The Winter 2014 Anime Preview Guide

Recently, My Sister is Unusual

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Hope Chapman

Rating: 1

Review: This is the rare anime that defines conventional review. A conventional review of fiction takes into account things like plot, characters, maybe even theme, and Recently, my sister is unusual. has only the sparsest crumbs of any of those things. Even compared to its brethren, “taboo” anime based around specific fetishes or scandalous premises, there's little to latch onto in this. Normally, these shows have a milquetoast male protagonist. In MySisUn, as I'll refer to it from this point, he barely shows up, and is given zero personality qualifiers, feelings, opinions, or backstory as opposed to the at least threadbare traits we're used to seeing. The little sister, likewise, is sometimes shy and sometimes flabbergasted but even then, there isn't much pattern or reason to it. It's hard to tell whether you would call her a tsundere, a kuudere, or any kind of -dere- at all. Then there's the supernatural ghost/angel/demon/rapist/little girl who floats down from on high to mess with our lead siblings, also given no motivation or specific traits as of yet, hence the string of slashes in place of details.

No, the best thing MySisUn can be compared to is a softcore porn outing with negligible niceties of character names or plot points sprinkled in to hold a series of fetish scenes together. The episode is heavily censored, and without the bars and icons, would just be classified as porn. The only loophole keeping it from being considered hentai is probably the lack of detailed vagina bits even in the uncensored version, but the content is otherwise baldly pornographic. There's very little to critique as the show jumps from fetish to fetish. This is little more than the top result in a search on a pornhub, so in lieu of a review, here are the search terms it satisfies:

anime +incest +yuri +chastitybelt +rape +peeholding

(The screenshot above is the “money shot” for that last term.)

If you can see yourself typing these things to scratch an itch, MySisUn is here to satisfy. If not, the show offers literally nothing else.

Recently, my sister is unusual. is available streaming at Crunchyroll.

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Carl Kimlinger

Rating: 1.5

Review: Yay! Another little-sister romance! Big brothers denying they have impure feelings for their little sisters; little sisters trying desperately to seduce their big brothers… Incest is such fun! Actually, to be entirely fair, this isn't quite the place to be bitching about incestuous anime. Recently… does its due diligence and overtly skirts any actual “familial relations.” The sister in question, Mitsuki Kanzaki, gains an elder brother—the blandly kind Yūya Kanzaki—only when her mother remarries. Incest: avoided. Heck, that situation wouldn't even trigger our evolved incest-avoidance mechanisms (as the strangers-raised-as-siblings situation would). As little-sister premises go, it's practically squeaky clean.

The purpose of that, of course, is so that non-degenerates can freely enjoy the ecchi developments that follow. If only the developments were a little more “ecchi” and a little less plain-old filthy. Mitsuki's dilemma is that she quickly becomes host to a ghost who is madly in love with Yuya. The ghost—Hiyori—goes a-courting, which leads to hijinks and misunderstandings. Or so we suppose. Because what it actually leads to, at least this episode, is Hiyori putting a suspiciously fetishistic chastity belt on Mitsuki and then graphically molesting her. After which Mitsuki has to go pee but can't—because she has a chastity belt on, see—leading to an extended bit of holding-it-in erotica. Try to hold your enthusiasm in.

Recently… has actual selling points—Mitsuki and Yuya have a believably awkward step-sibling relationship (at first) and Mitsuki's troubled relationship with her mother, whose remarriage she clearly isn't thrilled with, gets a couple of emotional zings in sideways—but they're utterly smothered by its crude libido. It doesn't help that, while the tone is light, the goings-on aren't the least bit funny. Veteran screenwriter Hideyuki Kurata slyly hints at the show's mysteries, but who's going to stick around to see where they lead? Not me.

Recently, my sister is unusual. is available streaming at Crunchyroll.

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Rebecca Silverman

Rating: 1.5 (out of 5)

Review:

How often do you get to start the season out with a sex scene? Crunchyroll's first official new series, Recently, my sister is unusual. not only has an unwieldly title, but smack dab in the middle of episode one we also have a soft-core yuri sex scene. Consider yourself forewarned and wear your headphones.

