What’s it about? High school sophomore Ito was excited for her new blended family, but when she finds out it comes with four younger stepbrothers, she might have gotten more than she bargained for. Between hot-and-cold Gen, chill Raku, reclusive Syu, and cheerful Rui, Ito’s life as an elder sibling is just beginning!
Our premiere starts in Spring as sophomore Ito and her mother move into their new home. Ito finds herself incredibly happy to be a part of a nuclear family, especially since being an only child pushed her to focus on her mother. Now, she gets to live the normal life as a regular teenager.
Only… she didn’t know her new family came with four younger siblings, each of whom has their own personality quirks that make Ito integrating into her new family even harder. But she’s a natural optimist and after years of taking care of her mother, Ito’s up to the challenge of making her new family feel like it’s always been around.
Upfront, I want to say that Please Excuse My Younger Brothers is a romantic comedy, and based on all of Ito’s trope-ishly hot step-siblings, they’re going to be the target of her affections whether that’s platonically, filially, or romantically. I didn’t expect that going in but it became extremely and quickly apparent that that’s the through-line here, so keep that in mind if that is outright not your thing.
Please Excuse My Younger Brothers is honestly, pretty dang good. It looks really nice, the voice acting feels natural for the siblings, and the comedy beats hit. I already like where it’s going with the relationship between Ito and Gen, especially as an only child who grew up kind of also a parent to myself. Seeing that play out between two very earnest but also stubborn people was immediately cathartic and wholly relatable.
But what makes this rom-com so laugh out loud funny comedic to me is that all of her new brothers look incredibly older than her: like, hilariously so. And if Ito’s a sophomore—making her sixteen—then that means that even the brother that looks like a twenty-something is… like fifteen at the oldest. There’s this goofy dissonance but honestly, I think it’s quite natural in reality to see siblings who are younger but got hit with the puberty stick pretty hard.
Still, in what should be a pretty chill story about blended families, we get all these teasers that this is going to be a romance, likely between Gen and Ito—though if they’re bold, they’ll go poly and blend the family even more. I don’t think that’s going to happen—the poly, not the romance; this is very much so a romantic comedy and it’s not afraid of that—but that’s only because we haven’t been shown all the potential romanceable brothers (cursed phrase) yet. But I’ve been around the anime block: I can tell exactly what’s gonna happen, and in terms of my personal taste… I neutrally don’t like it, largely because it’s just not my thing.
What I do like is that we get insight into why Gen, the most antagonizing of the new brothers, is the way he is. Much like Ito, he felt the pressure of taking care of his family, though unlike her, his came from his mother dying and making him promise to be a good big brother. So naturally, when someone like Ito comes in and takes over all of the roles he used to do—cleaning, cooking, generally taking care of chores—it grates. That is, until he and Ito finally meet in the middle and start to understand each other.
I have no problem with stepsibling romances, even if they’re not something I seek out. Sure, I do find them incredibly strange, but also, I try not to judge anyone’s fictional interests too hard as someone who once spent eighty minutes gleefully explaining the omegaverse to my roommate in a situation which some would call “holding her hostage” and I would call Tuesday. Point is, I get the fun with this type of scenario, and I won’t yuck anyone’s yum.
…That said.
I found that I was a little uncomfortablethis entire premiere. Like, Ito’s siblings are immediately antagonizing in a way that made her being left alone with them made me immediately worry that Ito would revert to old habits but also, that she’d get mistreated by the brothers. Both kind of happen in a very tame way: it’s clear that Gen, especially, hasn’t accepted her, which means the other brothers kind of follow suit. That said, things do get resolved by the midpoint, so that quickly went away. Still, there were just one too many shojo sparkle scenes between Ito and her new stepbrother for me to not snap back into this being a rom-com and not a slice of life series.
But even with that, I kind of couldn’t help but let my mind sink into focusing on this premiere. I really like Gen and Ito’s relationship, and even though my gut tells me it’ll go the way of so many blended family romances that have come before, I can’t help but really like their blooming relationship. In truth, I’m interested in Please Excuse My Younger Brothers in the same way I’m interested in the trolley problem, and this show is kind of a trolley problem: you can either have Ito being a new big sister or you can have Ito being in love with one of these brothers. This show is definitely telegraphing both in a way that is simultaneously bold and… just strange.
Yet I can’t help but want to see Episode 2, and I already know that I’ll be sat, complicated feelings and all. I’d actually like to see this show evolve. We currently don’t have access to the manga in English, so this is the only way I can see the story play out and I think that maybe, it’ll make me a better reviewer for dipping my toes into tropes I normally avoid. My verdict: give it a watch. This premiere is definitely interesting, no matter where you land on the topic.
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