Japan and their flow of ideas makes me wonder how many more "imouto" theme anime we’ll get in this generation. To begin with, I think light novel adaptations in today’s world about imoutos can hardly be an eye-catcher except for some specific audiences. What draws people to this type of show…that’s none of my business. But to be honest, why did this abysmal show get made in the first place?
In perhaps one of the most catastrophic launch of the year, the show already started with intolerable quality issues. The first few episodes won’t be hard to judge as you can see easily see the inconsistent character models. You don’t really need to be a genius to also realize the amount of inconsistency with the character expressions either. Every character behaves in one dimensional and lifeless ways that can’t really be compared to real humans. They look like plastic dolls that came to life. It’s fake. And by that, characters in this show are seemingly created with the purpose of wish-fulfillment. They are essentially characters that exist to satisfy the desires of a main protagonist, and in this case, that would be Yuu Nagami.
Now I don’t want to jump the gun too far ahead but anyone who has seen a show in 2017 known as “Eromanga sensei” may make some comparisons to this anime. Both shows involves light novel writing and has pseudo-incest tendencies. From the beginning, it’s pretty obvious that Suzuka is infatuated with Yuu. It becomes a running gag with her showing the most emotions whenever other girls are around him. The most obvious feeling she shows is jealousy and it appears in almost every episode. Sometimes, it gets in the way of the main story as this running gag becomes a major distraction. Even when female characters interacts with Yuu in a non-romantic nature, she still shows jealousy. It’s pretty pathetic.
But hey, that’s not the only distraction right? Well, look again. For the majority of the series, it seems almost every female character with a name is interested in Yuu in some way. For instance, there’s Mai who literally stalks Yuu to find out about his personal life. Sakura enters the show as an ideal woman but it doesn’t take long for her to get into a love angle with him. Let’s not forget Ahegao W Peace-sensei who adheres to adult jokes with her personality. The bottom line is that these characters are made with little creativity in mind. They exist to fulfill wish-fulfillment roles and Yuu often finds himself in awkward/lustful situations with them. However, the main selling context of the character relationship is still Yuu and Suzuka. The two makes the heart of the show and that’s not a good thing when you get pseudo-incest context.
Hey, what about the main story? Actually, you can probably watch this show without a direct goal in mind. This series is like a playful toy that enjoys fooling around with its characters than telling a story. Even before finishing the show, I had little expectations of how it would end. Every episode jumps back and forth with no real direction in mind. It's like a bloody loop with the same things happening every episode. At times, I wonder if this anime was made as a satire to make fun of itself. However, that doesn’t seem to be the case because a satire would have to be clever enough to sell its humor. It would have to mock fun of itself but this show was hardly creative enough to do that. What I did laugh at though is the shockingly production qualities. At one point, there was even one episode with a hidden message by an animator in the credits who pleads for help. From what I’ve read on the web, the show itself involved animators that weren’t even paid for their work. It’s a sad reality to realize that the anime was a project with little planning in mind and in fact, made just this year. From one of the tweets from an animator, they questioned why they are making this show. And honestly, I wondered why too. So I return to my original question, why did this abysmal show get made?
In a sane world, a show like this would have been scrapped from the start with such poor planning and execution. It has such a forgettable story and uncharismatic character cast that I can’t help but recommend people to avoid this like the plague. This show could have probably even worked better as an OVA rather than 10 episodes. What came out instead is hot garbage that gave a distasteful smell. And sadly, there's no cure.