Koi to Yobu ni wa Kimochi Warui

People fall in love in the most mysterious of ways. This statement seems to be especially true for the affluent genius playboy Ryou Amakusa. When he nearly falls off the stairs one rainy morning, a girl named Ichika Arima saves him. As if by fate, Ryou encounters Ichika again later that night; she happens to be the best friend of his little sister, Rio.

Wanting to "thank" her, Ryou attempts to woo Ichika by employing his usual flirtatious tactics only to be immediately shot down, his target creeped out by his behavior. Rather than being discouraged, Ryou instead becomes more enthralled by her, and he begins to do everything he can to steal Ichika's heart despite receiving disgusted reactions each time. However, as time passes by, will Ichika remain repulsed by Ryou's creepy yet dedicated advances?

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Amakusa, Ryou Main

Toyonaga, Toshiyuki Japanese

Arima, Ichika Main

Kozakai, Yurie Japanese

Amakusa, Rio Supporting

Hasegawa, Rena Japanese

Tamaru, Kai Supporting

Enoki, Junya Japanese

Masuda Supporting

Kimura, Ryouhei Japanese

Matsushima, Arie Supporting

Hanazawa, Kana Japanese

Bartender Supporting

Amakusa, Zenji Supporting

Nakata, Jouji Japanese

Saitou, Shunsuke Producer

Nakayama, Naomi Director

Koizumi, Kisuke Sound Director

Takayama, Hideki Episode Director

Reviews

Jun 14, 2021

Marinate1016

Recommended

“You can’t judge another country by your country’s standards” A simple, yet oft forgotten message. Koikimo is a series that exemplifies the differences between the west and Japan in terms of entertainment. If you’re sensitive or not able to accept that fiction does not equate to reality, you should avoid this. If you are sensible and understand that you can enjoy a story, without necessarily agreeing with the premise and characters’ actions, this is a gold mine.

Koikimo’s premise is truthfully a bit… odd, with the MC basically stalking the girl he likes, who happens to be a high school student and classmate of his little ... sister, but it’s presented in such a way that makes you forget what’s even going on. Koikimo uses a really cute aestethic to hide a questionable premise, and does so very well in my opinion. Again, you don’t have to agree with what’s going on in a show to like it. It’s fiction, not a documentary.

Shoujo Romance is my fave genre of LNs/animanga, so I check out any that air every season. I had no idea about this LN coming into the season and was immediately surprised by how much I love this damn show. In fact, it’s grown to be one of my faves. Ichika and Ryo’s relationship, while starting out in an unconventional way and with some weird circumstances, becomes very wholesome and downright adorable as the series progresses. Once the initial stalker phase ends, I liked the interactions between the two, a lot. Putting aside the age difference, their interactions and growth felt very organic to me and was the highlight of the show. The romance was well written and believable. It may not be socially acceptable, but things are not always black and white in life.

In addtion to likeable main characters, Koikimo’s side cast was really good as well. A love rectangle of sorts begins to form at a certain point, and I thought it was navigated perfectly. In romcoms there’s always going to be someone getting their feelings hurt, but if you do it the right way it doesn’t hamper the experience. Koikimo certainly did that.

Artistically, there’s nothing crazy or new going on design wise in the show, but I did really enjoy the bright colour palette throughout. I think it helped to create a cutsey atmosphere, in contrast to Higehiro, which ironically is the other series this season with a controversial premise. The OST is pretty solid as well as the OP and ED being bangers.

In closing, I loved Koikimo. I’m not ashamed to say that. It’s not for everyone, but I encourage you to keep an open mind when watching not just this show, but any anime. You’re watching a medium that was created for people in a totally different society. There’s going to be things you don’t like or agree with, that’s ok. Luckily for me, once the show got going, it was easily my third fave show of the season and something I looked forward to on Mondays to start my week. I will certainly miss my fave ship of the season, but I’ll be checking out the manga and LN for more. Koikimo gets 10 out of 10.

Reviewer’s Rating: 10

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Apr 23, 2023

mushi_Jyou

Mixed Feelings

Informative

Reason for watching: I went into this thinking it would be more Comedy than Romance, and had thought some negative reviews were exaggerating.
But honestly not much exaggeration.

*Mild spoiler as I do give out the basic premise and gave a general layout of the storyline.

TL;DR at the bottom.

