(L) KimiKiss pure rouge

[Sinestra]

Originally Posted by golthin

just that extra episode!

Damn thats disappointing im sure they could have managed at least 3 or so. There numerous little incidents in the series that could have warranty a couple of OVA's. Oh well at least we got this one it was fun to watch.

[germanturkey]

yeah, i found this ep more enjoyable than most of the series. more Sakino is always a good thing. anyways, i was hoping to see the movie they made, but at this point in the story, it hadn't been produced yet. lame.

[puretsundere]

Just saw the extra episode and it brought back a lot of memories. Loved seeing all the characters again especially Futami-san. Did not enjoy seeing the frogs or Hiiragi. (Sorry. They're just annoying. I just don't like either of them.) It actually hurt me seeing Kouichi and Yuumi, knowing how everything ended up. The best part of the episode for me was hearing the words "Koware sou de..." and listening to the ED song again. That really brought me back. All in all, a nice, simple episode.

[zzeroparticle]

That was a rather nice episode in that you really got to see more of Kuryuu's character and that it brought you all the warm feelings that you had for all of the other characters. It helps that this was a pretty good standalone episode and the perspective change provided for a nice implementation of her story. Also got a bit of a chuckle out of seeing those frogs once again, mostly because Kuryuu's reaction to them was absolutely funny somehow when the two girls went over the top. Don't ask me why.

[DragoonKain3]

Two thumbs up from me for the OVA episode. But then again, I pretty much worship the ground Kasai walks on, so it ain't too surprising for me.

And oddly enough, when my connection was down for the past 4 days, I had the urge to rewatch KimiKiss again. Colour me surprised when BSS's subs of the OVA came up when my connection was repaired. What a twist of fate indeed. ^_^

[Samatarou]

I enjoyed the extra episode, a nice bit of light relief after the way the series ended, but I would rather it had been set chronologically after the series when everything has settled down again rather than mid-series, it would have been nice to have had a glimpse of Kouichi and Mao back to normal.

As for the splitting the lead character thing that was being discussed earlier, I think that was a good way of getting more romantic angles dealt with, if there had been a single boy v. the four main girls then it would have ended up a really superficial harem series I think. With two leads we get double the emotional intensity.

[golthin]

Originally Posted by Samatarou

As for the splitting the lead character thing that was being discussed earlier, I think that was a good way of getting more romantic angles dealt with, if there had been a single boy v. the four main girls then it would have ended up a really superficial harem series I think. With two leads we get double the emotional intensity.

too bad the japanese audience didn't think so!

[ragnarokr]

Originally Posted by Samatarou

I enjoyed the extra episode, a nice bit of light relief after the way the series ended, but I would rather it had been set chronologically after the series when everything has settled down again rather than mid-series, it would have been nice to have had a glimpse of Kouichi and Mao back to normal.
.

It would have been nice to see some new stuff set after the series, but as long as we have anything, it is pretty good by itself.

The episode was pretty funny, nostalgic as everyone said. It's always good when some new episode appears after the series ended for a while back.

[Samatarou]

I just realised that Sakino('s seiyuu) was Rakka in Haibane Renmei! So that's why she killed herself! The boy she liked chose a cold-hearted girl over her.... Sakino was obviously more hurt than she looked....
...or something...

[Eczema]

Just finished Kimikiss ~ Pure Rouge + OVA.

Spoiler for Impressions:

Kimikiss basically follows the love-lives of the two male leads as they attempt to traverse their own respective love triangles. Both are given equal screentime throughout the series. The pacing of the show is good, with no outrageous plot twists or any unnecessary character drama. The behavior of all the characters remain congruent throughout the 24 episodes, and the ending is suitably realistic and conclusive.

Apart from the 6 main characters, the side-characters range from interesting to annoying to useless. There is the cliched younger sister character who provides comic relief by harassing the male lead, the sexy teacher who upstages her teenage students, and the rich but naive girl who discovers the meaning of friendship. The sexy teacher is an example of a useless character. They introduce her in the first episode, building her up to make the viewer think that she will have an important role in the series, but then she disappears for the next 20 eps only to appear in the last couple of episodes in an utterly meaningless way.

