#and dont have to post your inane ramblings condensed in several pieces of 280 characters

[lastthroes]

koikaze was a sibcest manga done right and im dying on that hill

it wasnt perfect, sure, but its drama certainly was the peak when it comes to animanga dealing with sibcest (recommending the manga over the anime however). its unfortunate that a work like this would never get published today, in a post-156 world. dare i say, the amount of creativity that abstract censorship law mustve killed is upsetting

in one side you have nanoka, a highschool student who is way too innocent and oblivious as to how the world works. in the other theres koushirou, a salaryman scratching his 30s who -something that becomes very ironic later- works in a company involved in omiais. their parents got a divorce when they were still very young, so they havent met since they were separated. this leads to them encountering each other at some point without recognizing who theyre really talking to, and their story gets established as a sort of love at first sight (what could be read as gsa, basically)

koushirou is in denial about his feelings long before learning nanoka is his sister (shes still in hs, so it is already taboo) but he still completely forgets he had just been dumped by his girlfriend thanks to her, an ex who had also threw him a "you were cold and didn't care, did you ever actually love me or anyone for that matter" bomb. he soon realizes he cant care about any woman as a woman except for nanoka, to the point rumors start that he is a closeted gay; a similar thing goes for nanoka who was subtly rejected by her crush before the story starts, and who stops feeling heartbroken about it after meeting koushirou, often mocked by her peers for "having a brother complex" - she will at some point gets pressured by them to try dating a classmate who confesses to her, but she discovers she cant do it

the idealization of the brother figure by nanoka, yuxtaposed with koushirou being self-aware of not being a proper role model; koushirous initial annoyance at this new disruption in his life, slowly melted away by nanokas efforts, and how at some point it stops being about "this girls appearance has changed my life and i dont like it, i preferred when it was just me and dad in the house" and becomes unwanted sexual desire... and everything neatly wrapped up with as much angst as you could come up with. this manga is packed with almost everything: theres koushirou proyecting his sexual desires onto any male who gets close to his sister and his subsequent jealousy; theres nanoka confessing and koushirou wondering how, if theres nothing likable about him; theres koushirou deciding he should move out and cut any contact to not make a move onto his own sister, while nanoka interprets this as her being a burden to him and being hated; you have the incest guilt from both sides, a last date+kiss as a farewell, the parallel of an unrequited love for an engaged person that a third character harbors being framed as more possible than their relationship; theres the people around them worrying about them feeling down when they cant say the truth, a character finding out and freaking out, the pressure of "becoming a proper man of society" through marriage, nanokas dream of having many kids and wearing a cute wedding dress... theres even a proposal of eloping at one point, and the negotiation of "lets not do anything beyond this line" that they cross eventually. even a shinju (lovers suicide) proposal with talks of reincarnation

(spoilers for the ending start here, if anyone might care to skip this paragraph)

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at the end, their relationship isnt a happily ever after. their relationship feels tragic, bittersweet, and filled with crushed dreams. even when theyre still together as a couple at the end, you dont feel fulfilled after finishing reading. koushirou is stepping onto a tragic future just like the coworker that found out told him he would. no one who knows about it supports them, and theyll have to lie to everyone until the very end of their lifes. its a romances "good ending" only in the surface. it has done more than enough to drive the point that everythings most probably doomed, and only a rough fate awaits them, though its still open-ended enough according to the author. if i had to compare the visuals and narration of the ending (both for the manga and the anime), id compare it to the american remake of a certain italian movie, where after a plot of infidelity the ending has two reads: she lets him enter the house to try to reconcile, or she does it for a farewell. similarly as like with koikaze, the relationship seems to have its days numbered albeit for different reasons. and the reason i liked koikaze was that it didnt hold much back, and it went all the way to shot the reality of "only if you give up on this love, youll be able to have a normal fulfilling life". no sugarcoating. they chose to stay together, and that would have consequences. even if their relationship ultimately goes well, and no one gets to know, in koushirous mind there might always exist the thought that nanoka was way too young and that she will eventually regret it and hate him

