Milking It for All It's Worth: the End of the Oreimo Anime

As you guys may have known, the last three episodes of the Oreimo season 2 anime have aired, and with it, the plotline of the anime has concluded. I have not seen it yet, but I have seen enough of the franchise and read the light novel enough to understand what's going to happen.

Thank God it's over.

Oh good, a flashback in the first episode of season two that explains the only significant point of the three OVAs after season one. I'm glad I watched those OVAs in 144p quality now, aren't I?

When I was going to Otakon and heard that the last three episodes would premiere there, I was washed over by a wave of disgust rather than anticipation. I thought the franchise would end a year ago or more. I thought it would have died with the incest wave that flattened out a while back. 

But Oreimo kept making headway.

Not in the good way. Not in a "oh, they're maybe doing an after-story" kind of thing, or "wow, they created a world around the Oreimo original story" sort of creative inspiration. Instead, the franchise went the exact opposite way and started to tirelessly churn out the same shit in different media by the truckload. The radio CDs. The spin-off manga. The OVAs. The games. The other games. The fandisc. Related merchandise. It was a myriad of things that were actually exactly the same, and the franchise expected people to lap this shit up. What's worse, the release of the related spin-offs and merchandise were so spread out that it was abundantly clear that all the companies involved wanted to do was grab as much of the suckers' money as possible, for as long as possible. I mean, who the fuck in recent memory releases three poor-quality web-rip OVAs over the span of more than a fourth of a year to garner attention? If the business related to Oreimo was a kid, I would have slapped it in its face and told it to go to its room. Sure, the problem is non-unique in that almost all popular franchises release a whole lot of merchandise/media, but this much merchandising and profiting on repetition is pitiful.

"But Oreimo is good!"

No. No it's not. Let me make this clear. Oreimo had a good run. It is the archetypal "soft/vague incest" series, where the relationship between siblings is more confused than a 5th grader trying to drive a car. It became mainstream because it hit the right buttons, and appeals to a wide niche as a gateway series. But for every one of its selling points, there is another series that's better. Harem? To Love-Ru. Incest? Aki-Sora, or hell, any fucking series out there during the '10-'11 imouto/trap wave that isn't Onii-chan no Koto nanka Zenzen Suki Janain Dakara ne!!. Romance-comedy/Slice-of-life? There are so many examples that it's hard to nail them all. Sure, within the incest wave a while back Oreimo did get a lot of hype as the big kid on the block, but the time for shitty interpersonal interactions and 159167861-volume tsundere relationships are long over. We've seen Hyouka. We've seen Hanasaku Iroha. We've seen the potential of how good series can be when they portray even a tinge of realism in a rom-com/slice-of-life series - so why is Oreimo touted so much?

Good thing this relationship gets resolved fast.

OH WAIT

Oreimo is popular because it's a casual, brainless watch. It is NOT, however, a good series. A decent fanservice series, maybe. But in terms of depth or complexity or realism or slice-of-life factors or even as a romantic comedy, not a chance.

I can't stand it. I can't stand it when a series gets spread or torn down due to its brand recognition, then has people swarm all over the series without even taking a second to realize that they're in the shallow end of the pool. It makes me utterly nauseous to think that Oreimo can make multiple games of the same storyline and just expect them to sell because, you know, they can do whatever they want. It frustrates me to know that with a little stretch, most of those same people could probably be watching something more worthwhile right now.

I would rather watch a show about samurai maids.

Yes.

Samurai maids.

And the worst part? Even the conclusion (probably the most important thing in an incest series, because it doesn't matter if they...don't hook up) petered out because portraying a realistic ending to a mainstream incest series was just too much for Fushimi Tsukasa, so the author just made some vague reference to the future with a tiny affirmation. Thanks, Fushimi! I definitely feel assured about their ending now!

I just want nothing more to do with this series. Oreimo is a bloated amalgam of everything that could possibly go wrong with a greedy series franchise. And so many fans are simply blind to it - while laughing at, say, the following of Justin Bieber on one side, they turn to unknowingly find themselves in the exact same sort of hole! It's confounding to think that there's so much hype and expectation for this series.

I'm just tired.  I want this mediocre cash cow to die, and it cannot die fast enough.

Because all the while, the Japanese companies are laughing all the way to the bank as they milk it for all it's worth.

Correction: Milking us for all it's worth.