The rich girl character is interesting, and during the series, the show alludes to her becoming romantically involved with another male side-character. But nothing eventuates, and the whole premise is dropped suddenly without any reason whatsoever. I think it was a good idea not to have a 3rd love plot in a 24 episode series, but if that was the case, why introduce it in the first place? Why not just leave her in the background? Oh, and again in the last few episodes, the aforementioned male side-character hooks up with another less developed female side-character for little reason other than to pair him up with someone. This was not foreshadowed at all and unnecessary given the events that unfolded earlier in the show. This plot progression severely hinders the show in the otherwise superb character development department. The OVA did redeem this certain character to an extent, but the coupling still troubles me.

Another point I have to mention is that Kimikiss is so innocent and sugar-sweet. Almost painfully so. None of the characters harbour any malicious intent whatsoever - they are all likeable kids. Confrontation scenes are uncommon and short-lived. You'd think if someone just got shafted by another girl in the game of love, there would be more RAGE. The characters and events may seem a bit unrealistic with this in mind, but I think that this is the atmosphere the producers were going for, and it turned out adequately in the end. It's certainly better than a nonsense School Days bad end. I guess this sort of tone is to be expected from an anime titled Kimikiss ~ Pure Rouge.

The music is generally good. The OP is very catchy, and the ED themes are classy. The animation is inconsistent. I recall a scene where the characters are walking barefoot, and their feet are simply single-colored square blocks! I though I was watching a Lego anime! But at other times, for example the kiss scenes, hand holding scenes, and crying scenes, are animated brilliantly. I understand it is probably too much to ask for the entire 24 eps to look so beautiful, but I would have liked it to be more consistent at least.

Kimikiss is a very satisfying, clean, and placid title - great for light, casual viewing. It might be a little slow paced, corny, and childishly naive for some, but that is just the mood of this anime, and I think it suited the series splendidly. I know reading over my post it seems like I dislike the show, but it has a certain charm that defies explanation. It is a jack-of-all-trades, but I think the show is more than the sum of its parts. KISS KISS KOISHITERU YO is not quite KISS KISS FALL IN LOVE, but I highly recommend it to all fans of the genre.

[Samatarou]

I agree that the stories of some of the minor characters like the teacher didn't go anywhere but I think some identifiable but undeveloped side characters are needed to give the story a realistic feeling and not have an abrupt cutoff beyond the main circle of characters.

I found the imouto figures (Narumi and Nana) annoying too, their silly squeaky voices had me reaching for the volume control whenever they opened their mouths, it would have been better to alot their screentime to the putative Hiiragi/Kuryuu/Shijou triangle instead (well except for the frog romance which was funny, and thankfully the frogs had lower voice tones).

The sudden switcharound with Hiiragi going for Kuryuu when he had been buttering up Shijou for most of the series was indeed rather bizarre, even though he'd had several run-ins with her they never seemed to connect on a personal level, I couldn't help feeling it was just a sop to the game fans who wanted to see Kuryuu brought into the romantic fold. Although I don't think they could realistically have developed those three characters fully it would have been nice to have given more time to them, so that their side story might actually have enough coherence to make some kind of sense. (I know a lot of people loathed Hiiragi though, I disliked him at first too, but his manipulative nature won me over after a while, it was nice to have someone who isn't pure and noble but instead was always putting himself first.)

I thought all these failings were fairly minor though, in that the emotional core of the story simply overwhelmed all the weaknesses. (And for me the biggest weakness was simply the intensely stereotypical main characters, which actually put me off from watching the series at all for over six months: I mean with sporty, posh, brainy, cute, etc it was like the Spice Girls or something! Fortunately I managed to overcome my initial predjudice against the whole setup for just long enough to appreciate that although cardboard in conception, the characters did actually interact convincingly, and after 2-3 episodes I got absorbed into the story).

I agree the animation was inconsistent. JC Staff were certainly employing their reserve team to do a lot of the inbetweening, some of the girls faces changed shape from moment to moment, for instance when Sakino was telling Futami off behind the school she looked like she had a broken nose or something, in fact the profile of her nose actually remained stationary as she raised her head so that the physiognomy of her whole face changed. It seemed that some of the animators were quite incapable of drawing someone's face properly when it was as a tilt!

I like the watercolour style backgrounds though, something JC Staff have used before, but again I don't think they were as good as in their other series, such as Karin which I thought had quite beautifiul backdrops. The music was good though, with upbeat OP and downbeat ED (at least the second one, Wasurenai, which fitted into the storyline perfectly, and really helped those emotional cliffhangers.)

