Monday 30 June 2008

Itazura na Kiss - Episode 12

During our run through Itazura no Kiss thus far, I've railed against almost every character for some reason or another, finally reaching the point last episode where I hated basically everybody except for the lovely Kotoko.

Well, scratch that, because now I dislike her too. With Naoki's father in hospital after a heart attack and pressure being put on him to succeed his father or at least help his failing business, Kotoko's motives throughout this episode are so singularly selfish as to defy belief. While this allows us to once again rehash the tired old 'spying on someone else's date' cliche that has already been used way too many times by this show already, it also betrays a complete lack of understanding on Kotoko's part that destroys the last brick in the wall between this series and my outright dislike of it.


Quite simply, I don't really care who gets together with who any more, or why, or what happens to any single character after - Indeed, if the entire odious bunch of them fell off a cliff in episode thirteen (unlucky for some) I don't think I'd particularly be disappointed.

Am I being a little harsh on both this series and its characters? Quite probably, yes, but after a dozen episodes of the same nonsense over and over again I'm sick of it. Following the trials and tribulations of love is what romantic comedy is all about, but without any actual romance or anything more than the vaguest hints of reciprocation towards someone's love, then the entire thing becomes pointless, and so we have the stage seen here in Itazura no Kiss. I'm not going to drop this series as I've invested far too much time in it already to not persevere to the bitter end, but from here in on I don't see any way of this series getting back into my good books. I really still hope I'm wrong on that count though.

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