#my wife (oniisama e)

[marasschino]

Finished oniisama e and will now launch myself off a cliff

[he-butch]

guess who got spoiled by scrolling the oniisama e tag

[cacaitos]

and btw i dont hate nanako shes one of the few animanga cutesy crybaby girls that dont get on my nerves.

[juricore]

like. obviously there is a hint of tragedy in most 70s-80s-90s shoujo dealing with either lesbianism or the 'girl prince' and while it is almost always suicide or some kind of death pact i did feel my heart sink a little when oscar (rose of versailles) declared herself andre's wife at the end of the series over all things. which somehow stung more than both of them dying? and with the amount that ive read/watched over the last six months its like the constant loop of confessing your feelings and either dying in disgrace or chalking it up to adolescence and losing yourself (oniisama e kaoru). you can see the societal or familial cages they all put themselves in and they almost always die trying to get out. and then utena comes around and for two seconds it doesn't seem like a happy ending at all. people forget her and they forget what she did. but by just having one character say no, this is stupid, im not staying here, i dont have to stay here, im not bound by anything more real than what i felt for her--and then she leaves! you can just leave. its one of the most cathartic and uplifting endings ive ever seen. it's crazy man it's 2024 and i'm still floored by it

[ntrlily]

oniisama e anime is sooo good except im not sure which is more hateful to me specifically, koton koton koton or what they did to kaoru my wife kaoru

[fostersffff]

Oniisama e... Anime vs. Manga

I watched Dear Brother/Oniisama e... earlier this year, and only after hearing that the English blu-ray is going out of print soon, I decided to see if the original manga had ever been translated, and it was! I read through it and noted a number of differences, and not just the differences that are inevitable when adapting a 17 chapter manga into a 39 episode anime.

Largely, these are changes made in adaptation that I think make the story better, but still worth going through.

(spoilers for the entirety of Oniisama e.../Dear Brother below)

Nanako’s Parents Origin Story

In the anime, the exact nature of how Nanako’s mother and step-father got together is never fully revealed. The rumors that haunts her at school is that her mother seduced him while working as a hostess, and Nanako obviously doesn’t want to believe that’s true, but she also can’t really work up the courage to actually ask, either. In the manga, we see the exact sequence of events: Professor Misonoo’s wife already left him by the time he started going to the bar, and also Nanako’s father had left her mother. No moral complications, s’all good!

However, the real killer here isn’t that it’s no longer morally amibguous, it’s the way the information is revealed. In the manga, her parents explain this to her after Kaoru accidentally reveals that Takehiko is Nanako’s step-brother, but the anime equivalent is a private conversation Nanako has with Professor Misonoo in the last episode. It’s also the scene that has what I consider to be the thesis statement for the entire story:

When asked about Nanako’s biological father, he explains that he never screwed up the courage himself to ask his wife about him, because he knew that she would never say, and tells Nanako he knows she asked him because she also knew her mother would never say, and then drops this line. It’s applicable to so much of the series, but there’s something I found it especially relevant to, which segues into...

Fukiko

Fukiko Ichinomiya is my favorite character in this anime, and it turns out that most of that was in adaptation. I think this is something that will be received different for different people, but Fukiko was so much more of a normal teenage girl in the manga. The anime presents her as this ultra-composed pillar of dignity and grace and lurking below that surface is an emotionally stunted 12 year old girl, and in the manga, she still has the veneer of being ultra-composed but it constantly, and visibly, cracks. Compare her expression when Kaoru first tells her that she thinks the sorority should be abolished in the manga versus the anime:

The more dramatic example for me is when Fukiko drops that she used her station to get Nanako into the sorority. In the manga, it’s an accidental angry outburst that she tries to brush off, but in the anime, it’s a pointed, conscious decision, confirming Nanako’s fears as a way to threaten and intimidate her:

That can also be chalked up to artistic direction: all the Dezaki works I’ve seen (with the possible exception of Hamtaro (for real)), the characters never deform or otherwise go off model for the sake of dramatic reactions or even comedy beats, and the same largely goes for the backgrounds. I also think it may be a choice to lean more into what Rei reveals about Fukiko, and how she’s the only person who ever saw Fukiko with her guard down and otherwise carries herself with the utmost dignity and grace. But hey, another segue speaking of Rei and her relationship with Fukiko!

