When 16-year-old Nanako Misonoo enters the prestigious all-girls Seiran Academy, she believes a bright future awaits her. Instead, the unlucky girl finds herself dragged into a web of deceit, misery, and jealousy. On top of that, she is chosen as the newest inductee of the Sorority, an elite group whose members are the envy of the entire school. Having none of the grace, wealth, or talent of the other members, Nanako quickly draws the ire of her jealous classmates—especially the fierce Aya Misaki.
To cope with her increasingly difficult school life, Nanako recalls her days through letters to her former teacher, Takehiko Henmi, whom she affectionately calls "onii-sama" (big brother). She also finds comfort with her four closest friends: her childhood friend Tomoko Arikura, the sociable but erratic Mariko Shinobu, the troubled musician Rei Asaka, and the athletic tomboy Kaoru Orihara.
An impassioned drama about the hardships of bullying, Oniisama e... chronicles a young girl's harsh life at her new school, as she endures cruel rumours, heartless classmates, and countless social trials.
[Written by MAL Rewrite]
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Comentários
Meiling
This early 90's anime addresses several controversial issues (especially considering the original manga was published in the 1970's) including drug abuse, homosexuality, bullying, incest and suicide. The story is set in a prestigious girls' highschool where the student body is obsessed with the school's Sorority and its leading members, dubbed "The Magnificent Three". The main character, Nanako, is a new student who became caught up in the affairs of the three most popular girls on campus and, with the help of her best friends, unlocks the secrets of their past as well as that of her own family. The title refers to the letters thatshe writes to her "brother" throughout the series, sharing with him the trials and tribulations of her highschool life.
While this series can be dark and depressing at times, it is not without its comedic moments. I felt the ending was uplifting and very satisfying, and I warmly recommend this series.
AvalonKnight
Some people see narration as an outdated storytelling tool which shows that the creators were either too lazy or too inexperienced to provide the audience with different clues to the characters' thoughts and feelings. This show, however, is a great example of narration used creatively and to great success. It is prominently provided by Nanako, the main character, in the form of letters written to her titular elder brother, which gives it a unique structure and allows for a set of disjointed questions and thoughts about nearly all significant events. It all feels natural in a young girl's letter. As you might expect with sucha storytelling tool, this particular anime is mostly centered on Nanako and her emotions. Thankfully, she is a very appealing character from the start and does evolve throughout the series, which is acknowledged and focused on. Personally, I love seeing characters not only react to events going on around them but also learn from their experience and change through it, and this is one of the show's greatest strengths. Even people you would think are completely stereotypical in the end come out as real people. Misguided, troubled, horrible but still people with believable motivations. All of them are young, most of them are school students, though not all of them are your typical teenage girls exploring life, as you would expect, some are surprisingly and convincingly mature. This allows for a great many of conversations and different relationships, many of which are used to the show's advantage.
There is not much, if any, story here, which I honestly don't mind as long as character development provided feels genuine, which is exactly the case. To be fair, though, things do seem to move forward, which mostly means learning more about character motivations, some of them being built up from the begging till the very end. There are not that many meaningful, by which I mean at the very least named, people here but all of them are given their own arcs and backstories, and at some point I found myself feeling some kind of emotion for each one of them. At no point did I feel ignorant about any of them, even those who are meant to be villains, and pretty generic at that, are able to invoke hatred or at least irritation, they are never boring.
This is mainly thanks to smart writing, which does a great job touching matters which most people can relate to and doing so in quite an intelligent manner, rarely taking the easy way out of the situations presented. Some topics are as typical and timeless as you can get: divorces and other family issues, bullying, suicide, others were surprising to see, like say, rebellion and its effect on both parties. All the dialogues are interesting to listen to, partly because of the superb voice acting, partly because of it using metaphors and allegories in a way that I noticed myself thinking "Yes, that was a good line!" quite a lot of times.
Being a visual media, anime also relays on its art to convey emotions and story elements. "Onii-sama e..." uses a peculiar style I am yet to see in another title. Admittedly, this may be due to me mostly having seen newer ones but still this is pretty far from what people generally t consider anime to be like. It also uses a lot of still-shots but manages to do that just enough for it to pass as an artistic decision rather than an annoyance, mostly used to put additional weight into certain moments. Sometimes the art did feel strange, for example, in the beginning I was unable to tell whether one of the characters was supposed to be male or female; then again, it might be intentional, since she is later often compared to a man.
Music is actually very important for any kind of visual media, since it can dramatically change emotions felt by the audience. I felt it to be more than effective in this show, sometimes being enough to express what the characters feel. Not once did it feel out of place or badly composed, in fact, all of it was recorded using classical musical instruments, none of it electronic, which seems appropriate for the show mostly dealing with timeless experiences of youth.
Overall, I enjoyed every second of it. It was dramatic and intense but also felt quiet when it needed to be. The characters, particularly Nanako, were interesting, fun to watch and felt real. Can't think of anything I thought was bad here.
Midori-tan
Oniisama e (Brother, Dear Brother) is about a girl named Nanako who enters high school and be selected as a member of the schools best community The Sorority, which makes other students hate, and try to get her out of there any way they can. Nanako writes letters to her older brother telling him about what is happening with her life. Not only that, but the story revolves around how Nanako gets to know and meet a lot of other people and learns about them and their lives. This anime is an old anime; there is no CG what so ever, and nothing to be impressedby. However; the animation is detailed and colored beautifully. It had a realistic feeling to it, and the backgrounds were done beautifully that you won’t even notice how old it is.
The OP and the ED are beautiful, simple yet heartwarming songs. The inserted music was also nice, the right musical piece in the right situation. We even get to hear some of the characters playing on musical instruments, like a piano and a violin. Great voice actors that portrayed their characters in spectacular ways, the background sounds were captivating as well, from the birds’ kippering to the train tracks to the cars’ horns.
Perhaps, the characters are the strongest point of this anime. There is a big cast of characters, but they were all introduced in a way that makes them all unforgettable. Each and every character has some problems going on in her life, be it a life threatening disease, a parents divorce, or being rejected by one’s own family.
This nime has drama, romance, slice of life, and school life. It is an angst anime, there is crying, and there is laughing. There is love and hate. There is family, how one deal with their family situations, be it a divorced parents, a loving parents. There are relationships in this anime, there are close friends, there are lovers, and there are haters.
Oniisama e is a great anime that is suitable for everyone. Not only does it provide a great entertainment, but it also teaches about life, how it is full of hardships and that we have to try to go on, no matter how hard it seems.
