My Sister, My Writer

My Sister, My Writer

My Sister, My Writer anime cover art featuring Suzuka and Yuu Nagami
My Sister, My Writer Cover Art

Overview

What better way to start the new year than with a review of the best, worst anime of 2018. My Sister, My Writer could have been a real contender for worst anime of the year if not for one simple fact, it was actually so bad that I found myself enjoying it.

If you’ve seen anime like Oreimo or Eromanga Sensei, then you already know the plot of My Sister, My Writer at its most basic level. However, what makes My Sister, My Writer stand out is that this time around it’s a bit less incestuous and has a much lower production value.

The animation for the series isn’t all that great, and if I’m being honest, neither is the art. But, this is part of what makes the series so entertaining.

For example, every character only has about three different facial expressions, which isn’t enough to cover the range of different emotions they need to show at times. This leads to many cases in which the facial expressions of characters don’t match up with what they’re saying or what situation they find themselves in.

My personal favorite of these is that Yuu’s expressions for both excitement and horror are exactly the same.

Alright, so it’s another imouto anime, but this time around the art and animation are bad, that’s all, right? Nope. The directing is bad too, or at least I think this counts as directing, I’m not entirely sure who’s to blame, but the series randomly decides to flip sideways at times.

Let’s say we’re watching a conversation between two characters and everything looks normal, but suddenly, our view flips to the side and zooms in on a single character. I think they were going for some sort of artistic effect, but in some cases we’re sideways for minutes at a time and there’s no real reason for it.

Typically you might see something like this, but better, done for emphasis when a character is saying something world-shattering, but that isn’t the case here. Instead, the characters who get zoomed in on aren’t saying anything particularly special, and I think the whole reason for this happening is so there can be a “full-screen” view of them.

Keep in mind that while this series is tagged as ecchi, it’s not really an ecchi series like To LOVE-Ru, so these full-screen close-ups of the girls aren’t really fanservice, they’re just annoying. But, seriously, whose idea was it to make the anime sideways at random points during conversations? Fire them.

Characters

Our protagonists of the series are siblings Yuu and Suzuka Nagami. Yuu has always wanted to become a light novel author, but none of his work has ever been good enough to be published. However, one day, in an attempt to get closer to him, his sister, Suzuka, writes a light novel about a brother-sister relationship and wins a competition.

Now Suzuka’s light novel is going to be published instead of one written by her brother, who actually wanted to become a light novel author. While this is clearly a slap in the face for Yuu, it’s also not the best for Suzuka either because her middle school doesn’t allow for students to have jobs, so she can’t actually be a published author.

To remedy this situation, Yuu takes over the role of Chikai Towano, which is Suzuka’s pen name, in the public sphere. Despite Yuu playing the roll of published light novel author, his sister is actually the one still writing the series from behind the scenes, which is a secret the two must keep from everyone else.

After Suzuka’s light novel gains popularity, various other girls from the light novel and related industries begin appearing around Yuu, which only serves to make her jealous. She wrote her novel so the world could learn of her love for her brother, but instead all it’s done is make her brother more popular with other women.

Yuu and Suzuka Nagami from the anime My Sister, My Writer
Yuu and Suzuka Nagami

One such woman is Mai Himuro, a fellow published light novel author and classmate of Yuu. After reading Suzuka’s light novel and learning that it was “written” by Yuu, Mai becomes obsessed with him and devotes her life to uncovering just how he was able to write such a “perfect” novel.

She also refers to herself as Yuu’s number one fan and uses this as an excuse to do some questionable things such as rummage through his trash to try to find any piece of evidence she can. Despite saying that she simply wants to learn how to write better from studying him, she’s clearly just in love.

Next up we have Ahegao Double Peace-sensei, the hentai artist who was hired to illustrate Suzuka’s novel, despite it not being a hentai. Everyone refers to her simply as Double Peace-sensei, but she insists that the “Ahegao” is the most important part of her name.

Out of all the characters in the series, Double Peace-sensei is the one who most exemplifies the ecchi side of the anime, which makes sense considering both her profession and name. Also, despite being the artist for Suzuka’s novel, even she thinks Yuu is the true author.

The final character of any real importance is Sakura Minazuki, a famous voice actress who fell in love with Suzuka’s book after reading it like so many others. The only difference is that she hates brother-sister relationships, so I’m still not exactly sure why she was so drawn to this novel.

Throughout the series, she attempts to essentially replace Suzuka as Yuu’s new younger sister, despite being older than him if I remember correctly. Sakura also hopes to voice the little sister character from Suzuka’s novel one day if it gets an anime adaptation.

Oddly enough, out of all these characters, the one I actually felt was written the best was Double Peace-sensei. At least everything she did and said made sense, which isn’t something I can say about the other characters in the series.

Conclusion

In the end, while I very well could have rated this anime as a 1 or 2, I decided on a final score of 3/10. The deciding factor in for this improved score was simply the fact that I found this series to be enjoyable despite how clearly terrible it was.

With every episode I was looking forward to see just how far below my expectations it could go, and with each consecutive episode it somehow managed to continue lowering the bar more and more. I can’t in good conscience recommend this anime to most people, but if you’re someone who gets enjoyment out of watching terrible series, give this one a try.

However, if you’re into better executed anime, but still have trash taste, then I’d recommend either Oreimo or Eromanga Sensei, both of which follow a very similar plot.

So, did you watch My Sister, My Writer this season? And, if so, what were your thoughts on the series? Let me know in the comments. I’m hoping at least one other person found this series as entertaining as I did, but maybe it was just me.

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My review of the uncensored My Sister, My Writer Specials is available here.

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