Itazura na Kiss

*sigh*
This is one of the most annoying romance animes I’ve ever watched. Now either hit the “not helpful” button or keep reading to find out why.
Story 3:
I chose to start InK because I heard it broke with the romance genre’s stale tradition of ending with a high school rooftop kiss, and instead actually followed the characters into their adult lives.
InK’s longitudinal narrative style was the one positive thing that I can say about this train wreck of an anime (that and its surprisingly accurate use of medical jargon).

This anime is about Kotoko, a ditzy, klutzy, dimwitted, high school girl, and her one-sided ... pursuit of her school’s super-perfect heart throb, Irie. The central conflict revolves around Kotoko’s struggle to get Irie’s attention and to get past his incredibly cold personality. You see, Irie, in addition to being good at everything he does, is a complete douchebag and sees Kotoko as nothing more than an annoying flea.
The narrative goes from high school to college to graduate school to working life. Unfortunately, despite spanning over 10 years, neither the characters nor the storyline ever matures. By episode 20 the characters are largely indistinguishable from their younger HS selves in episode 1. The humor is based almost exclusively around how bad Kotoko is at everything she does. As you can imagine this gets irritating pretty quickly.

Art 6: Fair

Sound 6: Nothing special either way.

Characters 2:
Everything about the characters was awful. They were awful as individuals and they were awful as couples. The side characters were little more than plot stick figures. Everything was awful.

Kotoko lacks just about every trait that a decent woman should have. She has no autonomy, no pride, no self-respect, no brains, no talent, and no ambition. Well that’s not true, she has ambition. Her sole ambition in life is to get the attention of her high school crush… an attraction based on infatuation rather than anything substantive. That’s about it. She’s willing to endure being humiliated, hit, bullied, and insulted by Irie because well, it’s Irie-kun and he’s way out of her league anyway. Basically, she should be thankful for whatever she can get…it’s really that simple. She sends out the wonderful message to young girls that if you just try hard enough with a guy who treats you like shit, you too can spend the best years of your life in an emotionally abusive relationship. I got the eerie feeling early on that if Irie decided to give her a black eye or some broken bones she’d find a way to blame herself for it. I felt pity for Kotoko throughout the series more than hope or encouragement.
Irie: In addition to being a major tool, Irie is one of the most emotionally vacant anime characters I’ve seen. Stoic characters can be great but they have to have some substance. Irie was just too robotic to really connect with. The whole detached genius thing got old pretty quickly. His character development was severely stunted too.

Relationships: All of the relationships in this anime lacked chemistry and most were severely cringe worthy. Now, there is something innately charming about a romance where two ‘opposites attract’—Beauty and the beast, Romeo and Juliet, B Gata H Kei lol. However, InK’s writer took that concept overboard and turned it into ‘complete incompatibility attracts.’ This is stupid and creates an environment where any character can fall in love with any character for no god damn reason. You’ve hated someone for 15 episodes? No problem, just have an abrupt, out of the blue declaration of undying love to them in episode 16. You’ve just met someone? No problem, get love struck and rearrange your whole life to accommodate them.

Enjoyment 3:
This was painful to watch and I had to take several hiatuses from the series. The only thing that kept me going was the solemn duty to write a scathing review so others could be spared my misery. You’re all welcome.

ItazuraCrap is of all the anime I have seen the one I detest the most. Sure, there are tons of stupid, annoying, brainless shows out there but this one exists in a craptastic category of its own. There is so much wrongness stuffed behind the mask of a cute shojo that it makes me want to get myself into a Tardis and erase every sign of this anime ever having been created. Let's dissect the wrongness…

Story:
The story kicks off clichéd to the n(th) degree: plain, ditzy girl is unrequitedly in love with the School Prince™. Now, this kind of setting can be charming given the ... correct ingredients: the right characters and the right dynamic between them. Far from being a good recipe, this anime requires an enema after viewing. The first few episodes were predictable enough in that the girl got her face shoved in the mud and suffered through lots of expectable humiliation. However, I was looking forward to the time when she would pick herself up, grow as a person and win the affections of her love interest. Respectively, I was expecting the love interest to stop being a jerk and show that he was actually a good enough person for the heroine. Instead, I got an S&M show. The heroine could not get enough humiliation and outright abuse, even at a point in the story where you'd think she'd get some love and affection. The love interest was such an abusive, unlikeable, insufferable asshole he only needed a Nazi uniform to make him complete. Honestly, if any viewer actually believes he is the ideal love interest then s/he is in desperate need of psychiatric evaluation and should not be allowed to care for small pets or children.
About the only positive thing I have to say for the story is that it moves fast. For the shojo genre it moves at warp speed 9 since it moves past high school and college and professional life. I suppose it shows more but I didn't make it past episode 15 so I wouldn't know. Nor would I want to know. I’d rather unclog my toilet.

