Ima Sugu Onii-chan ni Imouto da tte Iitai! (ImaImo https://vndb.org/v7766) is a surprisingly good all-ages moege, and one I'd recommend to most moege readers as long as they're okay with no H-scenes being present and can be okay with the somewhat stupid premise the VN itself has regarding crossdressing. I'll only be talking about things in general to avoid spoilers.

Getting the easy stuff out of the way: systems are standard and I had zero issues getting this working on my Windows 11 computer in JP locale and installing the English patch was a breeze. For reference I am running the DVD version with a USB DVD drive, so I can't speak to other versions, but this version was also incredibly cheap to get second hand - well under the cost of the download version when I purchased it - despite being a "first press limited edition".

OST is pretty straightforward and what you would expect from sprite / fairys at this point. Nothing particularly noteworthy to me, but a lot of stuff composed by elements garden, solid OP songs, a few really pretty inserts, and EDs sung by the VA's themselves, as well as one "grand ED" that played after clearing everyone's routes - I didn't specifically test but it may have played just after Ayumu's as that was the last route I did.

The characters are fairly well rounded in this story. MC is relatable and not a complete idiot (if you ignore him being

) - although he still has that donkan trait, but it didn't feel as bad as usual - and is somewhat proactive, which was a nice change. For the heroines, you have the titular imouto (Ayumu), the shy class president (Kimika), your best friend (Matsuri), and the serious martial artist (Mao). It was nice that these characters don't strictly boil down into their archetypes too much either. They all develop through the various routes and make progress in their personal goals, partially through the common route but primarily in their own heroine routes.

With the story, I came into this not expecting as much cuteness as I ended up getting since it is from the same writer as Koichoco ( https://vndb.org/v4028 ) and there was a decently heavy focus on drama in Koichoco. ImaImo's story does take place approximately 2 years before Koichoco and does feature some references and even shares a few characters with it, but there is no need to have read it before; although you will miss some references without having read it, nothing that changes the story, they are simply cute nods to it. The whole common route is focused on slice of life and various cute moments while they introduce the characters. While there is still drama in ImaImo it is much more well balanced and the heaviest bits of it are located within the titular imouto's route. For a simple comparison I cried twice in total over the course of the three other heroine's routes, but maybe five times during Ayumu's. Nothing too ridiculously over the top, but there is believable drama where it pops up in this visual novel so it hits quite a bit harder for me at least than the otherwise melodramatic bits that happen in other works.

Overall, I'd recommend ImaImo to any moege fan who wants a bit of drama but not too much as well as some comedy and a lot of cute moments but does not mind there being no H present in the story. If you're okay with the lack of 18+ scenes, then I think you'll come away from ImaImo happy. And as of writing this review the official English release of Koichoco is supposed to happen in a few days, so why not pick this up to read after - or before if you're a quick reader (it took me 18:54 in total)?