pay two tubs worth of water. Listen, I know this may sound difficult to comprehend, but men and women aren't ALWAYS sexually attracted to each other. So this is where the 'cheapness' of Eromanga comes in: it pretends just by not being blood related this can be romantic. It dismisses the point: you either focus on a brother sister relationship and build on that, which is difficult to show as romantic, or you drop that plot and say 'they have loved each other for years and lived together as well' and then it becomes plain bullshit. You have to force your characters not to destroy this scenario. Two young people living together for years and loving one another, with no supervision whatsoever - and not having sex like every day? We all know that's bullshit. So that's why the brother-sister thing is introduced. To RESTRAIN it, not to ENHANCE it. However subconsciously people tie the two stories together, the love and being related and they end up with this guilty of being attracted to a relative. And they enjoy it, never realising that it wasn't the relatives part that they were attracted to in the first place. By itself, that doesn't mean anything.

They were attracted to love and caring for each other. And I think Eromanga delivers when it comes to this. There's great attention on the Kirito (sorry I had to) and Rei (again, sorry) being shown as actually discussing things. Things that aren't always their relationship (I'm looking at you every other slice of life bullshit). They speak about work, other people, their past. It's actually really believable at that too.

I think it's also really important to emphasise: people in Eromanga seem to be attracted to each other for realistic and right reasons. They love each other because they impressed them with their writing, with their motivational speeches, with their enthusiasm for their passion (writing or drawing) and so on. They are not empty sexual objects, they all have their reasons for liking either the protagonist or others. The protagonist isn't empty either: he puts a lot of effort into preserving his way of life and following his dreams. He also cares deeply about others and interacts with them well: he does not shy away from criticising people but nor from taking advice.

I'm sad to see we got so posh and elitist in this community, that we don't accept who we originally all started of as: obnoxious, masturbating Naruto and DBZ fans. We obviously progressed from there, however we don't acknowledge that the genre didn't change fundamentally: we did. Anime like Eromanga is and always was a big part of Anime. We just stopped saying we liked it. We started watching YouTube videos with self-proclaimed critics cutting our passion and interest apart and criticising anime like it was the fucking Mona Lisa. Anime never was just about having a deep message or excellent drawing or philosophical story. It was about having fun too. There's always the disclaimer at the beginning and the end of those reviews; if you like it - good for you. But that's bullshit too, isn't it. If you like, 'good for you' but 'feel ashamed, because you're just not ready for higher quality'. I like this series because it reminds me of times when we had smaller problems and weren't so self-conscious. I can have fun watching this and so can you. Stop feeling ashamed for liking a show and start trying to understand why you like it in the first place. You might realise that your reasons aren't always as dark as they first seem. Hopefully these reviewers will also arrive to a point where they start to explore their own taboos and prejudices and understand what they are afraid of. Then, we can criticise Eromanga for what it truly does wrong.

Despite me not being a very shameful person that doesn't have problem with liking trashy incest shows full of loli fanservice and thus making it often questioning my life decisions, this one is far too much even for me to handle.

Oreimo had everything above but it also had more to say. If you ignore the shitty ending it was a very enjoyable show with decent characters and development in which they put all the trashy elements for us to enjoy - and it kinda worked out (till last OVA ofc). Eromanga is only that trash and nothing else.

Characters are blant with no development ... just for a sake of being there, story is missing, whole "12 year olds writing novels" thing feels retarded, MC is freaking Ki-ri-to (yup, as they couldn't make MC more generic and dense, they even hired Kirito VA) and yes, our imouto had a major upgrade with result of the most cute and unrealistic girl ever - shut-in loli imouto that draws eroge and loves onii-chan [did I mentioned that THEY ARE NOT BLOOD RELATED, for some reason show likes to remind you this] - yeah, they are still pussies for not going full incest but atleast we have all the trash as compensation.

