Domestic Girlfriend

A little behind, I know, but I only just recently got around to watching Domestic Girlfriend. It's not the sort of thing I would normally give time to, but when I heard the overall premise, it was just too jumbled up for me not to be interested. It focuses on tropes I don't normally enjoy, and honestly have actively avoided at multiple times in my life. Here though, we have things presented so differently from most other anime, that while frustrating, it was refreshing to see some manner of realism in such a taboo situation.

At its core, Domestic Girlfriend is another take on the incest genre. Rather than the thinly veiled concept that because they just so happen to be step siblings it's perfectly fine to have a sexual relationship while they've already been living together, we see the change in familial status happen. At the beginning of the anime, our protagonist has a crush on a teacher at his school. Knowing that this is wrong, he tries sleeping with someone else, in an attempt to distract his feelings. As an emotionally immature boy though, this doesn't work, and he winds up trying a second time, now with a girl who grabs him from a social outing, wanting to finally lose her own virginity.

Soon after this happens, we find out the father has been seeing someone new, and that they are going to be moving into a new home with her, and both of her daughters. The daughters of course wind up being not only the teacher, but also the girl who grabbed him away at the party. Which creates the awkward situation of now living with someone he's been sexual with, as well as someone he is attracted to, while redefining their relationships. The first half of the anime I find incredibly refreshing with how they actually try to include the conflict of right and wrong, as well as trying to reframe how the characters see each other to what should be appropriate.

The second half however, we see the frustrating turn to where the characters stop caring about the fact that they're now legally related, and both girls wind up being in love with the with protagonist. We ignore the idea that maybe people living together might form a familial connection which can also be a form of love, and instead go immediately to romantic infatuation. The teacher winds up moving out of the house, and practically abandoning her family to try something with her now brother. This lasts about a week, before the staff at school finds out, and her career is nearly destroyed. She winds up needing to move away, no longer with the help of any family, and having to completely avoid our protagonist, just so she can avoid having her entire life destroyed, which is something she knew would happen when accepting the risk.

At the same time, the younger sister leaves hints of her own feelings, being upset with the older sister for keeping her from their step brother, and practically jumps on him the next day to admit her own love, and saying that they should try instead, because they'll be able to keep it a secret better. Rather than mourning essentially losing her older sister, she then tries to create nearly the same situation, with the same boy, swearing that it'll be different with her. I found this point in the anime beyond irritating, because it just showed the immaturity of the characters as a whole, and lack of responsibility and morals on everyone's part.

I almost wish that we were left on more of a cliffhanger with this series. That the entire situation with the younger sister never occurred, and the series just ended at the conflict of the older sister moving away. It would create a chance to hope for the characters to learn from their mistakes, and process everything that happened, instead of impulsively relying on the trauma bonding of a sibling being forced to move away.

Should you be looking for something different, and enjoy more drama in your anime, this might be worth a try. If like me you tend to avoid incest as a genre, you may want to avoid it, or at least not watch all the way through.

This anime was so close to being good. It was so close to calling out an entire genre on it's toxicity, but wound up being just another contribution.