Another summer show I’m really enjoying that’s pretty close to locking down a spot in the rotation. Uchi no Otouto-domo ga Sumimasen is one of the best shoujo of the past several seasons for me. Pretty light in genre tropes and very heartfelt. I think the family dynamics are on-point and the way the various characters deal with these developments in their lives quite believable. But as ever, slice of life shows about boys that aren’t sexualized for the Ikebukuro market tend to get almost no attention from English-speaking audiences.

This whole business of leaving the kids alone so soon after the parents remarried is an interesting turn. I’m of the view that Dad wasn’t seriously suggesting anything would happen – that would be a shocking lack of trust in his son, even if Gen and Ito are both 16 or 17. I think he was more just generally aghast at the idea of a girl being in the company of four boys – three teens – she barely knows. But Ito can take care of herself, more or less. And Gen is if anything too responsible for a kid his age.

Then we have Rui. Right from the start I though the way Rui glomped onto Ito was totally realistic. It’s easy to forget because he’s freaking huge for a third-grader, but he’s only like 9 or even 8 – he’s a baby. As Gen said, Rui is the one who never knew a “normal” family life. Saho is technically now his mother, but Ito is the one who spends time with him and the one he can relate to. Is she spoiling him, as Gen charges? Sure – but I defy anyone in her position not to spoil a kid in his. And likewise very believable is the way he starts to test the boundaries here, see how much he can get away with. He’s making up for lost time, in a sense.

Rui noting that walking hand in hand with Gen and Ito at the supermarket was like being with parents was very telling. That’s a natural reaction and a red flag at the same time, and there’s a balance in dealing with this that the two of them haven’t worked out yet. Ito also hasn’t worked out the balance between her new home life and her new school – which is reflected in her test scores being as bad as Rui’s. She’s desperate to avoid Gen finding out she has to re-take her midterms, but Raku figures it out and immediately moves in to influence the situation.

Raku is the least developed brother (apart from the hikikomori, and even in his case we know that about him), a bit of a mystery man. But he doesn’t have anything sinister in mind here – more, he likes the idea that he can help Ito in a way Gen can’t. Gen naturally gets jealous of Ito spending so much time with another brother not him, but he’s true to his inner tsundere. In the end he thanks Raku for being there for Ito and accepts that he can’t always be the one to do that.

There are still a number of ways all this can go, not all of them welcome ones. But at this point I have a fair amount of faith in Please Excuse My Younger Brothers – its instincts seem to be correct most of the time. It’s earned a fair amount of credit with me already. I think the next step needs to be addressing the Syu situation head-on. It’s obviously going to happen sooner or later and for authenticity purposes sooner is better – the status quo with him really shouldn’t be acceptable to anyone in the family.