You're right, it has been done to death by now - which is why I remarked that it's not going anywhere. I don't want to be caught up in an infinite loop like poor Sora-chan in the Kami nomi "Crayon" game, repeating the same things again and again :heh:
So I said I'll end this now and pass up on any further replies.

Color me unsurprised.
Calling me a hypocrite because you missed a comma and an interrogative sentence, telling me to read wikipedia pages in japanese instead of making the point directly even though they agree with me (and be condescending about it to boot), then never explaining why... Perhaps someone else will recognize what these symptoms mean. But enough has been said, and no obscene language was used. Peace.

Hmmm. Seemed to have walked into something here. Anyway, so, Kirino feels like Kyousuke abandoned her, eh? That's an aspect of their relationship I'm really interested in now. I hope they go more into that next episode.

It's probably not because of her achievements - he only found out about her sports and grades sometime between discovering her hobby and the confrontation with their father...... if I'm not mistaken.

Would never have been that in the 1st place. Would have been something that happened along time ago.
Most likely some sorta misunderstanding or incident.

Well I know for sure the wait to find out what deal is, is gonna kill me!

It's not that unusual. Some siblings live their own lives without any concern for their other siblings. The way I worded it sounds a little cold, but some really see it awkward and unnecessary to stick their nose into their sibling's business unless they're forced to.

Kirino did well enough on her own before, so Kyousuke probably didn't feel like he was needed at all. Their relationship goes sour because they never talk up untill the beginning of the series.

I have a theory as to part of the reason why Kirino is so into the "Little Sister" eroge games, and I think that this would be a good thread to share it.

The sense I'm getting from this anime is that Kirino's family isn't a terribly loving one, at least not beyond an implicit level.

Kirino started tearing up when she stated her displeasure over not being closer to her brother for a long time.

Her father strikes me as a generally decent and caring man, but not a very warm one. There's definitely a stern, cold quality to him and his interactions with his children. At the very least, he wasn't close enough to his daughter to uncover her long-held Otaku hobby (before the events of episode 3), which strongly suggests that his presence in her life is usually a light one.

Her mother has not left me with much of an impression of her either way thus far.


This could very well leave Kirino feeling unloved at home, and somewhat emotionally needy.

So, Kirino plays games about loving little sisters (or loving lolicon girls in general), and she finds it uplifting to see young girls (like she used to be, and in some ways still is) being loved in the game. As the player of the game, she is able to roleplay loving the female game character just as she wished that she had been loved. Whether or not there's any sexual element to this remains to be seen, but even without that element, one can see the catharsis and emotional healing that Kirino might get from this and these games.


Now, this is just speculation on my part, as I've not read the source material. What do my fellow fans think? :)

Defiantly well put speculation here Triple_R ;)


Now that her brother is able to be trusted, and she doesn't feel lonely towards him anymore. She might even be playing as a little sister from one of her games, but not going to deep into the eroge part of her :heh: But thats just some silly speculation I have on how Kirino is going as of now.

I didn't quite get that impression. It might be true for the father only, and perhaps also somewhat for Kyousuke, but not for the mother.

There is some evidence to that as well.. In one of those games Kirino ordered that Kyousuke to play and finish, it mostly involved the little girl and her brother.. Hint maybe? Or just a coincidence?

He still cares for Kyousuke a little bit.... In episode 5, when Kyousuke just went mad and told his father about the issue that occured. His father still helped, even though he thinks that he is a "worthless son" also he has sorta a "Tsundere-Style" of being a father...

To get things done.. Yes indeed..

I was surprised to no limit when Kyousuke said that his mom looked at his porn and thought nothing about it....... :eek:

Before Kyousuke was involved in this case, her hobby was generally alienating her from everyone in the family. Her father never talks to her, Kyousuke was alienating Kirino from his life, the mother was just there for some moments. The Otaku friends were not even introduced yet. All she had was her little sisters, and her modeling friends. No one knew Kirino as the side that she was hiding, the side of being an Otaku. Even though she gets praised for her other side, she still feels lonely that no one else knows about her Otakuness.

Passivity isn't admirable, and the mother is pretty much entirely passive. She seems to tolerate everything, but she also doesn't take an active role in anyone's lives either. She cooks and cleans the house -- pretty much a stock housewife. While the mother isn't as strict as the father, she's definitely not a friend or a confidant to Kirino either.

