English Dub Review: A Sister’s All You Need. “I Only Need a Little Brother Who Can Cook, a Beautiful Naked Girl, and Friends I Can Relate To.”

How can an anime where a brother eats his sister’s panties be so likable?

With the previous season passing, which included such perverted shows as Seven Mortal Sins and My First Girlfriend is a Gal, I was not looking forward to another romp into a depraved comedy centered around sex jokes. It is just feeling tired and played out by this point. It doesn’t help in this show’s favor many people were showing the simply put over the top beginning of the show. It’s an intro that is so off the wall ridiculous that I couldn’t possibly think how it could bounce back from that and make Silver Link studio’s latest manga adaptation a hit.

OVERVIEW

Well over the top sister loving intro aside, this series has really nothing to do with that at first as it’s really about Itsuki Hashima played by Stephen Fu, a 20-year-old esteemed novelist, having published many high tier books in a span of five years. The issue with Itsuki though, that especially his publisher Kenjirō Toki played by Eric Vale hates, is his over the top obsession with younger sisters. Now just that sentence may already weird some light anime viewers off the show but in an odd way this obsession isn’t necessarily shown in that negative light.

The main theme of A Sister’s All You Need is how personal obsession and inspiration drives creatives to produce their work. The pilot’s dub even explicitly mentions this as well as a really forced in name drop of the series. This is what separate A Sister’s All You Need from the pack of pervy anime. While in the vast array of other pervert romantic comedies, the perverted nature of its characters was played just for its knee-slapping “hilarity” this anime holds no shame with that obsession. Of course, Itsuki is teased by his other college-age friends and fellow book writers for his sister complex but that isn’t the sole direction they take the complex within the writing. They use it as a vehicle to stage Itsuki’s personal growth, a building block to compare and contrast Itsuki’s writing career with his friends Nayuta and Haruto and give the show an uncanny level of realism to it.

Sure, I can’t say that most friends talk to each other about what little sisters they love the most but Itsuki’s more casual mentioning of this adult topics feels like a rambling conversation that many early 20-somethings may have just hanging with their friends. It gives the dialogue a more realistic flow to it with stops and starts to keep the pace flowing but not too fast. At the moment, the show’s major blunder is its animation and art style, it feels rather flat and unimpressive especially compared to many of the stylistic anime out this season. But maybe for a simple slice of life anime like this, a more muted animation style fits to offset the absurd content discussed.

OUR TAKE

I give this a perfect rating, not really because I feel anyone can enjoy this anime. It’s still got that more adult immaturity you’ve seen in many other shows including the previous anime featured here on Bubble Blabber. However, if you are interested in a perverted comedy that takes its comedy from a more realistic perspective, from the perspective of a creative yet obsessed writer then this could be the breath of fresh air you want. It brings so much to the table that is such a delight to watch. No need for any used sister panties to win me over.