Mahiro Oyama is your typical unemployed young man still living in his parents’ house, until one day when he wakes up and finds he’s been turned into a girl! Turns out his genius little sister put an experimental sex-changing drug into his drink, and now wants to observe the results as a “clinical trial” job for her shut-in brother. Of course, suddenly changing into a girl causes all sorts of problems for Mahiro, whether it be dealing with his new body or how his interests are starting to lean more to the feminine side, but considering how all of this is allowing him to be closer to his sister, maybe he wouldn’t mind living life as a “she/her” for a while…

Okay, there are definitely a lot of issues with this anime. To start with, the premise is based on a whole lot of sketchy actions from the little sister, so this definitely is not an anime for those who can’t overlook stuff like drugging played for comedy. Also, the episode can get fairly vulgar with the humor, especially with how much of it is based on Mahiro’s reactions to his female body. In fact, the anime adaptation upped the ecchi factor significantly from the original manga, with noticeably more focus on Mahiro’s body in varying levels of nakedness. (Considering this is the same studio that did Mushoku Tensei, that might not come as a surprise.) The episode does try to add a bit of reflection on Mahiro’s past views of his sister and what he thinks about his new role and identity; but then again, the whole drugging thing makes it hard to take anything too seriously, including any potential insights on actual transgender struggles. Overall, while I find the manga to be something of a guilty pleasure that can be a fun read if you don’t think about it too much, I think the anime pushes things a bit too much to the “guilty” side for me, without adding anything of note as an adaptation to make up for it. As such, this anime, like Mahiro’s life as a big brother, is over for me.

ONIMAI: I’m Now Your Sister! is streaming on Crunchyroll.

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stardf29

Frank is known as "stardf29" on various parts of the Internet; it stands for "Star Defender 29", which is something he came up with during his chuunibyou years. Now, when he's not doing things for the Navy or indefinitely delaying his writing projects, he likes engaging in anime, especially of the slice-of-life sort.

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