The Spring 2025 Anime Preview Guide

The Shiunji Family Children

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Arata Shiunji has never had a girlfriend, but with five incredible sisters and a younger brother, his life is far from lonely. Despite being surrounded by beautiful women every day, he begins to accept his days as a bachelor won't end anytime soon. But one day, that all changes when his father reveals to the family that he and his siblings aren't related by blood. Now, all bets are off, and Arata's future promises to be rather nerve-wracking indeed.

The Shiunji Family Children is based on a manga by Reiji Miyajima. The anime series is streaming on Crunchyroll on Tuesdays.

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Rebecca Silverman
Rating:

Anime parents do make some baffling decisions, don't they? From remarrying without ever telling their kids they were dating to picking a random date to tell their children that they're all adopted, the things anime parents do go way beyond the orphan fantasy that's so prevalent in worldwide literature. Although in the case of The Shiunji Family Children, it could be argued that the orphan fantasy – when parents are absent so that kids can have their adventures – is alive and well, just taking on a different format.

That would be the sibling romance, which is first hinted at when we learn that youngest Shiunji daughter Kotono has a crush on oldest Shiunji brother Arata, something the others sort of brush off because, as the brainy daughter (Seiha) says, incest is bad. But then, at Kotono's fifteenth birthday party, Dad pops up just long enough to say, “Surprise! You're all adopted, and only two of you have a blood tie!”, flinging everyone into uncertainty. It's an announcement that kicks off the plot, but also really rubs me the wrong way. Mr. Shiunji says that none of them are actually siblings, which feels patently false – they've spent at least seventeen years being siblings; blood ties have nothing to do with it. Being blood-related does not a sibling relationship make.

It's also a pretty cheap shot to kick off a quasi-forbidden romance story. Not only does it unsettle all of the kids (Shion and Minami are notably relieved that they're actually twins), but it also forces the issue of romance among the group. Arata has already stated that he's not keen on dating Kotono, but now she has the chance to make him more uncomfortable about it, while Ouka, who thought she and Arata were twins, is trying to understand how their lack of genetic tie fits into her understanding of him as her “other half.” Nothing about this plot twist feels natural, and a lot of it feels mean.

Perhaps all of this just drives home that I am not the intended audience for this series. That's fair; everything can't be for everyone. But it also feels like a cheat in of giving viewers who like incest stories something to hold on to because, technically, this isn't one. It just comes across as incredibly contrived, and that gets in the way of the plot. It doesn't look bad or sound bad, but Banri's boob jiggles also can't override the issues with the set up.