The Spring 2025 Anime Preview Guide

The Shiunji Family Children

Arata Shiunji has never had a girlfriend, but with five incredible sisters and a younger brother, his life is far from lonely. Despite being surrounded by beautiful women every day, he begins to accept his days as a bachelor won't end anytime soon. But one day, that all changes when his father reveals to the family that he and his siblings aren't related by blood. Now, all bets are off, and Arata's future promises to be rather nerve-wracking indeed.

The Shiunji Family Children is based on a manga by Reiji Miyajima. The anime series is streaming on Crunchyroll on Tuesdays.

While this anime is a pseudo-incest harem show (and is clear about that from the start), I really enjoyed how seriously it took its big reveal, reveling in the shock of it all. I mean, finding out you're not related to your family by blood? That's some world-shattering stuff right there.

Suddenly, you no longer know your place in the world, not in your family or your life. This is especially true for Ouka and Arata, who thought they were twins—an extension of each other. Suddenly, the person they thought they were closest to in all the world—together with them from the moment of conception—is almost a stranger.

While everyone is acting fine, it's clear that none of them are (well, except for maybe Minami). Sure, it's easy to put on a brave face and say nothing has changed, but everything has. It's got to feel like your family is a lie.

There is a subtle second story going on throughout the episode. There are hints from the start that things are already rocky between the seven siblings. A while back, something happened with Arata and Kotono—something that bordered on incestuous that everyone is trying to play off via humor (and it's implied to be Arata's fault).

Of course, the twist at the end of the episode is that whatever happened was due to Kotono and not Arata. She likely confessed to him, and he rejected her (likely using their sibling relationship as an excuse), and things have been awkward ever since. Knowing this recontextualizes her role in the entire episode.

When her father drops the “you're not siblings” bomb on everyone—and during her freaking birthday party no less—Kotono is less shocked and more overjoyed. There is no longer a barrier between her and her crush and so she makes a move on him as soon as the opportunity arises. This makes for good drama—and is objectively sad at the same time.

I enjoyed this first episode far more than I expected. I would love it if the show continued on with as much nuance, delving into the fears and worries of everyone involved as a new status quo for the family is established. However, something tells me it'll soon become an endless stream of harmen rom-com tropes where Arata has romance scenes with each sister in turn in a giant “will they, won't they” SNAFU. Regardless, this episode is a solid start.

The premise of The Shuinji Family Children is so deranged that I almost have to respect it. Here we have this family of gorgeous anime teenagers, you see, and from the moment we're introduced to them it is clear that the only thing these siblings have ever thought about is incest. The shameful, all-consuming sexual tension has been there for years, and it's obvious that the mad sister-lust that courses through the Shuinji family's veins is going to damn them all to a House of Usher-esque collapse into utter decay. Oh, sure, they all laugh and smile over the goofy “jokes” they all make about how it would be, like, so weird to actually have abominable and uncontrollable feelings for each other (except for the one girl who just straight up admits to it, which everyone just coos over like it's the cutest thing). Arata might play it like he's too cool for school and wants nothing more than to get away from his siblings because of how totally lame and not-in-any-way-obscenely-attractive they all are, but we know. We all know. And so do the sisters.

Then, just like Jigsaw himself might wheel out that little puppet to a room filled with screaming victims to announce his next parade of sick torture devices, the Shuiji siblings' father brings them all together over dinner to proudly announce that all of the kids are adopted, after all, and most of them (save for the one set of twins) have not one drop of that pesky family blood running in their veins.

You can see it in all of the girls' faces. The moment that their deepest, darkest fantasies all come frothing to the surface of their psychologically unprepared minds. Most of them would never admit to it, and some of them may even continue to cling to such hopelessly naive crutches as “universally understood principals of adolescent sibling psychology” and “the basic and agreed upon standards of human decency.” Those flimsy foundations barely held the girls back from their insatiable appetite for brother-flesh before they discovered that such acts might not technically be a crime against nature. Now, there is nothing to hold back the oncoming flood. It's like we're watching a nature documentary about the savage lioness' of the African plains. We may cry out in sympathy for the poor antelope that is being torn to shreds in the clutches of the merciless predators, but there's no stopping what nature has demanded since time immemorial. These girls will seduce their brother.

