I went into Sister Princess after watching the first ten episodes of Gundam 00. Gundam 00 made me want to kill myself, and while I will finish it (including season 2 + movie) I needed a break in an extreme way. My expectations of Sister Princess were low—so I figured, no chance of it disappointing me.
The Basics
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance, Slice of Life, Harem
Aired: April 4, 2001 to September 26, 2001
Directed by: MAL refuses to tell me
Producers: Starchild Records
Closing Theme: Tsubasa by Yui Horie
Review
The Story: Wataru Minakami is the top student in his high school and is accurately portrayed as an incredible nerd. I mean, look at that:
Well, thanks to a computer glitch, he utterly failed his high school entrance exam. It looks like he's about to spend a year doing nothing (read: the joys of cram school) when he's borderline kidnapped and sent to Promised Island, where he is to attend Stargazer Hill Academy. But not only that: it also turns out he has thirteen younger sisters that he never knew about, and not all of them were aware of each other. Still—they all really love their big brother.
Based on knowing this beforehand, all I could figure was that the anime would be the sort of thing Kirino would love. You know, little sisters loving their big brother and all. Turns out, that wasn't accurate at all...which is good, because some of the sisters were like below the age of ten and that would have been creepy/disturbing/get-this-away-from-me on so many levels. Instead, Sister Princess was a light-hearted story about pretty typical brother-sister things, minus all the hair-pulling and theft. I'd say it's the best family since the Brady Bunch.
The Characters: Okay, so we have Wataru, and we have thirteen sisters. We also have like...two other random people. That's our cast. With thirteen sisters to keep track of, I figured I would never be able to do it. I figured: I will identify them by hair color, there will be no name memory except for maybe four of them.
To my surprise, each and every sister was characterized incredibly well, and before I knew it, I was entirely familiar with every last sister, knowing which interest was theirs and all. Now that is what I call masterful charactization—when you can give me 13 younger sisters and make them all fully-fleshed out so I know them well...why can't a lot of shows today do that so well? Seriously, there are so many forgettable characters now, ones I forget about an hour after finishing a series, and even having watched Sister Princess a few weeks ago now, I still know which is which. Wataru was also well-done. He kind of reminded me a Studio Key guy—Tomoya or Yuuichi maybe. But not as awesome.
The Random Yaoi: Sister Princess, 26 episodes. Sometimes a few of the sisters would mention wanting to marry their brother in a surprisingly non-incestuous way. So that's straight. And Wataru likes girls. Definitely. No secret. He gets all blushy when his sisters are hugging him too much and in the beginning, before he knows some of them are his sisters he sees them as attractive.
Well then, near the end, Wataru's friend Akio shows up on the island. Akio is first seen in episode one and then not ever seen again until the end, though Wataru does spend the entire series writing emails to him. And he wants Wataru to come back to Tokyo with him. And we get this:
To be perfectly honest, this may be the first time my inner yaoi fangirl has ever told the obvious seme to go fuck himself. You want Wataru to leave his sisters? Not cool man. Not cool at all.
Conclusion?: The whole thing where I had no expectations, so I couldn't be disappointed? In comparison to those non-existent expectations, Sister Princess actually managed to impress the hell out of me. It was really, really good. There wasn't what I'd call an overwhelming plot, but this anime didn't need one. It did well with its little one-episode arcs, its focus on the familial relationship. Not the sort of thing I'd expect to enjoy in any way, but hey—I'm not going to complain when an anime series exceeds my expectations.
If you're looking for something nice and light-hearted, I would seriously recommend giving Sister Princess a watch.
There's also the second season, Sister Princess RePure, which takes place a few years later when all of them are living separately. I'm not going to go to the trouble of reviewing it, because really it's more of the same. If you enjoy the first season, you'll enjoy the second.
My rating: 7/10. Just because I enjoyed it didn't mean it was without its flaws. It was nothing special. (Who knows, maybe if I watched more anime from that time range I'd disagree.)
