happii (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} happii) wrote,@ 2007-03-17 19:49:00 |
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| Current mood: |  bored |
Brother, Dear Brother...
Here's my very late review of the anime series Oniisama e... by no other than Riyoko Ikeda, the author of my favorite anime of all times, The Rose of Versailles! It's been translated with the title "Brother, Dear Brother" by the wonderful fansub group, Techno Girls.
Oniisama e… tells the story of an ordinary girl, Misono Nanako who has just started high school in the prestigious all-girls Seiran Academy where she gets invited to the Sorority, an exclusive organization of elite members, selected by the wicked and beautiful leader Ichinomiya Fukiko, Miya-sama for short. Nanako becomes friends with a mysterious and terribly lonely girl called Mariko, also a member of the Sorority, who wants Nanako all to herself. While Nanako has to endure the horrible jealousy of other students who think that she wasn't qualified to enter the Sorority, she tries not to lose her best friend from middle school, Tomoko, to the pressures of this strange new life. Nanako meets with two other students, Asaka Rei, a.k.a. Saint Juste and Orihara Kaoru a.k.a. Kaoru no Kimi. Rei is a tormented soul, dependent on her pills, who shares a tragic past with Fukiko and Kaoru is a cheerful tomboy, full of life despite her life-threatening illness. Together with Miya-sama, Saint Juste and Kaoru no Kimi are the “magnificent ones”. They are the most popular, beautiful and talented girls who are looked up to by everyone in the school. As Nanako gets to know them and discovers their relations with each other, she finds peace in the letters she writes to her "brother" who is also keeping a secret from her.
This series explores the dark side of teenage girls. It shows to what extent their feelings can lead them to do unimaginable things. Being a genuine shoujo, it's notorious for being yuri, meaning containing girl-to-girl relationships. But I'm surprised that most people only care about this aspect of it. If you're going to avoid this anime do so because of its depressive athmospehere, not for the yuri content because, honestly, there's nothing to exaggerate. What can damage your psychology is the unexpected mood swings and suicidality of these troubled girls. But they are all great. Really, I love each character very much. They are not superficial. Some of them are very typical and some of them are very complex. Sometimes I really got frustrated because sometimes it's impossible to understand their motives but that's the beauty of this anime, the mystery of adolecence and that no one is pure good or evil.
Here you can watch a very cool clip of Oniisama e... and here is my favorite scene ^^