[iceyfw]

Wow. One thing kept repeating in my head and that was "Good Grief. Can you drag this out any longer?". I skipped the useless parts (LOL mentioning Udon like every 2 episodes) and went straight for the action. Well.. more like I speed forward every episode. And I'm glad I did, so the ending was alright with me.

[justinstrife]

Originally Posted by Darknemo2000

Obviously, multiple male leads experiment did not work out (financially) and I doubt that any other studio will try this approach again with date-sims anytime soon. The one heroine storyline might have more chances, but probably we will see just more harems (sadly, as i would prefer singular heroine line focus).

Multiple male leads just do not work as the studio has to create another male character(characters) that have problems blending in with other characters and usually stay outcasts through out the series. Plus the male viewers usually feel that if they support one male the other one is 'stealing' girls as in date-sims they are used to rather comfortable situation with a single male lead and if other male characters exist they usually do not have any chances.

JC Staff experiment should probably scare other studios from doing the same again in near future so i would say that it will be harems all the way or (well i hope) a singular heroines story lines , but definitely not multiple male leads.

I had to negative rep you for the broken record way you kept going on in this thread, from beginning to end. Yes, I spent the weekend reading everyone's posts(well I skimmed most of Lego's as he was getting really annoying with his antics. The guy needed to take some Prozac or something). We get that you gamers were disappointed. We get it already. WE GET IT ALREADY! Man...

I'll probably end up buying the game for the PS2, as I do own a Japanese slim PS2 for games that interest me. However, because of all the whiners from the game, I'm less than thrilled about spending the money for it.

Originally Posted by Shiroth

I'd recommend it to anyone who wants a school romance story. It won't end up like Lamune where no one even remembers it.

Just because it did bad in Japan doesn't effect my original opinion --- it's still one of my favorite shows from last year.

I will be recommending this show to quite a few people I know. It's a pity that this anime isn't going to be profitable in Japan. It's easily one of the favorite romance animes I've seen in 20+ years of anime watching. It took me awhile to find the time to sit down and watch the series, as I had a lot of other things on my to do list, but it was well worth the time and emotional commitment to the characters. There wasn't one character I disliked in the series, and the ending left everyone with a hopeful future, in different ways. It's a shame I wasn't around while the show was airing, as I would have liked to have engaged in some of the debates and character analysis that went on in here, but I wouldn't have wanted to have had to bash Lego's head in Jelly for all of his frantic posts about Kai. Someone would think he had a complex about the sax player.

Oh and I knew how the pairings were going to go very early on, and the signs were there for people to see, if they were willing to open their eyes to them. There was no sudden and abrupt plot twists that didn't make sense. The signs were there, way more coherently than in Canvas 2...

I'd give this show a 9.4/10, and am looking forward to finding more shows of this caliber. It's a pity I couldn't ever get into H&C like some others did. I watched both seasons, and deleted the show soon after, as I just didn't connect with any of the characters.

Thanks for all the reading everyone, it was quite entertaining this weekend. Now I'll have to rest my eyes up for a couple weeks as they've been put through a lot of work thanks to you all.

[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.

[golthin]

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.

you do know that Jc staff makes a profit regardless whether the show does well or not. the people that don't profit are the one that only get money from the DVD sales. Jc staff might get a cut from the DVD sales and their lost was just not getting HUGE extra profits from the royalties to the DVD sales. Now, Kimikiss merchandise got a huge increase in sales thanks to the show.
(i heard the game re-release sold 40k Extra copies and that was most likely thanks to the buss from the Show)

[Darknemo2000]

golthin, Kimikiss merchandise always sold well, before and after the anime. Game was always popular, in a sense kimikiss did its own job, everyone heard that it was worser than the original so decided to look up for the original. Same thing like with ZnT anime and novels.

However, Kimikiss as an anime was a failure. As merchandise - it was always a success before and after the anime, I do not think anime had that much of influence in those numbers. Kimikiss was just way too popular to begin with.

[Lego]

Originally Posted by justinstrife

I had to negative rep you for the broken record way you kept going on in this thread, from beginning to end. Yes, I spent the weekend reading everyone's posts(well I skimmed most of Lego's as he was getting really annoying with his antics. The guy needed to take some Prozac or something). We get that you gamers were disappointed. We get it already. WE GET IT ALREADY! Man...

