SPOILERS! Mass Effect the Anime SPOILERS!

Sorry can't do a review Tonight too busy, but here's a rant about why I hate the ending of Oreimo

 So this is an impression on the last few episodes of Oreimo so if you're planning on watching the show STOP READING NOW. This rant is taken from a super biased point of view. While in reviewing an anime I try to see things from points of view that are not my own as well, in this i am expressing my own opinion. In my review of Oreimo I mentioned that I hated the ending. Well here I'm going to attempt to justify this. 

Hey! So the last three episodes of Oreimo came out and i would Like to give my impressions of them. Now I think that the series as a whole has been pretty good. It had a some funny moments and some interesting characters. Now I may get sent to flame hell for this but of all the characters Kirino is the most boring. We only see her as a character at the very end, with an entire episode dedicated to fleshing her out and making her motivations seem realistic. In the rest of the series she is a typical Tsundere who has little development. While in the first season she serves as a doorway into the Otaku community in Japan, she isn’t developed very much throughout the course of the series. She seems like a cardboard cutout of other tsunderes. Even when her motivations for being so cold are revealed I can safely say I enjoyed the moments with the other characters more.  The twelfth and fourteenth to last episodes were really good. I say this because each time Kyousuke rejected someone it hit me on an emotional level, because it was all for his one true love, right? Riiiiiiiight? Ha ha, we’ll get to that later. Seeing Kuroneko and Ayase being rejected gave me some feels and I honestly felt bad for them.  Now we get to the good stuff. For any of you who are going to watch the OVAs no matter how much I try to stop you stop reading here. From the title you probably guessed that the primary pairing of the series was going to be Kyosuke and Kirino. So while I personally would rather it be the Kureneko route, the anime goes down the Kirino route. The problem is that it screws it up.  So Kyousuke does the whole confession thing and everything’s good happy stuff, yay all you people who ship those two (If you couldn’t tell I don’t really). They go to a hotel room where they agree on something unspoken. They graduate and everything’s happy. Manami and Kirino have their fight. I would say this is the best part of the series thus far. This part makes you think while keeping you engaged. It does a good job of redeeming Manami and you can genuinely see both sides of the argument.   

I didn't see this shot that well when I first saw it, because I was too busy flipping the table my laptop was sitting on.

It provides some interesting social commentary here: just how far can society control emotions? Excuse me for getting into a bit of deep stuff, but humor me here. With the recent legalization of gay marriage in various places around the world we have recently bucked a age old trend of hating on gay people. Something that has been considered to be unnatural has been changed. In the same way Kyousuke shows in these episodes that he realizes what boundaries society has set up, but decides to ignore them because he has something more important. Now, not to say I agree that Incest is wincest, but it’s an interesting point. I can respect someone who expresses themselves like that, because its what they honestly feel. Now here’s where it starts to fall apart. Kirino suggests that they should graduate, get married and then get back to being normal siblings. I’m sorry, but WHAT THE F**K?! Why have all this drama, all this tension keeping it a secret and all that, even having a fist-fight, just to go back to normal? Here it seems like the author really just wanted to be in the middle. I think he didn’t want to be controversial or something like that, and that’s why he made it like this. It feels lazy. What was the point of the huge arguement with Manami if they were just going to go back to being normal in a few months? Instead of fighting and rejecting Manami or any of the other girls, why didn’t he tell them that it was just temporary? I could sort of see it if the relationship was to be kept a secret from then on, but they just decide to go back to being normal siblings. Why confess your feelings, why have a fake wedding, why go through all the trouble of breaking every girl’s heart just to go back to being normal? Why? What is the point? the problem with the ending is that it makes everything feel utterly pointless. Goddammit I would have even preferred a sad ending, where Kirino or Kyosuke straight up says that they can’t be together. It would’ve made it into an emotionally satisfying ending. Now I bet that some people will say that it was a sad very well done ending where they both realize that it wasn’t meant to be and that even though they harbor romantic feelings toward each other they are trapped by society’s laws and therefore must return to being siblings. For those of you who believe that, why the hell did Kyousuke say that he would defy all of society’s laws because he cared for something even more? If not for that scene I would say that is plausible, but it straight up isn’t. Is it so hard to make a good ending? Seriously I think this guy was taking lessons from Bioware on how to make an ending. Hell, you could even have a split good-bad ending path, the way it is with visual novels. One where they do decide to screw society and another where they don’t. I had a pretty good opinion of Oreimo, but with the ending it was hard for me to look back on the memories I had as fun. Think about most romance anime. The finale, the conclusion, the climax is what always leaves a lasting impression. Its that moment that you always reflect on. yes, the rest of the anime may be good, even spectacular, but the ending is always the most memorable So yes the ending of this anime is memorable—but for all the wrong reasons. The way it resolves the harem problem—by rejecting all of the members, is one of the most touching and heart-wrenching moments I've seen in an Anime. Then it's flat out ruined by the ending. So this is the main reason why Oreimo will always be a good anime to me, and never a great one.

