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Oreimo Season 1 Collection – Anime Review

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Oreimo Season 1 Collection - Anime Review 1Title: Oreimo
Alternate Title: Ore no Imouto Ga Konnani Kawaii Wake Ga Na?
Encompasses: Season 1
Published by: Madman Entertainment (Australia/New Zealand), Aniplex of America (North America)
Based on: The light novel series written by Tsukasa Fushimi / Illustrated by Hiro Kanzaki
Genre: Comedy
Audio: Japanese Dub
Subtitles: English
Runtime: 400 Minutes
Classification: MA15+ for Strong Sexual Themes
Cost: $59.95 on DVD
Special Thanks: Madman Entertainment for kindly providing me with a copy of this title for review

Living in the shadow of his talented younger sister, Kyousuke Kosaka conducts a normal lifestyle until he accidentally finds out that she hides a secret. In addition to being smart, pretty, and popular; Kirino Kosaka is also an obsessive consumer of anime and eroge (adult computer games). What will Kyousuke do? Will this tear their already rocky relationship apart or bring them closer together?


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Storyline

After a little bit less than a year since the North American Limited Edition release of the show Madman Entertainment have released Oreimo in Australia, once again with the original Japanese dub and English subtitles. This release includes the originally broadcast 12-episode TV series as well as the additional four episodes which were aired and released through online and later physical release.

Oreimo starts off well, introducing an interesting concept, characters and multiple perspectives of what you could call the generically portrayed ‘otaku subculture’. The series primarily follows Kyousuke, an average 17-year old male who is for all purposes in this series normal and has a strained relationship with his younger sister Kirino. This is at least until he discovers her hobbies which include watching anime and playing eroge – ironically focusing on ‘Little Sister’ themed titles. While their relationship does remain tense, with his support she learns to open up as she makes friends with Saori Makishima and ‘Kuroneko’ while hiding her hobbies from her friends and family.

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The first half of the season proves to be very promising, focusing on introducing the characters and including a number of events which while being slightly obvious given the set-up were interesting and enjoyable to watch – from cracks appearing in the plan to keep Kirino’s hobbies a secret to the slowly developing brother-sister dynamic between the two. Both of these points serve as a foundation of the series, though it does tend to deviate a bit in the latter half of the season.

The second half of Oreimo ended up being a mishmash of ideas and concepts which resulted in mostly single-episode plotlines of varying quality that didn’t live up to the expectations of the first. I felt that with the second half, they tried to cram too much into too fewer episodes, and by the end of the TV episodes I was left with the feeling that they needed to spend more time building the episodes than rushing them (This might also be attributable to the fact we don’t have the light novels released over here).

Whilst the Kosaka siblings are the main focus of the series, the series also boasts a surprisingly appealing cast of secondary characters – most of who originally relating to Kirino become more social with Kyousuke for one reason or another. Kuroneko is perhaps the most interesting of the characters, who with conflicting interests to Kirino becomes both friend and foe to her and also stars in the OVA episodes as a new person for Kyosuke’s attention.

In addition, Kirino’s best friend Ayase appears occasionally with her own negative opinions on otaku alongside her other friend Kanako who remains a minor character aside from one episode. Saori (The administrator of the otaku girl’s website Kirino uses) is a character to complement and at times promote friendship / ease tension between Kirino and Kuroneko and serves this purpose well, but her own personal development is only ever briefly mentioned at certain points. Kyousuke’s childhood friend Manami proved to be another interesting character, but was moved to the side even more-so than Saori despite an episode being dedicated to the relationship between the two of them.

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The series ended with a ‘Good End’ episode, however continues on in a set of four OVA episodes under a “True Route”. This set of episodes result in Kirino temporarily leaving and giving Kuroneko the chance to shine. These episodes like the first few were more of a solid linear plot focusing of Kyousuke and Kuroneko as they join their schools Games Research Club. All four episodes were well written, bringing with them a new set of secondary characters, a new setting and new events… but unfortunately not offering much to develop the other pre-existing characters.

While there is very little in the way of fanservice to be seen visually in this series, the content in the dialogue does to some extent warrant its MA15+ rating for strong sexual themes – especially a few scenes in the OVA episodes. But otherwise Oreimo does not fall into too many of the cliches you can see in series like this and while the quality does vary at points and tries to do far too much for the number of episodes, it is a pretty enjoyable series to watch and one that I am looking forward to seeing the second season of when it launches in 2013.

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Design / Music / Voice Acting

While not perfect, the design and visual quality in Oreimo is high. The character designs are of solid quality and are complemented by well detailed background designs. During the episodes they also develop and preview aspects of the in-series series Stardust Witch Meruru from simple DVD covers to a whole music performance.

Oreimo features a single opening sequence titled ‘irony’ by ClariS (The same group responsible for Puella Magi Madoka Magica’s opening sequence) and overall the song was pretty enjoyable and featured slight alterations to the opening animation each episode which was a nice touch. Similar to Heaven’s Lost Property, this season features ending themes and animations unique to each episode – and going from general consensus the songs were good although animation generally focused on still images used in different ways to give the impression of being animated. The remainder of the music in this series soundtrack was suitable and served its purpose well.

Oreimo delivers a strong voice cast across the board from Yuuichi Nakamura (Tomoya Okazaki – Clannad) and Ayana Taketatsu (Azusa Nakano – K-ON!) as the Kosaka siblings to Kana Hanazawa (Mayuri Shiina – Steins;Gate) and Satomi Satou (Ritsu Tainaka – K-ON!) as Kuroneko and Manami respectively.

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Extra Content

While we did not receive any of the limited edition goodies from the North American release, the third and final disc in this set did include a number of extra goodies including:

  • Japanese Cover Art Gallery – Self explanatory, a typical DVD gallery containing all the cover art used in the Japanese releases of the series.
  • Special Next Episode Previews – A number of next episode previews that are extended from the original ones while featuring a chat between the online Personas of the characters. No English translations however.
  • On Air Ending Collection
  • Stardust Witch Meruru Special Opening – While brief segments of the opening are shown during a particular episode, this is the full opening of the in-series anime series Stardust Witch Meruru.
  • Trailers – Puella Magi Madoka Magica Vol. 1, GOSICK Collection 1, Cat Planet Cuties Collection, Air TV Collection and Kanon Collection. (Click on Bolded Title to read my review of the series)
Final Score
Storyline / Character Development: B-
Design: 
B+
Music/Voice Acting: B+
Extra Content: B
Personal Preference: B
Overall Score: B
Sam
Sam
Founder of The Otaku's Study. I have been exploring this labyrinth of fandom these last fifteen years, and still nowhere close to the exit yet. Probably searching for a long time to come.
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