Characters:
Kotoko: this is the kind of non-role model people should steer their kids away from. She has no self-respect, no life, no goals outside of loving the Jerk. I kid you not, she is a pushover and a doormat like no other. She even chooses her career only to complement the career the Jerk has chosen. She suffers untold humiliations and abusive behaviour because “she loves him“. Her only purpose in life is to love the Jerk? I wish I could put her head to the meat grinder and feed her to my cat. Then her life would have a better purpose.
The Jerk: has a name but I'm not going to use it. He's just the Jerk. He's supposed to be very pretty and very smart, so smart in fact that he has the supergenius ennui flu and views the rest of humanity on the same level as cockroaches. His “love interest” included. At no point does he become someone we can root for. You know, someone a girl in her right mind would actually love or even like. I wish I could put his head to the meat grinder and feed him to my cat but I’m afraid she’d just vomit him up.

By no means is this relationship the only problematic relationship in this anime. Throughout the show we have the message that boys should “smack their bitch up” and that the only good woman is the woman that is submissive to her man (re: total doormat). If you look closely, you'll see that any female character that is not a doormat (or does something against the wishes of her man) is portrayed as an evil bitch from hell. Honestly, I've seen hentai with healthier relationship portrayal.

Animation:
Below shojo mediocrity

Sound:
It’s there.

Overview:
Lighten up, I hear you say, this is just a romcom. No, it's not a comedy. It's a mean, sadistic piece of shit. You're not laughing because what you see is funny, you're laughing because you see a character being humiliated. And it's about as romantic as child brides.
Seriously, if you still can’t spot the shit compare this turd with romcoms like Skip Beat and Lovely Complex.

Be warned, this review may contain /spoilers/.

Aihara Kotoko is in love with the unattainable Irie Naoki. Fate intervenes when one day Kotoko’s house gets ruined by an earthquake, forcing Kotoko and her father to move in to Naoki and his parents’ house. Does Kotoko have a chance with Naoki after all? The romantic comedy begins! Itazura na Kiss is one of those few anime that go past the main couple’s high school life and transcends into their adult life – their marriage, honeymoon, and university/college experiences. The manga which this anime is based off of is unfinished due to the tragic, untimely death of the ... author. It is said that the anime ended the way the author truly wanted it to finish.

Oh my gooood. This is such a beautiful anime. The relationship with Naoki and Kotoko is wonderfully developed, and it’s so heartwarming and beautiful and I love it. I would love to have a husband like Naoki – he’s my dream man, you know – and this is an anime that every person should watch because it’s so beautiful. I had tears in my eyes during the last few episodes, it was that lovely.

LOL NO.

Excuse me while I rip this crap to pieces.

Itazura na Kiss (“Mischievous Kiss” in English, or ItaKiss as it is commonly known) is not the best love story ever. It is also not romantic in the least. Unless, of course, you’re a masochist. If you want a good love story, go watch…hmmm…I actually don’t watch too many romance anime. Ah, I know. Go watch Kimi ni Todoke, or Wolf and Spice, or Fruits Basket, or even Toradora!. Heck, even School Rumble is a better romance than this. I think I need my brain checked, because /I don’t understand why this anime has so many followers and girls screaming “oh my god I love Itazura na Kiss!”/ Please, someone help me understand why this anime is so popular. Seriously – if you Google “Itazura na Kiss anime review” (or even a manga review) over 98% of reviews are positive. /And I don’t understand./

Wow, I’m so pissed off that I can’t even write this review in the way I originally intended. So let’s go straight to the good stuff, shall we? Itazura na Kiss’s female protagonist is Aihara Kotoko, who is one of the stupidest students in her high school – no joke, she’s been in class “F” (the lowest class) all throughout high school. Unfortunately, the guy she likes is Irie Naoki, the most intelligent boy in school (a TENSAI!!1one! or genius) who happens to be in class “A”, which is the highest class. Naoki also happens to be a total jerk. None of their personalities change throughout the series, which goes on for twenty-five torturous episodes. I—I can’t even get a good synopsis out because I hate this anime so much, ughh. I promise that once I regain my composure, I’ll try to write a “redux” of this review.

Episode seventeen is when the anime actually starts to get good. For no other reason than they introduce Kamogari Keita. Ahh, Keita, you are the only reason I actually kept watching this anime. No joke. Keita is probably the best character in this entire series, if you ask me. For reasons that I will leave to you to find out, if you ever want to check out this anime. Actually – I’ll spare you the pain of doing that. Keita happens to be the only character (that I can remember, anyway) that tells Kotoko to break it off with Naoki because he’s a bastard that doesn’t care about her. You should have listened to him, Kotoko. I’m disappointed you didn’t.

