What They Say:
Kyosuke Kosaka, a normal 17-year-old high school student living in Chiba, has not gotten along with his younger sister Kirino in years. For longer than he can remember, Kirino has ignored his comings and goings and looked at him with spurning eyes. It seemed as if the relationship between Kyōsuke and his sister, now fourteen, would continue this way forever. One day however, Kyosuke finds a DVD case of a magical girl anime which had fallen in his house’s entrance way.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Kirino’s life is one that tends to go in odd circles, partially because of who she is but also because of her interests. Case in point is that she’s being scouted for an out of country gig, but she doesn’t want to leave in the slightest having just come back, and the only excuse she can come up with is that she has a boyfriend. Since there are no other men in her life at all at this point, she goes to Kyosuke for help to pretend to be her boyfriend so she can get the recruiter off of her back. Of course, the situation doesn’t go off that smoothly and Kyosuke has a bit of fun with it along the way, which makes her uncomfortable and results in her hitting him in the right places to make her displeasure clear. Suffice to say, there’s plenty of sibling material in place.
Unfortunately, since things don’t go too well there, Kyosuke manages to convince the recruiter that they can’t meet for a second time as the two have a date at that point. And in effort to make sure that Kirino isn’t being followed, the two of them go through with an actual date, meeting up in the city and going through the motions. Which surely can’t go wrong, right? As they go through some of the familiar motions, and doing Kirino related things such as picking up a new game, they do end up coming across a few friends along the way as well, some they play it cool with because it’s shocking, others they just hang out and have fun with for a bit. Naturally, it gets a bit confusing for both of them at different times, and you do see that Kyosuke really is having fun with it if only just to mess with her a bit more than anything else.
The first half has some good fun with this overall, though of course it doesn’t end on a positive note between the two and some of how it’s viewed by others. But the show also takes something of a softer tone because as it goes on, Kyosuke starts to wonder more if Kirino really does have someone she likes, or is actually dating someone on the sly because of things that have been said. The little nudges here and there are fun to watch, but seeing the way Kyosuke gets concerned of course plays up his little sister complex a fair bit. Which she’s able to use against him in some fun ways since she absolutely loves tormenting him on so many levels. There’s some good fun to events overall as it goes on between the two and the cuteness of the Comic Market event at the end is definitely a lot of fun since it’s something that’s always enjoyable to see no matter what series does it.
In Summary:
Oreimo’s second season continues to roll along nicely here and this episode focuses strongly on the relationship between Kirino and Kyosuke. We’ve had a good bit of that so far of course, but we’ve had it either from a distance or through the use of others to further things along. With this one, they spend most of their time together and deal with other issues along the way and there’s a good back and forth between them that’s just plain enjoyable to watch. The date aspect has its moments and the flare of jealousy that comes to life later makes for some good questions about how each of them really feel about things and how much of it is just playacting at this point. Capping it off with some Comic Market time only adds to the fun, especially as it runs through the credits and we get a good ensemble piece overall as lots of others show up. It’s fun and enjoyable but still skirts around doing something meaningful.
Grade: B
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Sony KDS-R70XBR2 70″ LCoS 1080P HDTV, Dell 10.1 Netbook via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.
