One new anime I’ve been watching is Koroshi Ai, or Love of Kill, a surprisingly adorable action-romance about a bounty hunter named Chateau Dankworth and the man she is tasked with killing, an S-rank assassin named Ryang-ha Song. Keep reading to see if it’s for you!
Chateau Dankworth is a novice bounty hunter trying to get good at her job when she encounters a mysterious killer. He handily dispatches her in hand-to-hand combat, but then, rather than kill her, starts flirting with her and trying to ask her out. “I have a bounty on my head, and I don’t get that many chances to talk to girls.” Soon after, Chateau’s firm receives orders to take out a famous killer working for an Asian crime syndicate named Ryang-ha Song, and she’s shocked to learn that this is her new suitor.
And so begins a ridiculous romance that could only exist in the world of manga/anime, with Ryang-ha Song pursuing Chateau romantically while she constantly brushes off his advances. He starts helping out her career by bagging targets she could never have handled alone, regularly putting his safety on the line for her, despite the fact that she could betray him at any moment.
Love of Kill is a cute anime that a lot of fans should check out, if you like nonstop action and cute romance.
I’m Fascinated by “Wish Fulfilment” in Anime
Obviously anime and manga stories exist to allow us all to escape our own dreary existence and live vicariously through characters with more interesting lives than us. For male fans these take predictable forms, such as being at the center of a harem of kawaii girls, becoming the producer of cute idols, getting isekai’ed into a fantasy world where we can be heroes, or getting to pilot a giant mecha. These genres are so familiar, we usually know what to expect before we even watch the first episode.
But what kind of “wish fulfillment” stories do female fans want, according to anime, manga and games aimed at them? That’s an interesting question to ponder. According to random anime I’ve watched over the years, here are a few things that female fans — at least, the Japanese fans these shows target — seem to want.
First, they want to be the center of attention, having multiple cute boys competing for them, whether it’s being fought over by 13 not-related-by-blood stepbrothers (Brothers Conflict) or being surrounded by hunky samurai warriors (Hakuoki).
They want to do a job where they must have real responsibility. In a world where many women work as OLs (“office ladies”), doing less demanding clerical and administrative work because it’s expected that they’ll quit when they get married within a few years, apparently the target audiences of these shows desire to have jobs where they can really make a mark. This is seen in series like Idolish7 or Stand My Heroes.
Responsibility is important, but they want work-life balance, too. This is evident in the super-cute anime Love is Like a Cocktail, about a highly-skilled female professional who comes home after a day at the office to hang out with her husband, who is young and loves doing housework and mixing cocktails for her to drink.
Sometimes it seems that women want to be dominated sexually by a man who will handle them roughly. This is a response to the trend of Japanese men becoming “herbivores” who lack the sexual drive of men in the past, who will do things like get a girl to come home with him… then just go to sleep without having sex. There’s a whole genre of racy late-night anime based on sexy “ladies comics” (redicomi) with some very steam themes. Some examples:
- The 25-year-old High School Student. A woman is asked to go back to high school in place of her cousin who will get expelled otherwise. When a teacher sees through her ruse, she’s forced to become his lover.
- XL Joshi: My Boss’s Dick is XL Size? A female office worker is running out of money, so she takes a job as a product tester who has to review XL-sized condoms. Her boss sees this and proceeds to help her out with her reviews, without asking for permission.
- Amai Chobatsu (Sweet Punishments). A woman is wrongly convicted of embezzlement and imprisoned in an all-male prison where she’s subject to more than a few cavity searches. The drama is heightened when the guard who is her main tormentor is challenged by one of the inmates who has fallen in love with her.
Will You Be Watching Love of Kill?
Thanks for reading this blog post about the Love of Kill anime. Will you be checking out Koroshi Ai? Tell us below, or reply to us on Twitter!
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