On the plus side, though, this anime has some psychological merits, even if it doesn’t mean to have them. Kotoko is dumb as a rock, and Irie is a genius. Irie uses this blatant gap in their intelligence to use Kotoko and keep her with him, mainly utilizing the carrot-and-stick method. Based on this, we can conclude that Irie has a very low amount of self-esteem, and hides it by being with a stupid girl.

This anime has ONE thing to say:
It is okay for a woman to be treated like trash, be constantly bullied, abused, rejected and belittled by her romantic interest. A woman should worship a man who has more respect for trash than for her, and her sole purpose in life should be to serve, idolize, and love him. As long as she continues to love him despite his utter lack of respect for her character, she will get a happy ending, because even though the man will always treat her as inferior piece of shit, he will eventually love her back. Kind of.

Kotoko's relationship ... with Irie is the epitome of an unhealthy, verbally abusive, unbalanced relationship. Irie completely controls, dominates, and constantly abuses Kotoko. He treats her worse than shit - he probably has more respect for the gum at the bottom of his shoe than he does for her. And yet she fawns over him, idolizes and loves him all the same? I'm sorry, but I wouldn't even consider dating a guy who called me "stupid", and Irie does much worse than that yet she pines after him. I can't stand these character types and relationships at all.

Kotoko is a cheerful, happy-go-lucky, sweet girl who is stupid, clumsy, useless and submissive. She gets absolutely terrible grades, but it's okay because she's pretty, cute, nice and cheerful! Actually, I didn't mind Kotoko being an absolute failure of a human being. What I hated was that she worshiped a man who went out of his way to abuse and belittle her daily. Who constantly called her dumb, annoying, stupid, useless and a failure. Kotoko is a nice girl who works hard, and I appreciated that she proved a point that working hard matters more than intelligence, because despite being naturally dumb, with hard work she got into the top of her class.

What DOES bother me is that Irie, her abusive object of affection, is the sole purpose she actually tries to do better in school. She becomes a nurse just so she can work close to him. I'm sorry, but that's the incentive she has for doing a job that deals with SAVING LIVES? NO. NO. Irie did not encourage and inspire her to want such a hard but rewarding career. In fact, he didn't believe she could do it and didn't go to her graduation. The fact is, Kotoko only lives to serve, love, worship, and follow Irie, who treats her like a wet piece of paper at best. And that's depressing, sexist, and wrong in more ways that I care to count.

If you don't mind an unhealthy, abusive relationship where the female is constantly belittled, has the emotional intelligence of a four year old, bows down and bends over backwards to the wants and needs of a selfish, cruel, arrogant, and abusive bully who dares to call himself a man, then by all means, watch this.

Oooooookkkk...

Let me start off by saying, I had *high* expectations for this. I had about 4 or more friends tell me that "Itazura na Kiss is beautiful! It's exactly like Clannad: After Story! I'm sure you'd LOVE it!"

Sorry, but what is there to love? And how the dang flying crap is it in ANY WAY like Clannad: After Story? HOW? I don't see the similarity at all! Most of the time I wanted to vomit because of how utterly gross this idiotic junk was.


Story~
Ughhhhh... more cliche romance. This is why I dislike romance-- it's very annoying to me. Mainly because the only ones I can ... find are crappy ones like this. It's soooo stereotypical... A girl falls in love with some random guy for no reason, and spends the rest of her life chasing him for no reason, then he pretends to like her for no reason, and he tells himself he likes her for no reason, but then he acts like a total jerk and treats her as royalty would treat a convict. There's nothing more to say... That's all the story has to it.


Art~
OK, it was fine, I admit. It was sorta cute, and the movement in some scenes was better than others. It was good where it needed to be, and Irie didn't look like one of those weird girly-guys... I think. XD So yes, the art was fine, but all in all, it's just...average. I guess.


Sound~
Wait, there was soundtrack? Where? I had no idea! Wow! Anyway, since I didn't even notice it, I won't give it a good or bad review-- it was just... there. Or was it? Erm, I'm sure it was. Just... I totally didn't see. I was too focused on the utter stupidity of every moment that frankly, I didn't hear or even care.


Character~
If there was a 0, I'd choose it. The characters in Itazura na Kiss are just AWFUL. Hate me for giving a "bad review", but it's my opinion and it won't change. Forgive me if I sort of compare to Clannad characters here, but I was referred to this FROM Clannad: After Story in the first place, so I'll point out why this anime is inferior garbage compared to the beautiful masterpiece that is Clannad.

