Days with my Stepsister is HEAVY

Article at a glance:

• The anime adeptly portrays the awkwardness of suddenly gaining a stepsibling and the resulting social dynamics.
• Saki and Yuuta’s willingness to communicate openly and maturely is a refreshing and well-executed aspect of the writing.
• The incorporation of diary monologues adds depth to the characters, and the animation quality is impressively high for the series.

I’d like to apologize for this anime before I start. I judged it by its name and thought it would be some cheesy stepsiter thing and I couldn’t have been more wrong. Days with My Stepsister deals with some heavy and important issues. I know that the “Stepsister” part will still bother some people. And it bothers me a little as well but I cannot deny that this anime has some amazing writing. So I urge you to watch this anime. There are certain things it does really well.

You wouldn’t think that an anime with a name like “Days with My Stepsister” would be serious but trust me, look past the name. This show is really good, it is not for everyone and you need to be in the right mental space to watch it but it is good. So let’s talk about it.

Why is Days with My Stepsister so good?

So first of all, one thing I love how this anime handles is the awkwardness of the whole situation. Imagine you’ve been a single child your whole life and one of your parents did something so you’re just used to being independent. And now suddenly you’re told that you’ll soon have a sibling. It is awkward and this anime does a great job of showcasing that awkwardness. Saki and Yuuta have no idea of how they should treat each other. They’re not very social either because of stuff I previously mentioned.

And that’s where the other strength of the writing comes into play. Saki and Yuuta are more than willing to talk things out without getting “too close”. That is brilliant, Do you know how rare it is to see characters who are ready to talk things out like grownups in modern media? It is refreshing. Their dynamic is incredibly well done and I am very curious to see how it will progress. And not just their dynamic, both of them as individual characters so far have been very strong as well, especially Saki.

I love how the anime incorporated monologs from the LN in the form of diaries. It adds a nice layer of depth to the characters when we know how they feel about certain events. Continuing the tradition of this season, this anime too has some pretty good animations. Again a few years ago, this standard of animations would only be reserved for decently popular shows.

That is all for now!

Again, don’t judge Days with My Stepsister by its name. It represents things like depression, the effects of a toxic marriage, and the awkwardness of suddenly having two new family members really well. I’ll easily give it an 8/10 based on the 3 episodes that are currently out. That is all for now, let me know what you guys think in the comments, and I will take my leave here. See ya!

Also, check out my thoughts on Too Many Losing Heroines here!