Until Kyousuke discovered her eroge hobby, Kirino was not close to anyone in the family. She talked with her modeling and school friends, and that's about it.

Very doubtful - most likely no coincidence, but a carefully chosen game.

I'm not so sure if he looked up that report because he cared still a bit about Kyousuke. It could just very well be that he looked it up just out of curiosity, then found out that it's actually quite half-assed, and therefore re-adjusted his opinion about Kyousuke somewhat and decided to help him a bit.

After the short conversation her mother had with him, and the impression I got of her from that, it didn't surprise me much.

It's debatable if her hobby alienated her, or if she was already alienated before and picked up that hobby precisely to overcome that alienation.

Agreed. I studied some Psychology in University, and its there that I learned about the four styles of parenting.

Now, any individual parent's parenting style won't necessarily fit nice and tidy into one of the four categories, but they do tend to at least lean more towards one of the four.

Kirino's mother strikes me as having a Permissive, or even Uninvolved, style in her parenting.

It's important, I think, to remember that a parent's first job is not to be their children's friend, but to be their children's parent. A parent that literally tolerates everything would be a bad parent. Parents should set at least some guidelines for their children.

A good parent avoids both extremes on the Authoritarian/Permissive scale. Sadly, a strong case can be made that Kirino's parents occupy the two opposite extreme ends on that scale. Her father leans a bit too strongly towards the Authoritarian parenting style, in my opinion.

He may not care about Kyousuke as much because he thinks that Kyousuke is just living out his normal life, nothing much for the parents to be concerned about. The father probably thinks that Kyousuke will not get into troubles.. Well that was until Kyousuke told him that he loved eroge. Thats when he sorta got concerned about Kyousuke, even after the punch and calling him a "worthless son" he doesn't give a cold shoulder to him. He atleast replies with the comment "About your future?" which means he cares what happens to him. Even giving the curiosity of looking up incidents that was put to him by Kyousuke for him to clear the tension between Ayase and Kirino. Of course this is my silly opinion :heh:

Now back to Kirino. Ever since I watched episode 5, I've been curious about the tension between Kirino and Kyousuke in the past, which lead her to not even talk to him until he found out about her Otaku games. A flashback or anything would be good.

One of the key points of the story that I hope gets expanded on in the anime (which I imagine would be near the very end anyway). I actually think that this ordeal is the heart of the whole story and the "keep the otaku life a secret" scheme was just a roundabout way to get to it. But I digress.

They could have never talked because neither one of them took the initiative before. At the beginning of the novel, Kyousuke said how it was his intention to keep things the way they were, with both of them ignoring each other and minding their own business. It seemed like one thing just lead to another after Kyousuke found the eroge disk.

There doesn't necessarily have to be a fight for them not to talk to one another.

There just had to be a reason for Kyousuke to even think about that.

Well I do hope it eventually gets into the anime as well, if it doesn't get into the anime, there better be a season 2 or something like that...

We can't really say from what little we saw of her... however, she seemed rather like the tolerant and caring type to me rather than the "do whatever you want, I don't care" type, as you put it.

Not just a bit, alot too much. In being so overly cold and severe, he's just alienating his kids. His style does leave quite a lot to be desired.

That remains to be seen... I'm not convinced of that yet.

In the very opposite, the father seems to think that Kyousuke is *nothing but* trouble... and when Kyousuke then "confesses" to be an otaku, he sees his prejudice confirmed.

I understood that quite differently: the father thought that Kyousuke came to him because he is deeply concerned about having been called a "worthless son" and the beating, and is worried about his future now and will try to make amends. That's why he said "About your future?".
What Kyousuke then says is quite the opposite of what he expected though, hence the father's reaction of spitting his tea all over the floor.

Yes, their relationship seemed to have been totally shot before... an explaining flashback would be nice there.

Well it shouldn't be too much of surprise. Kirino and Kyosuke's father is a high-ranking police officer as the established fact from manga and more importantly the novel.

As for parenting style. His father is definitely authoritive but at same time it is a split image of a stereo-typical Asian father. The traditional view of family in East Asia region (China, Korea, Japan, Taiwan,etc) is that the father is the bread-maker that provides the family while the mother is in charge of all in-house affair including parenting. Fathers usually don't involve in parenting unless something big happens and in good-cop/bad-cop senario, the father is always expect to be the bad-cop. As for Kyosuke's role, older sibling is expected to protect and act as shield for younger sibling while the younger sibling respects and assist older in anyway he/she can. (which Kirino is not)

All this is sprung from Confucian teaching of the Five Relationship of Hierarchy: Sibling(older=>younger), father/son, lord/vassal, husband/wife, and friendship, with friendship being the only relation that had equal responsibility.


