Sister ♥ brother is necessary but not sufficient.

OMGSISCONSOWRONG reaction is the sufficient condition.

Loli, goth, meido etc etc. are neither necessary nor sufficient conditions for Stripey’s Shocking Siscon OH THE DORAMAZ; rather they are Moé Force Multipliers.

When Brother x Sister fall in love and everyone in the cast (including themselves) reacts: HO HUM, move along please nothing to see here or SO HAWT MOAR POWAH TO U, then it fails Tanuki Criteria. What is ideal for Stripeysian gratification is something along the lines of screamy Sakura Yoshino: ‘YOU CAN’T! YOU’RE BROTHER AND SISTER!!!!!!!111one NEMU MUST DIE!!!” But I suppose mild embarrassment and teasing is also fine as long as the girl is cute.

P.S. Anyway the hetero siscon in KimiAru is for a big breasted oneesan rather than a loli imouto.

©2012 hontou ni sou omou?. All Rights Reserved.

Just a note this episode to record the minor yuri occurence, Mako asks Junichi to be her boyfriend so as to fend off a really aggressive junior. Who is a girl. I just had to laugh when Junichi replied: “Just go out with her! Only girls will ask you out anyway. It could your once-in-a-lifetime chance at happiness!” Ordinarily it would be extremely hurtful but it was clear he didn’t mean it as he also said that she should get a real bf instead. And actually Mako’s admirer has been admiring her since DC 10! (Above screencap.)

Junichi plays along after Mako bribes him with seafood yakisoba pan. Ah, the route to a man’s agreement – good food. Or beer. =P The girl (who’s her name?) stalks them, probably to verify if they are really dating. Nemu and Sakura’s jealousy, before they are told of the act, is fun. We also see a girlier side to Mako most obviously when she was frightened by the horror show. The plan works and the girl backs off after wishing them happiness together. It was a tad predictable that Mako was already attracted to Junichi and used this fake relationship to try and get closer, almost confessing to him at the end. I’m rather glad that she didn’t.

Mako’s plan had a big loophole that was not really addressed. That is, after the girl backs off, she and Junichi will break up. So what’s stopping the girl from coming back? Going out with Junichi may mean that she likes guys but that doesn’t preclude the girl from hoping she might be bi or has been off by the previous ‘failed’ relationship. Ok, maybe it was addressed when Mako declared that she’d go back to Junichi again if she needed another fake boyfriend. I just thought it would have been more convincing that the girl saw through the fake relationship but realised that Mako really was attracted to Junichi. But that’s just me.

©2012 hontou ni sou omou?. All Rights Reserved.

In celebration of Ender’s remarks on the evolution of anime bloggers’ writing styles, particularly the part about “there are some things that are reliable standbys, like … Stripey’s penchant for…. sis-con?” , I’ve attached an article from the Economist which gives a scientific basis for Nemu’s penchant for using her Nii-san’s old shirts as pajamas. Junichi acquiesces to Nemu’s continuation of this practice and asks, “You wash the shirts [before using them as pajamas], right?” “Yeah… but they still smell like you, Nii-san,” comes the embarrassed reply. No need to thank me, Stripey ole pal.

Archived copy of above-mentioned Hontou ni taihen desu entries.

Friday, November 28, 2003. Da Capo ep 10-14: Nemu is sooooooooo sweeeet!. She buys new shirts for her Onii-san when they are worn out and she wears those worn out shirts as her pyjamas (Ep 14). She’s got some pretty coy reasons doing so too….. something about worn out shirts being comfy and the shirts having the scent of her Onii-san…….aarrrgggghhhh so…so… incestuous? You know if you got the hots for him, you should stop calling him Onii-san and draw the line somewhere. You are giving a whole generation of young Japanese boys (mostly anyway) funny ideas about their cute sisters. *Shudder* Bro/Sis-con aside, Nemu’s fragrance of girlish charm permeates the series, brought out by her jealous moments, thoughtful moments, sensitive moments etc etc. All those “let’s pretend to be lovers, Yoriko-san no tameni” in ep 11 also kept me riveted. I was ready to smash my LCD screen (with a head butt) if our Onii-san had kissed his ‘imouto’. Well, turns out, it was not meant to be but I reckon the day is not far off. I need to start watching Da Capo on someone else’s computer. posted by Stripey at 12:59 AM