Let me do a quick review and opinion on this:

Visuals: Definitely up my alley. I like the animation of the story, the art style of the animation, the OP, and ED. They are beautiful to me. Of course the animation could be better, but is not like this is some shounen show with lots of action, ... so I do not expect them to put a lot into animating each scene. 8/10

Audio: Seiyuus performance were fine. Is as good as you can expect from such animation. The female lead is able to show emotions through her voice so is not that bad. Male lead on the other hand just seem pretty bland, even for the humane/sentimental (not his stoic persona) scene, there's pretty much not much tone difference. OP and ED are nice, which is the only reason why audio score is above average. 6.5/10

Characters: Very simple. The story relies more on the story plot than the characters personality to tell the story. You can switch around the characters' personality, and the story can still work with a a little tweak here and there. Very average character, and subpar character "growth". Not like I expected much character growth for a 12 episode show. But Male lead essentially just became "kinder" because he fell in love. I get falling in love will make someone happy, but to change how they interact with almost everyone (in a matter of weeks, WHILE not seeing the love of his life frequently) is kind of a stretch. Male Lead's dad just somehow became more understanding because of a one liner from the Female lead... That is not character growth. that's just superpower. 5/10

Story:
Oh this is the part where is ridiculous.
I will echo many reviewers that the premise of this story is unpleasant. To put it badly, is Pedophilic. To put it nicely, is border lining Pedophilic. Yeap.
Is of course not as jarring as the porn genre. But this story definitely has a pedophilic undertone. There is no other way around this. A "Japan's culture..", A "is fictional...", A "consenting age is different...", doesn't change the fact that is pedophilic. You don't see people all up in arms with the porn genre of pedophile(hentai, I know child porn is a big offense) or sexual assault, because we all know is fake. Doesn't change their genre, no excuses to "defend" them either. Also the circumstances leading to those genres in porn aren't as realistic as this story.

The story is of a full grown man, 26 Year old, falling in love with a 16 year old high schooler who is also his sister's BEST FRIEND. Reason for falling in love is sketchy but I do believe we are not able to control our feelings and emotions. But what we, humans, and definitely grown adult, can control, are our actions.
So Male lead falls in love, confessed, got rejected harshly, but still decided to pursue a 16 year old kid openly. Obtains her address without her consent, and consistently ignoring her "NOs" (this part is infuriating actually. regardless of what culture there is or which part of the world this story takes place. When a 16 year old repeatedly rejects you, respect it! Don't tell me is fiction, so NO can be seen as a YES, or she has a tsundere character or she's shy. What world do we live in if we can't understand CONSISTENT "NO" means NO even from a fictional character?).
Male lead tries his best to win the heart of the female lead even when FL is uncomfortable. Then every other side character that knows about this aggressive courtship is accepting of it, enabling a full grown adult with a good number of romantic and sexual experiences, and exposure to mature interactions to pursue a 16 year old child who has zero experiences with Romance, and limited interpersonal interactions, AND obviously much less exposure to the world and its complex dynamics, AND also not fully in touch with her emotional and psychological state yet.
The first 3 episodes are disgusting. Middle 6 episodes are fine if we can ignore how it all started. Last 3 episodes is a pathetic attempt to "correct" the show's logic (or just some sort of subpar redemption arc).
If the story had started with ML and FL having normal interactions that grew closer and their feelings for each other developed independently, the age thing would not have bothered me this much.
I do enjoy a plot with aggressive courtship like what male lead is doing here, but not when the other party is lacking so much in experiences and emotional and psychological development. If the female lead was a regular 20 year old university student, this wouldn't be as disturbing. She would have went through university meeting all sorts of people, and have much more experience as well as more maturity to assess her emotions and mental state.
10 years age gap is not a problem here. Is the age itself that is a problem.
Middle 6 episodes are just normal cliché rom com scenes where ML not so aggressively courts FL, and both the ML and FL have alternate love interests popping into the story.
Last 3 episodes are FL's 16 year old feelings developed romantically while ML realizes that he might be hurting/treating FL badly, because of their 10 years age gap that would be a cause for concern in society's standard... No is really not the age gap. No one really cares if a 45 YO and 35 YO falls in love. Not sure why they think making the 10 year age gap as the biggest problem actually makes sense. Even if japan culture generally raises sensible children, and consent is younger, doesn't change the fact that FL was not able to make an informed decision as well as ML due to their experiences. Is not fair game when FL was robbed off of growing up herself without all that calculated and targeted gaslighting.
So is a happy ending as ML will brave through criticisms of the 10 years age gap and is determine to protect FL from the less understanding society's judgment, while FL with all her 16-17 years experience on Earth (more than half spent on studying and novels and anime) makes the determination to trust her feelings of LOVE and reciprocate ML's advances.

