The Fall 2016 Anime Preview Guide

Kiss Him, Not Me!

Kae Serinuma is a fujoshi of the highest order. She has the stereotypical pudgy otaku build and lives for shipping hot guys together – and she has plenty of opportunities to do so since she gets along well with a number of hot guys, much to the dismay of her best friend (who is also a fujoshi but has a more normal build). One night a tragic turn on her favorite anime drives her to be a recluse in her room for a whole week. When she emerges, she has lost so much weight from not eating that she is now a stunning beauty, much to the shock of everyone who knew her. That gets her a different kind of attention from all of the hot guys and leads to a date with four of them. Can Kae restrain her otaku nature long enough to get through the date? Kiss Him, Not Me is based on a manga and can be found streaming on Crunchyroll, Saturdays at 1 AM EST.

Rebecca Silverman

Rating: 2.5

I have to admit, I don't remember the manga of Kiss Him, Not Me starting out quite so poorly. Yes, it still featured a “humorously” fat heroine who miraculously lost weight after fasting for a week when her favorite anime character died, and yes, it still had four boys suddenly fall for the new, thin, inexplicably glasses-free her. But the pacing and the lack of voices definitely helped to make the manga's introduction less distasteful than the anime's. The blame can mostly be laid at the feet of whoever it was who decided that Kae needed to have “fat voice” and a “thin voice.” Before her weight loss, Kae sounds like a creepy old woman with a mouth full of cotton balls, and that really feels unnecessary.

Since, having read beyond this point, the object of the story is more to show that Kae deserves to be loved for who she is rather than what she looks (or sounds) like, the fat voice makes her into a complete joke, as well as takes away from the fact that two of the boys were nice to her before her transformation, with at least one of them appreciating her for herself long before the weight loss. The decision to have it makes me a bit leery about how the show will handle later events.

Beyond that, it's clear that the episode feels pressure to get to a certain point in the story, because there's a sensation that things are being rushed. Hopefully it will start to slow down next week, but the speed with which events take place is a little dizzying. But with the big reveal that Kae's a fujoshi already dropped on the boys, who can't bear to let Mutsumi (the one who always appreciated her as a person) get ahead with his accepting attitude, the stage is fully set for the hijinks and shenanigans to commence, and that should smooth things out.

At its heart, this is actually a very funny story about a girl who suddenly finds herself the object of four different hot guys' desire and is more than a little uncomfortable with it. There's something relatable in that – fantasy is one thing, but it could get pretty overwhelming and awkward to actually be pursued by a bunch of romantic interests at once, and goodness knows high school romance is difficult enough already. None of the guys seem to be aware of how weirded out Kae is right now (Igarashi is the most attuned to that sort of thing, so he has a slight clue), but with Kae herself willing to be more open, there's the potential for everyone to grow as characters here. As a reader of the manga, I can tell you that it does get better in terms of story – let's just hope that there aren't many more questionable choices made by the anime as it goes on.

Nick Creamer

Rating: 3

I'll confess, I'm fairly put off by the fundamental premise of this show. The pairing of characters has been a core part of fandom for basically forever, but the pairing of real-life people is far more complex and questionable. When you get stuff like fans at conventions asking actual actors about their thoughts on pairings between them and other actual actors, you're entering legitimate harassment territory - and that's basically the foundation of this show. There's a bit of an inherent disconnect between me and the show's assumptions, because I find the behavior it's centered on pretty uncomfortable.

That said, Kiss Him, Not Me does not pretend that Kae Serinuma's behavior is in any way to be encouraged. In fact, the way the show consistently frames Kae as a slavering otaku is both central to its appeal and one of Kae's own most endearing qualities. Like the nerds of Genshiken, Kae has a complicated relationship with her own incorrigible nature, and frets constantly about having her lusts be discovered. And the show's depiction of her fantasies is wonderful - not necessarily in terms of her mental images, but definitely in terms of the hilariously depraved faces she makes whenever her interests run away with her.

In fact, there were a fair number of jokes in this episode that worked for me, and I ended up liking Kae a lot by the end of it. The show spends an awful lot of time in her head, which helps make both her interests and anxieties feel very understandable. And that focus on internal monologue also enables many of the jokes - Kae will often entirely miss what's going on around her, because she's so caught up in her fantasy world. I particularly liked the moment where the jerk boy suitor insulted her, but she ran away crying simply because he reminded her of her dead anime crush.

That said, outside of Kae's personality, the show's appeal feels a little thin. Only one of Kae's potential suitors has demonstrated any interest in her outside of her movie makeover cuteness, meaning our introduction to all three of the others essentially comes down to them being shallow flakes. And there's elements of meanness and uncomfortable theming littered up and down the production, from its over-the-top framing of Kae's initial appearance to the fact that here, “be yourself” might ultimately mean “fetishize the people around you as sex pairings, that's cool.” All of that makes it hard for me to unquestionably enjoy Kae's frantic antics.