JuneNephthys
Oniisama e… is an anime that I really wanted to like. Aesthetically, it’s right up my alley. ○ Beautiful flowers! ○ Musically talented and proper young women! ○ Lady Prince archetypes! ○ Creepy dolls? ○ Riyoko Ikeda's fabulous OG shoujo style! ○ Sexually ambiguous and lesbian overtones! ○ While my reasons for wanting to indulge seem terribly vapid, these are things that I have really enjoyed in the past. An example in anime is Maria-sama ga Miteru: a very simplistic, platonic, and elegant TV series about ordinary girls coming to terms with their blossoming sexual preferences and just generally being an adolescent.○ Before I digress too much into insipid hatefulness, let me clarify the main hinderance to my enjoyment of Dear Brother was that I didn't really understand where the story wanted to go, and once I thought I knew, it was derailed from what it had spend thirty episodes preparing for.
○ The story is full of nightmare fuel (I felt seriously horrified during a few moments) and most of the characters should be checked into an insane asylum, (seriouslyーbitches are fucked up and crazy) all the while focusing on the prestige of the academy and the sorority's notoriety. So, I thought, 'Sure, this anime makes sense! It's deconstructing the usually beautiful, wealthy all-girl school fantasy. Now, all of these potentially pick ax-wielding psychopaths have a purpose! This anime might be the best shoujo deconstruction I've ever seen!'
○ After Episode 32: the build-up, drama, and horror is all diminished with a random tragedy that is reminiscent of an after school special, but there is absolutely no foreshadowing or build-up to it. THE TWIST CAME COMPLETELY OUT OF LEFT FIELD! Like, all of the anime fans who were complaining about Re:Zero's asspull tragedy, this is exactly the same!
○ In my opinion, if any of the sorority’s horrifying antics and murder attempts had actually lead to the climaxーit would have been fine, but it didn’t go that route at all.
○ I haven't read the manga, so I don't know if it has the same ending as the anime, but the ending seemed retconned to Hell and back. The anime came out in 1991, the same year as the infamous Midori: Shoujo Tsubaki, and THAT got banned in Japan and the creator was denied a production team, so I'm guessing that the same could have happened with Oniisama e… but this is pure speculation about things I don't know. It's like they told the script writer, "Um, this is getting a little too dark and controversial. Let's make it have a Dead Poet’s Society ending where all of the characters are suddenly straight!"
○ Another problem that I had is that the main character (Nanako) is so wide-eyed and bushy tailed that you would think that the second or third time someone tried to kill or rape her, she would have had some sort of trauma. Or at least had a different demeanor, but she keeps the unrealistic stance of a typical mahou shoujo protagonist, and is like, "Hey! Person A (name is withheld for the sake of spoilers) tried to drown me at their family's estate! I'm going to continue to talk to them because I see the absolute best in everyone behest my own life!" Or something stupidly forgiving. Really! She should have been filing a restraining order and transferring to a different school. The random death of one of her friends is the only thing that phases her, and even then she's overshadowed by an off-screen character screaming and crying at their funeral and seems to get over it rather quickly. I get that she's a sheltered, upper-middle class girl, but this is beyond unrealistic! Annotation: See Miaka Yuuki from Fushigi Yugi to learn how "realistic" shoujo heroines can be (I had to add a bit of sarcasm to this completely serious and professional review).
○ While the anime addresses a few real topics, such as: drug abuse, bullying, incest, divorce/affairs, and suicide (actually quite a lot). It doesn't save itself from the car crash of an ending that burrows into you like a disgusting pill bug. An ending that undermines the entire point of ever watching the damned anime to begin with! I mean, why were all of these romantic ties sewn, why all of the development? I'm going to leave off there and let you watch the show if you ACTUALLY insist on knowing after all of my regurgitated hatred, but I can’t even begin to fully voice my discontent at the unresolved relations and story arcs.
○ I think that the visual style is really the only reason for watching; I thought the surrealism in conveying certain scenes was very visually appealing. The animation is choppy, and there are action scenes that have the same frame repeated three or four times to compensate for the production team not being able to animate something due to the lack of budget or time, but because of the stop-motion style animation, all of the stills look gorgeous and none of them suffer from a deformed face, a qualm that many have with modern shows.
○ Overall, Oniisama e… is about mentally unstable lesbians (who really aren't lesbians, I guessーwith the exception of Rei), pointless melodrama, and a plot that could have gone somewhere but leaves you high, dry, and bereft of any long-lasting modicum of something called meaning. This is not a good series, I feel like I wasted time watching thirty-nine episodes of a gross exaggeration of female issues and adolescence, just to be left by the roadside with nothing. My rating: 4/10.
Hatul
Onii-sama e.. is probably the most serious slice of life anime I've seen to date. It is also another major work from the same creator as the well known classic, Rose of Versailles. So people who liked that show should definitely give this one a shot. This is a spoiler free review. *Story and Characters* The story is very simple, it's about a girl going to an all girls' school who ends up joining a sorority, a group for only the elite girls in the school (some girly crap, I don't know)... And that's pretty much all there is to it. How interesting could that be? Despite thesimple slice of life set up, there's a lot of conflict in this series and it deals with a lot of heavy subjects, everything from drug abuse to suicide, to misandry. The story is told through the narration of the main character through her letters to her pen pal "Oniisama" who she so admires.
The story is structured in a way that make some interesting chains of events that transpire when one dispute leads to another or one decision a character makes would lead to a dispute with another and so on. It does rely partially on circumstance and convenience, but it's nothing to throw a fit about (I just tend to over think things). It's generally paced in a slow manner, but does fill the episode count fairly well and it ends in a satisfying way. It might be a little hard to get in to though, because of how dead serious it is.
A few significant aspects in the story seem to parallel the French Revolution in a way. You have the sorority that seem to parallel the royalty and a few characters that are against its very existence paralleling the rebels. One character is even named after a French rebel and other characters acknowledge it directly. If you pay attention you'll notice that the conflict between the characters almost always revolves around the sorority, whether directly or indirectly. This is no surprise since Rose of Versailles was an anime that centered on the French revolution. So I'm pretty that was the author's intention.
The main character is a bit of a Mary Sue. She does nothing wrong, always has the best of intentions and yet somehow she's always able to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and many girls in her school end up either hating her or taking advantage of her for seemingly petty reasons.
And before you ask, yes, this show is overly dramatic at first glance and it feels very mean spirited from time to time. Normally I can't stand shows like this but this is an exception to the rule because the show itself is trying to convey that these people are out of their minds (some of them anyway). It doesn't frame these overly dramatic people as normal and that basically what makes the drama unavoidable and separates this show from other melodramas. And when you discover what their life is like and what their backgrounds are, you start to understand why they're all crazy and their behavior starts to add up. You can easily mistake this all girls school for a mental ward.
