English Dub Review: A Sister’s All You Need “A Sister’s All You Need?”

It’s the last episode! Will we find out if a sister really is all you need?

Overview (Spoilers Below)

Itsuki is reflecting on his childhood, revealing that his early life was harsh, with his mother dying in 2nd grade and his father not really being around. To escape, he found comfort in romantic light novels, where he fell in love with the sister characters. In the midst of his lonely childhood, he found a big sister in the daughter of his family’s housekeeper, Ayane Mitahora. She’s a kind soul that reminds young Itsuki of the heroines in the novels he treasures so dearly. The two bond over Itsuki’s novel collection and Itsuki lets Ayane borrow his favorite book, “A Sister’s All You Need.” From that point on, Ayane comes over every week, and Itsuki quickly falls in love with her.

All is well until Itsuki learns that Ayane had confessed her love to someone else and got rejected. She tries to confide in Itsuki, but he can’t help but confess his own love to Ayane in turn. Things get awkward, and Itsuki’s heart is broken when Ayane tells him that she can’t help but see Itsuki as her little brother. Teary-eyed and angry, Itsuki throws Ayane out of his house and tells her to never come back. Lost in sadness, Itsuki wishes he could be the protagonist and not just a background character in his own life; his loneliness and isolation from the world deepen. But, in his darkest moment, he finds his determination. He tries his hand at writing and pours his heart and soul into his work. We see his spirit turn around as we flash back to the present, Itsuki declaring with confidence that he will be the protagonist of his story.

Itsuki awakes on Kani’s lap, revealing that his flashback was just a dream of his past life; cut to Itsuki having drinks and dinner with his friends to celebrate Mahou Academy becoming anime. After dinner, the gang decides to play a board game about being a light novel writer, similar to last week’s episode. The game relies mostly on dice rolls to advance your writer’s popularity, money and “happiness points” on one of several different publishing tracks. Everyone makes good progress except for Itsuki, who gets dragged down by his ambition and fails to break through on the major label track because of how hard it is to get started there. Itsuki’s stubbornness keeps him going, while each of the other players encounters different trials and tribulations on their own paths.

Things take a turn for the worse though, as the successful writers in the group start losing “Happiness points” by the bushel. As they move higher up in the industry, more and more unfortunate events keep bringing them down. One by one, the band of troubled writers find that success isn’t all that they thought it would be. By the end of it, the one with the highest happiness points ends up being Itsuki, ironically enough. Turns out, being a writer is a lot tougher than they thought, and Kenjiro acknowledges that he’s seen a lot of the crappy stuff in this game happen in real life. Itsuki stays strong though and acknowledges that it might be hard, but he keeps pressing on because he loves to do it.

As they all go home on the warmly lit streets, everyone’s stories get wrapped up in their own individual scenes.  Miyako stops Kenjirou before he goes and home and tells him she wants to learn how to be an editor, to which Kenjirou kindly offers her an internship at his office. Nayuta, naked as the day she was born, lays on her bed satisfied that Istuki loves her, and Haruto doubles his resolve to keep writing and do better despite his many setbacks. To close it out, Itsuki keeps chugging away at his writing, pushing forward despite his doubt about whether or not he’ll succeed.

Our Take:

This was a solid wrap up to one of the most bizarre shows of this season. Itsuki’s flashback was emotionally sincere, and the board game they all played wasn’t just a diversion like it was in the last episode, but a metaphor for the many trials that await our cast of colorful characters in their future careers. Easily, this one of the best episodes of the season, and wouldn’t be a bad place for the show to wrap up if we don’t get any more.