Monday, December 01, 2003. Da Capo Ep 15-20: My head is a bloody mess and my LCD screen is wrecked too… They went beyond the kiss… Although they didn’t play out the scenes after Nemu hugged her Onii-san and said “I want to be loved as a woman” But I can imagine them all… (All the cleaning/laundry/cooking scenes that follows immediately after… ahhhh, how a man shows love.) [snip] Takayuki can learn a thing or two from Jyunichi (Mr Onii-san himself). Both Sakura and Nemu are so totally devoted to their Onii-san and their fierce determination to have him really shows. I really like the jealous/cat-fighting Nemu and Sakura. It only go to show that they are only human, making it so much easier to empathise with them.

However, this time round, Jyunichi and Nemu feels more wrong than Karen/Miina/Maiku (Onegai Twins). Yeah you may not be related by blood like Maiku-tachi but Nemu is still effectively your sister in every other sense of the word. I can’t imagine what Dad is going to say….. posted by Stripey at 1:27 PM

Archive copy of the above-mentioned article:

The Economist 2005-07-09 | Science and technology > Human behaviour
The smell of power: Odour and mating preferences

What’s a girl to do when faced with the choice between a powerful action man who has great DNA but is likely to love her and leave her, and a carpet-and-slippers kind of bloke who will hang around and bring up the kids but may not be Mr Right in the genes department? Well, ideally, she should fool the latter into bringing up the former’s children. And a piece of evidence that this is exactly what happens emerged this week from a research group led by Jan Havlicek of Charles University, Prague.

Dr Havlicek and his colleagues were interested in discovering whether women are attracted by the smell of dominant men. A preference for the scent of dominants has been found in the females of other species, and scent is known to be important in attraction between the human sexes in other contexts, such as avoiding inbreeding. The attractiveness of body odour is also correlated with the attractiveness of the body it came from, even when presented separately from that body. But whether the odour of power—or, at least, of powerfulness—is attractive to women had not been established.

Deciding who is and is not a dominant male is the first question, of course. To do this, the researchers turned to one of the world’s most widely used experimental animals, the hard-up male student. Their subjects were asked to rate such things as their tendency to correct others, to want to control conversations, and to surpass others’ accomplishments, in a questionnaire designed to assess their dominance. In their paper in Biology Letters the researchers laconically observe that dominance in this questionnaire “corresponds to the scale ‘Narcissism’ in the widely used California psychological inventory”.

After baring their all in this manner, the volunteers had to wear cotton pads under their armpits for 24 hours to collect the sweat therefrom, and also had to lay off curries, beer, cigarettes and similar delights of student life that might affect the smell of their sweat. Surprisingly, given these constraints, the researchers managed to persuade 48 men to volunteer.

Compared with this, the female volunteers had it easy. They had to smell the pads and rate them for “intensity”, “sexiness” and “masculinity”. Okay, perhaps not that easy. They also had to vouchsafe whether they were single or in an on-going relationship with a man, and to submit to a saliva test that would show the phase of their menstrual cycle.

The upshot of the trial was that women did, indeed, find the odour of dominants sexier than that of wimps—but only in special circumstances. These circumstances were first that the woman was already in a relationship and second that she was in the most fertile phase of her cycle. In other words, dominant males’ scent was only more attractive at the point where a woman could both conceive and cuckold her mate. Which, given previous studies that show dominant men are indeed more likely than others to leave a woman holding the baby, makes perfect sense.

[Link to the academic paper.]

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