Right, so I've finally watched this series from last year. I've had it lying around for a while but didn't really bother to watch it until I read the LN translations over at baka-tsuki.
First of all, I'll say this. I liked the LN and it's because of the LN that I watched the anime series, which I feel fell short of the LNs.
So what's the premise about? Basically the main character; Yuuta, is a normal ordinary boy who is currently going to college. He doesn't develop any special powers, nor does he already possess any special powers. He isn't the 'chosen' one, nor the wielder of some super powerful lost mythical artifact. That already puts the LN above most of the others I've read so far. Instead, Yuuta is a normal college student who was raised by his older sister after his parents died. He has a complex about being a burden on his sister; feeling somewhat guilty for having had his sister sacrifice so much for him when he was younger, that he tries to avoid relying on her for anything now that he's older.
So one day, his sister goes overseas with her husband and leaves the 3 children with him, hoping to get him to bond with them. Cue plane crash and the 3 children becoming orphans. As the husbands family began 'discussing' what to do with the children and how to split them up to reduce the burden on each other, the 3 sisters ask to be adopted together instead of separated. Cue Yuuta's memory of his sister insisting that the two of them stick together and how she'll take care of Yuuta herself to make sure that the two of them can stay together. So he has a big DAMN HERO moment where he volunteers to take all 3 of them in even if he's a poor college student. Of course the rest of the family basically scoffs at him and says 'who do you think you are?' so he ends up 'kidnapping' them. No, not really. They go with him willingly and they just run away from the relatives.
This is when the story really starts where you see Yuuta start to struggle with doing enough part-time work to support 4 people while still staying in college, while the 3 sisters get used to living with him and slowly coming to grips with the situation and fact that their parents are dead. It's a fairly slice-of-life story that is fairly decent to read since it lacks so many of the things I detest in most japanese LNs (idiot protags, shitty harems etc). You can really start to see Yuuta think back and realise 'shit my sister had it rough just raising me' and then strengthen his resolve not to let his sisters children down.
The anime follows vol. 1 of the plot but doesn't do it very well. In this area, I found the LN to be much better. It had too many random segments, too many original characters and didn't really showcase the relationship between Yuuta's university friends and Yuuta. The one thing I found nice about the LN was that basically everyone chips in to help Yuuta, including his university friends and there are a lot of scenes where it's shown how their relationship grows. That's sadly lacking in the anime.
Instead, they focused too much on the children's relationship with Yuuta, which is an important aspect but that wasn't all there was to the LN and by doing so, they missed out a lot. Plus if I have to hear anime-Miu say 'delicacy' one more time, I will SNAP. Seriously, the kids weren't this annoying in the LN.
tl;dr Anime leaves a lot to be desired. Read the LNs.
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