(L) KimiKiss pure rouge

[DragoonKain3]

Vexx, remember that Kimikiss Manga Various Heroines is the most popular from all Kimikiss mangas, yet is the only one that doenst go in a harem way...

Only problem being that going the short story route hasn't exactly been popular in the anime side of things either. See Kita He and Sentimental Journey. And if Kimikiss actually went that route, where every 3 episodes or so they're going to 'reset' everything and have the hero go for a new girl, that would've been a recipe for disaster.

The thing is - they were used to identify themselves with the main Kimikiss hero Kouichi, but now they threw in another and that was killer as it actually called identification problems and even anger towards the next male lead...

More so, that character gets the most popular girl - Eriko... So they went against it...

The what now? I've always been under the impression that if there's any hate going around, it would be towards Kouichi and not Kazuki if 2ch was of any indication.

So yeah, while your theory may seem sound, reality doesn't support it.

[justinstrife]

Originally Posted by Darknemo2000

Yet, the post that you neg rep was the one stating that it is not doing good in japan in sales. You should have taken other post rather than the one that is stating an obvious truth (if you do not believe - take a look at the sales numbers this year, you will see Kimikiss near the end of that list).

Besides I never said that the anime is bad. I just said that it was a financial failure and that they should have done it the other way to to avoid that (obviously no one wants to work just for art alone, but want make money from it). Since usually I hate harems, I thought it being done in manga-way would be better rather than creating tow hero's and rather clichéd love-triangles.

I don't think that Kimikiss was a bad anime as such (much better than lets say ZnT II or III), yet I think it was a failure. It may sound contradictorily but it really isn't.

It doesn't matter which post I negative repped, as I had a choice of about 50 to choose from, and was just exhausted from reading the 200 pages in this thread over the course of the weekend. It was a LONG read believe me, and my eyes were on wit's end.

I probably could have chosen another post to negative rep, but was there really anything to gain by actually spending 2 hours looking at all over your posts to find a different one? The point still stands, and at least I was honest enough to leave my username, and even be public about it so you could respond. Others might have just left the negative rep, and left you guessing who they were, or why they did it.

I'm not the type who runs away from anything, and I will state what's on my mind. Just as you, yourself do.

[Darknemo2000]

DragoonKain3, they always complained about Kouchi...haven't you read any game threads? But it still doesn't matter, they criticize the character because he is viewed as important mean to identify with anime. It's rather normal. Now Kazuki was almost always ignored, because no one even cared about him enough, though still felt annoyed about Erika being with him.

So I still believe that the main crisis lies in splitting the main character. Well that and the fact that Mao had her first kiss stolen by some random guy who never appeared in the original game didn't help it either. As far as I remember that wasn't met too well..Though at taht point the number of fans have significantly decreased.

Kita He and Sentimental Journey, were never a good material to begin with. Just that this was used on rather crappy shows to begin with doesn't make it crappy itself. Now if it would screw something major then it would be a valid point, however not for such small fry like Kita He and Sentimental Journey. Well Sentimental Journey had its own fanbase admittedly at that time but the directing in those late 1998 were nothing impressive just like artwork. Not to mention it was 12 episodes long... And as far as I see it for a plsit storulines you would need much more episodes in general...Split a garbage or give it as whole it will still be garbage.

[DragoonKain3]

Well, your point was that the reason Kimikiss failed commercially was because people hated on Kazuki. Which isn't the case... people hated Kouichi and generally liked or even loved Kazuki. So I really don't get this 'identification' BS, if you can pardon my french, especially after you contradict yourself with this statement.

Now Kazuki was almost always ignored, because no one even cared about him enough, though still felt annoyed about Erika being with him.

Just face it... it's as Vexx says. KKPR wasn't particularly catered to the game playing audience by not giving them what they are used to, and thus they didn't like it. Sure there might be a few minor factors here and there, but that really is just the jist of it.


And lol at you trying to downplay Sentimental Journey. The fanbase of Sentimental Graffiti is comparable to KimiKiss's, and I'd even say it should exceed it during its time. It wasn't hailed as the next TokiMemo for no good reason after all. But what do I know? Next thing you know you're going to say TokiMemo wasn't as big as KimiKiss is right now lol.

In any case, there's already precedent that an anime about short stories with resets wasn't very popular, and that's the big reason why you don't see it happening now. KimiKiss would be of no exception, I assure you, so them doing something like the Various Heroines manga would have spelled an even less commercial success than the anime did.

