After witnessing the massive disappointment from the second season’s finale of Ore no Imouto, there is something that I came up with while watching the OVAs. Basically, I felt that this show is literally a tragic love story as Ruri, Ayase and Manami have their dreams crushed by a forbidden incestuous relationship between Kyousuke and his little sister.
This makes me wonder, was it worth it for him to go through all of this? My analysis says otherwise. (Image Source)
Throughout the show, Kyousuke is clearly warming up to his little sister. However, he doesn’t only face challenges from society, but also from girls that have romantic feelings for him. This is clear when he was dating Ruri because they had mutual romantic feelings for each other. Unfortunately, he also has feelings for Kirino, which he can’t keep in. Therefore, it became clear that Ruri is not going to lose. Therefore, she destroyed her memories with Kyousuke in front of him, showing that she doesn’t want to know him anymore. The same goes for Ayase as well. Even though they never got into a relationship, it was already too late since Kyousuke wants Kirino as his lover.
With all rejections out of the way, Kirino running away from Kyousuke on Christmas Eve shows one thing that it’s obvious. Because society looks down at incestuous relationships as taboo, they can never marry. Even with the desire to marry his little sister, he challenges the morals society set against them to make it possible. Besides remembering what Kirino wanted from him during her childhood, they finally confront their final nemesis, Manami. Manami represents the status quo that prevents the two from progressing their relationship and/or even get married. With words and violence, Manami is finally defeated, thus they can have their fake marriage. Still, they have to keep it a secret or society will break them apart forever. For the time being, they remain star-crossed lovers since they can never show their romantic feelings for each other until Kirino graduates.
But in all seriousness besides, my somewhat sarcastic analysis of the whole thing, the specials were painful to watch for the fact that Kyousuke basically turns down every girl who would have suited him more than Kirino. Not only that, Kyousuke officially rejecting Ruri was very heart breaking since they threw it all away. Probably the only redeeming thing about these three episodes is the catfight between Manami and Kirino. Otherwise, I’m agreeing with the consensus from the other side, this show is too popular for it’s own good, therefore showing the ugly side of indecisive big brothers and spoiled little sisters. It’s such a shame since the show had some really good ideas, which ultimately got ruined when they start being wishy-washy with the romance.
But look at the bright side! At least it didn’t give the cop out ending of “not blood related!”
OVA Overall Rating: 6.0/10, D-, Below Average
Gonna have to agree that the whole ending felt very surreal and just plain nonsensical for the most part. But yeah, that scene where Manami and Kirino beat each other up? That was genius. Not even saying that in an ironic way. It just revealed so many of the logical fallacies of the whole setup in such a powerful and believable way.
Really, the individual scenes in OreImo are always really well done, it’s just the overall message and presentation that makes it really hard to take. As for popularity, I think it’s deserved, for the most part: it’s irresistibly watchable, no matter how affronted or disgusted the viewer might be from it all.
Looks like, in the end, we had a lot of similar ideas and the whole is definitely not as good as the sum of its parts.
While I agree that Ore no Imouto was never bad from a production standpoint as it done the Otaku theme rather good. However, it’s very doubtful that a story like this will ever happen in real life. But still, the fight with Manami and Kirino pretty much sums up the struggle of society accepting an incesious relationship.