As some already stated, the issue here is that Kirino's father think ACG is bad for child growth and has always refrain from buying them for Kyosuke and Kirino. Kyosuke is argument is logical and begins with emotional plea for Kirino's happiness when the father countered bad with that ACG is a hobby that can negatively impact child growth. Kyosuke countered back with Kirino's achievement.

Now the anime adaption deleted a few lines here ignore the scenes where they mention all those achievement were from elementary school to recently. Those added information made the situation more clear in novel. Kyosuke's logic here is to illustrate that ACG did not negatively impact Kirino's performance. She is still the same old Kirino with good grades and strong athletic performance.

The picture with Kuroneko and Saori is setup for later when he pulled out his father's scrap book of Kirino. The father originally had same view on modeling and fashion and ends up being secretly proud of Kirino's modeling job after he did he own research. Kyosuke point out that the two event were the same, that the father should judge ACG just by its cover and that ACG is the same as Kirino's modeling job in which both put smiles to Kirino's face.

This cause the father to accept (or at least partially condone) the presence of ACG. the issue now become the R18 Eroge.

Keep in mind, R18 is NOT ILLEGAL in Japan, it was only a rating system similar to parental guidance or ESRB in US. But nevertheless a parent typically will not allow (at least not openly) and over adult materials for a 14 years old. This is where Kyosuke decide to put up on himself to take the blame because he can't spin it any other way to talk the father into accepting Kirino playing eroge and its HIS responsibility to protect his little sister. Keep in mind, the anime did a masterful job in depict this scene from novel. The choice Kyosuke was given includes HELP KIRINO, but he DID NOT SELECT IT. Instead Kyosuke picked HELP IMOUTO [LITTLE SISTER] which shows that he didn't do this because it's Kirino, but because it's his little sister.

In the end the father accept the ACG part of Kirino but is still kept in dark (at least on surface) about the eroge.



As for reason why Kyosuke and Kirino's relation is this bad. That is a question that seems to be central mystery for the series, at least in original light novel as Kyosuke himself did not know how they grew apart and stated numerous times that they weren't like this before and noted that it's nostalgic whenever Kirino show her "cute" face. Although the novel has implied that certain character was a big reason why......

Exactly. I mentioned that already at an earlier time.

1.) The topic for debate is and always has been that the anime will have a bad influence on Kirino. This is why Kirino's father wants to confiscate everything. Kyousuke compared eroge to Kirino's modeling. Because the father accepted Kirino's modeling, then there's no reason he couldn't accept the anime.

2.) Because R-18 games aren't illegal, the topic of concern is not legality, but influence. Kirino is obviously not 18, so she has no business owning a R-18 labelled game. Both Kyousuke and his father agreed on this.

3.) Because Kyousuke is an adult, there is nothing morally wrong with him owning the eroge, other than it being an unproductive and socially unpopular hobby. This is why their argument ends with Kyousuke getting punched over owning an eroge. He did not proclaim himself as a fan of anime or being an otaku in general.

4.) The VN-like option is just visual evidence of Kirino's eroge influencing Kyousuke more and more as the story progresses. In the laters novel, he makes more comparisons to visual novels.


Lastly, I would stick to asserting claims based on the series at hand and refrain from making ad hominem statements like calling others "learn-resistant." Ungrounded statements like that make it difficult to take the person seriously in any argument.

That's just an unfounded claim by the father which is based on his prejudice, which in turn is based on biased, poorly written sensationalist articles in the yellow press, like that "Sycalypse incident" article.
The claim is totally wrong because anime and eroge have no bad influence whatsoever on Kirino - she's great at school, a good athlete etc.

Why are we talking about the father when this thread is about Kirino... doesn't the dad have his own thread?

"To understand the present, you must understand the past." We look at how Kirino grew up to see why she is how she is now.

Exactly, and that was Kyosuke's counter-argument and the father did retract that prejudice. ( at least on the non-18 stuff)

The problem is that someone refuse to acknowledge that the father agreed on the non-Eroge part of Kyosuke's argument despise it being show on the anime. (which is incredibly weird if you ask me..)




