Synopsis

‘Ore no Imouto wa Konna ni Kawaii gana,’ henceforth abbreviated as OreImo, follows the somewhat romantic exploits of two siblings, Kyousuke and Kirino Kousaka.

Kyousuke is your average slacker who doesn’t have the energy to do anything. On the other hand, Kirino is shown to be an overachieving kid who excels in everything she does. Be it academics, sports, or even writing, Kirino does everything with fluency and poise (she won a scholarship to America in track and field and the one book she published became a bestseller). She also is a teen fashion model and supposedly earns a lot.

• Name: Ore no Imouto wa Konna ni Kawaii gana (My Little Sister can’t be this Cute)
• Author: Fushimi Tsukasa
• Status: Completed
• Volumes: 12
• Genre: Comedy, Harem, Romance, Slice of Life
• Demographic: Shojo

But this miraculous and overachieving Kirino has a secret that she wanted to hide at all costs: She’s secretly an otaku. But this doesn’t end here. Apart from her love for Mahou Shojo anime, Kirino has another interest. And that is playing adult games featuring little sisters. Moreover, Kirino seems to have a liking for little sisters as a whole (the novel that she published had a title which roughly translates to Little Sister’s Sky).

All this would have carried on normally except for one little glitch in the way. Kyousuke finds out about Kirino’s hobby by accident. And Kirino, acting as the child she is, pulls Kyousuke in too for moral support. Kyousuke, dominated by his little sister, gives in to her whims and consents to continue to support her with her strange hobby.

He gets involved with a lot of strange characters like Kirino’s otaku friends, Kuroneko (real name: Ruri Gokou) and Saori Bajina (real name: Saori Makishima) and her modeling friend Ayase Ayagaki, who was initially against Kirino’s hobby but later on reconciles with her. Also, Kyousuke has a bit of a strife with his father, early on in the series regarding Kirino and her hobby, but it gets solved at the end of Volume 1.

And against all odds, Kirino continues with her hobby with continued support from Kyousuke and by the end of the series, the Kousaka siblings come out with their true feelings for each other, everything continues to remain SFW and its happily ever after.

Reviewer’s comments

I remember when I first heard about this risqué title, I was really intrigued. I wanted to see whether it really was what I was expecting. But alas! Due to a programming error I couldn’t download the PDFs. It became my Zahir for the whole morning. I turned to the members of the anime club I was in to see if anyone had the PDFs lying around in the depths of their hard disks.

Nobody had one and one helpful senpai went out of her way to warn me that it was twelve volumes worth of nonsense I was pursuing. But I was beyond caring. I brainstormed for about ten minutes and God gave me the idea of using one of the indispensable inventions of the twenty-first century – BitTorrent! It took about another half an hour to download the available volumes. And then I set on a voyage I would never be able to forget – for all the wrong reasons.

‘OreImo,’ for the two whole days I wasted on it, never once failed to disappoint me. It is a way-over-the-top story with very little reality in it. And frankly, it builds on a quite disturbing theme. But that could have been overlooked had it been a well-written story. But nothing is well-written about this story.

Kyousuke is way too passive. Kirino remains dominant throughout the story, except for the times when she is in trouble. She never acts her age. Hell! The whole story is filled with brats who don’t act their age. I believe there was even a little girl in the story who smoked.

I have nothing against stories featuring little sisters. But I do have a thing against badly written stories. The OreImo series has one fundamental thing going wrong with it. And the thing was that why the hell did Kyousuke allowed his little sister, who was in middle school, to play games featuring adult content? Why the hell did the little brat start smoking? And there are other things too. But telling them will spoil your twelve-volume journey through little sister hell should you ever feel like taking it.

And the author didn’t bother to correct these. And why is that? Because there won’t be any story without these mistakes! The only thing good about this series might be the illustrations. The illustrations were really good. I feel like even the illustrator is let down by the horrendous thing that is the OreImo.