Another great thing about them is that even the mentally challenged ones develop a great deal over time and keep learning lessons to the point where they become more self aware.
Even many of the girls' parents get fleshed out to the point you get to know exactly what kind of family some characters are coming from. Unlike in many anime, the parents here actually exist (heaven forbid) and do play a significant role in their children's upbringing and behavior at school. In other words, the show goes out of its way to excuse its own melodramatic nature.
Okay, It's not terribly realistic, since there are one too many suicide attempts and the teachers are useless, but hey, it has no magic nonsense either.
*Art and Sound*
Visually, It's fairly minimalistic. Since the manga came out in the 70s it has the same artstyle from that time period that was updated quite well to the 90s, particularly the skinny looking character designs with big eyelashes. But the production values are quite low and the animation itself is pretty stiff and contains somewhere between 3-7 static images in nearly every episode. Granted, some of those are well placed, but it does get a bit distracting at points. On the plus side, the backgrounds look very nice and there is a greater attention to detail in that area even if there isn't as much variety and the artwork in general is great. It's just filled stunning imagery and great cinematography.
The entirety of the ost is rather quiet and might be boring for some people, but it never felt like it was out of place. Even some of the tracks are the exact same ones that were used in Rose of Versailles which is pretty cool. The sound effects are kinda lacking though and sometimes there isn't a sound effect at all where there should be one. The voice acting is a little over the top, but it blends very well with the dramatic nature of the series.
*Enjoyment/Overall* 8/10
It might feel a little tedious at times, but compared to other slice of life and melodramas, it's a great hidden gem for its characterization and themes.
machinegun84
reminds me of christmas 2021 cuz thats when i watched it. the best way i can describe it is just a dark melodramatic lesbian soap opera. if this is rlly how lesbians act then i guess the domestic abuse statistics really are true, these bitches r INSANE !!! almost all of them belong in a mental asylum, but thats what makes it so based. i think their craziness has more to do w being in an all girls school than anything tho. you cant go an episode without someone flinging a knife at someone else or contsant screaming and crying. id recommend watching an episodeevery time u need stupid drama but i wouldnt recommend binging it all at once because then the drama gets overwhelming and ur like wtf is this . i binged it so i know
the characters are good and the soundtrack is VERY good, the art is really good apart from the faces being ugly which is forgivable cause its old. the storylines and writing started off strong but mostly ended up not going where youd hope they would, they ended up being somewhat disappointing for the most part at least to me. specificaly the storyline of the crazy black haired hoe w the red lips (mariko or something), i thought it would go super dramatic but it didnt in the end. i guess thats more realistic, not everything ends with a bang. but the show was otherwise Unrealisticaly Dramatic with 10 billion twists and turns and uhoh moments so yea. that ended up being my main problem with it, instead of slow buildup there had to be a heart-thudding surprise moment every episode and they payoff usually didnt end up being worth it. but, i still feel like the characters were handled well psychologically
doc_awesome
"Oniisama E" is classic shoujo and often described as a yuri, although there is not really that much lesbian content and mostly it is a story of friendship and conflict between teenaged girls. It is the story of Nanako, a classic shoujo heroine who has the best of intentions but keeps getting in situations where people are plotting her social downfall or even just slapping her dramatically. She enrolls in a prestigious all-girls school where she is curiously chosen to join an elite sorority and is drawn into a complicated and mysterious relationship between the sorority's beautiful president and other girls in the school's socialhierarchy. The framing device is that Nanako is writing letters to her "dear brother", a cram school teacher she is fond of, describing her new and exciting school life.
I found the series to be delightful because of the strong story, both over the span of the 39 episodes, and each episode is a self-contained and enjoyable presentation. It is undeniable that there is a lot of melodrama here, but there is also more mature drama which overshadows the moments of silliness. We're also dealing with teenagers here, depicting them all as super-cool sarcastic types is actually not realistic either, teenagers are known to be a bit melodramatic after all.
The story deals with darker themes than you typically find in a high school anime, such as drug addiction, mental illness, suicide and divorce. The strong characters help here as the mature themes never come off as "after school special" kind of stuff.
I found the music to be excellent. There isn't a ton of it, but the opening and closing themes are elegant and fit nicely with the mood of the series. The background music is sparse and repetitive, but well-executed and I found the familiar "dramatic" music to add to the scenes. The instrumental reworkings of the opening and closing music that play at key moments are quite lovely.
Overall the animation is not anything special but at key moments it cuts to stylized, high-quality still drawings which, far from seeming like a cost-cutting measure, show detail and emotion quite well and are a distinctive part of the series.
This is one of my favorite animes because of the strong story and how mature and different it is from most every other anime I've seen. I wish they made more like this.
Akira_Veidt
Before I get into my review let me just say that I intend to make a review which tells my thoughts and feelings about this anime and my experience overall. What I felt and why I felt it. Stuff like that. I think that might be more helpful than just telling you what you can know from the description. First of all, I'd like to say that the show has plenty of artistic merits in the audio/visual presentation department. The writing is well done for the most part. The characters are interesting. The pacing is good. It is just an overall well crafted piece ofwork. And even though it is a show that made me sad in a lot of ways, it did make me think about a lot of things and write this review. That's something. That's what I love about 'Oniisama e'. I definitely recommend this to anyone who's in search of good classic slice of life drama.
Oh and this review is really intended for anyone who's reading reviews to check out what everyone's thoughts are about this series.I'm not gonna spoil anything that should not be spoiled but if you don't want to know anything about a series prior to watching it, the time to stop reading this review would be now. Okay ? Let's go.
Oniisama e is an anime that I came across as part of my search for good yuri anime. But what made me want to watch it was the art style I saw on the cover art and the fact that it is based on a manga published in the 70's and the fact that it aired in the early 90's. Prior to watching the show, I did know that it is not exactly a yuri anime. But as I kept watching it, I felt like it might be more yuri than I expected it to be. Because the characters do really develop and express romantic interest in other characters of the same sex. And the show initially seemed to heavily hint that some of the characters are lesbians. Having finished reading the manga 'Girlfriends', I know how interesting things could get in a lesbian romance between best friends. So automatically I was curious and interested in some of the overlapping romantic links between various characters in 'Oniisama e'.
But the sad thing is that even though the show at first seemed to imply that some of the characters are lesbians, it later revealed it to be not the case. Firstly and particularly,a character Orihara Kaoru, was shown to be very affectionate of her best friend Asaka Rei. And our main character Nanako,who is also the narrator of the show,had this to say about their friendship upon coming to know about it :
"This thing that connects them both so closely, is this what true friendship is ? If that is how real friendship works, it is so different from me and Tomoko. We are much more selfish about our friendship. We think of friendship as something that entitles, not as something that obligates. They are only an year older than us, yet they are so much more kind to each other, so much more patient . It's hard to understand why and how that could be. Unless it is something more special than mere friendship."
