After Oreimo started the fall incest season off, Yosuga no Sora brings us a twist on the new omnipresent (along with shota traps) anime incest craze – twincest. This one is based on an eroge (and later manga) and vibe-wise felt like equal parts Ef: A Tale of Memories, Clannad and True Tears.
It’s an odd duck, this one. Superb production values from Feel, a production company with which I’m not familiar and for whom this adaptation appears to be their first lead production. Director is fairly heavyweight, Takeo Takhashi, who worked on Spice & Wolf & Rozen Maiden. We have a fairly heavyweight cast too, led by Hiro Shimono – apparently tired of playing characters named Hiro and switching to Haru. While most of the ep has a soft, reflective feel it’s undeniably adult – featuring incest, female masturbation, yuri, and nudity for starters.
Thing is, despite all that it doesn’t play as a hentai – rather, it feels like a thoughtful and sad romance where the two leads happen to be twins. There’s an obvious harem development too, with several more girls covering all the anime stereotypes. Haru, the male lead, seems like a pretty nice and normal teenage kid. His twin, Sora, is OTOH something of a pill – morose, childish and maybe even a hikkomori. Mind you she has reason to be a little off her game, as she and Haru’s parents have died in some sort of tragic accident.
Joining a parade of fall shows about which I feel this way, I have very little idea where this going after the first episode. I definitely enjoyed the direction – storytelling was excellent and the slow build throughout the ep was very effective. Also loved the omake with Motoka and the ED was great. But what is this going to be – a serious hentai, a harem romance where the incest is downplayed? I don’t know if we’re getting “Ef” or “Clannad” or something that could degrade into melodrama like “Footprints in the Sand”, or dissolve into a nice boat ending like “School Days”. I don’t think either of those last two possibilities is likely but I’m not confident assuming anything at this point.
