Recap: Kirino remembers her childhood and how she used to get along with her brother. She recalls how their relationship deteriorated and how she got into her otaku hobbies.

Jel’s Thoughts: There was a time way back in 2010 that I would have wanted to see this episode. It was pretty much implied early on something drove a wedge between Kirino and Kyousuke, but it was never even hinted at what that reason might be. Perhaps predictably at this point, the actual events turned out to be incredibly underwhelming and the fact that a simple truth bomb from Manami would cause such a major rift is just frustratingly implausible… well I suppose it would be frustrating if I still cared. Instead I feel like I’m just sorting through the wreckage of a show I kind of enjoyed, finding almost nothing of value left in the rubble. Nevertheless, the post must go on!

I mentioned last week I thought the author was trying to turn Manami into the Bad Guy here and this pretty much confirmed it. I can’t deny she seems to be hiding a bit of a selfish streak, and I’ll even concede she probably could have said what she said to Kirino in a slightly, slightly nicer way. But think about what she actually said: Kyousuke is just a regular guy not worth worshipping, and being in love with your brother is not cool. Clearly Manami loves Kyousuke so I don’t think saying he’s not amazing was meant to be a derogatory thing. And hey, in most people’s books gettin’ it on with your brother is bad. So I don’t have any problem with what Manami said and the fact that the show is painting that in a negative light is downright troubling. Even if you take the right and wrong of the matter out, are we really supposed to believe a few words from some girl are going to have that much impact on Kirino? I just don’t buy it.

Of course the wild card is why Kyousuke gave up on all his interests. Presumably it’s because of Manami, but what she actually said to him as well as the rest of her conversation with Kirino are intentionally left out for now. Still, I can’t imagine anything she could have said that would have been so horribly offensive that my opinion would change, unless they are totally going to flip flop her character. I wouldn’t rule that out either.

If there was any doubt that Kirino is a total creeper at this point, that’s also made clear as well. After the first season of Oreimo, I had kind of naively written off Kirino’s interest in imouto themed eroge as an exercise in vanity more so than a hint at what her true intentions were. Having a little sister in love with her older brother playing eroge where you woo your little sister just seemed so jarringly unsubtle, there was just no way they would go there, right? I GUESS I WAS WRONG. Again, I find it unsettling that the girl that is in love with her brother and playing very specific erotic games to relieve her feelings is being painted as the sympathetic one. It would be one thing if it was like “oh that poor girl has some serious issues to iron out”, but instead it’s like she’s doing fine and the rest of the world is wrong. I’d say that sends a bad message, but at this point I’m just assuming the author has long abandoned any semblance of a point to this.

I’ll give this episode a little credit from a technical standpoint in that it looked great and it was very well directed. The story flowed well and never felt slow, something that can be tough to do with a flashback. Beyond that though it did nothing to reverse Oreimo’s downward spiral, and now all that’s left is to wait a month for the grand finale. I mentioned the details last week, but again the final three episodes will air in a block on August 17th as part of a big international simulcast. It’s a pretty big deal about nothing as far as I’m concerned, so in the meantime it’s on to better anime as the new season starts and we’ll finish off Oreimo then.

Zigg’s Thoughts: Jel’s pretty neatly encapsulated most of the problems with this show, so I’ll keep it brief. The thing which baffles me most about this episode is simply how selfish and immature Kirino acts and yet how the show eggs us on to sympathise with her at every possible opportunity. Guess what kiddo, people change when they grow up, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse. Whatever magical dream image you had of Kyousuke in your head when you were barely out of diapers, that’s not who he really is. Part of growing up is learning things like that – your parents don’t actually know everything, you might not grow up to be an astronaut and Santa Claus isn’t real. But here we’re meant to side with Kirino’s desire to mould Kyousuke into some sort of perfect hero for her to worship, and who gives a damn about what he wants?

The Manami angle is weird as hell too, and only makes sense in the rarified air of the anime universe where logic goes entirely out of the window. Manami has done NOTHING to hurt Kirino over the course of the entire story. She’s been nothing but kind, helpful and considerate to Kyousuke and the family, they’ve clearly been friends for years and years and she’s been a charming but very minor character for the most part. So to suddenly paint her as an evil villain who stole Kyousuke away from Kirino is a) bad storytelling and b) insulting storytelling. She’s absolutely in the right and yet we’re clearly meant to be against her in one of the most bone-headed bits of audience surrogacy I’ve yet seen. That NOPE was pretty great though.

As for the back half of the episode, it’s more shameless otaku pandering of the like Oreimo has become famous for. Hey look guys, this cute girl who you want to bang is just as much of a massive geek as you and freaks out when she gets her new porn game and dances around and shakes her butt and…

Whoah sorry, I think I started channeling Aquagaze there.

In any case, the entire bit is just silly, dumb audience surrogacy, and carries a creepy sexual awakening vibe which made me intensely uncomfortable watching it, no matter how much goofy animation gets chucked on screen. Unlike Jel, I never had faith in Oreimo from the start. It’s terrible being proved right sometimes.