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I thought a lot about that, and reached a conclusion: if my little sister was to leave her bedroom, she needed to learn how to have a proper normal conversation. And to help her with that, what could be better than starting with a topic that she was most familiar with?

“So, what are some of these… ‘animes’ that you like?”, I asked, more certain of the name of the things after some research (including about the term “hikikomori”, which apparently meant someone who didn’t leave their bedroom).

I had mostly got the gist of it, and even read some of the source material, “manga”: basically, boys were transported or reincarnated into another world and journeyed to defeat the evil of their new reality. They weren’t so different from the classic heroes' journeys stories in the west, if they had a few different tropes and styles.

[You want to talk about anime…?], my sister answered me via text, even though I was just outside her bedroom door.

“Yes, you seem to like it a lot, so I wanted to know more about it.”

[Say no more. The door is unlocked], She texted me again after a few minutes.

“Excuse me…”, I slowly opened the door to the bedroom of my little sister, making sure I wouldn’t run into her… unprepared form, let’s say.

Thankfully, though, she was wearing her pajamas again, and then she was digging through an unorganized collection of blue rays on one of her shelves.

“So, what do you want to see? Fantasy, mecha, slice of life, romance, something else?”, Allicia asked, selecting a growing pile of blue rays and laying them on her bed.

“Uhm… Fantasy sounds good enough? I like lord of the rings, after all.”

“Not bad, not bad. I don’t have any classic high fantasy anime here, since it’s not a genre that’s too popular nowadays, with the rise of litRPG, and isekais, I do have some modern fantasy! Like Rakudai Kishi no Cavalry!”, Allicia pulled up one of the blue rays and showed me a cover with a black-haired boy, and a pink-haired girl on the cover, both holding swords, and wearing something like a school uniform.

“Hey, this sounds cool? Cavalry… Something like modern knights, right?”, I picked it up. “What’s the plot?”

“It’s about a boy who has no talent whatsoever with magic, and you see? You need magic to become a respected knight in this world, so he gives 100% of himself to try to beat other knight apprentices with pure skill, even though his family doesn’t support him at all!”, she explained with stars in her eyes. “It’s an underrated work of art!”

“A protagonist who doesn’t get any support from his family… Allicia, I’m sorry for leaving you alone all these years, I just didn’t know what to do-“

“Ah- Aaah, that’s not what I meant! I like it because it’s good, I don’t relate to the main character or anything, and in fact, his relationship with his sister is one in which they would have no problem even kissing one another in front of the whole school!”

“…”

“…S-So, no Rakudai Kishi, I got it”, face burning red, Allicia took the Blu-ray from my hands and threw it to the other side of the bed. “You said fantasy, right? Let’s try some isekai then! How about No Game No Life?“

“Oh, that sounds unusual? What’s the story of this one?”

“Two adoptive siblings go to another world where everything is run by games, and they become king and queen and go to war with the other kingdoms in order to defy the god of the world.”

“Haha, that sounds better, and no awkward siblings kissing scene!”

“…”

“No awkward siblings kissing scene, right?”

“The-They are step-siblings, so it doesn’t count.”

“Does all Japanese media involve incest?!”, I was starting to lose my cool; I hadn’t noticed any of that during my previous investigation into anime.

“You know what? Fuck anime, how about web novels? I’m reading this really cool litRPG one right now, ‘Killing [Gods] With my Sister’, and… it…is… actually pretty trashy, forget about it”, Allicia facepalmed. “Don’t I have any normie shit in here…?!”, she whispered to herself with a sigh, her shoulders slanting down.

“You know what? I’m sorry Allicia, I didn’t intend to make this hard for you”, I shook my head, putting my ideas back in place. I came there to talk with my little sister, not to be an annoying prick who didn’t let her have fun! Putting a hand on her shoulder, I concluded, smiling: “Let’s just talk about one of your favorites, I’m not here to judge.”,

“One of my favorites? Then… How about White Star Apocalypse?”, the black-haired pale girl perked up. “It’s about two twins who have to go through a zombie apocalypse together and alone, but the zombies are not Resident Evil style zombies, and more like Left 4 Dead zombies, so they can’t just outrun them, or walk over the roof of the buildings or something, it’s actually really scary. But even then, they do not give up, and this harsh situation seems to actually make them get only closer to one another, so it’s also cute, and I always thought that this was a perfect combination, scary with cute”, Allicia picked up another blu ray with a duo of white-haired twins.

“Yeah, that sounds amazing! What do you like bout the characters?”

And so, the conversation proceeded, my little sister enthusiastically talking about every detail that she loved about that anime, putting on the opening and the ending for the two of us to listen to, and I made sure to pay attention to every word. I was just glad to see my little sister functioning again. It had been five years since we last talked, but to me, it was like five hundred years. Sometimes, I even asked myself if she still considered me family. But everything was fine then…

“But I already talked enough about this anime! Why don’t we watch it together? It’s just an OVA, so it should end quickly!”

…Until she, excitedly, decided to put the Blu-ray in her computer and ran it.