As we hear her narrate what she thinks of their strong friendship we are given a glimpse of the aforementioned character lying naked in bed with her said best friend. Not for sexual reasons but the scene is complimenting what Nanako was narrating.
In a later episode we see into the thoughts of Orihara through a surrealistic scene where she thinks to herself ;
" I can forget, because I love.
I can forget, because I've loved.
And I'll even forget that I've forgotten.
I loved you that much. "
Now, considering how the show already hinted at a homosexual relationship between her and her best friend, wouldn't this scene imply that the person she's in love with is Rei ? I can tell you, it would. And it was easy to see why she thinks she can't be with the Rei and why she's willing to forget about her feelings for her. You'll get it if you see it.
But towards the end of the show, it is revealed that the love she was referring to is actually some other guy. I won't spoil who that is but, it felt like a major wtf revelation. She's not in love with Rei. They're just close friends. She's in love with this other guy and she's not even a lesbian or a bisexual. That really bugged me. And it left a sad feeling in my heart when the show ended.
Another example of a character initially implied to be homosexual and later revealed to be heterosexual, is Ichinomiya Fukiko. But in her case, it didn't feel like an out of left field revelation. It actually made a lot of sense to me.
That was a well written revelation unlike the one I mentioned before. However her case is a bit different from Orihara's as she did struggle with the idea of it. She did have a tough time deciding between the man she loved and the woman who loved her.
And finally there is our main character herself who was clearly shown to be in love with Asaka Rei. Not just a hint like in Orihara's case. It was pretty solid. But in her case, homosexuality is portrayed as a silly phase that she went through during her immature teenage. Her love for Rei didn't progress much due to reasons I won't spoil. But in the end she did find a university student, who's a guy, that she has liking a towards. So she wasn't really a lesbian either.....
However , two of the lesbian characters did remain lesbian. Till the end of the show at least. They are Mariko and Rei. But neither of their love was fulfilled by the end.
I can't be the only one who interpreted this particular aspect of the show as a deliberate avoidance of portraying homosexuality in a positive light. ( To avoid controversy perhaps. I don't know. It was the 90's and it was in Japan. ) Almost as if the show is suggesting that true love can only exist between a man and a woman.
But then again, it can also be interpreted in another way too. Maybe the show just wanted the revelations to be a surprise and nothing else. Also, even if Orihara 's true love ,who is a man, was replaced by a woman in the story, it still wouldn't make the revelation of her true love any less ridiculous.
Everything about Orihara saddens me even though she's a likable character and she's happy by the end. It's just that ,throughout the show, women are portrayed as weak willed and needy housewives. Not the highschool girls. Women, like the mother characters. So when I see Orihara, a very strong and charismatic female character, being wed to some guy and finding happiness in being his wife and mothering his child, I can't help but think she too will be confined to the boundaries of a housewife. Not to mention she was only 18 when she got married. I think the show wants to me to be sad about it.
But that aside, the show has plenty of good messages which delighted me. And a lot of instances where the show avoided cliches and surprised me. Overall, Oniisama e is still a 10/10 experience. That's all of my thoughts on it.
azizsahar
I'm interested in the spacious area between the audience and the art itself, I do believe both contribute to one another more than we'd assume. Few intelligent artists do that consciously. This series is special to me for several reasons, along the high quality that stands by itself. I watched this anime at a period when I was starting to be aware of life's darker hues for the first time, as an adolescent facing and reasoning the hardships and questions of life, just like the main characters here. That's why it resonated with me and was tinted by my own perception to an extent. There area lot of things that makes it worth watching, but the first that come to my mind is how natural elements were involved in the shaping and driving of the plot! Notice what's happening when the sun is coming down, or the cherry blossoms are scattered, or the rain is falling or the birds and their shadows are reflected. It was done consciously and that's why it's so effective, I doubt we'll ever come across any anime that does so on this level, you'll never see any sunsets in anime like the ones here, the colour punctuation is to die for. (This is a hint, as sunsets will play a central role in the narrative the viewer will experience around the last ten episodes).
There's particularly a scene I will never forget its composition, it's when Mariko attacked Aya with the paper cutter, and the way the emotions escalated while Fukiko-sama was playing the piano at the same time. The whole thing is created by the "capricious fairy" of fate through inanimate objects, metaphorically by the piano (Fukiko-sama) and the clocktower (Rei), whom their mystery is the center of the whole story. All the sub-characters are shaped in one way or another by that relationship. It's almost devastating to analyse these two characters, I've never came across such stark depiction of loneliness in anime as done here. The way two lonely people were trying to heal each other despite their damages and wounds, let alone the fact they're siblings. Those obsessing over it being merely incestuous and homosexual prove they didn't get it.
Finally, we have the role of Nanako. Just like the poupée given by Fukiko-sama to Rei; she's a transparent vessel with almost no character though she's the one knotting the fates of everyone else. We actually live with her and witness how she grow, just to be blown away again by the end as she intensify the mystery of her being, even then we barely know her, which makes her more powerful. I can't applaud enough for such character development and writing.
Technically, it has its low moments, like the annoyingly fast and repeatedly moving still images and zooms at heightened drama, the laughingly large and foamy tears, etc. It baffles me how the Japanese would fall for that trap as they're masters of minimalism on many levels, why would they do that? Just ignore it and you'll have a masterpiece of a fading artform we'll probably not see anytime soon.
