Eromanga Sensei

Episode 4

I shouldn't doubt Eromanga Sensei's ability to rise to a challenge. After a rocky start, the series pulls together for a solid finish to this arc. It plays to its strengths and mitigates a lot of its previous issues, delivering its best episode yet.

This episode continues the duel of writing styles between Masamune and Elf that we were left hanging on last week. Elf's eccentric sensibilities are revisited as she cooks a meal for Masamune to glean knowledge of his feelings for her writing. This is in line with her previous portrayals (her naked piano playing embracing her love of nudity) and leads into her reiterating her stance of writing as a hobby. She tops that off with the revelation of one last detail; because she sees her writing as a hobby, she's able to pour that much more effort into it. This is a great point that I'm sure many people can relate to. We've all had things we enjoyed doing, but either through it turning into a job or some other obligation, our interest in it waned. In spite of all her other issues, Elf is admirable in this aspect, as she's managed to hold onto that enjoyment of her talents.

This is strengthened by our first actual peek behind Elf's mask. Letting himself into her house to review their competing manuscripts, Masamune gets to see Elf actually at work, and we see her not a haughty, cosplay-clad writing superstar loaded down with character tics, but a serious, practical, hard-working author. It would have been way too easy for the show to turn this into a panicked, 'you discovered my secret' moment for Elf, but she simply directs Masamune to wait, suits up, and goes right back into character to deliver her own manuscript. Her confidence in her own abilities as well as her delight in playing her other persona up when she can is evident, resulting in a truly unique character whose many facets we can understand having an effect on Masamune. The story's job of characterizing Elf is complete, and she has become a genuinely entertaining presence.

Masamune's aforementioned growth comprises the other major element of this episode. Sagiri confronts him one more time about his visits with Elf (adorably using drawings to communicate her points), and the resulting feud encourages him to assign the motivation Elf has told him he needs to his writing. He's not writing just to beat Elf or keep Sagiri as his illustrator; he's doing it to impress on Sagiri how much he cares for her. This notion introduced last week of needing a 'max-fire motivation' to produce the best content reaches its peak. Before, Masamune was just writing to put food on the table, producing everything he needed regardless of whether he wanted to. Now he's writing the story he wants, because he feels it's the best way to make his feelings clear to someone he cares about.

This ties into Elf's newly rounded-out character as they present their manuscripts to each other. Elf's story is calculated, designed for maximum appeal to her prospective illustrator Eromanga Sensei and produced with her signature quality. Masamune's, however, is a wholehearted love letter to the artist, a deeply personal appeal to make up for any shortcomings he's had with Sagiri. Elf acknowledges the difference in their writing and the growth Masamune has made with this new story. Her manuscript may be better, but his is so especially for Eromanga Sensei that hers doesn't stand a chance.

Elf's concession leads into the episode's finale and the next leg of the story as a whole. Masamune reconciles with Sagiri, explaining the situation only to discover that she was also working on her own growth as a creator to keep working with him. Sagiri's artistic skills have previously been glossed over or used for momentary fanservice, but they're wound back into the central story quite well this week. Her newly intensified relationship with her brother/writer leads her to push for developing her skills alongside Masamune's writing, bringing the siblings' relationship into the novel-making element that's always been the strongest point of the series. For as many issues as Eromanga Sensei has had with its plotlines boiling down to people standing in rooms talking, this last scene of brother and sister learning each others' feelings and resolving to truly start working as a team is an effective one. Everything that lead up to this set up its impact well.

Many of the issues with the characters that had cropped up over these first few episodes are lessened or resolved this week, but the biggest looming one is still present, rearing its ugly head around the end of this episode. The thorny issue of a possible romance between the siblings is still ever-present, exacerbated by Elf calling out Masamune's impassioned manuscript to Sagiri as an actual love letter, and then by Sagiri declaring that she's 'in love with someone' at the end of the episode, with Masamune taking this as a rejection of his less-pure feelings. Granted, anyone with a modicum of knowledge of romance anime tropes can tell that the 'someone' Sagiri is in love is Masamume, but for now, it's yet another time-stall on a central element that this story still seems hesitant to commit to.

Earlier in the episode, Masamune emphatically stated that 'a big brother doesn't think of lewd things with his little sister', and his behavior as an older sibling to Sagiri throughout does seem to be borne out of his desire to be an effective family member for her. However, the show's repeated moments of placing them in fanservicey situations and teasing the ways that Masamune might really care for Sagiri imply that the issue isn't even close to settled. The show's acknowledgement that a familial relationship between its two leads places a romantic situation outside the bounds of acceptability does put it above more shallow sister-love fare (which I still can't believe is enough of a genre that the comparison can even be made). However, if this series does intend to tease out a will they/won't they between a teenage boy and his little sister, that could become the major liability to an anime that has managed to do pretty well for itself up to this point. Eromanga Sensei has managed to succeed as a more universal story for now; it really doesn't need to descend into fetishistic pandering to sell itself anymore.

In any case, this episode of Eromanga Sensei is a high note, which if nothing else shows the skill of the people creating it. It's well-paced, the characters have rounded out to become interesting and likable, and the story has embraced the best parts of itself to become something worth watching so far. It was an uneven road to get to this point, but I sincerely hope that this is the Eromanga Sensei I get to keep watching for the season.

Rating: A-

Eromanga Sensei is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.