Kiss Him, Not Me Episode 3 Review:
Let’s have a school festival and embrace all the clichés on the planet.
Maid cafe. Check.
No, a cosplay cafe. Check.
Class doing a play. Check.
Guy having to dress like a girl. Check.
Hand holding freak out. Check.
Sharing a meal freak out. Check.
Haunted house freak out. Check.
Girl getting unwanted attention from guys. Check.
Oh, and while we’re at it, let’s use a lot of heavy references to other anime and hope it passes for a punch line this week. I mean, we already have our characters dressed in some cosplay so we might as well. My personal favourite came from No Game, No Life when Kae declared that “Real life is just a shitty game”.
In case you haven’t noticed, I’m being a little sarcastic. Even if I ignore the fact that I don’t much like the premise of this show, this episode gave me nothing else to hold onto, except a really cool Attack on Titan cosplay, but given it’s drawn rather than someone actually wearing the costume it kind of loses the impact.
The guys still don’t get the girl and she’s just going along with them even though she has no interest. I still haven’t worked out why she just doesn’t tell them she’s not interested.
The previous two episodes had moments of humour and kind of worked as episodes even with my criticisms of the overall setup. This episode feels longer than it is. The few jokes and amusing references to other material aside, there’s just not substance here at all.
Despite all of that criticism, I’m still going to keep watching this. Part of me wants to see if Kae can actually develop something resembling a spine and the other part of me wants to see if the guys in this can ever rise above being designated plot points. I’m not holding out much hope of that happening, but if it did that would be kind of cool.
Kiss Him, Not Me is available on Crunchyroll.
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Karandi James
I actually don’t mind this anime. I enjoy its silliness just for the mere entertainment factor. Definitely lacks in story otherwise.
I’ve not been watching this series as it doesn’t seem to align with my particular interests, but this review is pretty funny 😀 For now I’ll keep experiencing it vicariously through you.
Probably the best way to experience it at this point. While it isn’t actually bad (unless you actually care about the premise in which case there’s all sorts of problems) it hasn’t actually done anything overly interesting.