ProudElitist
If you happen to have watched a lot of 80's action movies I'm pretty sure you'll remember the intro to one of the most reviled (not by me) flicks of the lot, Last Action Hero, where Arnold Schwarznegger made a spoof of Hamlet with the guy going guns blazing on the enemies of Denmark. This series, albeit having nothing of testosterone-action in it, feels a lot like that intro. Why, you ask? because this feels like a completely out-of-place lyrical opera adapted from the manga of a wanna-be (at the time) opera singer that was so in love with opera that she literally used itas the main base for all her shoujo works, being those the historically-based ones or the more earthbound ones like in this case. The problem is, lyric opera and its overdramatic tones can function well in the first case like it happened with the masterpiece Versailles No Bara (of which this series is, by admission of the director himself, a remake from head to toe just with characters being shells of their formers selves) because the setting and the scale of the action permits it, like it would permit it space opera, mythologically-based IPs like Saint Seiya or your typical Superhero world's end cosmic scenarios (not always in this case, see following example). In case of action fully taking place in a school with normal schoolgirls with no grandscale element to speak of inbetween, this doesn't happen, and the forced overdrama results in the receiver losing all its interest in what happens in the screen or the comic/book, like it happened for example in the godawful Crisis on Infinite Earths where the "impeding doom" is so much stressed by hacky Marv Wolfman that you lose quickly all the possible emotional investment in the action taking place. It's the same here, with the emotions of the characters screamed at you with no subtetly whatsoever to speak of, and the blame falls both on the director (whose incredible fame after three mediocre experiences with his output I sincerely don't understand, him being a key animator in the absolute masterpiece Kanashimi No Belladonna or not. Reiko Okuyama did FAR BETTER than him with just one movie alone) and the writer of the manga. Why the director? because it was the director's choice to include or not certain scenes from the manga, scenes that have no emotional impact whatsoever, and it was the director's choice too to press on the dated suicide trope being repeated at nauseam to the point of becoming the parody enemies of the european romantic movement made in the 19th century. Technically excellent with good OST and animation, it's a watchable series and fun in places, but generally speaking it's a mediocre/bad adaptation from (I guess) an already bad manga. Oh, I also liked the lesbian/BDSM subtext but, like it happened with the Yuri subtext in Versailles No Bara with the character of Oscar De Jarjayes, it ends in nothing, yet again with the man (who is just a reskinned Fernsen but nothing more than that) being the center of attention of both the gender-bender AND the reskinned, completely dumbed down Marie Antoniette (a character I utterly LOVE in her original, feminist-like Versailles No Bara form). I say this just for the westerner LGBT people who scream every time you see LGBT innuendos in animes of mangas speaking of "self-representation" that there isn't any except in rare cases, and this proves it again. On an ending note, if you're a fan of Shoujo Kakumei Utena you'll probably like this series more than I did, since Kunihiko Ikuhara clearly took a LOT for his work from here.
MR_RHYMES
Finally finished this series as i am a fan of older anime(ie anything from early 2000s and older) and i have to say this was very very enjoyable. The show pretty much revolves around these characters(in which i thought they all had very interesting character developments and other traits): Nanako Misonoo: The main character of the story who in all honesty was probably my least favorite(though its not really a bad thing when the cast is overall amazing). She has the typical timid/naivete mindset. Pretty much purely innocent. Rei Asaka- One of the "Magnificent three" and also known as Saint Just. Without spoiling she was probably myfavorite character hands down. Probably one of the few complex characters ive seen in an anime. Her story is actually HAM
Kaoru Orihara- Aka Prince Kaoru is Another member of the "Magnificent three". Her character goes through alot. Essentially she is like the protector of everyone while in a sense she struggles to help herself. Has the nobility characteristic and looks after the MC alot.
Fukiko Ichinomiya- Aka Miya-sama Last of the "Magnificent three" in a way the antagonist for the majority of the story. She appears cool calm and collective but freaks out in private when things dont go her way. She def has selfish vibes though and is really consumed by hatred and jealousy while trying to mask herself as elegant. I also did dub her as sorority aizen(from bleach lol)
Takehiko Henmi- This is the person the MC writes letters to all the time, he plays a significant part in the story, without going to details but nanako and henmi share a interesting relationship.
These are the characters imo that make up the bulk of the story, didnt included MC best friend Tomoko cause she plays a small role(pretty much the only normal themed character) and there are a bunch of other side characters that help make up the main story.
A character im sure people disagree with my opinion is Mariko Shinobu. While many would debate shes also an important character, i honestly didnt see it as such. The story would have gone fine without her, in fact i honestly think she was filler material. Cause there was a point where they strayed away from the main story with the characters i listed above and focused on mariko for some episodes going into her backstory. After that the episodes continue on as if her detailing episodes didnt happen, its my only complaint in the show. They eventually go back on to it in later episodes, and kind of gave her an ending resolution as such so that the viewers can go back to the bulk of the story. The pacing seemed really off when it came to Mariko. She also has awkward moments with the Nanako and tomoko, she honestly didnt fit the with the group at times. As much as she is seen in the anime she was not a vital part of the story as many would think. It was like watching another main character but it wasnt her story lol. But like everyone else she also has issues and traumas she goes through which by itself is pretty interesting but sperate from everyone else. She has a tsundere type attitude and hates men lol.
All in all the show deals with depression, some LGBT stuff, family issues, dark thoughts etc. Def an enjoyable watch
Lady_Oum
// Personal review // This anime changed the meaning of the word Drama for me. Honestly, I don't think I ever seen a serie which have so much drama.. So many social/psychological topics were presented: suicide, bullying, betrayal, death, drugs, violence.... And I must admit, putting all these elements in one story is not an easy thing. The story is quit unique.. and weird at the same time. Almost every character is kind of disturbed and has deep psychological issues. Sometimes you will miss normal people. It was a very sad, dark, emotionally exhausting story, but have many life lessons to it.. that you will learn with Nanako(the main character).
The art was very beautiful and classic, and the backgrounds and surroundings were very symbolic and you could feel the harmony with the story.
Overall, it was a really good drama, definitely worth watching. The only reason I gave it a 9 not a 10 was due to some Yuri elements which I personally don't appreciate and I don't think they added anything to the story.
itikitty
Have ever imagined wanting to write a review for an anime that aired before I was born? in 2024 where all anime looks very beautiful?! here want to dedicate all passion to onii-sama e.. just for my precious Kaoru-no-Kimi succeeded because of one story, not the main character but a supporting named Kaoru who brought me to the finish line. So can I write a review just for her? synopsis: Kaoru no Kimi, a beautiful girl, good at sports, the idol of the whole school, her world is very perfect.. how the angel will fall when her wings are cut and can't fly because ofa sudden illness, she lies, smiles, and crying alone. keep trying to be a leader.. giving hope in the darkness.
Here we see how amazing Kaoru's psychological powers are can still fight ,seek justice from school elite group that setting many standards for girls, making them birds in cages or beautiful dolls.
Even though the story focuses on "shoujo-ai", Kaoru focuses more on being a good friend and leadership so in my eyes this story is now in the genre "friendship" and " "drama"
plot: 9/10 in this story you will find many forms of love in various arcs. Kaoru's love story will be at the very end, (36-39) like a very precious strawberry, bittersweet.
soundtrack: 7/10 heart-wrenching, and sometimes silent without a sound to hear all the sadness coming from her tears.
art: 6/10 can't deny the design is very old school, but the panorama they provide, the color of sunset, blue of ocean. birds flying in the sky.comes from miraculous hands and great effort,realize it in an instant and amazed.
