With the beautiful and respectful Ayase showing a drastically different side of her and Kyousuke worrying about her friendship with Kirino ending more than she was, I would’ve thought that receiving a swift kick to the groin was a good sign for Kyousuke to start rethinking why he’s going to such lengths for his little sister. However, it looks like his new-found opportunity to finally act like an older brother knows no bounds, as he not only goes out of his way to get them to make up, but takes another bullet for Kirino by degrading his image further. First his father, and now the one girl who seemed to have an actual interest in him. At some point, Kyousuke’s really got to start asking him why he keeps covering for Kirino and won’t let her learn from her own mistakes. If it’s to get her to show some appreciation towards him as an older brother again, I’m not so sure the “return in investment” is worth it with our violent closet otaku.

Seeing as Kirino hasn’t given Kyousuke any further indication that she’s grateful for everything he’s doing for her, I get the feeling that the story’s saving that up for a much bigger moment in a later episode. I can just picture it now. Kirino will be all teary-eyed in Kyousuke’s arms and thanking him for everything he’s done for her and finally start respecting him as an older brother. Okay maybe not quite, but at least to the point that Kyousuke feels like he hasn’t completely wasted his time by trying to improve his sibling relationship. As for Ayase, she’s probably a prime example of what happens when someone gets too absorbed into everything the mass media feeds them and allows it to dictate her lifestyle more than she realizes. It’s kind of ironic how she was scrutinizing Kirino’s games as the cause of a lot of heinous crimes, when she looked pretty psychotic herself based on what she heard on the news about them being a bad influence.

Granted, Ayase looks like she has a more fundamental problem with her mindset that caused her to lose it upon discovering Kirino’s secret hobby, possibly some level of insecurity over losing her friend to the “evil” world of eroge. The park scene at the end where she admitted that she wanted to make up with Kirino yet couldn’t overlook her love for cute little girls seemed to suggest as much, which I probably would’ve been more understanding towards if she had some sort of traumatic experience where another friend or a family member degenerated before her very eyes. Of course, the other possibility is that she’s more upset about how Kirino lied and kept it a secret from her all this time, which works for me since it’s a page right out of Densha Otoko, albeit the yuri version.

Whatever the case, it was interesting hearing how Hayama Saori voiced that other side to Ayase, as well as seeing Kirino weep a few tears of frustration when Kyousuke wouldn’t let his “little sister personality improvement project” go to waste. I gather that was supposed to be a moment where viewers were supposed to feel the urge to reach out and help Kirino, but I was still on the fence about it when the kick to the groin was followed up by a lot of pillow whacks over Kyousuke’s head. Aside from that, the humor was less prominent, but came through pretty nicely when Kyousuke went to his father for advice and pulled out another last resort to salvage the situation when Kirino gave him the evil eye to do something. The rational side of me says that Kyousuke really needs to get some more friends and stop hanging out with his sister, but the anime viewer side of me feels he should keep going out on a limb for her to self-degrading results. In the latter case, the next “Thanks Bro” is still long overdue.