It’s a tale as old as time, at least by anime standards. Two single parents have recently met and fallen in love, tying the knot and officially uniting their families. For Mr. Kanzaki, this means presenting his only son, Yuuya, with a brand new younger sister to bond with. For the newly crowned Mrs. Kanzaki, this means giving her only daughter, highschool freshman Mitsuki, two new male family members, even though she still hasn’t recovered from her history of absent and abusive father figures. On top of all that, the newlyweds are immediately going away on honeymoon, leaving their teenage dependants home with nothing but each other for company. Despite the writing that would be on the wall in any similar anime, Mitsuki and Yuuya really don’t have any interest in each other as anything other than temporary housemates... Until a bizarre twist of fate takes the decision out of their hands.

Recently My Sister is Unusual, which I’m going to be calling ImoCho for short for the rest of this review, was produced by Project no.9, a studio I’ve never heard of, and which I’ve barely seen anything from. I’ve seen Super HXEros, and I’ve seen And You Thought There Was Never A Girl Online, and I don’t recall either of those looking bad at all, so maybe they’re a really promising studio? It’s hard to tell with such a small sample size, especially since it’s been a few years since I saw either of those other titles, but I genuinely don’t remember having any strong opinions about the visuals of either one, although I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. If they were anything like ImoCho, then I’m certainly noticing a positive trend, because this anime looked perfectly fine.

I’m not sure how to explain this, because I don’t think I’ve ever made this specific observation about an anime before, but the visuals in ImoCho are perfectly acceptable and unobtrusive, in such a way that you kind of don’t notice anything about them while you’re watching it. I didn’t realize any cost cutting techniques, at least not for the most part, but I also never felt particularly impressed by what I was seeing. The only moments where I made any conscious mental notes about the visuals was in a couple of instances where it felt like the frame rate was slowing down and the animation... While smooth for the most part, as far as I could tell... Became slightly choppy, like they were skimping on in-between shots. This happened once at the waterpark, I remember that much at least. Other than that, I guess no notes is a good note?

The designs are a bit on the generic side, but they’re also not ugly or anything. Every member of the main cast looks perfectly suited to their role in the story, if not a couple steps above what was required. The only character who really stands out in a noticeable or memorable way is Hiyori, the ghost girl who started all of this, and considering her supernatural origin, that’s all to the better. I really liked the design of Yukina, Yuuya’s childhood friend who stands in stark defiance of the usual implications of that trope. She looks pretty cool, especially when you know what she looked/acted like as a child. The downside to these conventions is that most of the side cast, AKA Yuuya and Mitsuki’s classmates, are forgettable to the point that you may actually forget who they are and the fact that they exist inbetween their appearances. In any case, the backgrounds and set pieces are really well drawn and designed, especially the Heaven that Hiyori occasionally shows us.

The generally high quality of the visuals can be a double edged sword, though, because there’s some content in this series that would be better off not being so lovingly rendered and animated, or even not being portrayed on screen at all, and that is the sexual content, which is somehow both highly explicit and confusingly tame, as well as often with no explicit consent... Look, I’m just going to jump right into the writing portion of the review, because before we go any farther, we need to discuss the kind of first impression this series gives. We’re gonna skip right past the incredibly stupid fact that Mitsuki and Yuuya’s parents were able to carry on a relationship long enough to get married, without their kids ever meeting, which sounds not only highly unlikely, but also grossly irresponsible, since they’re dumping them together in a house and abandoning them there with no adult presence, for their first fucking meeting, as if they didn’t even attend the wedding. We’re going to ignore the fact that you should probably make sure your kid is able to get along with their new prospective step-siblings BEFORE deciding to get married, and sail smoothly along to the introduction of Hiyori.

The overall premise to this anime is that Mitsuki becomes possessed by a ghost who, in life, was in love with Yuuya. The ghost takes control of her, imprisons her within a kinky looking chastity belt that gauges her horny levels, and tells her that if she doesn’t fuck her new step brother, then Hiyori will go to hell, and she’ll take Mitsuki along with her. That alone is heart-crushingly unfair, inconsiderate and downright evil, but we’re not done. In the first two episodes alone, Mitsuki is literally raped by this ghost girl... Yes, literally, what she does fits the legal definition of rape... And then we get several instances of borderline torture porn as Mitsuki has to hold her pee in for long periods of time in order to follow the belt’s largely arbitrary rules. If you don’t feel pissed the fuck off on behalf of Mitsuki by this point, well, you must have had a hand in writing this trash, because the narrative genuinely doesn’t seem to understand how fucking cruel all of this is. If you were to drop this show after the first two episodes, I wouldn’t blame you for a second.

And yet. In Spite of all of this. In spite of what I knew was garbage, and what I knew I was never going to outright recommend to anybody. There was something there below the surface that caught my attention. There were clues, even in the worst moments of these episodes, that there was some spark of brilliance hiding in the background. I didn’t know what it was specifically, and I felt there was a legitimate concern that I might have been going out of my mind, but I couldn’t bring myself to hate this piece of shit, and I couldn’t stop watching for the life of me. Not in a ‘rubbernecking while passing a car crash’ way, either... I saw all these smart elements in the story that, if combined in the right way, could maybe somehow pull off the old alchemist trick of turning lead into gold. It didn’t seem entirely likely, in all fairness, but I just had this gut feeling that my investment would be rewarded beyond the obvious cringe.

