It’s 2017, and America is ruled by a mad king. I sit staring at my monitor, questioning what possible sequence of life choices has led to me reviewing Kiss x Sis.
It’s 2023, and the world is a plague-ridden wasteland. I sit staring at my monitor, questioning what possible sequence of life choices has led to me reviewing Kiss x Sis.
It’s 2025, and we voted for the mad king again. Science is illegal and America is a failed state. Fuck it, we ball.
We’ve previously sorta written around the actual content of Kiss x Sis, because there’s frankly not much to dig into there. Nonetheless, I have officially run out of conceptual gimmicks that seem tangentially Kiss x Sis-relevant, so I suppose we’re doing what I was supposed to do from the start: critiquing this OVA on its own terms, as a piece of softcore erotica.
This episode bounds right into the action with a “tastefully” steam-concealed crotch shot. Not that I’m in a position to question the professionals, but it does seem that a shot like this doesn’t really understand the spirit of this whole “sex appeal is found in implication” thing. I get that rather than active, intentional sexual performance on the part of the characters, some element of the appeal here is in the hapless unawareness of the characters – it’s the thrill of “peeping,” of seeing what you’re not intended to, which is a common sell even in non-ecchi series that just like to have their characters breast boobily.
But at the same time, the shot just seems so inert, so devoid of intrigue or naughty implication. It’s BAM, center frame “here’s a vagina – wait, we can’t actually show a vagina, so here’s a steam cloud implying the location of a vagina.” It feels perfunctory, sexual implication purely as establishing shot, like they’re simply reminding us what we’re all here for. Personally, I’d think to add either some humor or a sense of precarity by obscuring the vagina in question with a foreground object – not only is that a pretty reliable gag, employed from Evangelion to Austin Powers, but it also provides the possibility of someone removing that foreground object. With a steam cloud, we know that’s all we’ll ever gonna see – with an obscuring object, there’s the inherent implication that there might be more to see, which serves as a horny lure similar to those “how do their clothes even stay on” gacha outfits.
Alright, Ako is apparently rubbing cold lotion on her breasts. Well, at least this sequence has a certain tactile implication to it. There’s still no drama here, no context for her groping that might provide an emotional or dramatic backing to this moment (and yes, those things do improve even softcore fetish material), but I can at least see what fetish is being catered to here. And presumably we’re working off that old “massage breasts to grow them” canard that for some reason is universally agreed upon by anime perverts. That’s frankly a more coherent premise than “the Santa outfit karaoke pee episode.”
Meanwhile, Riko is inputting the Konami Code on her nipples. This production frankly seems at its best when it admits it’s not very successfully horny, but is at least pretty effectively silly. Which is also a valid pursuit! The ribald comedy has a long and distinguished history, even if its most noteworthy entrants generally have more going on conceptually than Kiss x Sis.
“Do you want to lose Kei-chan to a bunch of boobs?” See, there’s a good line. It even takes advantage of a second meaning for “boobs,” though I entirely doubt that’s intentional, given this is only a pun in translation.
After our boob-focused cold open, I’m immediately struck by the visually inert design of their apartment, as well as the frank lack of energy in these compositions. As with the opening shot, the objective here seems purely “here is the visual information you need,” with no thought as to how the presentation of that information might lead us towards a particular interpretation or mood. This is obviously a pretty low-rent production on the whole, meaning scenes are likely designed so they only need to make so many CG-painted backgrounds in total, but the way you frame a home really impacts the emotional takeaway – do we want to the cozy clutter of something like Tamako Market or Penguindrum, do we want to emphasize the sense of loneliness without Keita in the house, or what? All this tells me is that the sisters are both in a room, and every time a shot tells me nothing but that, it’s leaving an opportunity for mood-setting and characterization lying on the floor.
The girls then spend some time scheming about getting the jump on Kei-chan, which, limp visual execution aside, is almost certainly this story’s best, most distinctive trick. “Softcore porn shenanigans” is a field so richly populated that it’s hard to really stand out, and “softcore incest shenanigans” frankly barely moves the dial either. What could actually make this show fun to watch, rather than simply scandalous and perhaps arousing to an audience with no possible alternatives, would be to lean into the absurdity of the sisters’ schemes, letting them concoct convoluted ploys or construct preposterous Rube Goldberg devices that inevitably end in them failing to catch their prize (but which, of course, end with everyone in some compromised, sexually suggestive arrangement anyway). Stuff like the Konami Code gag already demonstrate this production is mostly in on the joke of its’ characters ridiculousness – leaning into that in fun, creative ways would make the show significantly more watchable, and also make the sisters much more compelling as characters. And yes, compelling characters tend to be more attractive than fetish-oriented ciphers.