[Darknemo2000]

DragoonKain3, you can feel dislike for one particular character, but still not express much about it as you simply do not care about that and put a blind eye. Ignoring can also be form of hatred or anger as you know, just more subtle because you do not care about the character in general to waste your time to comment on it. It is not a contradiction just more subtle type of dissatisfaction/anger rather than the one that which is openly expressed, as it indicates you at least care about this character enough. And I never got impression that Kazuki was liked. If he was indeed liked then yes, my statement would loose any credibility because if he is liked you can't really say that he is hated/not liked at the same. But again I never got the feeling he was liked.

And you on purpose ignored my statement that it did had a fanbase at that time but the general build up of it was horrible. Plus the 12 episode with singular plotlines that resets is suicide. You would need ta least 3-4 episodes of one story to keep the tension of one or the other character.

Wait I can understand where the problem lies. You thought that when I was commenting it as garbage I meant the game and not the anime, didn't you? But I thought it was self-clear that Sentimental GRAFFITI is NOT a Sentimental JOURNEY...


So I still don't see how you can claim that it has to be even more unsuccessful specially considering manga's success.

[Vexx]

Actually, I think Darknemo's assertion that it was the "two hero" idea that crashed it commercially is really what I'm talking about --- it wasn't even whether it was hating one male lead or the other underneath it all. The aspect I liked was exactly that which was disliked by some KKPR fans. Doing it with original characters would have been fine for me as well -- but I don't know how you'd get the backing to launch that without known characters.

See, I find the inability to accept the "two hero" plot kind of a fascinating bit because it reflects the amount of "self-identification" that some fans put into these things. I have trouble understanding that sort of thing because myself, I'm just interested in a good story and seeing characters try to work out their dilemmas.

Hell, I'd like to see every girl or guy find someone at the end of a series. Thinking otherwise.... just seems quite selfish.

[Darknemo2000]

But thats how it is... Japanese (at least ones that are connected with anime) are very selfish in that aspect and quite fragile in terms of their own self-identification.

[TigerII]

I may not agree with you in some things, but I agree with that. Why do you think in the fighting shows so many of the main characters are often weak and not apart of the 'popular' groups, yet become something great. Or how about the harem males who in the real world would have a hard time getting one woman at that age. Anime caters to a specific group many times.

[Darkje]

I picked this up a few weeks ago on a whim and watched through it. I thought it was pretty good and entertaining.

I thought Aihara's ending/path was great, but I hated Kouichi's.

Once again I am reminded what an idiot the main char can be, I feel the same way as I did after watching KGNE at the ending, just endlessly wondering how the heck they worked out to get to the ending.

Kouichi was pretty cool, but then after him finding out Hoshino was going away and Mao confessing to him, it seemed like he thought, screw Hoshino, I'm going to go for the "easier" route.

I know Mao was his childhood friend, and so forth, basic storyline, but still, he dumped the girl on the last day she was going to be around, what an ahole!!! Took him that long to figure this stuff out? I'm just so dissapointed in him.

I know you can think, at least he had the courage to tell her before she left, and not after...whatever, he screwed Hoshino over pretty good.

I'm going to read through the discusson thread at work tomorrow fully to get a vibe on what others thought.

Ps, still liked the series though!

[Irenicus]

^Let me put it this way: despite liking it from the start, I didn't finish this show precisely because I was really annoyed at how they were handling this near the end.

It was like the writers are saying, whoa, we are reaching the 20's, let's ramp up the angst for the dramatic finale! Thank the gods we made our main guy enough of a wimpy idiot to let this pass! So the pleasant school life sketches were phased out and the series switched gears for Rumbling Hearts Angst Fare 2.0.

Most people could see the Mao ending coming half a series away, some guessed it in the single digits episodes (though I don't credit them for any logical or intuitive power as much as guessing the right thing), but the messy way it was handled, the slow, inexorable, and frustrating progress of the situation -- inexorable not in any grand sense of fateful drama, but because the characters are a bit dim and the viewers can't do anything about it -- and the screen time it was taking away from more interesting plotlines, prompted me to drop this one prematurely. It didn't help that I thought the second ED just didn't work for that dramatic-music-cues-cliffhanger trick that helped make Honey and Clover, Nodame Cantabile, and to a much lesser extent the first half of this series so awesome.

I'm still not sure if I would go back and finish it or not. Kudos to you for having done that though.

P.S. When you read the thread discussions, I think it's safe to ignore the They Don't Follow The Original Source commentary -- that doesn't mean much for those of us who aren't familiar with the source material.

