Recently, My Sister Is Unusual Episode 4
What They Say:
Yuya and Mitsuki have recently become brother and sister because of their parents remarrying. Mitsuki is having a hard time opening up to her new family, but their parents leave for a foreign country right after getting married before that can get any better. As Mitsuki is troubled by her new life living alone with Yuya, a amnesiac ghost girl, Hiyori, appears before her, and she is forced to help her pass on to the next world…
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Though some of the gags have been a bit repetitious, it’s been amusing to watch the show as the focus is less about the brother, at least early on, and more about Mitsuki and her problems with Hiyori. That’s helped to ease the potential creepy factor that can be in place here because of the brother/sister aspect, but that was also already eased by not making them blood relatives that literally just met each other. By putting the onus more on Mitsuki rather than it being about Yuya’s heavy interest in her, which he doesn’t have (at least yet), it’s easier to laugh at the silliness of the situations and the perverted nature that comes into play because of the belt and so forth.
With Hiyori continually pressing Mitsuki to get along better with Yuya, that puts a good bit of pressure on her. She knows she has to in order to make things right, but there’s also the aspect of her not really knowing him well yet and all the problems that have happened so far. So she does try to do some normal things to make up for it all, such as making meals, which doesn’t go quite as she intended due to her lack of skill so far. It’s cute, simple and adorable in its way, and you can see a little bit of that getting into Yuya’s head. Of course, having Hiyori in control of the body to be all cute and adorable makes it easier to play out since that’s not exactly Mitsuki’s style. What becomes interesting is that as Hiyori interacts with him, Mitsuki realizes from the outside that she can really make it look like a brother and sister just being out and about.
While this leads to a lot of fun and silliness, there’s a bit more tossed in as well. We get a not so subtle moment where the disembodied Mitsuki hears someone say to not stay out of her own body for too long, though she can’t imagine anyone seeing her. But that starts to get into her head a bit and you have Hiyori demanding more time in control, which raises a fair number of concerns as well. This is all there in the background, but the second half plays more with Hiyori convincing Yuya to let her sleep in the same room since there’s a storm coming and she plays the afraid card. Mitsuki gets to watch how this is dealt with and gets easily frustrated, but it goes in ways that Hiyori didn’t expect since Yuya does right by her so well, really getting into Hiyori’s head with how well he treats her.
In Summary:
The series is one that definitely played to the pervy material well in its first couple of episodes, but it also shows that it doesn’t want to live completely by it as it goes on. A few hints are given this time around about more of the dangers of what’s going on and we also get a good bit of decent character material as Hiyori takes over the body more and learns more of what the relationship between brother and sister will be like. It’s a rather tame episode overall but it does some decent stuff overall and it leaves me curious as to which twists will come next.
Grade: B
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Sony KDL70R550A 70″ LED 1080P HDTV, Apple TV via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.