The Spring 2023 Anime Preview Guide

My One-Hit Kill Sister

Asahi Ikusaba is a high-school student who got lost and ended up in another world. He has knowledge of video games and fantasy worlds but is weak and has no "cheat abilities." He finds his older sister Maya in the other world, and she has the strongest cheat ability and also a brother complex.

My One-Hit Kill Sister is based on Konoe's Isekai One Turn Kill Nee-san: Ane Dо̄han no Isekai Seikatsu Hajimemashita (One Turn Kill Sister in Another World: I Started Living in Another World with My Older Sister) light novels and streams on Crunchyroll on Fridays.

I rarely have positive things to say about the five million isekai series that come out every quarter, so let's start off on the plus side, shall we? There are several things about this episode I genuinely liked. There are some really nice cuts of lively, expressive animation throughout, ranging from dynamic (if comedic) action to bouncy slapstick. Even on a moment-to-moment basis, there are a lot of fun, charming drawings and generally impressive artistry to enjoy. I found a couple of jokes funny, like when Asahi bemoans not living long enough to see a new Armored Core game get released. That made me chuckle.

Thus ends the positive portion of this preview.

Outside of that, there's nothing in this episode that you couldn't imagine by yourself from just reading the title. It's an isekai where the central melvin's big sister is the super powerful one, and she dotes on/comically molests him every chance she gets. The entire first half of this episode is just going through the motions of every other god damn isekai story, complete with Asahi constantly remarking on how this is like all those isekai stories he's seen before. That kind of back-patting dialogue used to be annoying, but it is so common and phoned-in these days that it barely registers as background noise. It's the same thing you've seen a million times; it knows that and has no ambition or ability to reach beyond that.

The same goes for the sister gimmick. If you've seen one comedic brother-complex character, you've seen everything the titular sister has to offer, besides her TITular assets, of course. She has an over-the-top obsession with her little brother, makes thinly (or not at all) veiled innuendo about wanting to bang him, and that's the joke. It wasn't funny the first time I saw it, and it's certainly not funny the millionth time. Also, she can kill things with one hit, naturally, but only does it when something threatens her brother. I'm almost certain a random bunch of friends spitballing gags in a Discord server could create better jokes than this. It's so stock it feels like a placeholder script that got rushed into production because we need to make 8,000 of these shows a day.

So yeah, nice looking episode, but otherwise, this is a disposable time waster.

There is a very specific fantasy at play here: isekai, but with your overly and inappropriately affectionate older sister, who has all the power, but you convince her to pretend you do. It's certainly not out of the realm of what we've seen before, but I can't say that it was something I was particularly eager to see again. It skirts the border between parody and unashamed fantasy situations and can't quite decide which side it prefers to stand on.

Asahi is our self-aware protagonist, who is miffed to find himself moving unconsciously to save a child from death by car and then frankly thrilled to have landed in his own isekai adventure. It's almost entertaining to watch him prance eagerly through his new fantasy setting, reveling in guild girls, stat windows, and the delightful mix of inexplicable Japanese and English signage. This episode segment works because it makes no bones about what's going on, even down to Asahi discovering that his stats are miserable and that his special skill is “rock throwing.”

Things take a nosedive once big sister Maya shows up. Not only is it not all that amusing that she beat her head against a wall until she, too, fell into a coma and was isekai'd away, but she did this because her affection for Asahi is something other than sisterly. This angle grows increasingly apparent as the episode drags on, and watching Maya lick her lips in a sexual manner gets old pretty fast. Though the show did give us plenty of warning where this was headed – Maya's first appearance is in a crotch-first angle, and the scene where Asahi joins the adventurers' guild is filmed in hip-vision, the focus firmly on that area to ensure maximum double entendres.

The big joke is that Maya is more powerful than Asahi, but no one knows it, and she's fully willing to sacrifice herself for him. It's not as amusing as a gimmick, even if the episode has its moments. Put this one down as “if you're not the intended audience, you might as well pass on by.”

I have a confession to make: For a brief period, maybe five or ten minutes into the premiere of My One-Hit Kill Sister, I was afraid I might end up liking the show. I know, I know. The crushing weight of the hypocrisy might well and truly have killed me. Here, we have the most generic isekai setup that one could think of. It is complete with stat menus and arbitrary JRPG rules slapped onto a bland fantasy universe that has absolutely no distinction. The only gimmick that this series has is the main character's older sister isekai'ing herself with him because she really wants to devote her life to molesting him. I could have discredited myself further if the show had revealed itself to be a shallow and cynical attempt to market some cheap gacha game—and I would still give it a 3-star rating.

To my credit, though, this show has no business looking as appealing and lively as it does. I think the "cinematic" aspect ratio of the opening scene was a bit much—nobody is getting fooled by any attempts to trick us into thinking it's A Real Anime™, My One-Hit Kill Sister. Still, I had a lot of fun just watching it, which goes a long way in my book. Also, the series does seem to have a sense of humor, as the bit where Maya beats her skull into comatose oblivion to follow her brother down the isekai rabbit hole made me laugh out loud. In anime, just as with love, "funny and good-looking" is enough to convince a sucker like me to overlook some serious red flags.

Thankfully, the second half of the episode was the proverbial bucket of cold water I needed to dump on my head to knock me back to my senses. It turns out that the whole "repeated threats of unwanted (and incestuous) sexual advances" are the only jokes this show has to work with. That joke can't be funny once you realize the show is just playing it straight. It wants to have its incestuous cake and eat it too, so to speak. Once the story becomes nothing more than a means to indulge in a niche fetish while spouting off lame jokes, the whole operation becomes unsustainable. This show looks pretty darn good. It might even be good for the occasional laugh if it were a short series of a few episodes. But as a full-length anime? Nah, count me out. You almost had me there, but you'll have to do better if you want to trap me completely.

I have two questions for you that will determine if you will enjoy this anime or not:

1) Does brother/sister incest turn you on?
2) Do you find brother/sister incest funny?

If the answer to either of these questions is 'yes,' then congratulations—I have the anime for you. Both the plot and comedy of My One-Hit Kill Sister are centered around the idea that the protagonist's older sister is teleported to the same fantasy world as him and is the overpowered one, not him... she also wants to have sex with him.

Maya is a full-blown yandere—not only does she mercilessly kill those who insult Asahi, but she is also obsessed with him to the point that she bashed her head into a wall until she fell into a coma just to be isekai'd alongside him. She doesn't care that they are trapped in a fantasy world, and will do pretty much anything he asks if he promises a bit of... "physical affection" in return.

And that's the core joke of the series, really. He's got himself trapped in a situation where he can't reveal how weak he is. So, he needs to “do things” for his sister to get her help in both battles and the cover-up.

Other than that, this is pretty much your average, cookie-cutter transported to another world story. Status windows? Check. Everyone speaks Japanese? Check. Demon Lord? Check. Adventurers guild? Check. Game-like magic system? Check. And, no, trying to lampshade the unoriginality of the world by having Asashi point it out is not a clever joke, nor does it make the laziness shown forgivable. However, it does reveal what this anime considers important (i.e. tall, busty, horny older sisters) and what isn't (i.e. plot, setting, world-building, etc.) What else needs to be said?