As the tile suggests, Recently, my sister is unusual. is a little sister romcom. Yuuya's father has just remarried a woman named Kyoko, who has a daughter, Mitsuki, just a little younger than him. Yuuya doesn't seem to have any strong feelings about suddenly acquiring a younger sister (much to his buddy Torii's bafflement), and really just wants to make her feel comfortable and welcome. He's trying to do this on the way home one day when Mitsuki suddenly falls backwards down the stairs. He catches her, and the next thing he knows, she's calling him “Big Brother” and caressing his back. Concerned something got knocked loose, he takes her to the hospital.

The show now shifts to Mitsuki's perspective, and we find out that she didn't fall, she was pushed by a ghost named Hiyori. Hiyori wants to borrow Mitsuki's body, possibly just to masturbate, which she does immediately upon forcing Mitsuki's spirit out. By the end of the episode, we still don't know what Hiyori wants, but Mitsuki has been saddled with a sexually curious ghost and a chastity belt that can only be removed for three minutes every hour. Yes, we have a prolonged scene where Mitsuki tries hard not to wet herself.

While this is a pretty distasteful show in more than just its premise – Hiyori forcing sex on Mitsuki was not okay, no matter how cleverly the narration was done – it does have a couple of saving points. That Yuuya has no initial designs on his sister and thinks that Torii's kind of creepy is a good sign, and the etymology lesson of the word “imoto” (or just imo) is interesting, both for word geeks and as a genre joke. I don't really have high hopes for it, even if I find the heart-shaped locks used to censor nudity kind of funny, but it also wasn't quite as all around wretched as I was expecting.

Recently, my sister is unusual. is available streaming at Crunchyroll.

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Theron Martin

Rating: 3 (of 5)

Review: The last series that Crunchyroll streamed which had an age warning (Valvrave the Liberator) had it primarily because of intense graphic violence. This one gets it because it has a remarkably graphic female masturbation scene which turns into a remarkably graphic lesbian sex scene – and yes, this is edgier than non-hentai anime normally gets. What's a little unsettling about this is the series does not give even the slightest hint that it will turn this raunchy until the opener plays about nine minutes in and prominently features chastity belts and vibrators. Even then, not a hint of actual fan service comes up prior to the female lead first being shown wearing said chastity belt about 12 minutes in. It almost seems like this was intended to be a stealth fan service series.

And yes, the (apparently magical?) chastity belt seems to be a central plot device. As the story goes, teenage Yuuya gains a cute younger stepsister in Mitsuki when her father remarries. Though he tries to be nice, and studiously avoids being the least bit creepy, Mitsuki still seems uncomfortable around him until she wakes up after taking a nasty fall down a staircase – and suddenly she's all lovey-dovey briefly before radically reversing herself and freaking out. It turns out that Mitsuki is being haunted by Hiyori, the ghost of a sexy girl who for as-yet-unspecified reasons wants to win Yuuya's heart. That is when the chastity belt first shows up, one whose heart symbol seems to start filling up when Mitsuki orgasms and which can only be turned off for a brief period of time every hour to allow her to go to the restroom. That presents a problem to Mitsuki when she misses her first opportunity while needing to go pee.

Essentially we have two different concepts at war here: in one respect the series seems to want to show more seriously how two hormonal teenagers might actually interact when put in this “now we're stepsiblings” situation, but in another respect it want to be a racy, edgy sex comedy. It will be a difficult balancing act to pull off, and the weak artistic effort, courtesy of the studio which did Ro-Kyu-Bu!, does not help. The concept is at least trying to be creative, though, the writing is better than one might expect, and nothing that takes place actually stretches logic much; after all, what is improbable about a spirit who takes on a body for the first time in a while being immediately interested in pleasuring herself? Ultimately this could end up being total trash, but at least initially it has a spark of potential.

Recently, my sister is unusual. is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.