Eromanga Sensei

Title:Eromanga Sensei
エロマンガ先生
Overall:Avoid
Keywords: , , , , , ,
Notables: Animation - A1 Pictures
FUJITA Akane
MATSUOKA Yoshitsugu
Masamune Izumi lives with his half-sister, Sagiri, who was traumatized by the deaths of their parents and lives alone in her room and seldom even shows herself to him. Masamune makes a decent living as an author of light novels, which he produces in cooperation with some talented artist known as 'Eromanga Sensei' who he has never met in person and contacts only via the internet. One day, Eromanga Sensei makes a brief appearance via video--and Masamune realizes that he may have met this person after all.

12 episodes
OverallArtAnimationCharacter Design MusicSeries StoryEpisode StoryReviewer
Avoid 7 6 7 5 3 4 Ggultra2764 [series:3341#1552]
Made by the same light novel writer behind Oreimo, Eromanga Sensei is another otaku-themed romantic comedy focused on teenage light novel writer Masamune Izumi trying to bond with his younger stepsister Sagiri, a hikikomori who he later learns is an acclaimed online illustrator named Eromanga Sensei known for drawing erotic female artwork.

Compared to Oreimo that at least believably explored public perception to life as an otaku, Eromanga Sensei opts to go into more conventional territory for its storytelling with all the cliches and pandering you can expect out of many modern anime titles. All the female characters are shown to be cute and following whatever typical characters types hammered to death from many conventional titles with Sagiri a tsundere, Megumi the genki girl, Elf the ojou, and Muramasa the traditional girl. Masamune mostly follows the doormat nice guy character type typical of rom-com titles and, not surprisingly, develops a small harem of girls that develop romantic interest in him that consist of Sagiri, Elf, and Muramasa. While these four do have some dimension to their personalities, there is little growth they face nor much depth throughout the span of Eromanga Sensei's run as they are still stuck with the same character types they were introduced with when first introduced.

Eromanga Sensei's two particular areas of focus in this series are the light novel industry that Masamune is part of and his relationship with Sagiri. For the former case, Eromanga Series doesn't really offer anything too poignant in exploring the light novel industry as it felt mostly like a backdrop to Masamune's complicated harem situation when Elf and Muramasa eventually take interest in him. For the latter case, the series goes for the same siscon vibe that Oreimo gave off with exploring Kyosuke and Kirino's relationship with both the mentioned siblings implied to have romantic interest in one another. Eromanga Sensei is much more direct and blatant with expressing Masamune and Sagiri's relationship here, yet goes the typical "wussed out" route with making the two stepsiblings so the relationship is more palatable for its audience considering the controversy faced with Oreimo's ending a few years earlier.

But the most uneasy thing for me with watching through this series has to do with the sexualization of middle school girls that pop up at points throughout Eromanga Sensei. Sagiri is only 12-years old within the series and shown to have an obsession with having girls undress and show off their undergarments to use as models for her erotic drawings. In one rather uneasy scene for this reviewer, Sagiri undresses to put on a thong with the intent to use herself as a model for her latest piece of artwork. Even the obligatory beach episodes came off making me feel a bit squicky with Elf and Muramasa donning some fairly skimpy swimsuits. While the series does go about with depicting all this tastefully enough to not make it a full-blown ecchi title, it's still likely to turn away some anime fans who offend easily.

Between the tiresome anime cliches, the incestual attraction between Masamune and Sagiri, and the rather squicky casual sexualization of middle school girls found within Eromanga Sensei, this easily stands out as one of the worst titles I've seen for 2017 thus far. Unless the typical otaku pandering schlock milked to death in recent years grabs your interest, avoid Eromanga Sensei like the plague.

Last updated Monday, September 04 2017. Created Monday, September 04 2017.
Unevaluated Stretch [series:3341#628]
(One episode watched):

I guess the problem with this show is that there are so many coincidences, so many highly unlikely things that just happen, and so many thoroughly generic touches that we have already seen time after time, that I could not suspend disbelief enough to take it seriously. Masamune discovers that his removed sister is actually the artist that he has been working with--and that this has been going on for at least a year. A girl who was apparently traumatized by the loss of her parents instantaneously snaps out of her shut-in mindset. There's the usual 'parents are dead/overseas to get them out of the way' shortcut. And of course now a teenage guy finds himself alone in a house with a girl who is only a half sister, and therefore fair game--there were several bits that were clearly designed to give male viewers a boner. And the jokes were not very funny, either. This show just seemed to make so little effort to be novel that I can't believe that any sort of entertaining plot will come together. If only a little trouble had been taken to make this premise a little more plausible, all sorts of potential might have been unleashed from the strange situation that has emerged--at least it would be strange in the real world, coincidences like this are so common in anime that you start to wonder if they are unusual at all. And that's why yet another anime needs to make some special effort in order to make itself noteworthy.

Last updated Wednesday, April 26 2017. Created Thursday, April 13 2017.

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