VA : 9/10 with old school art.. honestly sometimes the expressions on their faces are unreadable but voice actors who can convey emotions can still leave a mark in my heart,
confused and indecisive when the story has so many "red flags", I know not everyone will like it.. but Please give Kaoru a chance to tell her story.
sanetoshii
As much as I loved Oniisama e..., and loved how it was such a groundbreaking story for it's time, I felt there were many unanswered questions left, and the ending was just not satisfying for me. Characters (10/10): I'm going to start my review off with discussing characters first, because that is the part of this anime that I think the most highly of. Most of the characters in this series are just phenomenal, and unlike any characters I've seen in other anime (and I've watched over 200). First we have Rei Asaka or "Saint Juste-sama," and her character is amazingly well written and interesting.She's strange, but not a stereotypical like strange that would come to mind when thinking of what constitutes as so. She is very oddly obsessive, and shows her love and affection bizarre ways. This makes it so hard to actually tell what she is thinking, and when she makes confessions as to what she is thinking or how she is feeling they tend to be shocking. And what makes this even more important is the fact the Rei does not even know what she is thinking herself. She is always split between feelings and thoughts, and it is almost like us viewers have been placed inside her mind whenever she is on screen. I have great admiration for the creator of this series for being able to pull off something like that, where the audience is feeling the same emotions as the character. Despite all of this she still remains very mysterious to me, and she is a character that I will never forget, as I have never seen a character like her.
Next there's Fukiko Ichinomiya, and just like Rei she has odd ways of showing affection for people. She has problems with anger, but her anger is very subtle. She shows her anger by acting out, however this acting out has no foreseeable emotions upon her face, almost as if her actions are accidental and not predetermined. This also gives the audience a difficult time assessing her character and emotions at first. However, as the series goes on she begins showing her emotions more, and the audience is able to tell what she is feeling and thinking more. A lot of the reasoning behind her actions has remained unanswered to me, but I just feel like that's how questions concerning Fukiko should be. She's not someone who opens up to other people, therefore her feelings should not be "opened up" to or explained to the audience.
Nanako Misonoo, the main protagonist in this series. She is a little bit more basic compared to a lot of the other characters, but in a good way. Someone like her is always needed in a show; someone like her is needed to create balance between extremes. Though while she appears to be a basic character she will do anything for the person she loves, even if that person is not as affectionate back. Nanako represents the average viewer watching Oniisama e... I think it's safe to assume that everyone can relate to her in some sort of way. She is a very strong girl; Despite being heartbroken throughout most of the series, she has always come out stronger and has never tried taking measures that some of the other characters in this series have tried taking. However, there were some things about her that I did not feel were fully addressed by the end of the series that I think should have been addressed.
Those are the only characters specifically that I wanted to talk about in this review, however there were a lot of supporting characters that I think were very well written. Even if they just had a little bit of screen time, I feel like some of these characters had well developed personalities and seemed unique despite being minor. The ones that stood out to me in particular were Komabayashi ("Mona Lisa-sama") and Ogiwara ("Borgia-sama").
Story (7/10):
Here is where I give my lowest rating, and I'm going to explain just why that is. Aside from the unanswered questions I mentioned in the beginning, I feel like there was one trope that was used a tad too much in this anime, which I'm not going to say in order to avoid spoilers. However if you know what I'm talking about, I feel like that was overused and the author could've come up with some better tropes than that. Next, I feel like the ending was rushed. There was a whole story that they tried to wrap up in 3 episodes, which I felt was completely unnecessary. I feel like this story should've been incorporated into the series way earlier than it was, because putting it at the end just made the series worse. Because of this so many questions were unanswered. They tried to add this story at the end so it would make the ending seem satisfying, but it did just the opposite of that for me.
Now, for questions I feel were left unanswered. For one, we never got confirmation of a lot of characters' feelings, and I feel like the whole Shoujo-Ai aspect of it was just completely thrown out the window. At the end, it just felt like none of the girls who had feelings for other girls had those feelings anymore, however there was no way of knowing that. For one, after certain characters confessed their feelings it was as if they didn't have feelings anymore, didn't feel jealously and didn't feel much pain from being rejected. It's like afterwards the story just moved completely on, and their feelings were never addressed again. This was the number one reason why I have only given this anime an 8/10. More and more things just kept coming up, and it felt like their feelings were being ignored.
It felt like the author was trying to forget that they made some of the female characters fall in love with other female characters, so they just stopped the development completely. And in the end as the girls got older and developed more it started to seem like they were more into men, which just felt like the creator was trying to say that homosexual feelings are just childish, and that the characters' development caused them to no longer be interested in the same sex. Now I may be wrong about this, but that is just how it felt to me.
Another thing I don't like is how there is a prominent antagonist in the beginning of the series, who randomly disappears for a long period of time but randomly makes a comeback in later episodes. I feel like this antagonist should've just completely disappeared from where she did in the beginning, because just making her come back randomly made me question what she was doing the whole time. This character was in the same vicinity as the main characters throughout the whole series, so why would she stop messing with them for so long but then come back and start again like no time passed from when she was there before? I don't know, but this just didn't make sense at all to me.
Also, there is another thing about the story that I think should've been changed, and changing this aspect would have made the story more memorable and more like this aspect/event had a purpose. What I'm talking about is a certain characters' demise, and how their demise was handled. With how it was handled I think this character's demise was pointless, however with a different cause I wouldn't have minded it (I know the wording of this sounds a bit weird but I'm trying my best not to say any spoilers). I think the cause should have had to do with this character's prolonged addiction/obsession, and that it should not have been accidental. I feel like that would have been much more meaningful to the story, and with the messages the author is trying to present.
Art (10/10):
Honestly, I love love love the art style of this anime, and I love all of the stills throughout the episodes. The vibe of the art just perfectly matches the vibe of the series to me, and for 1991 I think the quality was pretty good. And the animation for a Slice of Life/Romance anime like this doesn't need to be over the top, it just needs to have good art because we are focusing on how the characters themselves are individually drawn, because most scenes are of characters talking to each other.
Enjoyment (9/10): Despite my complaints about the plot holes in the story and everything, there is always something going on in this anime and you always want to keep watching the episodes. At some points it can feel boring, but even with that you'll always want to know what happens in the next episode. That's because the characters in this series are so lovable and interesting, you just can't stop watching until you understand what they are thinking or until you know what they do or know what happens to them. It is very easy to get attached to the characters in this show, which will want you to keep watching more and more! I very much enjoyed Oniisama e... :)
OVERALL: 8/10
ggultra2764
Based on a 1970s shoujo manga series, Dear Brother focuses on our female lead Nanako getting caught up in the complicated and tragic lives faced by several members of the student body at the prestigious Seiran all-girl's private high school, starting from when she becomes a part of the school's elite and sophisticated club known as the Sorority. She narrates on the struggles and ordeals she faces at Seiran when composing letters for a tutor pen-pal she met while at a cram school and said ordeals involve a number of touchy issues that made the series a bit controversial during the time it was madesuch as suicide, bullying, divorce, drug addiction and lesbianism.
