I honestly don’t know what surprises me more - the ability of some mangaka to continuously churn out utter garbage or the community who will eat said garbage up without caring one bit.
As a westerner with no connection to Japan other than my cultural interest, I am always a bit hesitant when critiquing their culture. Is it right for me to criticize a culture I am not a part of? Personally I think any type of criticism should be allowed. At the end of the day no one is forcing anyone to change, it is simply an observation of a culture in a more critical context.
Well, enough pretentious talking to warrant me shitting on Reiji Miyajima’s newest series. Miyajima, most well known for the hit-series “Rent A Girlfriend”, has already earned a notoriously bad reputation in the animanga community, although only having published 2 manga. Rent A Girlfriend took a somewhat interesting premise of a lonely college student falling in love with a rental girlfriend and used it to create an overtly long harem-esque shitshow that is still ongoing to this day.
“The Shiunji Family Children” is similar to “Rent A Girlfriend”. Where the previous series could have been an exploration of obsession and love in complicated circumstances, Shiunji takes the idea of forbidden love inside a family and, like Rent A Girlfriend, creates another harem love story around it.
While I do not want to discuss whether Incestual Love should be allowed in modern society (that is something you will have to decide for yourself), I won’t deny that it isn’t a somewhat interesting premise. Is the love to our family members different to love to a romantical partner? Why is it seen as taboo to be in love with our siblings? All these questions can be thrown around and discussed in a serious context but Shiunji does not even attempt to do this.
Incest is not a rare topic to see highlighted in animanga culture and while anilist sadly does not have an Incest-Tag, that warrants me to see the spectacular selection of titles the community has gathered, a simple google search has given me enough interesting titles: Kiss x Sis, My Little Sister Can't Be This Cute, Eromanga Sensei, Do You Love Your Mom nd Her Two-Hit Multi-Target Attacks?.
All of these series end up being pure fanservice for lonely people that couldn’t imagine anything better than having a little sister who calls you “Oni-Chan”. The way that incest has been normalized as just being another romance trope is quite odd to me (not that the western world is exempt of it). Instead of arguing for the sake of it (or against it) it is used as a form of taboo to spice up a normal romance series.
Arata Shiunji, the protagonist of the series, finds out that his sisters, that all love him dearly, aren’t actually his real sisters. While they have all grown up together seeing each other as siblings, it turns out that they are not all related by blood. Well… let the fun begin!! Now all sisters, each representing some common trope in romance manga, can throw themselves at Arata to fight over his heart. Similar to other harem series like, The Quintessential Quintuplets, we have a beautiful cast of girls to cheer for. Choose your own favorite so you can root for her: the shy Kotono, sporty Minami, outgoing Ouka or the two other sisters that are so uninteresting that I not only have forgotten their names but also any characteristic that defines them.
At this point it should also have become clear that there won’t be any intellectual discussion about the ethic of incest in the manga. The premise is also stupid - why would the fact that they are not blood related change anything. They have grown up with the idea of being siblings, which is the thing that usually makes incest seem weird. Genetics only come into consideration when having babies. Whatever.
The series is currently at Volume 7, already being translated in multiple languages, and has entered the typical Miyajima-esque plotline: Each girl gets their own small arc over a few chapters as we learn their own struggles and why they love Arata. Some conflict comes into play that is quickly resolved and everyone is happy. Miyajima will probably drag out the story into oblivion to make sure he gets as much money (good for him) and any plotline will eventually come to resemble only a former shadow of itself. One thing I have to admit is that he does know how to write addicting stories. As bad as they are, I could read multiple volumes a day. It’s kind of like crack - pretty shitty but certainly won’t let you go.