Fear leads to a startling confession.
What They Say:
When Kouji learns that his elder sister Sana plans to move away from home, he feels the urgent need to confront her and express his true pent-up emotions before she leaves. Sana is shocked by the sudden revelation and her brother’s frenzied lust but she gradually begins to reciprocate his feelings until things begin to unravel and escalate! How will the siblings ultimately deal with their torrid taboo cravings for each other?
The Review:
Audio:
The audio presentation for this release brings us the original Japanese language track in stereo along with the English language dub, both of which are in the uncompressed PCM form. The show is pretty straightforward when you get down to it as there’s not much outside of dialogue to it and some minor incidental music. The dialogue and the sexytimes are pretty much kept to the center channel without a lot in the way of placement or depth but there’s some movement here and there throughout each of the installments. The dialogue is pretty clean and clear throughout and we didn’t have any problems with dropouts or distortions during regular playback.
Video:
Originally released in 2013, the transfer for this OVA series is presented in its original aspect ratio of 1.78:1 in 1080p using the AVC codec. Produced by MS Pictures and Pashmina, the show is kept to a single disc with plenty of room to work with and a pretty solid bit rate throughout. The show is one that does work with familiar designs but feels like it has a bit more of a budget to it in terms of character designs and animation fluidity, allowing it to step it up a notch – but not too far. This is basically your average looking material that has a slightly more detailed and fluid look to it. The high-motion sequences look great and the detail we get and the backgrounds themselves all hold well. It’s a bright and colorful show that has a lot of appealing moments to it that the encode handles without issue.
Packaging:
The packaging for this release brings us a standard-sized Blu-ray case where the front cover gives us a really appealing illustration style shot of Sana on her bed as she undresses, which is naturally nicely covered up heavily by the logo over it. It’s a simple layout but the artwork is definitely going to catch a few eyes, especially with the color design. The back cover gives us a better look at the show with some actual in-show character animation on the side and shots from the show along the bottom. The summary of the premises is a clean read with white text on a reddish background and it covers the origins and basic production information well. The technical grid along the bottom handles everything clearly and accurately and there are no show related inserts not a reversible cover included.
Menu:
The menu design for this release surprises me a little as it doesn’t use the front cover artwork like I expected it would. What we get is an image of Sana in illustrated form along the right where she’s partially undressed and covered by the navigation bar. The logo to the upper left goes for the vibrant color design with the reds and yellows. It’s a decent looking menu and the kind of more explicit piece than you’d get on the cover for obvious reasons. The navigation strip along the bottom has the basics that provide for quick and easy setup that works well. It’s a simple but functional and effective menu.
Extras:
None.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Based on the sixth chapter story in Love-Hate-Really Love manga from Yuzuki N’ that was produced in 2010, the OVA series originally saw release in 2013 through Pashima. The manga saw release in English through Project-H as Ane Koi – Elder Sister Love, so it’s a chapter that some may be familiar with already. I do like when we get some manga adapted into animated form for hentai, though the quality of the original designs don’t always make it through depending on the budget. Heaven knows there are a lot of storyline works that I’d love to bring to anime form but I’m usually glad when we do get stories like this out there.
The project is one that plays to the taboo angle, however, as we’re introduced to siblings Sana and Yoshiharu. The two have a standard relationship in that there’s always that air of tension, especially with the way he keeps walking into her room without knocking or giving notice. Stuff like that wasn’t even acceptable when you were elementary-aged, dude! The situation that’s unfolding, however, is that Sana is getting ready to move away soon because of the kinds of advances he’s been making and just how she feels about the whole situation. That gets him to confess his true feelings for her and to proceed to strip her down and have his way with her. Which he knows is wrong, basically kind of admits it’s wrong, but goes on about how they really love each other so it’s kind of okay. She resists only so much because it’s not a great situation in general and from there it just turns into something kind of reciprocal.
This is mostly lead by Yoshiharu in the first episode where he’s the aggressor but it turns a bit more toward Sana in the second as she takes more control and wants to hear it clearly that Yoshiharu loves her. It’s a dangerous pit that both of them fall into here and one that will invariably have a bad end eventually. There’s no playing up the whole step-sibling there either, it just goes right to the dark side that even the live-action adult material won’t play with because of the taboos about it. It’s not a favorite thing of mine so I always try to play the mental game of they’re not really related or just ignore the sibling stuff and treat it in some other way. If you do so with this, you get a pretty vanilla show out of it with some unpleasant aggressiveness.
In Summary:
This kind of material isn’t my bag but I can mentally rewrite part of it just to check out the animation and the hentai-ness itself. Sizzling Siblings is pretty middle of the road when it comes to its material outside of the sibling aspect so it’s pretty straightforward with its vanilla scenes. It just has some additional aggressiveness at first and rides that intensity a little bit without going too far. The animation is decent with some nice design work and it feels a slight notch or so ahead of some of the lower quality productions I’ve seen more recently, which is a nice change of pace. Kitty’s release is solid in that it looks great throughout, has a fun dub to work with, and has a clean look with easy access that fans will enjoy. It’s a light release with no extras but I’m always glad when we get dubbed hentai.
Features:
Japanese PCM 2.0 Language, English PCM 2.0 Language, English Subtitles
Content Grade: C
Audio Grade: B+
Video Grade: B+
Packaging Grade: B+
Menu Grade: B
Extras Grade: N/A
Released By: Kitty Media
Release Date: May 5th, 2020
MSRP: $29.99
Running Time: 50 Minutes
Video Encoding: 1080p AVC
Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1 Widescreen
Review Equipment:
Sony KDL70R550A 70″ LED 1080P HDTV, Sony PlayStation3 Blu-ray player via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.