Dear Brother's storytelling was a bit mixed in its quality for me, the negative aspects I'll cover a little later in my review. For the most part, the storytelling of the series was solid as it explored the problems faced by many of the major characters in the series and depicted just how flawed the Sorority's influence on the school can be, particularly in regards to how freshmen openly haze and bully one another to get into it and some among the club being opportunists who abuse their influence for their own personal gain. The series drops enough hints of certain key characters having more going on with them than what it seems on the surface, particularly the interest that Sorority chairman Fukiko has in Nanako and her abusive relationship with half-sister Rei, that gets slowly fleshed out throughout the show's run. The mentioned controversial issues explored are mostly depicted believably in how they negatively effect the major characters throughout the show such as Rei's drug addiction being a coping mechanism to deal with her abusive relationship with Fukiko and the messy family life of Mariko.
What will make or break your enjoyment of Dear Brother though will be the title's heavy offering of melodrama, and this is where my thoughts on the series get a bit mixed. The series loves to go overboard in depicting the dramatic problems facing the characters within the series and there are occasions where the exaggeration of emotions during these moments can get a bit too overboard as such where it can be hard to take them seriously. Because of the melodrama, it makes some of the major events that transpire throughout the series and the reasoning behind character motives getting rather ridiculous as it pushes believability to its breaking point with how characters respond to these situations. Particularly, the one storyline in the series to be the most absurd in its developments and rationale for me were the events that take place with Fukiko's interest in Nanako as some of the former's actions and the reason why Fukiko was entered into the Sorority by her in the first place are rather ridiculous, and even get life-threatening at a few points.
Visually, the series drawing styles resembles what you would see out of an 80s anime. The style gives character designs and settings a beautiful and lifelike feel in terms of facial features and details, though animation shortcuts are a regular sight in this series with still shots, speed lines and limited onscreen movements. The soundtrack of the series is a mixture of enka (Japanese ballads) and classical tracks that are fitting for the dramatic mood seen regularly throughout the series, though they usually can get just as exaggerated in the feel they give off as the melodramatic trappings that Dear Brother gets itself into regularly.
Overall, I suppose your mileage may vary with how well you enjoy Dear Brother. The series does a good job with fleshing out its characters and showing just how messy the lives of some of the major players are, though the show's penchant for melodrama can cause the drama of key events to feel ridiculous at points and I was not really a fan of the storyline involving Fukiko's interest in Nanako. Fans of older shoujo titles may be willing to give this series a shot, especially with how old its source material is.
LuxuriousHeart
How does one fumble a 10/10 Masterpiece, into an 8/10 (being generous)? Well... Do like this manga. This manga is almost like Rose of Versailles, but in a high school setting. Some of the characters even look like the people from Rose of Versailles. It even touches upon classism and has a revolution. It brilliantly does so in a high school sorority setting to touch on more issues. The issues of bullying, the issues of wanting to fit in, the issues of classism, etc. It goes even deeper into the feelings of abandonment and jealousy. It does theseissues so well, and maintains an air of mystery. Though if I had to say what this anime was like, I'd say it was like that one Wendy Williams meme. You know the one where it's all smokey and a silhouette, and then next to it is a picture of Wendy Williams. It has the words "When you finally unlock that character that looks sick AF but then you see how it really looks". That's this anime is a nutshell. It's like the mystery of the characters was very intriguing. You're invested in it, and it's so interesting. The friendships along with the fall outs and the craziness of the girls. The anger, the happiness, wholesome moments, and scary moments. Some episodes where like a thriller horror movie, and some of them actually disturb you. Though once you strip away the mystery and figure out what it truly is, then it's like "wait, it's THIS! THIS is the conclusion???" That's what Oniisama e... does. It's like it's afraid to just go there. They bait and switch so hard, but then they're afraid to go through with it. That's ultimately what frustrated me about this. It's like they wanted to deconstruct Shoujo, but then the ending was ultimately a bland Shoujo. And there's a way to deconstruct something while implying a normal ending. Princess Tutu did very well. They deconstructed fairy tales and flipped the ending, but then they implied that it would end up being very similar to another fairy tale that's already been written. They do it brilliantly by having their own take on it, and even then changing a few roles (but ultimately the same thing). This doesn't do so at all. It deconstructs Shoujo and has something interesting, and then they start feeding you the bland food that was the ending. Seriously, wtf was that?
This was actually more insulting than the worst Shonen. You watch this thinking that the women have power, only to realize that the major movers and shakers were all men. They were rather dull men that honestly should've stayed in the background. The anime started to suck when those men were pushed at the forefront. Like congratulations, you ruined your product to push these bland AF characters. I hope it was worth it...
Though outside of the bland characters, most of the main cast was interesting. Especially Mariko. She was a very charismatic and complex character, and there wasn't a dull moment around her. She just sucked you into her world, so when she was feeling sad and depressed, she just brought you in. You feel sympathy for her, but she can also make you laugh. You cheer her on with her bold decisions, and ultimately root for her (while also recognizing that she's emotionally manipulative AF, and is obviously unhinged). The main character goes through so much character development along with her best friend. Even the 'villains' are humanized and ultimately said to not be bad people. That's something that I personally like, because it shows that everyone isn't always a villain or just plain evil. Everyone has some redeemable qualities and some good in them. I really wish the show had just stuck with them instead of adding bland characters that just throw off the balance and chemistry.
Wild_Rose
This can be considered one of the most complicated anime that are there. Being a complicated and long story, this asks for a long review... Sorry. The story of the anime and the manga are virtually the same, though the anime gives, what I think, a better ending for some characters. But watch the anime and some months later read a few chapters of the manga gave me a mood whiplash. While I like the things that Dezaki used to do, it's abysmal how the anime takes itself too seriously and the manga takes itself too lightly. The anime could also have been shorter and haveless melodrama, and the manga could be longer and could have taken itself a little more seriously.
Regardless of these things, I think that that was the perfect timing to adapt this kind of story. It's impossible to imagine a serious anime like this in the 1970s, and even if it had a better atmosphere for it, I don't know if the 1980s were a good time to adapt it. But the early 1990s were simply perfect. It had the perfect atmosphere, and the fact that this decade had a 1960s and 1970s revival only helped it, even though the revivals happened some years later.
