Sister Princess: Volume 1 — Oh, Brother! (review)

It should hardly come as a surprise that the Japanese continue to find new ways to use animation to be both creepy and sexist. Here, a teenaged boy, Wataru, gets shanghaied to a mysterious, remote island, where thirteen obsequious girls who claim to be his sisters dote on him night and day. The four half-hour episodes see Wataru exploring his new home — did I mention it’s called “Promised Island”? — and lamenting his inability to escape the slave army of caricatures of females — from the Naughty Schoolgirl to the Spunky Tomboy to the Submissive Geisha — waiting on him hand and foot. It’s like The Prisoner, only icky and incomprehensible except as a bizarre adolescent male sexual fantasy.