That's it. And don't get me started on other girls. Especially Mrs. Filthy Frank "Ore wa ochinchin ga daisuki nandayo". You know who is gonna win this so what is the point of having any classic harem "competition". Hint - SHE IS NOT BLOOD RELATED TO KIRITO-JESUSU. In the end even (unlike in Oreimo) the main romance isn't very developed.

There is no development or explanation why they end up liking each other so much. It's like author knows that you have been through that in Oreimo so they just skipped to the part where they just want to f-ck each other. WHICH IS ALL RIGHT BECAUSE THEY ARE NOT BLOOD RELATED. Please help, this is autistic...

THIS REVIEW CONTAINS MINOR SPOILERS THAT YOU SHOULDN'T GIVE A SH*T ABOUT

this abomination is the ultimate incest trash, it's so generic in terms of atmosphere, in terms of characters, in terms of story that i am shocked how this thing crushed my lowest held expectations for a generic anime, or even a consistent anime

i just finished this anime and i don't even know how should i even describe what i saw but i'll try my best

story and setups: so the story is about a shy girl who locks herself in her room and her brother who is trying to make her open her leg...i mean ... heart, open her heart, however it turns out our super shy and tsundere girl is into drawing ass, after this revelation the brother will try to help her! in various ways
first off: what an irresponsible piece of garbage MC is, this is an under-aged child exposed to pornography and MC helps her!
second off: how come a girl at her age is the leading artist in terms of ecchi drawing?
and ofc there is no plot, i mean we all know what the "plot" is, it's so bad that if the brother went netflix and chill with her sister i would be happier because now we have character development! at least our characters changed themselves or something was accomplished in the story

and ofc the fucking incest, it's one of those anime where the "Big Brother" says i love you to the younger-sister-who-my-mother-and-father-entrusted-her-with-me-and-now-are-gone-for-plot-convenience-reasons and the younger sister get's happy but then the big brother adds "it is a big brothers job to love her sister in a non sexual way" and the sister gets all sad and her hair covers her eyes and silently we hear her say "baka" and big brother says "sorry i didn't hear your mumbling, did you say something", but this time she says "no, it's nothing" with the fakest smile imaginable

doesn't this scenario sounds familiar? for fuck sake, we keep seeing this in every hentai and anime we see, this is the most generic incest anime ever, nothing original, you've seen it before
the character are all copy pasted from some hentai or other anime

the MC: he gets kicked around by a slutty under-aged girl who uses the word "dick" around MC a lot, he is absolutely clueless about what is going on with her sister suddenly getting mad at him, he has his harem, and his memorable quote is "i love my sister...because we are a family",
and his name won't be remembered by anyone, i just finished this anime and i don't know his name, it would be really funny if his name turn out to be "yota" or "yuki" or some overused name like that

the sister: keeps getting shy when his brother gets near her, keeps wearing half naked clothe around him, BAKA, shuts doors really hard, baka, gets jealous when other girls talk to MC
this is it! oh and he calls his brother hentai a lot, even though she literally draws hentai!

soundtrack and opening weren't anything special, it was quit obvious the team behind the sound effects were either underpaid or lazy

art: wasted on this garbage, it was decent

don't watch this, hentai is better than this

Eromanga-sensei is an insult to the medium. Everyone has their own tastes and that is fine if you want to make a show about an incestuous relationship then I would have just moved on. It is not the premise of the show that is the problem. Eromanga-sensei could not be more cookie cutter if it tried to be.

Story:
Basically OreImo but this time they are half siblings (implicitly from the very beginning). MC is your generic shouting bland guy, little sister is a bi-polar loli. The story starts off being mildly interesting but eventually deteriorates into contrived reasons for different characters to be in provocative positions.

Art:
The ... palate is generic cutesy colours and the characters are all designed to make you think they are cute. The art is quite jarring as the forced cuteness really just makes it feel emotionless, like a randomly generated character was created by picking cute features out of a hat.

Sound:
I don't really have much to say about the sound. It wasn't bad and it wasn't outstanding, it just served its purpose.