First off, in Clannad, Tomoya is loving and only cares for Nagisa... but not in a stupid way. He just wants to support and help her. He can get... over-excited, but he's kind and caring.
Now, onto Irie-- he DOESN'T care. No matter how much he claims to love poor pathetic Kotoko, it just won't work. Love shows itself. Irie doesn't even show any. He just kisses her one moment, tells her he loves her, then ignores her and verbally abuses her (and occasionally physically) for the next few weeks. Then we get a tiny "romantic" moment only for him to return to his normal jerk self. He DOESN'T care for Kotoko, he DOESN'T love her, he DOESN'T only want to help and support her and make her happy. I'm not sure if he's incredibly and unbelievably naive (if he's THAT naive, maybe he's a robot) or if he's sadistic. This whole show is watching Irie make fun of his "beloved", and then he tries to convince himself he loves her, which he does not. This is REALLY annoying and makes me want to brutally murder him with many different weapons.

Next... ok sorry for comparing Clannad but ok. Nagisa is sweet, yet a little strange, but is actually believable. She loves Tomoya but not in a fangirly "I MUST DAYDREAM ABOUT HIM ALL DAY" thing.
The previous statement is Kotoko's entire life. All she does is sit and "fangirl" over a guy who doesn't even care, a guy who has nothing good about him, a guy who would rather read a book or go... somewhere than talk to his so-called "beloved". Her entire life revolves around a cold, cruel, abusive man with nothing good about him. She just sits there with unrequited love for YEARS, until he "pretends" to accept her later on. And then she remains exactly the same. Fangirly, stupid, ditzy, uncaring-- without a BRAIN in her HEAD. I think she's masochist! She's not even believable, in any way. I'm a girl, but do I sit and stare at my crush while blushing, dreaming, and my entire life revolves around impressing him? NO. Nor do I know ANYONE like that in the whole world. If there is anyone like that, she's been watching too much of this crappy show.
I mean really. Kotoko thinks about this useless guy through the entire series, and nothing else... ever. One day, she begins searching for a career, and I finally thought, "WOOT! There's something ELSE on her mind for once!" Then, 2 seconds later, I realize she's pursuing that career just to be by her "beloved's" side. FAIL.


All in all, this is a disgusting show that didn't provide an ounce of enjoyment for me, ever. It teaches that all girls should be entirely devoted to a guy, no matter how much he abuses you. Honestly? Woooow... Being devoted is great, but only to a good guy, not a complete rusted, smelly, awful, old garbage tin. There's a time when girls need to realize to GET UP and MOVE ON, because there are better, non-abusive guys out there.

When I'm embarrassed, I laugh, loudly, and turn away from the situation, flustered at how embarrassed I am. That's the ONLY time this show ever made me laugh-- it was never because it was funny. No, not ONCE. It's because it embarrassed me so dang much I could have exploded.

I should have probably finished the show before reviewing it, but nah.
I got 2 minutes into episode 20 (because in episode 19, there was a hint that Irie might become a better person at some point) so I continued. But then he reverted to our neighborhood ignoring, idiotic guy, and with that, I exploded. I give up. And no matter how you try to convince me otherwise I will keep the opinion I have of this sexist, stupid, pointless, PAINFUL show.

I've never written a review before but I just had to write a review for this one. If I can save one person from the misery of sitting through this tripe then I'll have done my duty as a human being. I've forgotten the names of the male and female lead but it doesn't matter. As this review focuses solely on them, the words "he" and "she" should cover it.

So here it is: The idea of a romantic comedy is to make the viewer/reader root for the couple in the spotlight; to cheer them on in their quest to find ... true love while at the same time, giving us a good laugh in the process. Itazura na Kiss does none of this. Unless you find a girl's miserable existence, trapped in a one-sided relationship with a bully, great comedy material, you will not enjoy this.

The female lead in this show is a salivating halfwit and the male lead is an egotistical misogynist. For some reason, despite the fact this simply horrible man treats her like something most of us would avoid stepping in, however, she adores him. The show covers nine years by my recollection and this never changes once. She remains smitten by someone who clearly has no respect for her whatsoever and he never stops being a hateful scumbag.

As the show goes on, you find yourself rooting for the male lead to die. Not just to lose her love, but to be killed in a horrible accident. Alas this doesn't happen. If it had, this alleged comedy might finally have given us something to laugh about, but alas he does not.

Without saying too much and spoiling anything, the show follows their romance from high school up until they're in the late twenties. They get married and eventually have a child together, then finally our hell is at an end because they stopped making this rubbish. During those years covered, the male lead sneers at and looks down on his dimwitted other half constantly. He gets nastier and nastier by the minute then every now and again he'll say something like, "You may look like a mutant from the planet uggo but you're not the least prettiest moron I've ever shagged." At which point, she will go starry eyed and drool, taking his words as a compliment. The real insult there being that as the viewer, we're supposed to find his back-handed compliments endearing too. We don't. They just make us want to drown him.

