With a title like Days With My Stepsister, you might already expect how this story will unfold. But this is just at first glance. Despite the tale dipping its feet into the taboo waters of NBR relationships, the anime does what it can to subvert its given trope while giving it a visual style that sets it apart from other anime of its ilk. Initial awkwardness ensues, some quasi-romantic tension enters the fray, all coming couched with an experimental direction that elevates Stepsister into something that looks and feels bolder than it really is.

The cinematic aesthetic is the one thing that struck me right away. In this post-Eromanga- Sensei, post-Domestic Girlfriend landscape, I would imagine that there are only a handful of anime directors who would grant artistic dignity to this specific genre of anime. Souta Ueno seems all too eager to be part of that handful, and crams as much cinématographique as possible. A large portion of Stepsister's first half is filled with scenes where Yuuta and Saki are physically together but their awkward natures leave them separated, forcing them to be isolated in their own frames that emphasize their emotional distance. Other scenes let the mise en scene do the talking, wedging things like gates, windows, or other characters to clearly draw the line between the two. This dissolves a bit as the series goes on when Saki and Yuuta become closer together, and feels visually rewarding as it does. While this doesn't make the show worthy of a write-up in Cahiers du Cinema anytime soon, I was still rather impressed by the visual language of this anime.

The trade-off is that this is an exercise of style over substance. The light novels are kind of a chore to read and very redundant in their storytelling. Poor Yuuta and Saki don't have much personality to boot -Yuuta is conflicted with his feelings towards his stepsister while Saki is a hopeless romantic pining for her “Big Brother.” The finer aspects of the light novels are obviously changed for the sake of adaptation, yet Yuuta and Saki's personalities are as thin as ever before, and are entwined in ordinary, everyday antics that are drawn out and trudge along at a snail's pace.

One big difference, however, is that while Yuuta's character exists as a yawn, Saki is given a teensy bit more character here. The epilogues at the end of each light novel volume (which are taken from Saki's private diary) are given new life in the anime, interspersing them throughout certain moments to breathe new life into Saki's personality. The anime's most explicit scene is interrupted by a cinematic montage going through entries of Saki's diary in an ethereal manner that brings out the emotion of her character. It's arguably the most intriguing scene the anime has to offer; what should be (and technically still is) stupid sexual nonsense is transformed into a visually rich montage delving deep into Saki's psyche. Again, nothing entirely revolutionary, but way more than I expected here.

I'm a sucker for good tunes, so naturally, I was amazed by how crystalline and pristine Stepsister's music is. It's just another thing alongside the direction and visuals as something almost too good to be in this type of story. The best tracks here have slow piano key plinks meshed with ethereal synths that add much to the anime's atmosphere. Some might consider these musical touches to be unnecessarily melodramatic, and to an extent they are correct. Still though, these musical features help the relationship between the two leads to flourish in resounding and unexpected ways.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, this show delivered in ways that I did not expect given the subject matter. Certainly this does not make Days With My Stepsister's story captivating in any way, but it certainly does make for an intriguing viewing experience. It's not often you get to see this type of series have so much artistic merit embedded into its texture.