This anime have a paradox. Because of the amount of melodrama it have, it's almost tortuous to watch it until the end because of its high number of episodes. But on the other side, it is aesthetically so beautiful that I could watch it forever, it's easily one of the prettiest anime ever made. Only to begin with, the opening is 2-minutes long. Every scene in every episode is so detailed that I ask myself how many time it took to be made, and how they got permission and sponsorship to do it... Even more being the adaptation of a complicated manga released friggin 17 years earlier. It makes everything complicated because while you're probably going to feel like skipping some episodes, literally every single one is so beautiful that it also feels like a crime to skip even a single one of them.
Talking about the story... It's a shoujo, and worse, a 1970s shoujo ai. Expect literally every kind of tragedy possible. I can't even list them because it would be spoiler, ranging from light to heavy spoilers. So, really, almost every thing you can imagine happens in this anime, sometimes more than once. What is strange is, like in a lot of melodramas, while it is tiring and sometimes almost funny to watch so many tragedies happening, sometimes you think that everything (or almost everything) you're watching could happen in real life.
The voice acting is good, which means something coming from an anime where 4/5 of its cast is composed by girls. But one voice that caught my attention was Rei's voice, because it's not the kind of voice you would expect from a character like her and this is perfect, making her believable.
The soundtrack is beautiful, the opening being one of the most incredible and melancholics that I've ever watched, and the ending, while of course still melancholic, gives a lighter feeling.
Without any sarcasm or irony, this anime is for the strong ones. I've had started to watch it because when I'm feeling depressed I watch, read or listen to sad things to try to get ridden of these feelings. But I try to stop going after these things once the feelings are gone, so it made it almost impossible to finish this anime. So, I tried to binge watch the remaining episodes and honestly, after finishing it I think it was with no joke one of the worst ideas I've had in my 26 years of life (even though I've watched it when I was 24).
For the strong ones, even though this is an awfully slow series, I recommend it, because virtually everything else is well executed. For the not-so-strong ones, I would recommend listen to the soundtrack and go after some screencaps, gifs or anything among these lines.
Update 2022: So... I've finished reading the manga and if you're really interested in this story, please just watch the anime. Yes, it changes some elements of the story, but to make up for it the anime actually explains(!) or develops a lot of events that in the manga are just remarked by the characters or happens in a flash. The anime being so slow is a favour to this story that is so good but so rushed in its original form.
The_Namer
An important part of story-telling is the promises the creator makes to the audience. When it comes to TV shows, the first episode is usually enough for the audience to at least get a rough idea of the type of story they're watching, or maybe a few episodes if there's an early game-changing twist. Yet, throughout its 39 episodes, Dear Brother repeatedly confounded my attempts to solidly grasp what kind of story it was trying to tell me. This isn't to say that it's confusing or muddled, as it was never difficult to follow what was happening, but it kept shifting focus. Itstarts simply enough. Nanako enters a high school renowned for its sorority, a prestigious inner circle composed of the school's elite students. Though not an exceptional student, Nanako is granted entry into the sorority, and becomes a target of bullying from others who suspect she used underhanded means to get in. How Nanako copes with the bullying is the main focus of the early episodes, and I expected the show to mainly be about her struggles within and against the sorority, but soon it becomes more of an ensemble piece with several other intertwining plotlines. This would have been fine, except that Nanako becomes overshadowed by the other characters, turning into more of a passive observer, puppet, or narrator for their stories. There are times when she starts to return to the centre of the story, but she always drifts back to the fringes again after a few episodes.
So what kind of story is this in the end? Is it about high school bullying, an allegory for the excesses of the French aristocracy (which the author explored more directly in Rose of Versailles), an old-school yuri romance, a classical tragedy, or a bittersweet family drama? It's a bit of all of them. All of these elements are established early, so there's nothing that comes out of left field or feels particularly jarring, it's just the repeatedly shifting focus that can become frustrating.
That said, both writer Riyoko Ikeda and director Osamu Dezaki handle each of these elements expertly. I've seen anime that were heavily influenced by both this show and Rose of Versailles, but there's an assured sense of mastery at work here on an episode-by-episode basis that makes this feel like the definitive version. When it's firing on all thrusters, Dear Brother is riveting, tackling intense emotions head-on with a sincerity that few can pull off as well as Dezaki. While I would have preferred to see Nanako take centre stage throughout, as the early episodes implied she would, this is an unforgettable story. Or rather, an unforgettable web of stories.
keemoksa
Review of Oniisama A (No Spoilers) Nanako is a kind-hearted but overly timid high school freshman. She is an ordinary girl with nothing particularly special about her. Her new school has an old tradition called the Sorority Club, an elite group that only selects the "best of the best." Given her average nature, Nanako expects not to be chosen, but the opposite happens—and this is where the story begins. While the premise of "elite school hierarchies" is common in anime, Oniisama A executes it with unmatched realism and depth, setting it apart from typical school or shoujo dramas. This is due to several factors, which I’ll detailin upcoming tweets.
Realistic Dialogues & Psychological Depth:
The dialogues are strikingly realistic, I'd say almost uncomfortable for some viewers, as they delve into heavy psychological themes like:
Possessiveness born from loneliness, Jealousy intertwined with friendship, Narcissism, manipulation, and accurately portrayed sexual deviations...
The realism stems from the characters’ nuanced development:
Their growth or decline is shown, not told.
Unlike in real life, where psychological issues are harder to detect, the anime subtly allows viewers to observe the characters’ struggles without resorting to forced, convoluted monologues.
A Brief dive to some Characters:
Shinobu & Mariko
Shinobu is isolated not out of shyness but due to her selfish, opportunistic personality—a result of her complex upbringing (a detached father and a helpless mother). Yet, she retains traces of kindness.
Fukiko Ichinomiya
The Sorority Club president is manipulative, obsessed with the past, and willing to harm anyone to achieve her ambiguous goals.
Kaoru Orihara
A kind, selfless girl burdened with repressed issues she hides to protect others.
Every character—main or side—feels distinct and deeply human.
Art & Direction
Background Art: Oil-painting-like visuals rich in details that capture each location’s essence.
Character Design: Eyes are especially expressive, conveying emotions masterfully.
Animation: Consistently good, peaking in key scenes.
Direction: As usual, Osamu Dezaki's direction is distinguished by its Excellent camera angles
and the Postcard Memory style for important scenes is beautifully applied too. One of the things that caught my attention is the running scenes, how they show many emotions in an expressive and innovative way
Flaws
Overuse of Coincidences: While coincidences can enhance realism, here they feel lazy, replacing proper plot-building.
Rushed Ending (Kaoru’s Arc): Her pivotal moments feel abrupt and illogical, breaking the story’s credibility.
Conclusion:
Oniisama A is a masterclass in psychological realism, rare in anime. It’s excellent overall but demands emotional preparedness due to its heavy themes.
