Gimai Seikatsu
Days with My Stepsister

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8.3/10


For my expectations of the typical “We’re not blood-related, so everything is perfectly fine” trope, this manga completely superseded that. Let’s be real here, the step-sibling genre produces some of the worst trash on the market, but this manga actually presents the issue in a palpable and interesting manner from its characters and philosophical approach, which I thought was impossible.

The plot is rather basic with the usual cliches of love interests and characters, however, the thing that makes this manga truly special is the character development that comes from plot points and events. Instead of a full in-your-face type of romantic developments, this manga ... takes a more subtle and slower approach, creating an interesting and likable cast of characters.

All of the characters are no less than well-grounded and moving. Whether it be due to the plot that has been paved to make each of them to get ample screen time or their distinct personalities, they add such a “fun” and interesting element to the story. Instead of taking the usual approach of comedy and brushing aside the whole “incest-not-incest,” this manga takes an introspective approach on the main characters and their morality while battling the consequences that stems for their romantic desires.

Who knew that all it took for a pseudo incest manga to be good is to make the characters feel more real and have genuine responsibilities; either way, this manga does just that while not having one boring point in the manga — there are some forced drama events, however, it’s still enjoyable and wholesome nonetheless.


Reading Rankings (Portnoy inspired + A Huang-Teizan Original)
10 - God’s penmanship
9 - Must-read. Drop everything else.
8 - Instant bookmark
7 - Entertaining
6 - Good to pass time
5 - Why are you reading this?
4 - Bad.
3 - Typical garbage.
2 - My head hurts.
1 - Retirement is a thought.
0 - “Did they even give you a story?!”

This review is for the manga version of Gimai Seikatsu. I read until chapter 7 (which covers whole vol 1 of LN) as per time of writing.

First of all the background is not your typical type of romance and slice of life as it brings two people from broken home family together. The story is slow paced as this is SoL and for sure it will take time for 2 people to adjust in new life.

There is not much to talk about here since these 7 chapters (all vol 1 of LN) is simply more towards to introduction of what the future story will ... shape and might happened, so not much happened.

If you are looking for typical romance slice of life, this might be not one for you as this also to a certain degree have some psychological in it since it have some roller coaster of emotion.

But, i highly suggest to read the LN to know the stories. if you are lazy to read the LN but interested about how romance of step siblings unfolding, this is the one worth to wait.

Usually, I only feel the urge to write a review if something is obscure and deserves more attention, or something touched me deeply. This one doesn't fit in either of those.

Instead, this review is fueled by hatred and written out of spite.
I'm only writing this review to shit on the seemingly recent-yet-common trope of being self aware, with this manga being the worst offender I've come across so far.

Frankly, this manga is annoying, and the author comes off as constantly insecure, because they feel the need to remind the readers that "usually in manga or novels this would happen, but this is real life", constantly ... having to remind them that the way they have written the story is realistic and that's justification for it being uninteresting.

Yes, this guy has the audacity to acknowledge clichés and tropes, to feign awareness, all while trying to avoid them like the plague. But what does that leave us with? Well, definitely not a well written story devoid of clichés and tropes. It leaves us with extremely uninteresting dialogues that feel like the outcome of putting two introverts in a room and forcing them to talk.

Not like they successfully avoids tropes anyway, because they will still create cliched scenarios and execute them in the most pretentious/boring or ironically enough, the most cliched way possible.
They will have the MC help the heroine study (cliched development) yet the interactions and dialogue will be drier than a piece of KFC left in sunlight for 76 days, because remember, this is real life hurr durr. At that point I'd take the MC slipping off some notebook on the floor and falling onto the heroine instead.

This is not simply just a bad manga. This manga's existence is offensive to me.