Kiss Him, Not Me #01 — Skin Deep

October 6th, 2016

Describes pretty much everything about this show.

Impressions:

I've mentioned this before, but I often think about these kinds of boy-harem shows in terms of "how godawful would things be if the genders were reversed?" And I can't help but thinking that the comedy would work so much better if it was an unattractive guy who turned into a pretty boy, yet hated the attention and was trying to make all the girls go lesbian. Or maybe it's just that this left so much spare brain cycles during the first half when the only joke it had was "fat people are so gross." It was then followed by the second half being "Goddamned, is everyone shallow as hell." That wasn't really the joke though. The 'joke' was "she was fat… but now she's not! That's nuts!"

So it's really hard to call this a comedy, let alone a funny one, and I'm not sure where else that could possibly leave it. The whole thing is an exercise in superficiality which seems like it should be a joke, but the makers don't seem to be in on it. Despite some lipservice of self-awareness, the utter lack of it is probably the biggest problem. Christ. That group date thing of the second half couldn't be any less self-aware if they dragged her into a dark corner to gang… tickle her. It's just your typical wallflower-suddenly-becomes-popular-girl boy-harem affair, only it feels like the premise lets it be slightly more overt with its pretty boy on pretty boy nonsense packaged with a somewhat horrifying message that the only thing that counts is being attractive.

Next Episode:

What a tale.

Posted in Anime | 3 Comments »

3 Shouts From the Peanut Gallery

  • Fuwaa says:
    October 7, 2016 at 5:44 am

    > And I can’t help but thinking that the comedy would work so much better if it was an unattractive guy who turned into a pretty boy, yet hated the attention and was trying to make all the girls go lesbian.

    I agree. I can’t imagine the show getting any better after this unless she actually succeeds and then realizes how empty the feeling is when all the guys are paired together and no one is paying attention to her anymore.

  • jingoi says:
    October 7, 2016 at 8:13 am

    Would’ve been funnier if she stayed fat or always had this expression http://tenka.seiha.org/images2016/kiss1/70.jpg

  • Neclord X says:
    October 10, 2016 at 3:27 am

    I’ll be honest, I had fun watching the episode, although it was only because the reaction faces.

    But the show itself disturbed me because several reasons. First, how the guys were such a dick and jumped to her like wolves when she becomes beautiful. That’s…realistic, I’ll give that, but it makes hard to root for any of them at all. And the only guy that looked a bit less dick that the rest had the personality of a table.

    The second thing that annoyed me, and my biggest problem, is that from the premise of the show I thought she would be REALLY REALLY fujoshi, but as soon as she dates the boys…she suddenly feels something in her chest?! I expected her to remain totally crazy fujoshi for some episodes at least before starting to have a change of feelings. Doing it this fast feels as if they were saying “is not that she is a fujoshi cause she wants, but because she was too ugly to get a man”.

    Finally, I can accept she turned thin in a week, but…how losing weight changes the color of your hair and your voice?

    Overall I had fun but…to me it felt it contained way too much questionable messages.