“Hopefully,” as in, “I hope this series ends up feeling worth MY time and effort to review,” since nothing else airing this season apparently is. I guess I could review season sixty of My Hero Academia or season forty of Bungou Stray Dogs, something like that, piss a bunch of people off, etc. But what’s the point? Where’s the fun? What can be said about the endless deluge of shounen baby formula, highschool romcoms, and isekai/grossly-isekai-adjacent fantasy adventures which populate the apparent entirety of this winter season that hasn’t already been said about prior, similar, questionably distinguishable contemporary anime to complete exhaustion? I’m going to try to refrain from ragging on the actual quality of the anime produced this season from a technical perspective, even though I most certainly could (and don’t be sure that I won’t), and I’m instead going to ask that we all take a moment to appreciate the eye-watering banality of it all from a creative perspective. Even everything popular, seemingly, is a next season of a show I already reviewed and can’t bare the thought of writing about again.
Then there’s Oniichan wa Oshimai!, the unequivocal best anime I’ve ever been this fundamentally disappointed by. It’s a show about your typical NEET otaku protagonist getting dragged out of their room and slowly but surely rehabilitated and reacquainted with normal, social, everyday life through the power of friendship, family, whatever. The element of the story which gives the series its excuse to call itself different and stand out from the crowd is that the inciting incident which first begins to push our hero, Mahiro, away from the NEET lifestyle is that his magical(?), genius(?), scientist(?) younger sister administers him an undefined mystery drug that turns him into a girl. Wacky, right? Don’t see many gender-bender anime around these parts, now do we? But if you look past the quirky gimmick, the oh-so outrageous loli fanservice, and the consistently mind-bogglingly fantastic animation, I’m afraid you’ll be left starring in the face of, essentially, an anime you’ve already seen. I’m not saying the series is generic, because, indeed, it’s a tad fucking weird. What I’m saying is that I wanted more Space Race type shit. Ya know?
If we’re gonna sip our cognac and be high-class, gentlemanly and ladylike, intellectual critics about this, then I think it’s worth taking a full-stride step back and making the general commentary that this was an enjoyable series. It has that nice cushiony fuzz to it where I could just sit and un-impatiently watch the damn thing. All an anime really needs to succeed when it comes to borderline slapstick comedy, at least in my book, is competent voice acting, which this anime has; creative direction and good timing, which this anime has; lots of movement and visual energy, which this anime has; and good character designs matched with memorable, funny, broadly entertaining facial expressions, which this anime has in fucking spades. So often did they go for the most obvious joke and still make me laugh anyway. It’s just the most technically well-executed version of the simple thing it is, and the simple thing it is is silly. And that’s fine…and I expected that…I just wanted more Space Race shit. I wanted it to have something that would fucking reach out and slap me in the face if I tried lumping it in with “the other basic moe shows currently airing” other than “lol he got turned into a girl.”
If you were to scroll through the seemingly endless waterfall of seasonal anime which aired this season, intentionally paying each promotional image nothing but a mere glance, combining every entry which your brain subconsciously finds difficult to visually distinguish into one anime, you would end up with I’d wager something like five or six. There simply isn’t enough pizzazz popping out, nothing to get your neurons firing in different enough directions. My eyes simply could not in rapid succession pass by the MAL entries for, for example, “The Reincarnation of the Strongest Exorcist in Another World” and “The Iceblade Sorcerer Shall Rule the World” without my mind fumbling incredulously at the alleged uniqueness of the two properties. When a friend of mine first learned I was considering writing for this series, he said, “Ain’t no way you’re hoping on this crazy train.” To which I frankly replied, “When does the crazy kick in?” Oniichan wa Oshimai! has a memorable premise, I’ll give it that, and I’d consider the cast of characters particularly quirky to watch, but the wholesome NEET recovery routine has been done so often now as to, well, be a routine at this point. Like, if this wasn’t such a heartfelt, technically impressive animation passion project, what would it be the sum of its actual parts?
To play Devil’s Advocate, it’s worth pointing out that the first half of Hikari no Ou came out this season, so…that was probably interesting and worthwhile…presumably? Buddy Daddies, as well, looks fun, decent, cute enough…DOESN’T IT??!?!?!!????? Clearly I’m just being an asshole about the whole seasonal anime thing, right? I mean, what? An anime becomes worthless and derivative as soon as the arc of its story begins resembling an established genre of past works? Is that the argument I’ve been making? Because that’s a fucking stupid argument. If my whole thesis statement is Oniichan wa Oshimai! is somehow not worth watching because it is to whatever degree “formulaic” underneath the visual gloss, then this is a bad review. I just don’t have the fucking time anymore, okay? I’m like a normal fucking person now with a life, under pressure. If I’m gonna soak back into this, I wanna be pulled in hard. I wanna suffocate in the quicksand that got me this deep in the first place. I wanna be wooed, wowed, kapowed—swept up, up, up, and away, or plunged into the abyss. I don’t just want to watch something good; I want to watch something special; I want to watch some new and exciting, boundary-pushing, Space Race shit. Evidently, I want to watch something that didn’t air in the apocalyptically unimpressive season of Winter 2023.
But hey? This is all sounding more and more like a me problem.
Thank you for reading.
