Story: 5
It's not a particularly compelling story. A brother and a sister who live as polar opposites, one a normal guy who wants things to remain average, the other a model, star student, athletic prodigy, and eventually a notable novelist, act coldly to each other due to mutual hatred. One fateful day, the perfect, straight A student Kirino is revealed to her brother Kyousuke as an otaku, obsessed primarily in erotic adult games involving little sisters. The story of the show revolves around Kyousuke giving Kirino advice on how to deal with making new friends that share her interests and giving her an outlet to talk about her obsession by indulging in it himself.
The story isn't handled very tactfully, nor is it particularly interesting. Removing the potential for humor/jokes, the story itself isn't compelling or particularly unique. It's a refurbished version of the rekindling of a broken relationship through a common interest, secret, problem, goal etc. Very little development is made, and episodes eventually drop the story altogether for a more slice of life style show. The brother-sister relationship rekindling is replaced with a look into the struggles of otaku, who are looked down on by society. Once again, the story here is rather lackluster, but the humor is prime. However, comedy doesn't make for a good story, and although OreImo tries its darnedest to remind you that it can be serious every once in a while with a dramatic scene, it fights a losing battle trying to split its time between silly cuteness and otaku culture, and a serious story about siblings who come to understand each other.
Art: 8
The art style of the show isn't notably deviant or original, but its pleasant nonetheless. The show offers a very stagnant style of art. While other shows make use of multiple animation styles to portray a mood or enhance an aspect of a character (cute, serious, dumbfounded, etc.), OreImo consistently uses one style almost all the way through without resorting to the use of alternate styles to make the characters appear cuter or more serious in a scene. This actually helps with the realistic setting the show tries to create.
Similarly, the show doesn't resort to classic animation tropes (or anime tropes), such as bleeding noses, or simplified versions of the characters being used for quicker animations, or a blurred depiction of fast movement. The characters are drawn to look and act like real people, and don't break from that. Aside from the classic blushing lines (which are used almost constantly), the show steers clear of most other stereotypical anime art choices.
The show also pays a lot of attention to detail, and even offers some different opening animations almost every episode, along with different pictures at the ending of every episode. Details like this are what push a shows art from good to very good.
For those reasons, and simply because the art is pleasant to look at in the first place (and since the characters are adorable), the art gets an 8.
Sound: 7
The voice actors seemed to match their personalities well, and they did a good job. The OP is extremely upbeat and catchy, which matches the shows atmosphere, and every episode makes use of an entirely different ending song, which is something very unique.
I can't say much about the background music. While the opening and closing songs were very good, and the voice acting was prime, the background music got old extremely quick. None of the tracks were notably special and overall they were rather average. Best I can do is a 7.
Character: 7
There's a wide spectrum of characters on the show. If I could rate each one individually they would get everything ranging from a 3 to a 10.
The main male lead, a character position that is very rarely done well by romance/comedy anime, follows suit with every other wimpy male lead. Though he's rather refreshing because he's at least sarcastic and apathetic, he's abused constantly, usually for no good reason, and doesn't retaliate, his character remains rather static for the entire show, he's portrayed as completely average and uninteresting, with no stated goals, hobbies, or interests that could give him the slightest amount of depth. Like most other male leads, he's romantically oblivious and dense. And, of course, his only redeeming factor is that he is occasionally kind, and occasionally sticks up for his friends. If it weren't for the fact that he at least had a little bit of a backbone and was willing to reprimand his sister for her bullshit occasionally, he'd truly be another irredeemable, boring male lead.
The main female lead doesn't differ much. Her personality is split between mega-bitch and super-cute-girl. When it comes to anything but anime/eroge, she is a classic tsundere character, turned up to 11. She's extremely annoying, makes no changes to her character regardless of what happens, and is generally difficult to like. Of course, she's adorable sometimes, so she has that going for her, and at least that helps the title make sense. There's also a sense of wish-fulfillment going on with her character. She's a very cliche example of a character who is presented to other characters as perfect/flawless but really has a glaring oddity/flaw that makes her more relatable to people who aren't perfect/flawless. She complains often, is annoying, and makes little to no development unless the director happens to want some sort of drama to happen. This personality is critical to the show, since any other personality wouldn't have made the story work, but is extremely dissatisfying to watch.
The rest of the cast is mostly enjoyable, with a few gems that really stand apart from the rest of the cast. I don't have the time or motivation to write an individual analysis of each one to give you a better idea of what the cast of characters in this show is like, but the personalities are varied and there's something for mostly everyone. Even though the two leads don't always cut it as far as good characters go, characters like Ayase, Manami, and Kuroneko show that the writers do actually know how to write a character that isn't incredibly irritating to watch or unbearably average/boring with questionable motivations that don't always make sense. The moe is strong with all the characters, however.
If it weren't for the strong supporting cast, the show would have flunked as far as characters go. As the show goes on, Kirino and Kyousuke become more bearable and make a good comedic duo with their sparring personalities. There is at least some good to come out of their extreme personalities.
Enjoyment: 8
The show is funny, there's not much else to note here. Neither the drama nor the romance is particularly enjoyable, other shows do it much better. The story isn't very interesting or engrossing, but offers situations in which the characters can interact in hilarious ways.
At its core, the show takes a bunch of adorably cute characters (and the male lead) and puts them in situations where they have to deal with each others' differing and sometimes clashing personalities as well as with the challenges of being obsessed with something society looks down upon. Overall, the humor of the show is the best part, and makes the other, lesser aspects of the show bearable.
Overall: 7
The show almost does a lot of things. It almost offers an endearing story about how a brother and a sister rekindle their relationship through the odd common factor of erotic adult games involving little sisters. It almost offers a full cast of interesting, fun characters with believable personalities that interact in realistic ways. It almost executes jokes without repeating the same ones over and over again. It almost keeps the characters personalities from going overboard for the sake of quick comedy. It almost creates realistic situations in which the characters act in accordance to their personality without resorting to dumbing down a character or changing the way they act to make a story work. It almost offers great comedy without interference of lackluster drama and unneeded plot points. But it doesn't quite reach there. The show could have been great, but it makes a lot of mistakes.
There's two ways you can go about the show taking into account these mistakes. You can either get caught up in them and hate the show, or you can ignore them in favor of laughing at the jokes and choking over the adorable characters and overall cuteness. Personally, I couldn't forgive the mistakes completely, but I easily ignored them in favor of a good laugh while watching. The show could have been great, but it remains only good because of this.
I definitely recommend the show, but your enjoyment of it really depends on you sense of humor (this show deals mostly with character interaction for its source of humor and light quips about otaku culture) and how much you'll get caught up in the poor aspects of the show and its mistakes.