Finally, just to hammer home the point of what a nasty show this is. At one point the female lead actually stands up for herself and screams at him, "You don't love me." Finally, I thought. It's about time she stood up for herself. Sadly no. He hits her! Yes, he resorts to domestic violence. To make matters worse, she then finds herself feeling guilty and blames herself for putting too much pressure on him. Oh yes, he whacks her and she apologises. I kid you not! If this was a subjective look into the mind of a battered woman, I'd say give them an Oscar. However, it is not. This is apparently a comedy. Maybe if you hate women you might find this quite the turn on or indeed worthy of a chuckle, for decent human beings, however, this anime is quite frankly wrong.

What can I say.. I hated this anime because of the main two characters.
Aihara is everything a women shouldn't be. She is stupid , useless and falls for an abusive bully who treats her like dogshit. At the start I felt bad for her, but when she turned down some nice guys for that bully I didn't pity her at all. She deserves all of this.
Irie is basically a bully. The only reason he is with Aihara is because she is too stupid and he can control her easily ( for example when she wants to forget about him he just kisses her only so ... she cannot forget about him). He treats her like shit. I just hope that no one will ever fall for this kind of jerk.
Oh and he isn;t even smart , he just has photographic memory so he remembers everything after reading it once. He doesn't have to put in any effort but looks down on people who weren't blessed with a photographic memory like his.

The only good thing I have to say about this anime is how the story progresses quickly, and shows the characters when they are older.

Spoilers. Probably. Not really. There is definitely spoilers in this review.


NOTE: HIGHLY RECOMMEND TO REWATCH THIS ANIME IF YOU HAPPENED TO SEE MY COMMENT AND YOU ALREADY LEFT A COMMENT WITH HIGH MIGHTY RATING AGES AGO.

Well, well, well, well I rated this anime 7 back then when I was a child. I thought I should re-watch this after reading the synopsis and was clearly dumbfounded that I actually liked this anime. Was I masochist or am I just plainly ignorant back then?

Story and Character

Alright, the MC girl is a stupid, clumsy, masochist, dimwit, silly, idiot, klutzy-- wait, did I just use interchangeable words ... excessively? You damn right I did. I cannot fathom her attitude at all. She's like the god of stupidity and masochism because all she did is offer her life to a sadist wannabe man who clearly thinks she is a piece of shit (probably worse than that). The guy? I don't think he's a man at all, I don't even categorize him as human. If you want to know whether both characters improved throughout the anime, I can guarantee you that they did not. The only good part about this anime is how the story revolves around them; how she chases him, them finally being a couple, graduating school, working, getting married and actually having a child. They are infuriating to watch but I have to see what I liked about this anime back then. In the end, I just cannot deal the fact that this anime is just plain garbage. I think I lose half of my life by just realizing how the characters force a relationship despite the lack of chemistry, respect or even humanity.


If there is a fantastic anime out there, this one tops the craptastic anime of all time for me. It leaves a bitter taste in my mouth and as much as I want to rate it 1, I have to give it 2 for the sake of my childhood life. Man, if you still want to give this a good rating, I salute you for appreciating the horrendous opposite attract shenanigans. Oh wait, I don't even think he is attracted to the girl at all.

Again: RECOMMEND TO RE WATCH AND RE EVALUATE YOUR SCORE FOR THIS ANIME IF YOU HAPPENED TO RATE THIS FROM 7-10 SCORE. I am trying to save your soul.

I was really excited to watch this anime because I knew this, along with the live-action version were really popular romance animes. Unfortunately, I had little to no enjoyment when watching it. I'm not against the enemy's to lovers troupe but, this entire show was pretty much just enemies to a one-sided love. I know that with Irie, his whole thing is that he's "Cool" but he treats her like absolute trash and literally only gets better in the last two episodes. I think the show also made it a running gag to have every other character point out that he treats her terrible and ... question why she's with him, but she just laughs it off and then says "oh well he is always like that!"
I'm sure if I watched this when I was a kid I would have LOVED this and thought it was really good but watching it now, I have to give my overall rating a 3 and do not recommend it.

This is the most sadistic, unpleasant thing I have ever seen - on a psychological level - and I've watched those PEETA animal cruelty videos (and 'Friday' by Rebecca Black). What do they have in common you ask? They both make me cringe.