I honestly don't know how anyone can think pedophile/ manipulation/ grooming elements is okay in a regular anime show because is a fiction.
If mutual sex scenes between adults in shows require R21 rating. We should at least have rating for pedophilic story lines, maybe like rated C-reep? At least porn/hentai will rate them R21 and tell you the genre outright. This is not RomCom, is RomCriminalOffence. 5/10 (Story is okay, premise is bad).

Total: 6.1/10 (6)

TL;DR
Definitely has pedophilic undertone no matter how fictional this story is (even if you add in talking clouds and flowers). Uncomfortable premise if you have awareness on how pedophilic crimes are the absolute worst. If you imagine FL to be at least 18 years old or have the maturity of a 20 years old, the story gets a little better lol. Cute songs and art style. Cute storylines in the middle 6 episodes lol.
Mixed feelings because FL is not TOO young and there's no sexualization in here, If she's any younger, this would be a "Not recommended" sentiment. Basically a "vanilla Pedophilic" plot.

- coming from someone who is not saintly or overly reserved (Eye for an eye plot, SA, cruel gangster plots, torture, murderers, anything with blood I do enjoy, even if it was 2 16 YOs falling in love and maybe get a little sexually curious, I am also fine), but when you exploit children, then is a no-go for me.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Jun 14, 2021

skysurf

Not Recommended

This anime feels like watching Pepé Le Pew from Looney Tunes, but with the kitten falling in love with the skunk for no reason.

In one line, it's a show trying hard to romanticize sexual harassment.

This is the story of a creepy grown ass man romantically pursuing a high school girl by stalking, harassing and gaslighting her. His obsession starts by the simple fact that the girl apparently has been the only non-shallow woman he has met that rejected his creepy advances, so he immediately sets on a mission to conquer her whether she likes it or not.

Even though the MC girl already told him to ... stop and that she's uncomfortable with the unwelcome attention, the male MC still continued relentlessly after that. Some of the creep's actions include: multiple unsolicited phone calls even late at night, sending unwanted gifts, pressuring for dating, touching the girl while she was sick sleeping, etc.

The second harasser is the male MC's sister, who acts as a plot device supporting her creep brother and providing him with all kinds of intel info on her "friend" and setting up convenient scenarios so he can prey on the MC girl easier (e.g. literally gave out her friend's home address since episode 1, brought the brother's gifts to school, tricked her into giving out her phone number, schemed all kinds of settings to facilitate their encounters so they would appear as "coincidences", etc).

There are even more red flags when observing the male MC character's behavior that provides a clear view on the kind of toxic relationship he's pursuing, just to list a few:

1) VIOLENT: He had no trouble in assaulting an adult woman in a public place and threatening her with further physical abuse.

2) POSSESSIVE: Got triggered just by the fact that a classmate was talking to MC girl and felt the need to act in a threatening way towards the teenage boy. His own male friend is aware of this, who is seen SECRETLY hanging out with the female MC admitting that he himself would be in trouble with the creep if he knows they're hanging out. Not being able to casually hang out or even talk with friends sounds like the depiction of the worst type of toxic relationship.

3) MANIPULATIVE: Despite the fact that the creep is the one harassing the inexperienced girl ignoring her requests to stop, when the girl tried her best to take a strong stand against his behavior and called him out, all it took was him doing a pikachu surprised face to make her feel guilty resulting in HER APOLOGIZING TO HIM. This is not a light observation, as the creep was literally shown rejoicing himself in the fact that she was the one who apologized to him. That's some dark stuff right there for those who can see past the shojo-esque colorful backgrounds and cute faces.

As for the rest of characters, most of them seem to have been designed by the author to create an unrealistic sexual harassment fantasy where all the society surrounding the abuser is happy about his actions. Just as an example, you have the girl's mother who was being enthusiastic about all the unwanted gifts (instead of the more realistic approach of being suspicious/worried) and also not caring at all even after she found out the dude sending them is a grown ass man... instead, the mother was instantly added to the male MC's harem.

The animation is nothing special, just alright and the art style is average. Nothing really stands out.

Sound quality was awful mostly with the character voices. The opening and ending songs are quite cool though, which thankfully can be purchased and enjoyed independently without having to watch this anime.

Overall, this looks like a typical trash josei story with an abusive male MC where the author went overboard with the harassment fantasy and destroyed all credibility of the world depicted, converting this supposed romance comedy into something mediocre that is neither funny nor romantic in the slightest.

Reviewer’s Rating: 1

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