First off, two elements that work in its favor from early on. There’s the pacing, which fits comfortably between the settings of brisk and gentle. Then there’s the fanservice, which is not as overwhelming as you might expect? It definitely has a presence in the story, what with Mitsuki wearing the TST, and Hiyori constantly setting up circumstances for her and Yuuya to become closer and hook up, but as much fanservice as there is, it rarely feels gratuitous or forced. Don’t get me wrong, the situation most of it surrounds is fucking terrible, but an absurdly positive side effect of this is that at least it all feels plot-relevant. Well, most of it, there are always going to be hot springs episodes, that’s what we signed up for by watching anime. Like, compare this show to something like Ikki Tousen, where the panty shots are so frequent that they very quickly begin to lose all meaning. ImoCho keeps its debauchery in line with the narrative, no matter how heinous things get, so credit for that I guess. This also means that when the writers are actually cooking, they're not throwing garbage at us at the same time.

Beyond that, ImoCho just has this weird habit of breaking into random spurts of good writing out of seemingly nowhere. Sometimes it’ll do something unique or subversive with an old trope. Maybe it’ll find an inspired and unpredictable way to get from point A to point B. Characters react to each other in believable ways, and there is some complexity to their personalities and dynamics. Characters in this show maybe aren’t what you’d call smart, but they do possess the ability to occasionally rub two or three brain cells together, and there are times when they have engaging, meaningful conversations with each other. As objectionable as the chastity belt is, it does have some creative features, and the fact that Mitsuki has to constantly keep this stupid thing she hates wearing out of the public’s eye is something the writers thankfully never take for granted. Yuuya doesn’t just write off Mitsuki’s bizarre behavior, he investigates and tries to figure out what’s wrong.

Probably my favorite thing this show does to shake things up is introduce an actual little sister character... Not for Yuuya, but for the token “Girl crazy comic relief loser,” and if that sets some alarm bells off in your head, don't worry, this isn't Clannad. Loser actually acts more or less normally to his biological sibling, who is not sexualized, and who... Aside from a quick hint in the final episode... Does not turn out to be in love with Yuuya. It is nice, seeing these sibling bicker in a relatively realistic and familiar manner, which serves the audience as an illustration about how brothers and sisters WOULD act toward each other, unlike our step-sibling protagonists. So with all that being said, you can see why this show became so intriguing to me. This isn’t the first time I’ve seen a trash incest-ish anime that tried to put actual effort into being something more, but unlike Nakaimo, I legitimately could not predict where this series was going, and that alone made it far more watchable than it deserved to be.

Unfortunately, these efforts towards redemption ultimately fell short, and I think I can pair that down to two specific reasons. First of all, Mitsuki’s situation in this story is way, way more egregious than the narrative thinks it is. I talked about this before, but it deserves to be repeated, her circumstances are jaw droppingly awful. She’s being forced into this unconscionable dilemma, made to choose between a sexual act she doesn’t want to commit and death, and no matter what she does, the only reward she stands to obtain from any of it is her own survival. That is fucked up. Some of what she goes through is straight up torture, both physical and emotional, but the writer fails to grasp this, trying to write Hiyori as likeable and tying to justify the situation by having Mitsuki slowly become sexually attracted to Yuuya, which feels eerily like Stockholm Syndrome under these circumstance.

Now, I wouldn’t mind any of this if the story took the same route as Romantic Killer, with Mitsuki being openly defiant towards her supernatural possessor and having the self-awareness to never, ever, ever let her forget that she is not fucking okay with the shit she’s been forced into. Seeing her constantly insult or even find ways to hurt Hiyori would have been cathartic as all hell, and would have eased a lot of the resentment I felt towards her for actively ruining Mitsuki’s life. Granted, Romantic Killer isn’t the perfect role model here... Anzu also doesn’t tell the people around her what’s going on with her when she should, and she also forgives her possessor way too easily and refuses to actually let her fuck off out of her life... But at least the more enjoyable aspects of that series were consistent and received somewhat satisfying pay-offs, while ImoCho’s sporadic bursts of quality feel more like a missed opportunity than any kind of vindication.

And it ends with a giant middle finger to the audience, so fuck me I guess.

Recently My Sister is Unusual is not available stateside through any kind of physical media, but it can be streamed on Amazon prime. The original manga is also not available stateside, but a live action film curiously did manage to release here on Bluray. There’s also an OVA episode that I would highly recommend watching, it’s pretty damn funny.

When I started watching this series, I had no plans to review it, because I had no idea it could possibly be anything other than the same old same old incest ecchi trash. Because of this, I felt damn near electrified when I started picking up clues that it even COULD raise the bar beyond that. Sadly, as much as I appreciate the efforts it made, and as glad as I am that it at least fucking TRIED, it needed to push itself a LOT farther to make up for the squicky premise, the infuriatingly cruel plight of the main female protagonist, and the morally reprehensible content that played out early on, and then again every time Hiyori’s treatment of Mitsuki made me shudder. I’d probably be a lot nicer to it if it didn’t have all that baggage holding it back, but an A for effort can only carry you so far.

I give Recently My Sister is Unusual a 4/10