If watching the slow-motion implosion of a young man's familial relationships under the crushing weight of horny anime-girl determination disguised as a lackadaisical sex comedy sounds like your thing, then boy howdy, is The Shuinji Family Children for you. If not, well, you could have probably figured that out by reading the show's premise right up there. As for me, I would have appreciated the whole thing more if it cranked up the “Silliness” meter a few more notches. That last shot of the naked 8th-grader earnestly clutching her brother's waist in the shower felt weirdly self-serious, and that is not the tone I need from my implausible incest farces. If you need me, I'll be catching up on all those episodes of 100 Girlfriends that I missed.

Listen, The Shiunji Family Children is not an anime for me. For the most part, it's an anime made up entirely of things I don't like. Not only is it a harem series, but it's a pseudo-incest harem, in which a group of seven siblings, after growing up together for 15 years, learn they're not actually related except for one pair of twins. I didn't like anything about that sentence! There wasn't a single phrase in it that sounds appealing!

The characters also seem to be weirdly chill about the idea of incest from the jump; they have an extended group conversation about how they're all hot people, so is it that strange for them to be attracted to each other? To the outside world, they argue, they're just a group of seven attractive teenagers, to which I say nay, that is not at all how that works. The only one with any sense is the blue-haired smarty-pants sister, who correctly points out that incest is taboo for evolutionary biological reasons, only for it to be handwaved away by the big-titty oldest sister. The purpose of most of the dialogue in the first episode appears to be priming the audience not to question it when, the instant they learn that they're all adopted, they start competing to get into the main character's pants. Nope, not a series for me at all.

But!

If you're someone who likes pseudo-incest harem, or at least isn't put off by the idea, The Shiunji Family Children is… well… It's good. Dōga Kōbō has, as usual, put out a gorgeous piece of work: bright without resorting to eye-smarting filters, fluid, and expressive. The scene where Arata accidentally walks in on Kotono in the bath? I didn't like what was happening, but I was still impressed by the lifelike animation as Arata fled, wrapping himself in a towel. As I write this, I remember that the manga has the same artist as Rent-A-Girlfriend, and while I detest his work, I can recognize that he's a talented character designer.

The writing is also… better than average for this type of show, but I also remember saying the same thing about Rent-A-Girlfriend when it came out. Although the first half was awkward (and a little reminiscent of how in RAG there's a lot of focus on random people wondering whether the main characters are having sex), there's some sensitivity to the siblings struggling with the fallout from their father's sudden revelation. I can't say that in that situation the most natural response is to think, “Wow, we can actually have sex now!” But once again, we're working within the parameters of the genre.

The Shiunji Family Children is not worth trying out if you're put off by the premise. It does exactly what you would expect it to. But hey, if this kind of thing floats your boat, it promises to keep you… buoyant.

Anime parents do make some baffling decisions, don't they? From remarrying without ever telling their kids they were dating to picking a random date to tell their children that they're all adopted, the things anime parents do go way beyond the orphan fantasy that's so prevalent in worldwide literature. Although in the case of The Shiunji Family Children, it could be argued that the orphan fantasy – when parents are absent so that kids can have their adventures – is alive and well, just taking on a different format.

That would be the sibling romance, which is first hinted at when we learn that youngest Shiunji daughter Kotono has a crush on oldest Shiunji brother Arata, something the others sort of brush off because, as the brainy daughter (Seiha) says, incest is bad. But then, at Kotono's fifteenth birthday party, Dad pops up just long enough to say, “Surprise! You're all adopted, and only two of you have a blood tie!”, flinging everyone into uncertainty. It's an announcement that kicks off the plot, but also really rubs me the wrong way. Mr. Shiunji says that none of them are actually siblings, which feels patently false – they've spent at least seventeen years being siblings; blood ties have nothing to do with it. Being blood-related does not a sibling relationship make.

It's also a pretty cheap shot to kick off a quasi-forbidden romance story. Not only does it unsettle all of the kids (Shion and Minami are notably relieved that they're actually twins), but it also forces the issue of romance among the group. Arata has already stated that he's not keen on dating Kotono, but now she has the chance to make him more uncomfortable about it, while Ouka, who thought she and Arata were twins, is trying to understand how their lack of genetic tie fits into her understanding of him as her “other half.” Nothing about this plot twist feels natural, and a lot of it feels mean.

Perhaps all of this just drives home that I am not the intended audience for this series. That's fair; everything can't be for everyone. But it also feels like a cheat in terms of giving viewers who like incest stories something to hold on to because, technically, this isn't one. It just comes across as incredibly contrived, and that gets in the way of the plot. It doesn't look bad or sound bad, but Banri's boob jiggles also can't override the issues with the set up.