This review contains spoilers for Onimai.

Onimai is an anime which has seemed to garner quite a lot of attention this season. Reception is mixed as discussion ranges from its heartwarming energy to its shamelessly lewd scenes and the animation which brings it all to life. I, however, am hardly concerned with any of this as I recognise something much more ominous within Onimai that no one else is talking about. I'm not exactly sure how or why this seems to have gone over everyone's heads, but I have taken it upon myself to inform the masses of the true nature of this deceptively "wholesome" anime. But enough beating around the bush. Surely you must be wondering what sort of schizophrenic inner machinations I could have thought up while watching this show to warrant me making a 750 word review about it.

Simply put, at its core, Onimai is an anime about a vulnerable young man being gaslit and manipulated by his deranged and twisted little sister into destroying his own identity.

"It's just a harmless slice of life about a hikikomori reconnecting with his little sister and reliving the youth he never could," you say, "What would possess you to see something so sinister in such a seemingly sweet concept?" But oh, dear reader, I promise you that there is much more to this concept than meets the eye.

In the first place, Mahiro is a man; he never wanted to be a girl. Mahiro struggles with remaining in touch with his actual gender throughout the duration of the anime after he is unconsensually sissified by his sister. There are several instances in the story where Mahiro expresses how much more comfortable he felt as a man, and it is sad and borderline disturbing when he begins to unknowingly adopt female habits and get used to life as a girl. Unfortunately, the situation he finds himself in prevents him from being properly able to maintain his masculinity as he is constantly surrounded by women and feminine activities. All of this is orchestrated by his sister, Mihari.

Mihari is conniving and evil. Besides knowingly feminising her brother, she manipulates him into subconsciously accepting his new form despite assuring him that the drug which transformed him will wear off soon. She convinces him to dress up, to embrace his feminimity; to make friends with prepubescent little girls; she'll organise social events for him without his knowledge, make him participate in female gatherings like sleepovers and hot spring trips, all in an effort to paint over his original identity. She wants him to remain a girl, and as evident in the final episode, the best way to do that is to make him grow attached to the new life he created as one. Mahiro can return to being a man, but he finally has people he can call friends and genuinely enjoys being around them, yet he cannot maintain these relationships if he turned back into a male. "What a coincidence! I just so happen to have brought the drug with me so you can continue being a girl for a while longer! You wouldn't want to lose all your friends and go back to being a hikkineet, would you?" And so Mahiro once again falls victim to his sister's wiles. They are the actions of a complete psychopath; a woman who will do anything to get her brother to pay attention to her again, and what better way to do that than to turn him into a little girl and make him rely on you for everything? After all, Mahiro knows nothing about living as a girl and has no choice but to lean on his sister. From dealing with periods to washing his hair to putting on bras, Mahiro practically needs Mihari to live properly, and she is all too happy to oblige. While the anime may paint Mihari's intentions as pure and genuine, those being the desires to reconnect with her sibling and free him from NEETdom, there is nothing within its runtime that can justify her horrendous actions.

The author of Onimai has unknowingly created a dark story about a man's identity slowly sipping out of his grasp as he lets himself be controlled by his sister so that she may fulfill her own selfish desires. The anime never really acknowledges how fucked up this entire scenario is, and to be honest I seem to be the only one who doesn't see some cute and heartwarming slice of life. That being said, the implications and undertones are too much to ignore. I will not take my meds and I will stand by the fact that this anime just makes me plain uncomfortable.