Ultimately, your response to this show will likely be guided by your response to its premise. Kiss Him, Not Me is very good at conveying the humor and humanity in Kae's position, but it's still a very straightforward articulation of “what if a pairing-crazy fujoshi girl were pursued by a bunch of generic hot anime dudes.” The cover does not lie.

Theron Martin

Rating: 2

Some anime get classified as “edgy” because of dark and/or explicit subject matter, or because they dabble in cultural or religious taboos. Others earn that title because they straddle the line between being funny and offensive. Traditionally the latter type has been the almost exclusive domain of male-oriented fan service shows, but the rise of fujoshi-friendly shows has caused that type to start appearing in series aimed at female audiences, too. Kiss Him, Not Me is just such a show, though not for the typical reasons.

Actually, I don't at all think that the series is intended to be edgy; quite the contrary, in fact. Its intent seems to merely be lightly poking fun at fujoshi while telling a fish-out- of-water story from a different angle. Read nothing more into it than that and the first episode comes off as a mildly amusing little tale with a reassurance to girls at the end that hot guys won't reject you because you're an otaku. It even strikes into some fresher territory by having the girl not be flustered by having so many hot guys interested in her, because (at this point at least) she doesn't actually see any of them as love interests; as she says herself at one point, their attention is wasted on her since she's only interested in pairing them up with each other. That creates the irony of the situation, since she's become (as her friend puts it) the heroine of a reverse harem otaku game, but she's not interested. However, it does also raise one important question: if she really does see the guys only as shipping material and actually finds some contrariness in their characters to be appealing, then why does she care what they might think about her hobbies?

There are several things about this scenario which raised an eyebrow for me, though. The “lose a lot of weight and guys who had no romantic interest in you before will be practically fighting over you” notion is doubtless meant to be a joke, but that also sends a potentially troublesome message, too, and I have to wonder how her losing what looks like more than half her original body weight in only a week from doing nothing more than skipping a few meals comes across to a target audience that, based on accounts I've read, has become increasingly plagued by body image issues in recent years. Sure, it can be looked at as a dream scenario, such as a case where a nondescript male character suddenly gets all buff, but will it be interpreted that way? There's also the apparent shallowness of all of the male characters, too; only being interested in her romantically when her weight changes and the seeming “we'll tolerate anything as long as you're pretty” attitude towards her at the end.

Of course, it's entirely possible that I'm reading waaaaay too much into this and it really is just coming across as innocent fun. But few recent titles have as strongly struck me as outright sending negative messages as what this one does.

Paul Jensen

Rating: 3

I don't think there's any way of explaining the premise of Kiss Him, Not Me without making it sound kind of suspicious. Even if you ignore the questionable logic of the “fast in bed for a week and end up gorgeous” plot device, having four guys suddenly show a romantic interest in the heroine after her transformation doesn't exactly paint them in a positive light. The show does seem to be aware of just how ridiculous it is, and it makes a couple of jokes about its own premise, but that doesn't change the fact that there are some head-scratching moments in this episode.

It's a bit of a shame, because there's a fair amount of potential on display as well. Placing a fujoshi character into an otome game scenario opens the door for all kinds of genre satire, and we get a sense of what that might look like in the early going here. Some of Kae's inner monologues are pretty funny, especially when it comes to her ability to read way too much into a situation. While her deliberations over whether or not to run into the anime shop at the end of the episode aren't all that subtle, it's still an entertaining scene. I wouldn't put the series on the same level as an otaku culture comedy like Genshiken, but its humor is in that same vein of self-parody.

I'm not yet sure what I think about Kae's four suitors. This episode doesn't do them any favors by rushing straight from the debut of Kae's new appearance to everyone asking her out on a date, as it paints the guys in a very shallow light. Perhaps that's sort of the point; I could see this series getting a lot of comedic mileage out of the inconveniences of hanging out with generic anime pretty boys in real life. If, however, they're supposed to be genuine characters in their own right, then Kiss Him, Not Me has some real work to do in developing their personalities. The success of any serious attempts at romantic drama will depend on whether or not the audience finds something to like about the characters surrounding Kae.

We've seen plenty of shows get good results from insane setups over the years, but just as many have crashed and burned. I have a relatively good feeling about Kiss Him, Not Me at the moment, if only because it's done more things right than wrong in its first episode. If it can slow down and add some depth to its character dynamics, it could certainly be worth watching. It'll have to step around its fair share of thematic landmines along the way, though.