AMINE AND MANGA

The premise behind Sister Princess is that an ordinary young man (the player) is made to live with twelve lovable little sisters, each with their own distinct quirks and personalities. Both the "little sister" characters and the plot of "being forced to live with beautiful girls" are very common and popular in bishōjo products.

Sister Princess is remarkable for its intensely cute and saccharine atmosphere, taking to an extreme a tendency in Japanese culture. With its focus of young girls, the series can be classified as moe but not technically lolicon since it does not contain pornographic elements.

The game itself plays out like a dating sim. Players have about a month to spend with the sisters with each day broken up into three segments: first is the free time period before noon, followed by the period after lunch and ending with another period of time before bed. During day time, the player can choose which of the girls he wishes to escort to school, if any. The period after lunch is similar to the one in the morning, with additional choices which allow the player to go to various places in town besides walking home with one of the girls. Every night before bed, the player will be allowed to check his e-mail and send replies. As the player continues to interact with the sisters, their reactions to their big brother will change accordingly until the ending.

For Sister Princess 2, the story begins on the final day of school before summer vacation. Then the player chooses a sister who he wants to start with for a close relationship. Therefore, Sister Princess 2 is about spending the player's time with either one sister or all sisters at the same time as they spend their summer together.

In Sister Princess 1, the player can see two different endings for each sister, but Sister Princess 2 has four endings for each sister. The first two were the non-sibling relation and siblings-together ending and, if the player chooses one sister in the beginning but ends up with another sister, either of the other two endings for the first sister who the player does not choose appear ("non-blood relation" ending and "still brother and sister forever" ending also) but with a different story.

Sister Princess (シスター・プリンセス, Shisutā Purinsesu) is a popular Japanese seinen series written by Sakurako Kimino and illustrated by Naoto Tenhiro. It began as a serialized light novel series in 1999. In 2001, a manga series and a bishōjo game for the Sony PlayStation were released. Sequels to the game were released for the PlayStation and Game Boy Advance. Sister Princess was also adapted into a Japanese anime television series.

The history of Sister Princess can be traced back to March 1999, when it first appeared in the monthly Dengeki G's Magazine. Originally, there were only nine sisters, not twelve. Readers were able to vote for their favorite sister and following the tremendous response from the fans, the magazine decided to serialize Sister Princess.

In March 2000, a decision was made to renew the series, this time by featuring the short letters that the girls wrote to their beloved brother. Three more sisters were added to the mix: Haruka, who came from Germany; Yotsuba, who came from England; and Aria, who came from France.

A year later, on March 8, 2001, the game version of Sister Princess — about the older brother spending a month with all twelve sisters, and featuring original artwork by Naoto Tenhiro—was released on the Sony PlayStation. Priced at 6800yen (9800yen for the limited edition), the game was the third best-selling title in Japan in its first week of release.

In July of the same year, a new series of stories began in Dengeki G's, right up till April 2002. While the magazine was preparing for yet another renewal of the Sister Princess stories for its May 2002 issue, a premium edition of the game (the original plus two other Christmas and Valentine side stories) was released for the Sega Dreamcast on Mar 28, 2002.

Sequels include Sister Princess 2 and Sister Princess RePure.

In September 2003, the series was retired as G's Magazine premier flagship title (replaced by another popular series, Futakoi). Despite the urging of fans, no official story elements has been produced since then.

The portrayal of events in the first Sister Princess anime is not considered canon by MediaWorks or hardcore fans. It's more commonly accepted as an alternate universe setting. The Sister Princess RePure anime is more faithful to the original magazine stories than its predecessor, and was created to answer disappointed fans. In fact, the stories told in the "second half" of each episode are actually modified versions of the magazine stories or mini-novels. There is nothing in Sister Princess RePure that contradicts the games, magazine stories or mini-novels: thus it can be considered canon, despite not actually being so.

The gameplay mostly consists of reading and listening to the conversations provided. Every now and then, a "Please Select Your Destiny" event will occur, giving the player multiple choices on how to respond. The choices selected determine who will be Rin's destined love; depending on which route the player takes, there will be between 8 and 12 multiple-choice questions. At a certain point in the visual novel, a translucent image of the destined character appears when the day changes indicating who Rin has fallen in love with after which the multiple-choice events become almost nonexistent. Near the end of the game, two sexual intercourse scenes will occur with the second scenes all including fellatio. After some more conversation the visual novel ends. After the visual novel has been completed at least once, players can view CG (computer graphics) artwork they have observed, skip to scenes or endings for characters they have viewed, and listen to music they have heard in the game.

The PlayStation 2 version varies from the personal computer (PC) version as all the sex scenes are removed. Instead, the PS2 version expands the storylines five heroines and the player may follow two new storylines: Mayumi Thyme's and Kareha's. Additionally, Kareha's younger sister Tsubomi makes her first appearance in the PS2 version during Kareha's path.

Shuffle! Essence+ allows the player to follow the storylines of seven heroines, including four new storylines: Tsubomi's, Sakura Yae's, Nadeshiko Benibara's and Daisy's. In Daisy's path, Erica Suzuran makes her first appearance as a secondary character and Ruri Matsuri appears as the second main heroine, but she does not have any sex scenes.