[Lego]

Originally Posted by Darkje

I'm going to read through the discusson thread at work tomorrow fully to get a vibe on what others thought.

Ps, still liked the series though!

Feel free to ignore most of my latter incoherent rambling unless you're having a REALLY boring day at work . Believe me, I wish I could

[Samatarou]

Originally Posted by Darkje

Kouichi was pretty cool, but then after him finding out Hoshino was going away and Mao confessing to him, it seemed like he thought, screw Hoshino, I'm going to go for the "easier" route.

I know Mao was his childhood friend, and so forth, basic storyline, but still, he dumped the girl on the last day she was going to be around, what an ahole!!! Took him that long to figure this stuff out? I'm just so dissapointed in him.

That's not how I saw it. First, I don't think Kouichi was cool. Compared to Kai, he was just a child, I think that showed clearly every time they met. So the first surprise for me was that Mao chose Kouichi over Kai, However ISTM this was her realising that Kouchi had always cared deeply for her whereas she didn't really know Kai that well. So love and maturity aren't necessarily connected.

As for Kouichi's choices, I felt he was determing to stay with Hoshino simply because it seemed the honorable thing to do, and simply denied to himself what his real feelings were. The encounter with Kai finally crystalised his feeling, he finally understood (just in time!) that his state of denial was not really saving anyone from being hurt at all. That was Kai's message: "Mao tried to avoid hurting me but she failed because I knew something was wrong anyway."

The timing of Kouichi dumping Hoshino came down to the fact that this was his last chance to do the honorable thing and tell her he loved someone else and not simply take up with Mao behind her back. Also ISTM that Mao had basically abandoned all hope and he realised his denial of feelings for her had left her in a purgatory of pain and he needed to act decisively to end this.

Kai had basically said to Kouichi "for your sake, both me and Mao have suffered a lot of pain - are you going to piss on us both or are you going to act like a man and make sure that suffering was not in vain?"

At this point it finally penetrated Kouichi's thick skull that far from helping anyone, his pretense that everything was just hunky dory was just making things worse, hurting both Mao and Hoshino and indeed himself. Most importantly he was hurting the person he really loved, which when you think about the lengths he went to earlier in the series to make Mao happy was clearly completely at odds with his true feelings. He had always said he just wanted her to be happy and yet here he was making her miserable!

[willyvereb]

Yeah the story became somewhat similar to the Rumbling Hearts(KGNE)...
The Mao ending was not so sweet but predictable and it proved that Hoshino is a strong person(not letting herself to cry...).
The Eriko ending was good but somehow i felt that Sakina was the most sad from the D3(the ditched 3: Yuuma, Kai, Sakina).

Overall that was a great show...and somehow i'm not bored at all the whole time...

[DragoZERO]

I just re watched this series and it really is one of the best. All of the characters were developed beautifully and the ending was clear and crisp.

Truly on of the greats.

[popsiclestick]

Originally Posted by DragoZERO

I just re watched this series and it really is one of the best. All of the characters were developed beautifully and the ending was clear and crisp.

Truly on of the greats.

This one works out well since the main character was split and there can be some clear endings that work out for the 2 main males.

[Vexx]

Aye, the very thing many fans of the source eroge hated (and punished the series for) -- was also the thing that helped make it a great story line: an actual ensemble drama with multiple threads.

[harmonious]

This is definitely up there with my favorite romance anime, Kare Kano. Plus it has a great ending and was fully realized unlike Kare Kano.

[Apple Fiend]

Ah I wish there was a list of what songs are being played on which episode (someone had did it for clannad, it detailed all of the songs that were played and which ones and from which album)

I'm mentioning this as I think there is a song I heard that isn't on the ost but was really good, its on episode 19 around 4:17-4:50 (where mao is talking to kouichi on the street than hosino appears in the background)

[Shiroth]

Originally Posted by Apple Fiend

I'm mentioning this as I think there is a song I heard that isn't on the ost but was really good, its on episode 19 around 4:17-4:50 (where mao is talking to kouichi on the street than hosino appears in the background)

That piece didn't appear on the soundtrack, which is a huge shame really.

[Sinestra]

Originally Posted by DragoZERO

I just re watched this series and it really is one of the best. All of the characters were developed beautifully and the ending was clear and crisp.

Truly on of the greats.

How i miss this series maybe i will follow suite and do a re watch one of my favorites as well. It seems we dont get quality romance shows like Kimikiss as often as we use too.

im still reading Kimikiss various heroins.