Imouto

　The sudden arrival on DLsite of the massive work “Deatte 4 Kounen de Gattai” felt beautiful to me—its structure was so meticulously built, as if it had been delicately reverse-engineered from a single question: how do you reach an ending where a gross otaku is loved by a girl?

　To me, it felt like art—my own fixation and twisted need to be affirmed by a girl, and the fear of that affirmation having “no reason,” sublimated through an SF premise.

　I’ve probably played more bishoujo games than most people. But I’ve never once accepted the idea of being “loved unconditionally by the heroine.” If anything, I’ve always been drawn to what makes it convincing—how a pathetic, indecisive protagonist manages to connect with the opposite sex at all, and the cleverness of scenario and system that gets you there.

　That said, I also love Alicesoft titles with that Bastard!!-like worldview, where a lust-soaked, larger-than-life man barrels forward with a big GAHAHA and collects women like it’s nothing.

　But because I can’t believe—even for a second—that someone could love me, I lose my immersion. I can’t empathize.

　And so, after a shut-in, idiot adolescent who loved bishoujo games struggled and searched, a single “natural” shape for unconditional affirmation of an otaku rose to the surface:

　a little sister.

　After that, middle-school me ended up living with an imaginary little sister in a dim room. Sometimes it was the three of us—my mother coming home late at night, and the two of us.

　For someone like me—an only child—this “blood bond” I could never reach was an irresistibly beautiful bond.

That setup—“two people in a dim room lit only by the pale glow of a monitor: an unemployed, gross-otaku big brother and a little sister who loves her big brother”—is just too perfect. It’s so good that I end up crying during totally ordinary scenes in Onimai.

I kept repeating the same routine for ages: taking sleeping pills, drifting in that drowsy half-sleep, and falling asleep with episode 2 of Onimai playing. No exaggeration—I’ve watched episode 2 more than fifty times.Over and over, I keep watching that closed little world: just Onii-chan and Mihari, with a tiny bit of the neighborhood around them—a sealed-off sibling universe.

Episode 2 of Onimai is an animation with an extremely narrow cast and setting: Onii-chan, a little sister who adores him, and basically nothing beyond their home and its immediate surroundings. It’s cramped and perverse—and precisely because of that, there’s no noise, no impurities. You can loop it endlessly and do nothing but savor “siblings.” I’m grateful to the staff who created such a perfect piece of animation.

　With that history, for example, I recently developed an intense obsession and attachment to episode 2 of Onimai. From episode 3 onward, the story naturally expands—the cast increases, and “big brother” starts going outside. And that made me understand: this relationship shines because it’s a brief sparkle. A moment that can’t last.

　So in my current work, I decided to depict a little sister.

　If I’m finally freed from every restraint—if I’m allowed to do whatever I want—then of course, in my world, it ends up coming back to “imouto.”

　This is Imouto-chan that Maruino-sensei, who’s in charge of our UI design, drew as a little break. Cute, isn’t she?