By this point, so much has been said about this series that it's hard to tell what to actually think. How bad is Eromanga-sensei, really? Is it merely a raunchy comedy series that accidentally attracted a larger audience than intended? Or is it something far worse? To phrase the question simply, is Eromanga-sensei really that bad?

...Yes.

Eromanga-sensei is an anime that is broken to its very core. Its first issue is the most basic issue any show can have: the premise is bad. It attempts (poorly) to tell the story of Masamune Izumi, a successful teenage light novel author with a remarkable ability for causing sexy things to inexplicably happen around him. Joining him in his lascivious endeavors is his loli sister Sagiri, a child who makes a living drawing porn (something something FBI…). Incidentally, she also happens to draw the illustrations for Masamune’s novels; although, through a contrivance of cosmic proportions, he remains unaware of this fact… even though they live in the same house.

The sheer poorness of this premise is staggering.

To begin with, it lifts the aspiring light novel author plot directly out of Oreimo’s first season. I was no fan of the idea there, and certainly am no fan of it here. The notion that the fifteen-year-old Kirino could get a light novel published with such ease always struck me as a bizarre deviation from the relatively grounded nature of Oreimo's first season up to that point, and it strikes me as far worse in Eromanga-sensei, where the characters are all several years younger.

To make matters worse, the fact that Masamune has somehow remained unknowing of his sister’s profession despite her living in the same house as him is downright asinine. It’s bad enough that I have to believe that an unremarkable teenager could get a series of successful novels published, but now I’m also supposed to accept that his kawaii imouto does the illustrations and he never suspected a thing? No thanks—I don’t buy it.

I should mention that my intention here is not to suggest that realism is particularly important in anime; rather, I expect a slice of life series about otaku culture to have some grounding in the reality of otaku culture. Otherwise, what’s the point? There’s simply no reason for the show to even incorporate elements of a real phenomenon like otaku culture if it only plans to skew them beyond recognition anyway. For all of its shortcomings, this was something that Oreimo did well. It painted a pretty shady picture of otaku culture, but (excluding the light novel section) it showed characters interacting with this culture in a very real and relatable way. They formed communities of fans, attended events, and even had heated discussions about their favorite anime. It was played comically, but there was a definite sense that these events came from a place of experience and passion for the world of otaku on the part of the author. None of this is the case in Eromanga-sensei. The characters of this show live in a distant fantasy world where teenagers write light novels and children create hentai. Being an otaku here means nothing more than enjoying lewd light novels with lewder drawings. This is not the reality of otaku culture—not to most people, at any rate—and the show gains nothing from portraying it in this way.

From what I’ve written about its premise alone, you’re probably expecting me to write an almighty diatribe against the rest of Eromanga-sensei, but actually, past its premise the show is barely worth discussing. Things progress exactly how anyone would expect them to. More unremarkable characters are introduced, more absurd situations occur, and the show settles into a routine of raunchy mediocrity punctuated only by the occasional scene offensive enough to warrant a reaction. I honestly think the show would have been forgotten almost immediately, lost in a slew of other sexual anime comedies, if not for these extra offensive moments. Thanks, however, to delightful scenes like the one where a twelve-year-old girl says “I love dicks—all girls my age do,” this show began an unfortunate ascension to the status of a meme. The good old anime memesters began crawling out of the woodwork, and eventually big figures in the community like Gigguk started paying the series some attention. Now, I love Gigguk’s videos about Eromanga-sensei as much as any other self-respecting weeb, but I do suspect that without them and the related memes, this series would have been quickly sentenced to a well-deserved eternity of obscurity.

I bring this up because this meme-ability represents my other main problem with this series: it tries too hard to be offensive. This is speculation upon my part, but I believe that Eromanga-sensei’s writer knew that his brand of imouto-themed otaku comedies had waning relevance, so he deliberately used these shocking moments as a last ditch effort at increasing publicity for his work. And… I guess it worked. These moments became memes and the memes became a form of free marketing for the show. I would call it ingenious if it didn’t cause me and countless other hapless weebs to waste five hours of our time watching a terrible anime. To clarify, none of this is to say that I have any inherent problem with Eromanga-sensei’s nature as a offensive show. Being bawdy is an excellent and time-honored way of approaching humor, and Eromanga-sensei… sometimes does it well. The dick-lover scene is bad, but it’s bad not because there is any inherent problem with twelve-year-olds who love dicks; rather, it fails because it does nothing particularly humorous with this idea. This is the core of the problem: instead of using offensive elements as a means to create humor, these elements are played as though they are intrinsically humorous.

What seems oddest about this situation is that the writer occasionally uses bawdy elements to make actual jokes, so it’s clear that he understands how to do this, he just fails to do it most of the time. For instance, compare the dick-lover scene to a later scene in episode twelve where Sagiri tries to draw some good ole hentai but can’t seem to correctly identify the location of the male genitals. This scene is also rather lewd, but it’s much funnier than the dick-lover scene because it manages to go beyond being superficially raunchy and makes a real joke (namely that Sagiri pretends to be experienced about sex but is really laughably naïve). Being the sort of tasteless person I am, I think I would have earnestly enjoyed this series if it were able to keep to the obscene-but-funny standard set by this last scene. Instead, however, Eromanga-sensei’s humor falls as flat as its premise, leaving us with a series that is worthless from almost any viewpoint—a series, in other words, that is not only trashy but trash as well.

Note: I used the phrase "dick-lover scene" three times in this review without even meaning to. I feel like that says something about the kind of anime Eromanga-sensei is...