Oh, “Brother”

April 29th, 2013 in Anime, General Reviews by

Oniai

This is another of those series that has a monstropatious title, but gets reduced to something more manageable. Some know it as “Onii-chan dakedo Ai sae Areba Kankeinai yo ne!” (which comes out to “As Long as There’s Love, It Doesn’t Matter If He is My Brother, Right!”), or “Oniai” for short. This is another brother-sister anime, but with more screwball situations. Our femme fatales are:

Ginbe Haruomi Sawatari
Akiko Himenokoji (the sister half of the brother-sister team)
Arashi Nikaido
Anastasia Nasuhara

The brother in question, Akito Himenokoji, isn’t shown and he really is used more as a foil for the misplaced desires of the ladies than anything else.

The story tells of how Akito and Akiko were separated for six years and have come back together, with both attending Saint Liliana High School. Suddenly the student council (which consists of all five of them) moves into this rather grand house and they all have to live together. It seems each and every lady has a fixation upon Akito and, adding to the mayhem, are Alisa Takanomiya, who was Akito’s adoptive family at to whom he is her fiancée (much to the shock and chagrin of everyone) plus Kaoruko Jinno, who is an editor at the publishing house where Akito has his book published.

This is an endless tale of misunderstandings, misinterpretations, misrepresentations and mistaken assumptions. Each of the ladies are flirty in their own way, trying very hard to win Akito’s heart, whereas Akiko feels that, having an inside track, is the one best configure to be with Akito.

My major problem with this is that I saw it at a time when I was watching ANOTHER brother-sister love show. Yes, I did get certain plot points confused, but it was still the same results, in that…oh, that might tip my hand. Well, don’t worry; you could probably guess the ending.

It just got a little tiresome in that none of these ladies were going to give an inch to the others and that there was really no character development. This one is the man-eater, that one is the quiet and demure the one in the corner is passive-aggressive and all we do is reinforce this. Don’t misunderstand; this is not a terrible series, but I felt that they could have done a lot more with it. But, as it stands, it’s along the lines of “Sekerei”, but they did this same caliber of idea (the harem romantic comedy) a lot better than you see here.

On a scale of 1 to 10:

Artwork   7 (Good artwork, but it feels they are trying too hard)
Plot    6 (Runs dry)
Pacing    8 (Runs wild at times)
Effectiveness    6 (Never goes anywhere)
Conclusion    7 (It reaches a series end, but it has a coupler)
Fan Service    5 (A similar show would be “Maburaho”)

Overall     6 (Light on laughs and lotsa boobs)

And remember, it’s first run until you’ve seen it. I’m the best!


One response to “Oh, “Brother””

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