The Superior Sister Complex

The one thing that has been dogging me the last few seasons of anime, are the shows that air in three-to-five minute segments. They say quality reigns over quantity, and lord knows that has held true for all but Space Bros in the past year-plus, but these micro shows are simply a taste of something even better, like eating cake with buttercream frosting instead of the store-bought Betty Crocker shit. I should know, I worked in a bakery that made buttercreme cakes. This does not correlate to my ‘MURICAN weight though. My love of all things pizza and goddamn Italian sandwiches probably did that in. Working on that though. I make salads tasty.

Onee-chan ga Kita! is liquid fucking gold this season, and it’s not even necessarily because it’s the best, or the animation is godly, it’s the most simple basics of a good premise, it’s the antithesis of Ore no Imouto, it’s a boy’s older non-blood related sister through re-marriage doing what any respectable older step-sister would do. Motorboat the shit out of him. He thinks it’s awkward. I think he’s attained zen.

We’re going to have to go into the Danger Zone to find out.

I’ve quipped a number of times about my overall distaste for OreImo before, but in case you don’t want to travel back in time, here is the gist:

Then there is the whole Siscon thing. I will not get into the giant /a/ arguments or all, but really, the only people who have a Siscon are people who don’t have a sister. Debate it how you wish, but I have a younger sister and good fucking lord, Kirino reminds me exactly of the same shit, that same self-serving superiority complex all the time, until she realizes she needs help and goes all dere-dere for it.

I have one sibling, a younger sister, not terribly younger, only two years younger. She prides herself on being this sort of wild free-spirit who does what she wants and gets this whole independent thing. We here in America call them progressives. I am less progressive and more conservative-leaning. That shouldn’t matter really, but when we were kids and didn’t know better about the world, life was great. But when we realized we had hormones and dividing interests that culminated in different world-views in our adult years, we drifted apart. There is a bunch of other stuff, but I ain’t going to repeat it to you fucks, not yet anyway. The point is, we did not exhibit the type of relationship portrayed in anime, or even in Full House. It’s a pipe dream in entertainment, and really the only shows to come close to depicting the sort of family we really were, was shows like Arrested Development or Modern Family. We argued a lot over the years, fought a few times, defriended, she moved to the bottom of the country for awhile and came back, these sorts of things. But what separates us is privilege. The Power Word of Tumblr social justice warriors. She was favored throughout our lives and given more chances to do something with herself, and she did not. I wasn’t afforded many of the same things. Am I upset? No. Am I bitter? Sure. I made my own way, I’m at peace with that. But take note, Japan, sibling relationships aren’t what they seem. They aren’t socialism in a neat bow. I was always told “Life Is Not Fair.” It isn’t. Not when you’re calling the shots. So when I shy away from things like OreImo for the obvious reasons, that’s why. I was in that role, and bitches weren’t flinging themselves at my feet.

09:44 <@Delta> since tumblr seems to be the only website blocked here
09:51 <ifeexpress> tumblr is a breeding ground for terrorists and liberals
09:55 <Urist> SAME THING
09:55 <Urist> #911TRUTH
09:55 <ifeexpress> no the terrorists are the liberals with turbans

See? Even far-western US people from progressive states get the joke. To be fair though, this conversation was because I couldn’t view a GMinusG strip this morning at work. It really is one of the greatest comics since CAD Edits.

So the concept of an older, non-blood related sister through re-marriage comes up in a show, it’s like the perfect storm of fantasies, and one I will never share. I was already about to graduate by the time my parents divorced, so even though I technically have an older step-sister through my mother, there is no real connection between us because she is much older and we never lived together. Instead, I ended up living with my younger step-sister through my father for a couple years before going on my own. Still an experience, but not the most ideal one. Tomo has this shit licked, he’s at an age when having an older sister with older friends is fucking cake, and resembled how I treated my babysitter when I was that age.

As usual, Jinx sums this up in far less words than I can.

Onee-chan ga Kita! doesn’t have any drama, but the very premise of it is tragic. It’s tragic because of our shitty, empty lives, collectively an utterly onee-chanless existence, whose greatest achievements can only be attributed to trying to compensate for the lack of a loving older sister. What hope can we possibly have? Might as well crawl under a rock while Putin claims the Earth, which he is probably doing because of the insecurity of also being onee-chanless.

Or even better on the Twit-Twots:

httpss://twitter.com/CirNobar/statuses/440905076920430593

It’s such a good idea I went against my mother’s wishes to see a therapist after the divorce. The answer was here all along, I simply needed an older sister who showered me with unconditional love!

If this show were produced in America and not squashed by FCC regulations and PTA mothers, those boys would be hiding under sink cabinets to get a glimpse of them in the shower, or making enough money to buy a wireless IP camera and hide it in a stuffed animal in their room– basically anything to get a peek, like boys do. Call me sexist, a pig, misogynist, whatever, I wasn’t ogling boys on magazine covers like some people. But this is Japan, and since Japanese men are apparently afraid of women, Tomo can’t pull the trigger on what would elevate his character to King Older Sister Complex, or King Pervert, either one.

But this is okay, actually. In a rare show of form, I will actually allow this one to pass the usual shenanigans, and that’s because of how the interaction flows between Mizuhara and Tomo, that sort of bond where you can tell she cares for him, but doesn’t really know why. Most re-marriages don’t gel well between families, it takes years if at all for some to get along with step-siblings, for a variety of reasons. Even the most optimistic of kids still deal with going from being an only, younger, or older child, to another role within the unit when a second/third/etc, younger, or older step-sibling enters the picture. That’s what made The Brady Bunch popular back then, that whole family dynamic. But we all know they were loaded. No normal family affords a maid.

I’ve observed a lot of sibling interactions before. My wife’s siblings are a basket case of insanity wrought from the very best environment this state has to offer. Her cousins reinforce my internal policy of limiting access to violent media at a young age. I come from a family and extended family of divorce. So a show like this really pulls me back into that realm of thinking where if I were in that position, would I be loving it so hard I couldn’t sleep at night, or would I panic like our illustrious male lead here and choke on the magnificence and glory that is the unrequited love of an older step-sister? Frankly, I am not sure why anyone in their right mind would reject such a love. I only hope that Japan sees this as a signal that older-siscon is a thing and should be played up in more shows, preferably full-length episodes and seasons.

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