It's as good a time as any to post, especially when referenced by name. Holy crap did I loose myself in posting so damn much. It's something that I find mortally embarrassing just looking at it. I could make excuses for having a tough time at the time, but nah, I turned into an annoying asshole who posted five paragraph posts over and over and ended up leaving that type of impression on people. Still when it comes to certain shows I get passionate, it's what I do. Couple that with some tough times and you get that as a result.

Still golthin and Westlo told me to come post over here about the series, which I did originally, so aside from the warning from I forget which moderator no one said anything to me about it aside from you telling me I need prozac. I wish someone would just give me the straight deal instead of checking back to find wonderful comments like that.

Ugh . It's still something that bothers me to this day though and I'd apologize to everyone if I could, but thats something that can't be done after the fact. Still we all have our vices and I guess posting tons of times about a show passionately(perhaps annoyingly to some) got ahold of me instead of just letting those emotions play normally.

[Vexx]

Originally Posted by Darknemo2000

golthin, Kimikiss merchandise always sold well, before and after the anime. Game was always popular, in a sense kimikiss did its own job, everyone heard that it was worser than the original so decided to look up for the original. Same thing like with ZnT anime and novels.

However, Kimikiss as an anime was a failure. As merchandise - it was always a success before and after the anime, I do not think anime had that much of influence in those numbers. Kimikiss was just way too popular to begin with.

Kimikiss the anime ... was a *commercial* failure (i.e. did not sell well) because it put the core fans outside of their comfortable safe zone. I'll skip the psychoanalysis of why....
Artistically, all I can say is that I appreciated the anime adapters trying to do something unusual and take this fare outside of its "usual plodding rut" that most game adaptations take. Its just unfortunate that the japanese domestic fans in this case were so obsessively fragile o.O

Artistically, KKPR is a keeper for me simply because it executed an interesting ensemble drama rather than the usual "by the numbers" harem fantasy. Sadly, it is unlikely to get an R1 distribution even though it probably would do much better in the US for the exact same reason it did so poorly in Japan.

[Darknemo2000]

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...

This means taht fans can not be so fragile after all. They can deal a game adaptation not being a harem, yet it is important how the story portrayed...

The main thing that killed Kimikiss was... two heroe's. For a series that had only one that was suicidal due to self-identification of viewers...but lets leave the psychoanalysis for the later.

My main point is that the fragility may not lie in tha actual genre (not being a harem etc.) but rather in self-identification and Kimikiss took too far here.

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...

In fact I would go as far as to say that if the love triangle of Kuochi would have been MaoxErikoXKouchi then the series would have been much more popular, since the two twice as popular girls than the rest of the girls together would be around the guy they identify with... The other one could have a harem, die or whatever...

JC STaff decided that fans wanted happy ending for the two most popular girls...and were wrong... Creating another male character to provide that turned out to be a real killer...

[golthin]

Originally Posted by Darknemo2000

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...

This means taht fans can not be so fragile after all. They can deal a game adaptation not being a harem, yet it is important how the story portrayed...

The main thing that killed Kimikiss was... two heroe's. For a series that had only one that was suicidal due to self-identification of viewers...but lets leave the psychoanalysis for the later.

My main point is that the fragility may not lie in tha actual genre (not being a harem etc.) but rather in self-identification and Kimikiss took too far here.

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...

In fact I would go as far as to say that if the love triangle of Kuochi would have been MaoxErikoXKouchi then the series would have been much more popular, since the two twice as popular girls than the rest of the girls together would be around the guy they identify with... The other one could have a harem, die or whatever...

JC STaff decided that fans wanted happy ending for the two most popular girls...and were wrong... Creating another male character to provide that turned out to be a real killer...

The show would have done much better if they had just gone with a Various Heroines formula and if they had saved the story of kimikiss for an original anime with original characters. The story that they used with kimikiss was an awesome story and they really didn't need the "kimikiss" name to carry it. That was the big mistake, they had the formula for one the biggest succes in anime, an incredible plot. If they were worry about being accused of stealing from the source material, they could still have done it by just paying for the use ofit without using the kimikiss name. They just didn't think that the fans were going to be so unforgiven.