Recap: Kyousuke, Kirino and Kuroneko make a surprise visit to Saori’s house for her birthday. After the shock of her friends seeing her without her glasses for the first time, Saori remembers how she got into her various otaku hobbies.

Jel’s Thoughts: This was a good episode and, perhaps tellingly, it was also very different than what we’re used to seeing from Oreimo. As far as I can remember the switch to anyone else’s perspective other than Kyousuke’s is a first, but more impressive was the surprising amount of nuance in developing Saori’s path to Otaku-hood.

Aside from the Kousaka clan Oreimo does feature quite a few different spins on the imouto-to-older-sibling relationship, from Sena’s overwhelming devotion to her brother to Kuroneko’s role as a responsible caretaker. Of all those though, I think this may have been the most emotionally engaging. The noticeable gap in age and huge gap in personalities between Saori and Kaori are the perfect set up for a story about how it feels to be the tag along little sister. I was particularly impressed with the tea scene when Kaori realizes she’s been neglecting her sister but gets cut off when she finally tries to open her mouth and talk to her. That’s the kind of show-don’t-tell subtlety I’m just not used to seeing in this show, and it worked great.

Perhaps most importantly this flashback helps us appreciate how much Saori’s current friendships mean to her. I couldn’t help but remember the scene in the True End episodes when Saori is talking about how hurt she was that Kirino left for America and never contacted her. This certainly added a lot more weight to that. Saori’s story also kind of softened the implausibility that under her otaku facade she also happens to have model good looks and unlimited resources. I mean sure, her entire situation as a whole is pretty impossible and implausibility is practically the whole point of Oreimo, but at least her character seems to have developed naturally from her circumstances.

While I’m fairly certain whoever writes Oreimo has no idea what they’re doing, they do occasionally stumble into a good plot line like this. Maybe that’s why I keep coming back, ready to roll the dice with each episode? Maybe I have a gambling addiction? Well whatever the case, we’re going in totally blind next week as the episode title hints at the appearance of Kirino’s presumably American rival. I’m not sure if that’s good or bad, but hopefully we’ll at least get some glorious Engrish out of it.