Summer 2022 First Impressions – My Stepmom’s Daughter is My Ex

Streaming: Crunchyroll

Episodes: 12

Source: Light Novel

Episode Summary: Mizuto and Yume are new to living under the same roof. After the marriage of their parents, they’re stuck navigating the awkwardness of gaining each-other as new stepsiblings. Unfortunately, their situation is made even more awkward by the fact that the two dated while they were in middle school and then broke up at the end of the school year. While they put on a decent front of getting along with one-another for the sake of their parents, behind the scenes it’s all bickering over who’s the actual older sibling and how annoying they find one-another.

After the two start the new school year and enter high school, it isn’t long before their classmates infer their situation. Some boys think that getting close with Mizuto will somehow get them easy access to Yume, but Yume finds that thought so distasteful that she feigns a brother complex to get them out of her hair. Though the two ended their romantic relationship on poor terms, it seems as though there might still be a faint spark left behind. But how much do the two feel like disrupting their new home life to figure things out for sure?

Impressions: There are many times when I’m writing about new anime that my feelings about what I’m watching come in loud-and-clear. Whether it’s the joy at being really impressed with or surprised by something, or the teeth-gritting discomfort that comes along with watching something that plumbs the depths of bad taste, usually there’s some clear emotional signal to build an opinion out of. Occasionally, though, there’s some show that swaggers into the room with a premise meant to confound some of the preconceived notions one might have about particular genres or story beats, and while that experience can be fun at times, it has just as likely a chance of being very frustrating.

The title of this series figuratively screams “stepsister fetish!” and by cramming its leads into a house together with parents who seem oblivious to the implications, one would expect it to go that direction. But that’s where we’re initially fooled because – surprise! – the two have a history and apparently can’t stand one-another. They’re mature enough to make nice in front of their parents, but when they’re alone it’s all competitive pettiness. But wait now… is that sexual tension I sense? Of course, we find out we’ve been doubly-fooled, because the story actually is about the potential of a rekindled romance between these two teens. And now I find myself exhausted from being dragged in two directions at once.

There’s a lot of ways to feel about this type of pseudo-taboo situation. Personally, I don’t believe that two people who didn’t grow up together, whose parents randomly got married, are necessarily doing anything morally wrong by having romantic feelings toward one-another. On the other hand, I also have the type of brain which occasionally behaves in a hardcore binary mode. Once something has the fragrance of impropriety, it’s like my feelings just cut themselves off right then-and-there. For example, learning about the shittiness of various famous people over the past five years or so has definitely been an interesting experience, because it’s caused me not to want to watch once-beloved films or read books I once cherished, and what’s crazy is that I don’t really even feel that bad about it. Likewise – you’re telling me that my ex is now my step-sibling? Well, my feelings about them have flipped to a completely non-sexual mode now, thank you and good night.

So I suppose really what I’m trying to convey is that this is a situation that I just simply can’t comprehend. Or perhaps more accurately, one that doesn’t register as anything other than “weird.” And what I’m left with after waving that out of the way is two lukewarm characters being vaguely irritating to one-another, which isn’t really that compelling to sit through.

Pros: I guess it’s a bit of a miracle that this episode didn’t turn out to be completely uncomfortable. It definitely toes a fine line at a times, but I think what saves it is that, despite their bickering, Yume and Mizuto seem to have at least a little bit of lingering care for the other’s feelings. They’ll go so far as to privately make wagers with one-another over who gets to be the “older” sibling, but they both have enough concern for their public-facing lives to behave most of the time.

Cons: The two leads just aren’t people I want to know more about. There are occasional, extremely brief flashbacks to some moments from their middle school days where they were both dating and also apparently a little bit geeky. I feel like I’d much rather hear more about that than I would watch them as they are now.

Content Warnings: Mild nudity.

Would I Watch More? – The central premise isn’t for me and the bouncing back-and-forth between a lukewarm comedy and stepsibling fetish bait doesn’t help the matter.