The only reason I think I gave this anime a 2 is because there are moments that really engage one's sense of empathy - you laugh sometimes at the things that Kotoko does (if you're not cringing) and you cry. I really felt Kotoko's pain sometimes - and boy does she go through a lot of it. Perhaps one of the most ... disturbing aspects of Itazura Na Kiss is that it's quite dismissive of Kotoko's pain and doesn't really focus on character development at all. But then it does get difficult to feel sorry for someone like her after a while. How cool would it have been if the first couple of episodes were just to demonstrate how naive she was to begin with, and then she got it together became an awesome ball-buster of a tsundere?! It probably would have been one of my favorite animes ever. But unfortunately, as the episodes progressed it became evident that.. well, this is sadistic bull. It's really almost unbearable. The way in which Kotoko is treated by Naoki and the her utter masochistic behavior was genuinely horrifying for me to witness.

I hope that no girl or woman ever aspires to be like her; it makes me so angry that people don't recognize how twisted this anime is sometimes.

Okay, first of all, apologies in advance for the perhaps colorful language that I'll be using in this review.

This anime, while generally average, has the highlight of having the single douchiest character that I have ever seen to date. Seriously, Irie is so impressively terrible to everything and everyone (especially the female lead) that her own musings on her potential masochistic tendencies are less musings and more an exercise in stating the obvious.

This anime quite obviously tries to have an archetypical strong, silent, impassive and cold guy, but the creators obviously could not tell when enough was enough when adding from the 'cold' jar. Seriously, ... this guy is so extremely over the edge in the 'a-hole' department that he's in a class of his own. I seriously have no one else to compare him to.

This anime deserves credit for that, if nothing else.

As for the female lead, there isn't too much to say about her. Kotoko actually does manage to land perfectly in the center of her archetype, the 'always nice to everything and everyone beyond any sense of logic, duty or reason' hyperactive, cheerful kind of character. It's very easy to like and root for characters like her, but in the end she is rather forgettable. Also, my biggest gripe with her, is that I simply can not respect her. I pity her. Say what you will about having the single-minded determination to never give up on the man, no matter how rude and/or abusive he is towards her, but there is 'determined' and then there is 'self-punishingly moronic'. Watching Kotoko was painful, because in reality girls like her need professional help and a lot of support in order to get over the compulsion that keeps sending them back to their abuser and live a full and healthy life.

Surprisingly, the best part of this anime was its supporting cast, though that speaks more about the low quality of everything else.

I gave Itazura na kiss a 4/10. The animation was below average, the main characters were hilariously bad caricatures of people, and the plot itself was slow, predictable, and ultimately unfulfilling.

Props for sending young adolescent girls all the wrong messages, I guess.

This anime is literal dogshit. It’s heavily flawed on every level and the ambitious premise doesn't make up for the horrible characters and misguided recurring themes in this anime.

Story (1/10):

Itazura na Kiss is a story about how a unintelligent girl with no redeeming qualities other than being kind, relentlessly pursues her crush, who is a scumbag, and then proceeds with a long term emotionally (and physically to some extent) abusive relationship that is for some reason framed in a positive light. Sounds awful, right? I see a lot of praise for this anime comes from the premise, which is ambitious in the sense that ... it covers a long period of time and touches on romance past the usual "mutually confess and get together" phase where most romance anime end. What left a bad taste in my mouth is how Itazura na Kiss's narrative tries to portray a destructive and outright disgusting romance as something acceptable and even worth striving for. The very fact that this anime even exists is a moral stain on the industry.

Beyond this hollow and sickening take on what initially seemed an interesting premise, this anime still utilizes every shoujo troupe in the book but fails to execute them in a way that meaningfully adds to the characters, story, or underlying themes (which are.. problematic, to say the least). One example would be when they transitioned from high school to college, yet every character ended up at the same university in equivalent classes and situations. Even the one character who didn't make it into college conveniently found employment as a cafeteria worker at the school. Every "major" development was underwhelming and screamed lazy writing.

Art (3/10):

I wasn't a fan of the art style heading into this anime, I find it wildly inconsistent and lacking any artistic direction, which is why I put off watching this for so long despite the intriguing premise. The male lead is the ugliest character in the show which I'm pretty sure is opposite of the intended effect. His mouth was way too close to his nose which just highlighted his stupid gigantic chin, but I guess that’s personal preference. The MC was pretty cute and the backgrounds were run of the mill.

Sound (7/10):

I actually enjoyed the voice acting in this anime. The roles should have been easy considering how one-note all the characters are, so I can't heap too much praise here, but overall I thought they did well. The music was decent.

Character (0/10):

Awful, awful, awful, abysmal, trash, embarrassing, awful, and plain bad. The main two are the worst of the bunch, which should never be the case, and all the side characters were static and underwent absurdly predictable, cliché developmental character arcs, that were for the most part, just convenient cop-outs to force feed happy endings for everyone.