Character:
Character dynamics start out quite interesting, but quickly deteriorate into just being another excuse for the fanservice. It is less like the characters are creating a narrative through their interactions and personalities and more that they become whoever the story needs that single person to be. The characters themselves (besides their physical features) have no distinguishing qualities about them. The only memorable character is the loli sister who is a walking contradiction, it's almost like the anime is trying to make fun of people with traumas in their life.

Enjoyment:
I can find no enjoyment in this anime. The setting is boring, the characters aren't characters but vehicles for fanservice, the story is a vehicle for fanservice. The worst part is that the fanservice isn't even that good, the attempt at a moe style hinders the amount of sexiness that could be conveyed.

Overall:
I started by claiming that this was an insult to the medium, that isn't because it is fanservice anime, there is plenty good fanservice anime. It is an insult because it is a very clear cash grab. Seeing that people relatively enjoyed OreImo this has been created to pander to the same crowd. I did not like OreImo but at least I could say it was an interesting show, the characters were well defined and the story had some substance. Eromanga-sensei takes that and does away with it all so we can see more fanservice of little sisters.

If I were to describe how I feel about this show it would be that it is the type of show I feel a computer would generate. It is devoid of any sort of passion or effort and so feels soulless. It feels like an anime fresh off the mass production line. If you want to watch a show about somewhat cutesy girls in attempted sexy positions and don't really care about plot then please ignore me and enjoy to your heart's content.

Elsewise 1/10 I would recommend actively avoiding.

Tsukasa Fushimi is a man who truly knows what he is passionate about, and he wants to share that passion with the whole world. After being denied the incestuous romance he craved (and presumably the biggest orgasm of his life) by the publishers of his last series, "My Little Sister Can't Be This Cute," Fushimi-San set out to write another sibling-love story, this time utilizing the "they're not biologically related, so it's okay" loophole. As many of us know, publisher restrictions can be quite a brother... I mean bother.

And so, Eromanga-sensei was born and was released to thousands of otaku, some of whom seemingly got ... offended that a show would have the nerve to exist without trying to appeal to them in particular and went onto the internet to complain about it.

Anyway, the show explores many similar themes to Oreimo (aka, the aforementioned "little sister" series). So many in fact, that one might consider it a sister-series of sorts. The main difference between the two (other than the "not related" loophole) being that Eromanga-sensei truly raises the bar for self-insert characters. The main character is a light-novelist who desperately wants to publish his new work: a book about a cute little sister. Not only does the show refrain from any attempt to hide its liberal use of this trope, it seems to bask in it to the point where the series itself almost becomes a big self-referential inside-joke.

I'm not saying that any of this is a bad thing, by the way. The goofiness of the show's plot makes for an enjoyable watch, and there are more than a few heartfelt moments mixed in to lend some emotional appeal to the characters.

I guess I should also mention the biggest draw of the show: yes, it's full of cute lolis. Yes, it's very perverted and full of fan-service. And no, I haven't yet made peace with my God. If by chance I die tonight, I shall pass on to the afterlife bloated with sin as black as the scorched ashen remains of a burnt church and far more foul. Last night I drank antibacterial dish soap in hopes to cleanse my system of impure thoughts about dick-loving 12-year-olds and ended up vomiting dark, dreadful bile over the tile floor of my bathroom. I laid there next to the slowly-spreading puddle of vomit for what seemed like an eternity, shivering and whispering desperate words of prayer.

Dear God, I'm so sorry.

But I digress. That's enough about me. What you should know is that if you enjoy romantic comedies and you're not too much of a sissy to stomach the semi-incestuous themes, you'll probably end up enjoying this series quite a bit. As a writer myself, I find this show quite inspirational, and it has really assistered me in my writing process as of late.

The animation is fantastic, the music is fun and catchy, and the characters are all fairly likable. In fact, by the end of the series, they might even feel like family to you... cute, yet strangely sexy family.

9/10.