This didn't have to happen

This didn't have to happen

This didn't have to happen, though I'm so glad it did.

Thanks for Reading!

Oreimo Anime review

Ok so not the greatest idea to start my blog with this kind of review, but I'll explain myself first. This review has gotten a lot of flak. This is especially true from casual anime fans/ people who haven't delved into the weirder stuff. That being said this anime is pretty mainstream, meaning a lot of people have seen it. So the point of this review is not to try to increase the show's popularity, but merely to make it less creepy than it actually is...er that came out wrong. To judge the anime for what it actually is regardless of what kind of themes it carries. Thanks for taking the time to read this!

Oreimo, at first glance it’s a creepy otaku incest slice of life. At second glance however, it still is an incest slice of life. Yet as much as I hate to admit it, it is a pretty good show certainly for the first two seasons. Now my first reaction to this anime went along the lines of—this show is only for people who have a sister complex, but I decided to watch because A: it had gained enough popularity that I could no longer convince myself that it was just a show for people who had incest fetishes and B: I wanted to see what people liked about the show . In other words just got curious. Now imagine my surprise when twelve episodes had gone by and I was still being entertained. Why? well I’m hoping to answer that in the next few minutes.

Story- I’ll get to the point, it’s slice of life—Next! No seriously there isn’t much of a plot here. The basics are as follows. Brother and sister have a bad relationship Brother finds out sister is an otaku, adventure!

Animation-Let me just say that the animation isn’t going to blow you away. The art style isn’t anything spectacular, especially on the environments, but it doesn’t need to be. The character art style is good and the animations on characters are good when they need to be. A nice little touch is that since this is an otaku based anime, there sometimes are sometimes anime playing in the background. They don’t even emphasize them. It’s a little touch, but a nice one.

Soundtrack-solid openings and endings, If you like electronic, synthesized stuff you’re going to enjoy it. The soundtrack accurately matches what’s going on onscreen, and it certainly is different. It’s a weird soundtrack. I mean of course it has the typical piano in the sad parts, but overall it’s weird, but really good. I mean it strikes a good balance between being distinguishable and unique while also not being distracting. Voice actors are very good, with standouts being Saori Hayami as Ayase and Kana Hanazawa as Kuroneko. The voice actor for Kyosuke was good, but didn’t get the heart wrenching scenes that both the actress had the opportunity for. The only annoying voice actress was Manami, who sounded like a barbie doll.

Characters-Characters are where this anime is supposed to shine, and for the most part it does. Each of the characters was fleshed out to the extent that they were likeable and understandable, yet none of the characters feel like they are the center, save for Kyosuke for obvious reasons. In this way none of the characters vying for Kyosuke’s affection are fiends who you would wish would get the the hell out of the anime *cough* Siesta *cough*. I found the only character that falls through in this amazing cast is Kirino. Now sting me up for this one, but of all the characters, I simply couldn’t like her. She comes across as your typical tsundere and doesn’t have much development until the end of the series. I found myself getting tired of her crazy mood swings and snappy insults. Not many of her lines were very witty, and I think her scenes could have been made a lot more enjoyable by throwing some slapstick in the mix. As I said she does get fleshed out towards the end, but before that she doesn’t hold a candle to other characters.

I don't think I even need a caption here

Romance-Since this is in fact a Romance comedy, the real question is whether or not the Romance is any good. Well the answer is yes and nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo! I am going to give no word on the matter of the incestual themes this anime has and instead focus on the Romance itself. Kyosuke goes through hell for his sister, from getting her to make otaku friends, to standing up for her hobbies to her father, to helping resolve a conflict between Kirino and her best friend. Other hints of pairings pop up in the form of Kuroneko or Ruri, Ayase and to a lesser extent Manami. Each character gets a few episodes to have their moments with Kyosuke and none of them are annoying, my personal favorite being Ayase, whose Psychopathic tendencies can be hilarious, plus slapstick. Now excuse me as I get a little serious here and a little spoilerific, though it’s a spoiler you should see coming a mile away. At the climax of the anime Kyosuke defends his love for Kirino. Now don’t take this the wrong way, I Do not support incest, however the arguments that Kyosuke presents are thought provoking and begs the question: how much can society limit us? How important is our societal standings compared to our emotions and core beliefs. I will not spoil the ending for those of you who are going to watch the series from start to finish, but in my opinion it is the worst ending to a romance anime I have seen thus far. It doesn’t make sense and makes the events of the last five or so episodes utterly pointless.

Overall I enjoyed my time with Oreimo. There! I said it! It was a fun comedy romance and I think that if only it had a better ending it would be one of my favorites. I recommend this anime for the excellent characters, fantastic soundtrack, and some good comedic moments scattered throughout. I say give this a try. I mean, if you can ignore the incest stuff then I’m sure you’ll love it. If you can’t get by that, then I think that you should at least give it a try. It’s not for everybody, and as I said, the ending ruined the anime for me, but it’s a fun ride for most of it. So a decent recommendation from me this anime gets.  

Thank you for reading this review!