The Relationship Between Fukiko and Rei

This is maybe my least favorite difference in the manga from the anime, and really highlights the fact that in the manga, Fukiko wasn’t really much of a fully formed character. Unlike the anime, where the relationship between Rei and Fukiko is a fucked up abusive co-dependent nightmare, in the manga, it’s a fucked abusive one-sided nightmare. Namely, this scene, which to my recollection doesn’t exist at all in the anime:

In the anime, this is recontextualized entirely: rather than Fukiko looking down her nose at Rei and taking satisfaction from her own superiority, she’s wildly possessive and jealous of Rei because her satisfaction comes from how much Rei admires her.

There’s probably an argument to be made that Fukiko was just lashing out at Rei in response to the sorority petition, but again, that would tie into “boy Fukiko is a much different character in the manga than in the anime”, and outside of her reaction to Rei’s death, there’s not much to indicate that might be the case.

And this also ties into maybe two of the three biggest changes between the manga and anime: first, Rei commits suicide by overdosing on her drugs in the manga, versus accidentally falling to her death in the anime, and second, Fukiko actually doesn’t know Rei’s her full sister in the manga, versus the anime where she knew all along. I think this also adds something to Nanako’s character, that she’s burdened with the knowledge that each of them knew about their relationship, but can never say anything about it.

More Depressing, Less Catharsis

Two major contributing points here, the first of which is Rei’s suicide. Dying accidentally in the anime is more tragic, with the implication being that she was getting better, but her suicide is a pointed “sometimes, your feelings just can’t reach people”, which is definitely more depressing (and depressingly realistic).

The second, and one which is on the same wavelength as “more depressingly realistic” is the reveal that Kaoru’s breast cancer came back, and she passed away. And this was after the same sweeping marriage ceremony and departure to Germany in the anime, so the delivery of this information on the last page of the last chapter is so abrupt it could be considered black comedy.

No reflection on the fact that at least she was able to spend the time she had left with the one she loved or anything of that sort, just “cancer do be like that”. Call me a sentimental bitch, but I much prefer the anime version that “two years later, she hasn’t relapsed and they had a child!”

Riyoko Ikeda Draws Some Funny Faces

Circling back to the point about art direction; with fewer total pages to work with and not having the benefit of sound cues and cuts, the manga does often rely on cartoonish deformation to get emotions across succinctly, and I’ll be damned if Ikeda’s not good at making some funny face.

There’s more- both funny faces and differences in content- but I think that covers the major points for me. The manga is still a good read, but I think it works better as a complementary piece to read after watching the anime.

[orchid3a]

random aus pt. V

babysitter!reader falls in love with the father of the twins they is taking care of,takeomi akashi (bonten au!)

bonten!rindou at work is cold and unexpressive but at home is a total baby for his wife and his children (inspired by the manga daddy at home and at home)

idol!haruchiyo declares that he wants to marry his n°1 fan aka reader! (inspired by the manga my idol came to my house)

shy!class president!reader crushing over kondo rengo!wakasa 

big sis hanagaki!reader and her friendship with 1st gen black dragons

young!takeomi sees reader and shinichiro getting closer and he realizes too late his feeling for reader

sorortity au! fem!reader and her relationship with tokrev girls (inspired by oniisama e but no angst)

utena!senju + anthy!fem!reader (utena revolutionary girl au!) 

bandori au!tokrev girls + manager!reader 

kohai!chifuyu helping senpai!reader to confess to their crush, how? thanks to shoujo manga tropes

high school au!naoto and reader are rivals but in reality they are trying to confess to each other (enemies to lovers in school)

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who said “ i think that my brain will go in hibernation for a while (i hope for at least two months) “?

oh yeah me... i’ll never understimate my brain never.

my brain missed creating aus

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[cacaitos]

dont talk about my wife like that