I didn't think anyone is disagree with those other than that Kyosuke is only 17 and not an adult (unless he was married, you're a legal adult if you are married before age of 18 and depend on area you are free to have sex as young as 13.)

But as Hameji said , that not really what the argument was for.

The issue here is that the same people are making argument basing that ACG=Eroge=R-18=illegal=bad which is completely not true and claim that the father ignorantly shift ALL BLAMES [not partial, R-18 only] to Kyosuke and still believe Kirino is not into ACG which is not true at all. All the while refuse to take in any factual evidence.

I don't like Kirino much, her ways of thinking and treating people is completly off. She wants to be friends with Ayase who seriously doesn't care about real her, and is avoiding people who actually do care.

She really should re-think things and make new list of priorities. So far she didn't deserve to have such understanding people (brother, Kuroneku, Saori) around her.

I hate to ask this but isn't little bit odd for female otaku like Kirino indulges herself on something that more for men, like the eroge she played. No I'm not generalizing how male and female otakus should look like but I don't think someone like her exist in real-life, I mean real-life female otakus I have seen so far are more interested in fujioshi, bishounen and yaoi stuffs.

I also think the author of light novel maybe hates such otakus and made a male otaku that trapped inside in a body of a 14-years old girl.

That's the whole point. The series has realistic themes, but is in no way a commentary on reality. At heart it's basically a light romantic comedy; if you ignore the whole "sibling" thing then you realise that it's playing out rather typically (tsundere girl discovers true meaning of friendship, finds herself, et al and on..)

Well that's the whole point, she's been living a completely different life to what she is trying to attain up until now and obviously is unable to quickly change. She still wants to hang on to her old friends and ways because to her that is stability; it's a life which she was reasonably happy with and she's afraid of losing that. In short, she desperately wants to keep both her friends and her eroge as stated in ep 5. Sure she's not doing a great job and her methods are (... xD ) but the point is she's changing and growing up. Give her some time huh?

Kirino has a very compartmentalized life, and this is probably fairly common for people with a wide and varied set of interests and/or talents. Each "compartment" of her life does indeed reflect part of who she is, and in fact each "compartment" probably stands for a part of herself.

This I can relate to. When I was in high school, I was in a few different social circles. One was student politics, another was something akin to an otaku group (friends who I shared particular 'nerd' interests with), and another was long-standing friendships with people who held more traditional interests, shall we say. These social circles were fairly distinctive from one another, and there were different sides of myself that kind of naturally came out when I was amongst each such circle.

As a teenager, I wouldn't want to sacrifice either of these social circles, as they each reflected part of who I am. So, in this respect, I can understand why Kirino wants to hold on to her long-standing friendships, even if her entertainment interests are far different from theirs.

I think this harks back to the age old question "who are we really?" because as Triple_R has pointed out we all behave differently around different people. For example, the "me" around my friends is very different to the "me" around my parents, teachers, myself (lol) etc. Yet they all make up who I am.

Kirino has the part of her which enjoys anime/manga/eroge/otaku culture, and the her which is the stereotypical cool perfect student; the problem for her is that she thinks these two are mutually exclusive and cannot fathom bringing them together. For this reason she tries to hide her hobbies from her school friends, and attempts to ditch her fancy fashionable persona when around Saori and co. Only later developments will show if she can somehow reconcile the two.

And I'm sure I'm not the only one here when I say I'm rooting for a Kirino ending :P

That's because it's going to happen :heh:

In harem-style anime, I always root for a harem ending. No broken hearts.

And I have to disagree with you, Seitsuki. This show to me seems very much a commentary on social reality. I mean, it's actively bringing up issues such as how society wrongly perceives otaku, society's bias and prejudice, and social development. Kirino is mostly the focus, and we're seeing her development through the impartial Kyousuke's eyes. One of the underlying themes of the show is how people act counter to expectations, and the entire social commentary vibe is I think one of the best aspects of the show.

Utter lies :P The only narrator more unreliable than Kyousuke I reckon would be Kyon (and even that's up for debate). Seriously, when you consider his words in the light novels (and therefore by extension the anime), it becomes rather obvious that there is a lot Kyousuke is hiding, or changing, or just plain getting wrong- his continued assertion that he still hates his sister and vice versa (up to the fifth freakin novel) just to name one.

