In the early 2000s, prominent cultural critic Hiroki Azuma observed that the otaku media diet is slowly animalising: grand narratives were slowly being abandoned for categorised consumption, personalities of characters becoming mere data points to be sorted into a personal database in the mind of the otaku, each entry granting a little dopamine hit evolved from our primitive ancestors who survived nature better through pattern recognition.

So, you might be asking, why am I bringing up Azuma’s seminal theory on postmodern otaku culture in a review about My Friend’s Little Sister Has It In for Me!? It’s because every element of this show is designed to invoke this animalistic reaction of categorisation. The character, the narrative, the sound design, the OP and ED, the visual presentation, everything serves to deliver those sweet sweet dopamine hits.

Tune into an episode of My Friend’s Little Sister Has It In for Me!, and the first thing you’ll see is a barrage of exclusively contemporary otaku-sphere references splattered onto its OP. I cannot stress this enough—this is the most repulsive, unoriginal, unharmonious opening sequence I have ever seen, period. Ace Attorney, Kyoufuu All Back, the Twitter Bungo Cat reaction gif, Minecraft, Jojo's Bizarre Adventures, Pacman, Street Fighter, Suika Game, all used thrown together with the intentionality and care of McDonalds fries, which is, ironically, the first scene of the OP. They even showed cleavage three different times in there just in case you live like a caveman and miss all those references.

After getting through that 90-second hellscape, you’re greeted with our completely sauceless protagonist, Temu Takagi-san main love interest, a paedophilic teacher, and a cast of (to put it in the nicest terms possible) clinically autistic supporting characters. Each of them a wet sock devoid of any real internal struggles or personality, except for their contrived and imposed personality traits coated in a thick layer of irony, with the sole purpose to deflect criticisms.

If you think the setting and plot couldn't be any worse, oh boy aren’t you in for a treat. It all starts with a fake-dating story line, protag-kun Aki (who's a genius game developer that makes the big bucks) was threatened into fake-dating his osananajimi (who's a genius best-selling author that writes the plot for the games under an alias) by her rich uncle (who publishes his games), or face divine retribution (his uncle will refuse to publish his game). Meanwhile, we get to know that he had blackmailed his paedophilic teacher (who's a genius best-selling doujin artist) into drawing art for his game. Half a dozen episodes of faffing around later, Temu Takagi-san Iroha (who's a genius voice actor that voices every single character for his games) eventually gets jealous of the fake-dating and stops doing his job properly. Once that got sloppily resolved in a 2- minute conversation at the park, drama is reinstated as the paedophile teacher is in a pinch… I think you get the picture. The plot has no semblance of a coherent structure or escalation, and the horrible characters almost necessitates the story to progress in an equally horrible way to match its energy.

All this is presented with a heavily optimised and artistically bankrupt production. One thing I've neglected to mention in my rant about the OP is the dance chibi Temu Takagi-san does throughout, and this perhaps encapsulates the problem with the entire show's animation. The ordinary shots are already terrible as it is, but constantly random scenes get chibi-fied for no good reason at all, other than to save animators’ energy on shots elsewhere.

This is really mean to say but there's no way around it, anime like My Friend's Little Sister Has It In for Me! have no business existing. I like to call it the Fifty Shades of Grey phenomenon, where aggressively terrible stories can, against all odds, sell tens of thousands of copies and get an adaptation. But where it happens once in a blue moon in Hollywood, there's one every season for anime, a deep sickness in the medium that has no cure.

I guess I only have myself to blame, I'm watching ts voluntarily.