Ore no Imouto ga Konnani Kawaii Wake ga Nai - Episode 2

For all of the expectations bandied around before it began that this show would be some kind of shameful disaster, the first episode of Ore no Imouto ga Konnani Kawaii Wake ga Nai actually proved to be amongst the better new season shows I've watched thus far.  The next question is, of course, whether it has the legs to keep its premise running over the course of the entire series.

In case you missed the subtext in Kirino's please to her brother to help her with "life counselling" on account of her secret life as a closet otaku, the opening scenes of this second episode hits her main problem home immediately - her inability to talk about that particular passion in front of her school friends while others within the same class can do so with abandon is leaving her feeling pretty lonely.  It doesn't exactly help that her brother is proving to be worse than useless when it comes to playing the game she lent him last time around, meaning she has absolutely nobody to talk to about her interests.

That said, Kyou comes up with a perfectly reasonable solution to her problem - why not join some like-minded online communities and make friends that way?  Of course, he failed to mention that there are some wonderful people online who will happily talk about anime at any time of the day... but I digress.  Kirino takes her brother's advice and signs up to just such a community for otaku girls, and next thing we know she's invited as part of a real-life meetup between some of its members.

Of course, meeting a bunch of like-minded people in real-life is one thing, but openly discussing your interests with them is still pretty tricky at first as Kirino discovers.  It's only once she's invited to an after-party meeting with the meet-up organiser Saori and the only other girl who didn't talk to anyone during the meet, a girl who insists on only being known by her online handle of "Kuroneko" - next thing we know, Kirino is arguing vehemently with this girl over the virtues over their respective favourite shows, which is ironically a rather hefty chunk of progress between the two of them.  So, all's well that ends well, and Kyou's turn at helping out his sister is surely over, right?...

From a solid first episode, Ore no Imouto ga Konnani Kawaii Wake ga Nai's second instalment proved to be even better still, throwing in some pretty decent comedy to mix into what could arguably be called a Genshiken-lite plot.  The brother-sister relationship between Kyou and Kirino remains nicely balanced between sibling love and hatred, veering between the two as required, while Kirino's difficulty in both finding like-minded people and making friends with them reverberates pretty strongly with my own experiences, and I'm sure I'm not the only one.  Throw in an amusing outright argument with the only other girl Kirino does manage to talk to properly, and you have yourself a decent episode.  Overall then, this series is truly proving that you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, and thus far it's looking good as one of the most entertaining shows of the autumn if it keeps up this level of quality.