On the other point, I don't believe it to be commentary simply for the fact that it is portraying reality. The situation IRL is (sortta) the situation depicted in the series, but what makes this simply the setting rather than commentary imo is that nothing much comes from it- sure Kirino has to fight with her otaku side and try to keep both sides but I believe this is character development for her rather than some more generalised depiction of the real world situation facing people.

damn right it will. *salutes a brother*

Sadly, I can't comment on the light novel, though I have to say I want to read it now. I haven't seen the "unreliable narrator" point-of-view done well in a long time. And I think Kyousuke making an effort to point out the flaws in the status quo of their reality is what makes this show a commentary, not that the show merely has a depiction of reality. Having it simply as a setting for Kirino's character development would be Kyousuke telling Kirino to accept herself over what society thinks, but Kyousuke is doing the opposite. He's going to society--i.e. their father and Ayase--and telling them to accept Kirino's hobby as part of her. So to me the show is being very blunt about its issues with reality, almost to the point of beating the audience over the head with them.

I have a personal theory regarding Kirino and some of her behaviour. Going by what she said in episode 5 (I also seem to recall a breif flashback in the manga hinting at this but I don't remember what chapter) I think her and Kyousuke had a closer relationship when they were kids and she probably adored her big brother at some point. However we know how often Kyousuke spent/spends time with Manami, meaning he constantly left Kirino alone. This could result in Kirino becoming bitter towards him, and explains their drifting apart and her fundamental dislike of Manami despite (by Kirino's own admission) not knowing much about her.

Kirino's love of little sisters could stem from her desire to compensate for this. She adores and dotes on little sisters, giving them what she didn't get and feels is the 'proper' way big brothers are supposed to act. Of course things get more complicated when you add in the whole having sex with them thing, but Kirino doesn't seem that focused on the porn part of it. Even so, sex in eroge is often portrayed as the ultimate expression of love but Kirino knows full well such a thing shouldn't be applied to reality.

Unlike most I don't foresee an incest ending. I think those going on about how Kirino is in love with Kyousuke are reading into things perhaps a bit too much. I think she's just rediscovering her love for him as a sibling and is happy he's giving her so much attention now but she's still mad at him for what he did before, resulting in her tsundereness.

You know, now that I think about it, the two scenes when we see her play in the eroge usually feature very young little sister characters. The sneak-into-bed scene and have-a-bath-together scene both show girls who haven't even hit puberty, it seems. If that's when she and Kyousuke first started drifting apart, then she may be trying to live vicariously through those characters. I find the prospect both fascinating and maybe a little sad, so hopefully within the next episode I'll see something to either substantiate or invalidate the theory.

I know a couple of female otaku friends who enjoyed Koihime and Sengoku Rance (haven't check other series yet). Don't generalise female otaku and put them into the same subcategory.


just like how one of my straight male friends loves reading yaoi~ :P

Claiming that females only watch yuri would be as odd as claiming that males only watch yuri :heh:

Perhaps he's not as straight as you think he is ;)

Kirino seemed a bit too clingy to Kyousuke in episode 6 (there was no physical contact shown between them of course, but her reactions every time she had screen time) She might even think that Kyousuke is going back to his old ways of visiting Minami over, and over again, since one visit can lead to future loops. Or that is what Kirino will think, or that Kyousuke will get too friendly with Minami, and that will get Kirino to be jealous over the fact she is going to lose her big brother to his childhood friend. So he might pull something on us :uhoh:

00-Raiser, you were thinking exactly what I was thinking. Kyousuke might have visited Minami alot when they were little, leaving Kirino to be all alone in the house. Possibly! Kirino might pull something to make sure this does not happen again.

Yeah, but there's a major difference between separating your social circles and bashing the unpopular one in the company of the popular one just to maintain your standing in the latter. It makes Kirino look like a hypocritical, selfish bitch or just a plain old idiot for wanting to so desperately please and hang out with such shallow, superficial creatures in the first place.

I mean, seriously. Her "best friend" Ayase goes all bunny boiler batsh*t insane after finding out Kirino's an otaku and drops her like a hot potato. Compare and contrast this with Saori calling her house so that she and Kuroneko could find out how she was doing in spite of the object of the concern having publicly denied knowing "weirdos" like them.

If anything, I would've loved to have had the scene in the park end with Kirono bitchslapping Ayase for being so judgemental and then called up Saori and Kuroneko to apologize.