Our MC is dumb, talentless, and unwaveringly in love with a guy who continually treats her like garbage and belittles her. At one point in the show she decides to become a nurse for the sole purpose of being able to better support her doctor husband. Eventually a side character points this out critically, but the show failed to delve into the critique as the MC never directly responds to the issue nor has any internal monologue regarding it. I found their dynamic, and the show as a whole, to be incredibly misogynistic, which is very discomforting considering this a shoujo.

The show never decides to really point out the self-destructive nature of her character and instead casts it aside in favor of framing her as a “spunky” good hearted girl and somehow expects the viewer to find solace in her simplicity. The worst example of this was when she discovers a side character in distress and then proceeds to completely panic and cry on the phone as the male lead tells her what to do, step by step, including how to call an ambulance. Bear in mind this happens in the latter half of the series which exemplifies her complete lack of development as a competent human being.

The male lead is initially a “cool” jerk, which is typical in shoujo, but usually the male lead ends up progressively improving as a person as the MC warms his cold heart, so to speak, or they were always “good” and just not great at outwardly expressing it. This male lead in Itazura na Kiss is a jerk, and a truly horrible one at that, who doesn’t become a redeeming character until the last 2 or 3 episodes. On numerous occasions he shows some compassion but then consistently reverts back to his usual disgusting self. There’s also usually a reason, such as a tragic experience or difficult childhood, for the male leads initial behavior, but here the male lead has lived a carefree life in a traditional atomic household with his loving and wealthy parents. He has an amazing support system and the show never alluded to anything negative in his past to attempt to explain his flaws.

To sum it up, she is incompetent and he is lacking in basic humanity. I’m not exactly sure how these are supposed to be likeable characters.

Enjoyment (1/10):

I did not enjoy watching this anime whatsoever. In fact, I watched the last 5 episodes at double the speed, as in I literally sped up the video 2x, in order to avoid wasting any more of my life on this irreprehensible trash heap of an anime. The misogynistic central relationship was frankly appalling, as was the lack of character development. I will say that the ending (episode 24; 25 is a light hearted epilogue) was heartwarming and enjoyable. At this point they are in their late 20s and the MC finally shows some fortitude that isn’t directly derived from her unsubstantiated romantic feelings, and the male lead finally shows respectable character traits without ever reverting. The problem with Itazura na Kiss is that it takes 23 episodes, or approximately 10 years within the timeline of the show, for these characters to achieve this minimally acceptable level of competence and humanity.

If you want to watch a terrible rom-com anime with unlikeable characters and misogynistic themes, look no further, Itazura na Kiss is the anime for you.

I picked up this series looking for a light enjoyable shoujo anime, but finishing Itazura na Kiss proved to be one of the hardest things I've done.

Starting the anime, my fears were that Kotoko would keep running after the guy after being stepped over and over with no clear reason why. That was proven correct after 3 or 4 episodes of her getting nothing from Irie but still describing him as a 'gentle person' for doing the bare minimum (holding the door of the subway for her. Noting that was the second time, since the first time he let's the door close stating he hates ... distracted girls).

The series gets progressively worse so don't expect for a redeming ending or character growth. As adults Kotoko keeps having zero self respect and Irie keeps treating her with indifference or rudeness at occasion, absolutely nothing changes.

the supporting characters are dull and not charismatic at all, but I would still rather watch them than have to watch one more second of the love Irie and Kotoko are said to share.

If you don't mind the main character having no dignity, no goals or reason for her love and admirition, gor for it. But if you require any of those, stay away from this horror show.

Somewhat spoiler-free review:

Seeing the high score on MAL made me think this was going to be a good Shojou Romance. I was in for a rude awakening with this one. As I have lived in Japan for over a decade, I know full well the patriarchal dominance and chauvinism of a good portion of male citizens. Naoki is nothing more than a pretty face hiding a terrible persona. Kotoko is mentally subdued by him throughout the entirety of the show. He treats her terribly 99% of the time. He mentally and emotionally abuses her. When he realizes he is losing his hold on her at ... a myriad of times, he uses flashy words or phrases to manipulate her into running back into his arms. He treats her like a tool to keep himself at ease with little care for her feelings until the last few episodes where he just slightly cares due to her situation (trying not to spoil too much). Many viewers were calling him a tsundere. He isn't. He is just a toxic male persona. The entire time watching all I could think of was actions speak louder than words. As I said, he used a lot of flashy wordage, but he rarely used action as proof. Naoki's family and Kotoko's father were all oblivious to the terrible way he treated her (save for his mother who sometimes got upset, but not enough for Naoki to care). They also added to the issues by not taking her feelings into account for a majority of the show. *Slight Spoiler* The biggest failure was Kotoko's father sitting down with Naoki at one point for a friendly chat about why she ran away near the end half of the series due to Naoki's treatment of her. He put his own daughter down while talking about how she is similar to his wife and even sympathized with Naoki having to deal with it. A real father would chew him out for treating his daughter like a cold-hearted jerk, not stroll down memory lane. *End Spoiler* This is definitely not an anime for kids who can't use logic when viewing as it sets a bad example of how one should act in relationships. As for the other characters they all have many terrible personas. From people only loving someone based off looks, trying to steal other people's lovers, trying to cheat (honeymoon episode), being creepy, or going as far as forcing themselves onto other characters, this is not a show worth enjoying. There are plenty of beautiful Shoujou and non-Shoujou Romance anime out there worth your time. Unless you really want to watch this to see how disgusting people can be, I advise finding something better.

