Genki Life Magazine 35 - Spring 2019

ero-kawaii and energetic moe girls, and is just plain fun and
enjoyable in general. And as a result, what you have is a thoroughly
entertaining anime despite everything. Yes, that is in
fact all that’s needed, as shocking as that might be for some
people to believe.
In short, Eromanga-sensei follows the lives of a high school
light novel author named Izumi Masamune and his hikikomori
little sister Sagiri, who somewhat secretly works as an erotic
illustrator for his novels amongst other things under the pen
name “Eromanga-sensei.” The story follows both their struggles
with their respective jobs as well as their relationship with
each other as step siblings. There are also a number of other
girls involved in one way or another, primarily the eccentric
Elf Yamada who is also a top-selling light novel author, as well
as the even more successful Senju Muramasa who on top of
being an author is also Masamune’s biggest fan. There’s also
Sagiri’s pushy classmate Megumi Jinno who keeps trying to
find ways to convince Sagiri to leave her room and go to school
for once. It’s a simple setup overall, but it serves as an easy way
to get the protagonist and the various girls intimately involved
with each other on both a personal and professional level,
which is a good thing since the main selling point of Eromangasensei
is the characters’ interactions with each other.
As you can probably tell, it is all quite similar to Oreimo
in not just the incestuous themes but the type of chemistry
between the main characters and the side characters
as well. And as it happens, they generally fulfill somewhat
similar roles too. Just like Kirino, Sagiri is here the otaku
imouto with a rather perverted hobby who is also quite
obviously in love with her Onii-chan. In terms of personality
though, they’re very different from each other. Whereas
Kirino was an outgoing honors student and a rather extreme
tsundere, Sagiri is shy, reclusive and more of a dandere than
anything, and she gets embarrassed easily whenever she’s
not hiding behind the mask of her online Eromanga-sensei
persona. But perhaps most importantly, just like Kirino,
Sagiri is incredibly sexy. The vast majority of the show’s fan
service is centered on her in the form of various suggestive
shots of her inside her room, but it’s done in a rather smooth
and natural way so it doesn’t feel out of place. It’s the type
of eroticism which greatly enhances an anime’s enjoyment
value in my mind; the kind that makes you repeatedly pause
the video to rape the screenshot button for academic purposes.
I appreciate it quite a lot. It’s no wonder that Sagiri
has already been crowned the clear ero-fanart queen of the
season by the Japanese portion of the internet, as is quite
Masamune
Izumi
Tomoe
Takasago
Megumi
Jinno
Sagiri
Izumi
Elf
Yamada
Muramasa
Senju
Genki Life Magazine • Spring 2019
23