What’s your pathetic excuse for not watching this anime? Some feeble fobbing off, declaring it to be crappy incest trash wish fulfilment? That the main character is a complete potato-kun of no personality and the girls are just a parade of moeblobs? That you are sick of trashy light novel adaptations with ridiculously long titles with ‘imouto’ in them? These may all be true, but in reality you’re just scared. You are scared of discovering the truth. The greatest mystery of our time. The kindred conundrum of our era. The relation riddle. The sibling stumper.
WHO
IS
IMOUTO?
Before we ask the burning question the world needs answers to, we must first examine the origin case. Namely our lead male character potato-kun, a man so lacking in any sort of drive or emotion or personality that it physically hurts him to think. So we are looking for a female character with just as little personality and independence as he does.
This is where the intrigue thickens, as essentially every single female character introduced in the first episode fulfills this requirement. Which one of them is it? Is it the black-haired girl who calls her breasts cream puffs and wants to bone the main character? Is it the angry little girl with pokey twintails who wants to bone the main character. Is it the girl who actually calls herself his imouto but is possibly lying and is dressed up as a witch or possibly Nagato from Haruhi Suzumiya and wants to bone the main character? At first glance the puzzle appears to have very few pieces. The longer I analyse it though, the more difficult it becomes. It’s simplicity is exactly the thing that makes it so complex.
Scientists at SERN CERN have finally discovered the Higgs Boson, the second-last great mystery eluding science for the past few decades. Perhaps they can now attempt a real challenge. They have the advantage of the Large Hadron Collider. If we take these dense particles (and let’s face it, these girls are pretty darn dense) and collide them together at high speeds, the resulting debris may include a brand new IM0 uT0 particle that we’ve been desperately searching for.
Someone must continue this quest. The rest of the earth’s population may give up. They may all accept that this will forever be the unanswerable question. But not me. I shall remain steadfast in my research. The answer will show itself. Einstein once said that insanity is to keep watching the same incest show and expecting different results. If that is the case, then call me insane, for I must know! I must discover once and for all
WHO
IS
IMOUTO?
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34 Comments
The deconstruction of the siscon genre.
I feckin love you mate.
Scamp, what happened to your complaints about wish fulfillment and pandering? This had it ALL.
There was one thing it didn’t have. There was no answer to The Question.
WHO
IS
IMOUTO?
Sorry for the spoilers scamp, but the imouto IS Higgs Boson. It’s that kinda twist ending you won’t see in anywhere other than this masterconundrum.
Imoutos give mass to everything
“What’s your pathetic excuse for not watching this anime?”
WHAT anime ? Are you taking points from Seiha in not bothering to list the name of the anime you are talking about ? I have no idea, i havent seen every 1st episode yet.
Clearly you are the man
Kono Naka ni Hitori Imouto ga Iru
i will never remember this title again.
From now on, every convention I go to that has someone cosplaying as the token boring male from To-Love-Ru or Asobi ni Ikuyo or R-15 or Mayo Chiki, I’m going to point at him and declare “I found Potato-kun!”
10/10. Anime of the Season, nay, Anime of the Year. Flawless.
I watched it.
This will be good.
My theory: They’re ALL imouto!
We are all imouto
He is imouto!
There’s an AC/DC parody in there somewhere…
you is imouto!
YOU WA IMOUTO
Am I really that obvious?
Scamp you’ve truly brought up the greatest scientific question that man should solve. “Who is Imouto” Every government power should spend ever dollar to fund to solve this question. Who is Imouto.. who is the imouto?! This is would be the greatest scientific exploit that the world should pursue sense the race to make it to the moon. We should all work towards this. Thank you scamp.. Thank you.. you are truly a powerful and innovative mind.
Holy shit this was an excellent post!
Sidenote to scamp – Do you have an imouto ?
Yes he does, and she happens to be more sucessful. Their mother frequently quesses scamp as to why he is not successful like his sister.
He also has an older brother, who is a doctor.
For you see scamp is Jewish-Irish-Asain.
Of course, whilst the Higgs Boson has finally been discovered, the lesser known particle, the Imouto quark, continues to evade scientists, if not only for the fact they aren’t looking for it. Believed to be roughly 2.3 proton masses and of a neutral charge (unless it’s a tsundere Imouto boson, in which case it looks like it has a -1 charge but really has a +1 charge). It’s what makes Imoutos what they are, without them they would simply be “siblings”.
Of course I’m hopeful for any discovery made in the next few years regarding this.
I think you’re approaching this challenge from completely the wrong perspective. I don’t think IMOUTO is necessarily a scientific concept to be inserted in one of those highfaluting, god-destroying Super Collidermajigz, but rather as something deeply spiritual. IMOUTO lays in a place denser than mere particle physics; I’m talking the realm of the mind! Truly this is the classic ‘man of science, man of faith’ debate given a modern twist!
The answer is simple. We need to cast off the shackles of our so-called learning, & truly look deep inside ourselves, past the external trappings of tsun-tsun, of clumsy meganekkos & loli-scientists. It is only then that we shall find our Eden, our Shangri-la, our IMOUTO!
Okay, now you’re just being silly.
Imouto is the sled
“Large Hadron Collider”
Would it have killed you to make the typo? Such a wasted opportunity.
Obviously they all are.
Every girl at that school is his imouto
He takes after his father, and since he already has a harem, surely his father had a large harem, therefore many children. Ofc, it was just so he had only one male child, and the rest being female.
Potato-man has nowhere to run. All girls at that school are his imouto. No matter what he does, he will be marrying his imouto.
The plot twist is that he’s an only child and all the other girls are androids.
I believe that ‘Imouto’ is a product of Potato-kun’s poor lonely imagination – after all, what self respecting high school boy does not have an Imouto to wake him with cries of ‘onii-chan, wake up! You’ll be late!’? Potato-kun is clearly so starved of Imouto affection that he has deluded himself into believing this new school holds the Imouto of his dreams!
Poor Potato-kun, clearly that Traumatic Accident in his past has given him a split personality that acts as the desired Imouto as well as convenient amnesia – so tragic.
Split-nonexistent-personality. Only in anime.
Potato-kun & Spud-kun!
When @solidad told me this on the phone, I did not believe. Then I saw this post (although didn’t read them all) .
The best. Question. I’ve heard. Ever. In my life.
2 Trackbacks
[...] So yeah, this is pretty much a “Which of these 5 girls is my sister?” plot, as the official english title, “Who is ‘Imouto’?” (seriously) already indicates. Despite that and despite some truly truly godawful twists, this show actually isn’t half bad. Sometimes it’s bad enough to be good and sometimes it’s just decent. So far, the main character isn’t the most competent one but he’s also not as dumb as most other protagonists. The girls are also rather likeable despite being blatant stereotypes and always having red cheeks which reminds me of OreImo, the worst anime ever. Animation is also above average. So yeah, it’s – for all the wrong and all the right reasons – somewhat entertaining and not a pain to watch. Just don’t expect anything good and you’re safe. As a blogger, you certainly can’t miss this show: By now, it’s already become the laughing stock of the english ‘sphere due to Scamp’s efforts. [...]
[...] Scamp implores “Who is Imouto?.” I will go one further and ask you, “Why is [...]