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koikaze really ruined me for animanga with this theme when i take a look at recent titles. even if it tries to approach the topic, its so diluted its meaningless. taking a good, popular example: eromanga-sensei

im going off by the manga, which is what i read. the two siblings became so, and met, only after their respective widowed parents got married a year prior (i will ignore the asspull about masamune making a tales of phantasia self-insert fanfic that sagiri casually read and loved, as its all a convenient excuse for them to have some sort of shared story). the parents then conveniently die for unknown reasons and the kids end up on their own, with their aunt becoming their legal tutor who also conveniently doesnt live in the same house despite them being minors. somehow, they can pull art and ranobes and even an anime at the young age of 13~ to keep afloat finantially

unfortunately, beyond how impossible it becomes to suspend your disbelief (i am aware that eromanga was published in dengeki daioh while koikaze in evening, thats most probably the reason the ages are that dumb: the audience), that isnt even the worst part. the worst part is how superfluous their relationship actually is, even when this is supposed to be the core of the story for a manga thats at least twice or even thrice the length of koikaze. it feels theres barely a genuine focus in their rship as a couple beyond dragging out the manga talking about their nebulous feeling of a "dream" once its established. the manga is almost one hundred chapters long, but its stretched to no end like a gum, and any the climax and "development" of their relationship ultimately amounts to a kiss in the cheek. its also forced with the most terribly executed miscommunication trope, something thats basically "she loves him too but she will lie and wont say it". whats worse, sagiri doesnt develop enough to ever stop being a hikikomori, and the take on it also feels nonsensical and filled with inconsistent rules (moreso if you ever experienced something like welcome to the nhk, a shounen)

ultimately, where koikaze takes its sweet time to establish the characters lifes (and from what i recall, flawed as it was, oreimo tried to as well), personalities and feelings, eromanga-sensei falls short, and several moments end up feeling as nothing but cheap filler. the characters arent interesting, acting more as caricatures made out of a bunch of tropes badly smashed together, to the point masamune ends up interested in sagiri as more than a sibling just because the plot demands it to. with a premise like eromanga-sensei, where the brother writes love comedy ranobes and the sister draws his illustrations in an erokawaii style, youd think itd go much more differently than it actually does. but the truth is that even the setting of their business is incredibly dull and childish. it feels even a mockery, as if anything could be sold as long as it has the blandest attempt at the sibcest theme and a few lolis, because fans would eat up anything anyway. theres no substance in anything it wants to express whatsoever, filling a good part of its last part with nothing but mindless fanservice shots of the girls

in the end, and of course, their last alive relative never finds out about the "change" in their relationship. somehow, all of their friends are all fine with their relationship too, never bringing up the reality that theyre step siblings, and even with the manga becoming another mediocre harem of the bunch for several volumes. as theyre not related (and sagiri didnt see masamune as an actual brother, she just went along with calling him so because that was what he wanted) theres never any guilt, nor any serious problem to overcome when its about their relationship. there are no stakes of any kind, because if there were, it would not be eromanga-sensei

ill say it in three words: eromanga-sensei was boring. it was a really boring manga. i like to feel things when i read something, but the only thing i felt was annoyance and relief i was finally done with it and could mark the "read" status. the addition of the harem only made it worse, as it was the most obvious trick to artifitially lenghten the story when since the first episode you knew that the endgame was going to be the stepsister because this was oreimos author. there was no need to spend almost an entire volume in one of the "fake" li. even worse, masamune not being able to reject anyone outright (yes, im aware thats a staple of the genre) was embarrassing. it felt it was going against its characterization just to keep the manga going - by that time he had already confessed to sagiri, so it ends up downplaying his supposed strong feelings

and why am i comparing both titles even when they have different demographies? frankly, because im tired of people clutching their pearls over all these most recent titles like eromanga-sensei and its "incest and pedo supporters", when its always just a bunch of nothing. because im never going to see a properly done story again after that tokio bill, and im bitter about how people will uselessly complain anyway - at least every month theres some new idiot trying to get free easy clout by claiming they "accidentally" stumbled upon a oh-so-terrible sibcest anime, often being racist in the process and claiming anime is filled with incest. thats ofc a lie or a blown-up statement, as its something you have to actively search for and in 18+ material

conclusion: read koikaze if you like sibcest, stay away from eromanga-sensei and similar titles people make a mountain of: you might as well look for a good fic in ao3 before that latter one if you want a good story with a sibcest thematic, or learn japanese to read eroge, because you will only get disappointed and waste your time otherwise