Warning: May contain rage, sarcasm and some adult words.
Let’s make one thing clear - it’s an incest anime. If the idea of incest genre even slightly makes you sick, stay away from this anime. It’s a hardcore incest between 100% blood-related twins not that cheery “we’re not related by blood” ecchi comedy that Kiss x sis was. Furthermore, it’s an ecchi (borderline hentai), harem, romance drama. So right off the bat, the genres suggest that it’s either gonna be an unusual, interesting incest romance anime with harem in it or a generic, shitty, boring harem anime with incest in it. Unfortunately, it’s the latter.
Story: 2 (Generic, dumb, predictable)
The story opens with our main characters arriving to a countryside town to proceed with their lives after the loss of their parents. The brother then proceeds with his life by looking after his sickly sister, attending high-school and fucking every girl in the town. Oh sorry, too blunt for you? Well, the anime is not subtle in any way so why should I be? The story which could have been an interesting and original aspect of the anime, is actually one of the weakest points. It hits every single harem cliché. (Including the mandatory beach episode >.>) Would it kill anyone to actually attempt to make an original harem anime? It’s not that difficult, just chop off the protagonist’s head or something… (<- obscure reference)
Honestly, it is hard to describe the story because there practically was none up until the last couple of episodes. The majority of the episodes is just a quick look at other girls’ panties, err I mean, paths before proceeding with the incest theme.
Animation: 7 (Good)
It’s an anime made in 2010 so naturally it looks good. Nothing amazing or anything but it’s not bad either. Good character designs, colorful backgrounds and so on. What annoys me is that the anime has genially good art that it doesn’t deserve. People put their time into animating a good looking anime that gets hugely let down by the fact that its story and characters are shit.
Sound: 7 (Good)
Nothing lacks quality but nor does anything particularly stand out. The voice acting and the soundtrack were good but once again, just like the animation department, sound department gets hugely let down by the crap story and characters.
I have a complaint about a specific violin/piano melody that seemed to be a bit overused. And I don’t mean overused in an obnoxious way, I mean overused as if the staff went: “Oh hey, this scene is [attempting to be] serious so let’s put our sad track there.” I remember watching a sad drama scene and the violin track started playing. I realized that I (the viewer) was supposed to feel sad and compassionate for the emotions the characters were going through. Well, too bad I didn’t give a shit about the abysmal characters, thus soundtrack made the scenes look over dramatic. And even though the scene was dramatic, you can’t put clowns in drama, play a sad tune and expect the viewer take it seriously.
Characters: 2 (horrible)
So we’ve come to the arguably worst aspect of the anime. If you create a harem anime that fails to deliver anything original in the story department to make it stand out in the huge crowd, you better make sure that the characters are interesting or at least - likeable. Yosuga no Sora utterly fails at both of these things.
Personally, I HATED both of the twins. The brother which is the series protagonist is a generic harem protagonist stereotype (the only difference being him digging his sister). Aside from the moments when he had a mental breakdown or was fucking the entire female teenage population of the town without condoms, he was a rather normal character. Despite being attracted to his sister, he was reluctant to engage in any intimate relationship with her and the idea incest and society’s general attitude towards it was stressful and emotionally challenging for him… Of course, after he slept with his sister regardless, he then proceeded to go multiple phases of emotionally unstable prick.
The sister was abysmal since the beginning. Demanding, selfish, unsocial, sickly, selfish, unhappy, selfish asshole that had a huge crush on her brother and no regards to morals or society’s possible reaction to their incestuous relationship. Did I mention that she was selfish?
And do I even have to mention the secondary characters or may I assume that you’ve seen any other harem anime by now? They’re your typical characters – the protagonist’s best friend that is a pervert and a class-clown, class president, childhood friend with glasses and big tits and so forth. That being said, these generic harem character cut-outs were at least likeable or rather they were so generic there was no reason to hate them unlike the main two characters. Also, a special mention to a comic relief character – a maid named Motoka who had her own short comedy segment at the end of each episode featuring cute chibi style animation.
Overall: 3 (Bad)
Yosuga no Sora is a hugely missed opportunity. With the subject of incest it could have been an interesting romance drama about brother and sister’s relationship and the society’s attitude towards them and that relationship. Instead, it focuses too much time to be your generic shitty harem with shoe-horning in as many H-scenes as possible. It attempts to be drama towards the end but at that point, you’re past the point of giving a crap and you know exactly what you’re watching. The only remotely different thing this anime does compared to some other visual novel based anime is the fact that the protagonist sleeps with every girl as opposed to none of them and actually makes a choice at the end.
The overall impression of Yosuga no Sora is very poor. Sure the animation and sound are good but that means absolutely nothing without compelling, well put-together story and engaging characters. The anime barely explores its main subject matter (incest) and even that it does remarkably poorly.
Note: Please understand that I don’t condone incest in any way. However, I do think that it’s a rarely explored territory in a proper, mature fiction. The premise of incest can lead to an interesting character, taboo and society study in any sort of fiction (be it anime, books or movies). Unfortunately, as stated in my review, Yosuga no Sora is none of that.