English Dub Review: Dealing with Mikadono Sisters Is a Breeze “I Want Us to Be a Family”

Overview (Spoilers Below):

Yu begins to get to know the three sisters, and they start to see him as more than just an unwelcome guest.

Our Take: 

Yu is slowly but surely striving to have a happy family of his own.  However, in typical harem fashion, the top students seem to believe that the term “family” meant something else.  This was the case in this week’s episode, in which the sisters discover that their feelings for Yu have grown, yet they continuously neglect them through their harsh demeanors towards him.  Of course, things become even more complicated when Yu discovers that the sisters had attended a festival during their childhood.  Since the sisters’ competitions are in the same city, Yu sees this as an opportunity for them to revisit the festival from their childhood.  

The series’s third episode served as another true test to see if the concept is worthy of the sisters’ strict and talented personalities, especially when their attitudes towards Yu are taken into consideration.  Fortunately, rather than make them unbearable assholes through their formulaic “higher-up” personas, the episode utilized them to provide some amusingly offbeat interactions between them and Yu.  It’s not an easy feat to accomplish, given my hit-and-miss experiences with how prodigy characters were written in various media.  However, Mikadono Sisters seemed poised to be one of the examples that managed to make them tolerable through their growth.  

One such occasion is Niko, whose tomboyish persona hides her secret interest in wearing cute clothes, a result of her determination to better herself.  That is, until she tries out the yukata dress for the festival, revealing a new side of her that Yu and the other sisters haven’t seen before.  Even amid the narrative’s typical genre elements, the episode’s beauty stems from its purported message about embracing one’s true self.