Review of Days with My Stepsister

Gimai Seikatsu was a surprise, not because of the premise, but because it is not every day that I can confidently say that one of the best directed shows in a season is a romance anime. Most romance anime I’ve seen that are praised as “creative” or “well directed” aren’t, well, creative or well directed, however, this anime definitely makes use of framings and visual techniques that you would usually never see in a show of this kind, the director definitely did a good job, which is surprising given he has no other experience being the main director of a series. It's easy to see whya lot of people who are searching for more creative directing than average wouldn’t even give the time of the day to this series, after all, the title Gimai Seikatsu or “Days with my Stepsister” would probably remind you of some kind of porn instead of an actually well done romance series, and I can’t blame them, I first saw this series being recommended alongside Otonari no Tenshi-sama and that series was terrible, so I decided to watch it to laugh at it, but once I started watching it, it definitely caught my eye that it didn’t even try to have comedy, then when I saw the author notes explaining things about the episodes that were posted on the author’s social media, I’d say that this series surpassed my expectations by far, mainly because my expectations for it were really low, but it got me to actually be invested on it. And I’m sure that people who want to watch actual incest and not NBR stuff would not look at this series at all, but I’m actually glad that this series touches the theme about relationships between stepsiblings, because while the characters obviously see that a if they were to enter in a romantic relationship it would be seen as “wrong” by society, it also makes multiple points about how stepsiblings are basically strangers that were suddenly put to live together so there’s actual no problem with it, after all, some people will look down upon anything that’s even remotely close to looking like incest, so unless you are an extremely sensitive snowflake there shouldn’t be a problem with this type of relationship, and there’s also the fact this series focuses more on the character’s emotions and their way of rationalizing around their new situation and less on the fetishy side of wanting to fuck your stepbrother/sister.

The diary episodes gives you what happened from Saki’s point of view and shows you things you already knew about but with Saki’s inner thoughts included, and they are shown as if watching an old filming roll, which I guess it is fitting for showing you something you already watched but as a memory, and these episodes worked pretty well for me, because I’m sure a lot of people, including me, see the average romance anime and asks to ourselves “why is this girl in love with the guy?”, and these episodes pretty much answer that question as thoroughly as it can, it gives you a bigger exploration of Saki’s character, and by being presented as her diary it makes sense why she would go in such overexplanation of her emotions instead of saying it out loud for everyone to hear.

The scene where, after watching the movie, Shiori starts saying some dialogue from it and then Asamura follows along, I paused the episode to stare at the ceiling, I mean, her reaction seemed completely in tone with being stopped midway by a freaking vending machine, it definitely made me feel the kind of emotion I’m wishing in romance series without doing anything exaggerated, and I honestly really liked that scene, Shiori could have won right there and I wouldn’t have minded, but alas, she isn’t the main girl so of course nothing would happen. But this is the kind of scenes that work for me, while you definitely can’t expect for something too exciting to happen, the down-to-earth feeling that they have is what makes the series in general work.

Thank you for reading