Our next scene gets into the “pampering older sister” specifics of the fetish being celebrated here, as the girls clean up Keita’s messy room. This also feels like something the production could effectively further lean into; the convenient thing about this fetish is that it naturally facilitates intimate, slice-of-life moments of Keita being pampered, meaning such sequences can serve dual duty as character-building moments and horny payoff. And hell, isn’t that contradiction actually part of the appeal – the subversive thrill of being like a child and a lover to the same person? That said, I’m not sure Kiss x Sis is really brave enough in its perversion to embrace the full implications of its premise.
While the sisters goad each other to find Keita’s porn stash, Keita’s horny friend at school extols the virtues of the siscon porn he slipped him. Interesting how both sides are simultaneously illustrating this sort of fig-leaf permission structure used to push the characters forward; even though the goal here is obviously to indulge in incest fantasies, our leads always have to be led to that conclusion, always demonstrate a degree of discomfort in indulging their fantasies, thus necessitating either the escalating dares of the sisters or the willing evangelism of this friend character. I imagine that’s necessary because this whole affair being naughty and forbidden is itself part of the fantasy; we can’t just have the three leads happily boning, they have to feel constantly unsure and abashed. The greater point there is that different fantasies have different calibration points for both how explicit they get and how enthusiastically the players embrace their roles; softcore porn isn’t just “porn but less so,” it’s fulfilling a distinct role in the ecchi environment.
The peculiarities of that permission structure are further emphasized in the following scene, as the more bashful sister takes some hesitant peeks at the explicit porno magazine. One of the core appeals here is “crossing the line” between implication and consummation, so having one of the stars basically poke at the live wire that is actual, unabashed sexual intercourse makes perfect sense. Sex alone doesn’t provide the fantasy – sex being considered by someone who still sees a threesome and thinks “that’s naughty” is basically the line we’re navigating here. I’d quibble with the execution (this sequence should lean more into her imagining herself in these situations, focusing on the tactile sensations of what she is seeing, thus creating both a greater sense of intimacy and a stronger sensory experience), but the concept is sound.
Then we’re off to the B part, where the girls have constructed a Keita practice dummy with a dry erase marker for a dick. This feels like a reasonable example of what I was suggesting earlier – leaning into the farcical schemes of the girls, giving them more convoluted construction and more ridiculous payoff. Kiss x Sis is basically working off the twin levers of “naughty implication” and “comic payoff,” with the two balancing out in order to create an experience that is sexually charged, but never so close to fulfillment as to feel consequential or inevitable. It’s similar to the line harem productions pursue, where everything exists in a perpetual stasis of near-consummation, and the characters are essentially all roommates competing to get the prize. If they got the prize, the game would be over, and they’d have to engage with the messy, perpetual labor of actually being in a relationship (or at least admitted sexual partners). And most ecchi stories are not looking to embrace either the conceptual specifics or thematic implications of 100 Girlfriends.
This of course leads into the pair of them dry-humping their Keita-doll, which is unsurprisingly the only scene so far that seems to care about things like animation and cinematography. It’s all pretty standard partial body photography, focusing mostly on butts, crotches, and clenching toes, but the closeness of the cuts contrasted against the girls’ running commentary does indeed create a sense of intimacy and momentum. They’re even exploiting the girls’ general competitive one-upmanship to facilitate the escalation, tethering genuine characterization to sexual intimacy – yeah, this scene actually works.
It’s funny, it seems like the inherent “naughtiness” of this scene being between two sisters basically covers the show’s general need to be cagey and self-critical about its horny instincts. Thus this scene actually feels less anxious than previous ones with Keita, where “what will Keita think of me” is always establishing a fence between the characters. Instead, this is just purely two characters having fun and learning how to feel good together, with any hangups about that process only existing in a meta sense.
Alright, let’s finish this preposterous exercise with one final thought: it’s interesting how the uh, “secondary priorities” of erotica impact its pacing, as this scene gets a bit overlong and repetitive, but I recognize that’s only to let the audience finish off their own presumed business.
Critiquing art is truly a journey of discovery.
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