Kiss Him, Not Me Episode 8

kiss8

Review:

Just when I think I’m over the basic faults in Kiss Him, Not Me’s premise we get an episode like this. Nanashima essentially assaults Kae because he has ‘a fever’ and then apologizes profusely but Kae is a little bit traumatized (from both the kiss and the realisation she couldn’t stop him from holding her down). And then at the end he ‘saves’ her by beating up some overzealous fans and she decides that boys can be scary but very dependable. Um, did I miss something there? What sort of rationalisation is that?

Once again,  I know that depicting realistic relationships is not actually the job of a story but could we at least not reinforce messages that allow culturally entrenched domestic abuse to be perpetuated. That would be nice.

Now, if I remove my personal distaste for this overall message this week, the episode is neither better nor worse than any other. That said, one more episode like this and I will finally toss this show into the dropped pile. There’s only so much air-headed girl getting pursued by guys who actually don’t know her as a person or particularly care about the person I can take and if we’re going to start excusing assault I think I’m going to have to pull the plug.

Kiss Him, Not Me is available on Crunchyroll.

8 thoughts on “Kiss Him, Not Me Episode 8

  1. He had a chance when he was going well with the magical girl anime thing. But i was left feeling sorely disappointed by his actions. Despite him being sick – it definitely didn’t make his behavior tolerable at all and the scene actually made me feel uncomfortable. In the end I think Mutsumi senpai is in the top running and the only one I find decent of the 4 boys.

    1. That was cute and for the first part of the episode I thought the show was making a last ditch effort to make this extremely shallow and uninteresting character kind of lovable and then he attacked Kae. Any hope this show had of me liking this character is gone at this point.

  2. I have no idea how the character arrived at ‘Scary but dependable’ from those events and I don’t think I want to know. I agree that stories should at least try not to normalize/trivialize such behavior. Not everyone can be decent human beings, in life or fiction, but can fiction at least show the ones that aren’t as the assholes they are rather than covering it up with bs.

    1. This probably didn’t get to needing the police but I just don’t think she should be all smiles at the end just because he helped with a dance number.

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