About
Oreimo Cover Art Parodies, known in Japan as “My Sister’s Cover Art Style” (Japanese: 俺の妹表紙風, Ore no Imoumo Hyōshi Fu), is a series of spoof illustrations based off the first volume cover art of the light novel series Ore no Imōto ga Konna ni Kawaii Wake ga Nai (俺の妹がこんなに可愛いわけがない, lit. My Little Sister Can’t Be This Cute), or simply known as Oreimo (俺妹) for short.
Origin
The Japanese light novel series Oreimo[1] was written by Tsukasa Fushimi and its first volume was released in Japan under the publisher ASCII Media Works on August 10th, 2008. The initial cover art of the volume was created by the series’ illustrator Hiro Kanzaki, where it featured main character Kirino Kosaka standing with her arms crossed and wearing a stern expression, while protagonist and older brother Kyosuke Kosaka is shown from behind looking disgruntled.
Spread
After the publication of the light novel, illustrators online saw the potential of the cover art as a source of parody, and began reproducing illustrations with character from various series. Often time, these artworks are usually titled under “My Little X Can’t Be This Y,” a phrasal template based off the series’ name. The creation of these parodies kept appearing at a steady rate as the novel series went on, but would later see a surge of interest after the announcement of the anime adaptation in May 2010. During that same time, the fad would also see interest overseas in art-sharing sites like deviantART[2], Tumblr[3], and as well as 4chan. Over 2,000 parody artworks has since submitted within the Japanese illustrators community pixiv[4][5] and as well as on Nico Nico Seiga,[6] where many of these creations has been collected on the art-dumping site Danbooru.[7]
Notable Examples
Search Interest
External References
[1]Wikipedia – Ore no Imōto ga Konna ni Kawaii Wake ga Nai
[2]deviantART – Search results for oreimo parody
[3]Tumblr – Search results for the tag #oreimo parody
[4]pixiv – Search results for 俺の妹表紙風
[5]pixiv – Search results for 俺の妹表紙のポーズ
[6]Nico Nico Seiga – Search results for 俺の妹表紙風
[7]Danbooru – Images tagged as can’t be this cute