One of the themes of the current anime season seems to be “age gap” romantic relationships, with offerings like the popular HigeHiro as well as today’s blog topic, KoiKimo, whose official English title is It’s Too Sick to Call This Love, though a more accurate translation might be It’s Too Disgusting to Call This Love. It’s a fun romantic comedy about people from different worlds falling in love, and I’ll write about it in today’s blog post.
The Story of KoiKimo
When a playboy businessman named Ryo nearly slips on some stairs, a high school girl named Ichika happens to be nearby and saves his life, then gives him her bento because he hasn’t been eating properly. When Ryo goes home and finds that a friend of his younger sister Rio is visiting, he’s shocked to learn that the friend is none other than Ichika, the girl who saved him. Since Ryo is kind of a bastard and had only dated women of dubious character in the past, he offers “himself” as a return gift for Ichika’s saving his life, causing her to be repelled with utter disgust at his offer.
Ryo becomes infatuated with Ichika, and aggressively courts her, all in a cutesy rom-com type of way. Ichika regularly rebuffs his advances… yet nevertheless allows him to call her every night, visit her school culture festival, and go on a date with her on Christmas which results in exchanging gifts with him. She clearly likes learning about Ryo and is attracted to his mature self-confidence, even though she keeps him at arm’s length, and Ryo doesn’t try to get physical.
For his part, Ryo’s pursuit of Ichika creates immediate benefits for him. He quits smoking, stops being a womanizing jerk, and becomes a generally more “well-rounded” person, causing his co-workers to speculate that he’s in love. He gets closer to his sister, and the two of them enjoy each other’s company like never before. He takes an interest in the anime and light novels that Ichika likes, becoming a genuine fan, which allows him to emotionally connect with Matsushima, a co-worker who would like to date him. Ryo even takes steps to repair his relationship with his father.
Western Criticisms of KoiKimo
Glancing through the reviews on MAL, I had to smile at the high number of negative reactions to the story. Koikimo is “dangerous,” because it makes light of an adult male “grooming a high school girl” despite her repeated rejections of him. Ryo’s sister Rio is “even more sociopathic than he is” for setting up her friend with her older brother, giving each information about the other’s tastes in the hopes of bringing them together. And Ichika’s mother, taken with the dashing Ryo and his flowers, should also be held accountable. Someone on Reddit actually asked, “Is watching KoiKimo immoral?”
These fans are forgetting the fact that anime is fiction, and as such is allowed to tell stories that wouldn’t fly in the real world. It’s perfectly okay for topics to be explored in the context of anime or manga, since these are works of fiction if that’s the story the creator wants to tell, and the story fans want to watch.
I have to wonder if these fans had the same reaction to After the Rain, a touching story about a high school girl who becomes obsessed with a divorced manager of a family restaurant who’s 20 years older than her? It’s exactly the same concept, with the role of the aggressor reversed.
Let’s Examine The Reason for KoiKimo’s Popularity in Japan
KoiKimo is based on a series of romantic comedy illustrations uploaded to Pixiv by female artist Mogusu. The story began serialization as a digital manga and has managed a stunning 10,000,000 downloads. Clearly, any work that becomes so popular is striking an emotional chord with its fanbase, and it’s worth looking at why that is, rather than just dismissing it out of hand. I believe the core fans of KoiKimo in Japan are
- High school girls who secretly yearn to be whisked off their feet by an older, mature man in a world where many Japanese males have become “herbivores”
- Company employees who love anime and light novels but must hide it from their co-workers
- Anyone who likes a good romantic comedy that analyzes people from different worlds coming together in a comical way
I believe that, in the same way, that Redo of Healer proved more popular with female fans than with males despite its violent sexual themes, and in the same way that young Japanese girls secretly wish they had flowing blonde hair just like Sailor Moon, the core story of KimoKoi clearly has some appeal, once you approach it as the work of fiction that it is.
In the end, my policy is that if large groups on the Internet decide they hate a certain anime, we should probably go out of our way to watch the show and judge for ourselves whether it’s for us or not. Otherwise, you’d miss out on great series like Uzaki-chan Wants to Hang Out! or Please Don’t Toy With Me, Miss Nagato. And that would be a shame.
Do Anime Coincidences Happen in real Life?
We all know the trope: the main character encounters some ridiculously flamboyant girl, has a short adventure with her, then leaves, sure he’ll never set eyes on her again…only to find the next morning that the girl has just transferred into his class, and will be seated next to him. Convenient coincidences are a huge part of anime, but do they exist in real life? I have to say yes.
In my nearly 30 years of living in Japan, I’ve encountered some incredible coincidences, like:
- Despite me living 150 km north of Yokohama and only visiting occasionally, I’ve encountered people I studied Japanese with at university three different times.
- I learned Japanese mainly from the classic Touch baseball manga from the 1980s. By chance, the city I came to live in is the birthplace of the creator, manga-ka Adachi Mitsuru. Oh, and Mrs. J-List just happens to share a birthday with him.
- In the early 2000’s, many fans knew two 18+ websites in Japan: J-List, and Yulia Nova photographer Satoshi Kizu. By chance, he lives just down the road from us, about 3 km away.
- When J-List became an official Touhou shop, we were surprised to find that the company that distributed Touhou products to us was very close to us, despite J-List being based in a small rural city.
- I once bought a used high school uniform from a girl at a school event to give to my niece. A year later, I went to teach a random new ESL student, to find that it was that same girl.
Should You Watch KoiKimo?
Will the combination of Ryo’s advances towards Ichika along with the positive changes in his personality enable him to win her heart? Or will he realize he’s better off dating Matsushima, his secret otaku co-worker? Will Ichika continue to be attracted to Ryo, or will she realize that her classmate Tamaru is a more appropriate target for her feelings? I hope we’ll find out as the series concludes!
Thanks for reading this post about the KoiKimo anime. Will you be watching it, or do you think it’s too disgusting to call it love? Post your thoughts below, or tell us on Twitter!
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