I found the whole story to be very cringy at best due to everything I stated above. Hence the pathetic score. The art was slightly old-school which I don't mind, but the elongated chins were odd looking. Hence the fair score. The sound was fine. Characters... It's what really drove home the terrible nature of this anime. While there was progression for everyone, most of their personas stayed the same disgusting shade. Hence dreadful. I didn't get much enjoyment out of it, but I never drop anime and watched it until the end. Overall, it was not worth it. Please don't be fooled by the score.

This show could have been great, and maybe it will be for you girls out there. I'm a guy that often enjoys Shoujo/Josei, but this one, I just can't even. It would have been great, but Irie is just such a piece of s***. Like he is literally worse than Hitler. Well, maybe not Hitler, but he's at least worse than Stalin. You'll keep on telling yourself as you watching, "Oh, this will be the episode when he stops being an a**hole." Nope. It never happens. And she's just so blindly loyal to him! Like get a grip girl and kick him to the curb! ... nope. This anime isn't disappointing, its unsettling. It left me with a bad taste in my mouth. I totally expected Irie to like see the error of his ways. Nope. And the worst part is that the show totally teases you, like an episode will end on a good note so that you actually expect Irie to be a good decent human being in the next episode. Nope. Sorry-not-sorry. Whats most unsettling is all the praise this show gets. Do girls really like guys like Irie? He's the worst! If you are a guy, at least, please do not watch this, unless you wish to be deeply disturbed.

This anime's story is about as deep as a puddle. The main character falls in love with an abuser and everyone's just fine with this. He continues to be mentally and verbally abusive throughout the majority of the anime. The main character herself was written with little to no redeeming qualities and constantly shows no trust in her relationships. The show resolves love triangles by making them squares and just having anyone who isn't the main two just settle.

The only "enjoyable" parts of the anime where when in focused less on the main relationship and towards the end. The side characters were far more interesting ... then the main characters, with the exception of two. One of the two I speak of is literally a Mary Sue and the other is so obnoxious it's unbearable.

Idiotic girl falls in love with the school prince who happens to be a total jerk.
The jerk plays with her feelings and humiliates her repeatedly. Any woman who has some self respect would have spat in his face and move on...But not Kotoko...She remains in love with the douchebag because...I don't know....She's a masochist?...Actually I don't even know why she fell in love with him in the first place....Of course this is a shoujo anime so I knew that the jerk would start falling for her too sooner or later.But I expected it to happen through character development...I expected Kotoko to change , to mature ... and earn his respect...I expected the jerk to stop being such a jerk so that it would make sense for someone to love him....But it wasn't that way...The characters remained exactly the same throughout the series.The jerk fell in love with the moron named Kotoko because....I have no idea, probably because he likes stupid women that he can control.So if you are not a masochist and if you do not want to waste your time watching some terribad ,even worse than twilight love story, then do not bother watching this anime
Story :1
Art:5
Sound:5
Character:0....but I can't vote 0 so 1
Enjoyment :1

This was terrible. It started of alright, but the characters began to annoy me, especially with Kotoko perusing Irie so intently despite how horrible he is to her. She spend so much time and effort on him and it takes a long time until he actually responds, and even then it's in an incredibly cruel way. I was hoping she would eventually realise and mess him up like he had been acting to her for so long, but NO, she is far to persistent, but does not deserve that treatment at all.

Anyway... I just did nt like this, and it went on for so ... long with hardly anything happening, and then I skipped forward towards the end, and the plot had developed so dramatically. No, I did not like this at all.

To put it simply, I felt that this anime was shit. I gave it an overall rating of 4 (not 1) because though it was shit, it had the saving grace of being smooth while coming out of my ass, and not in the form of diarrhea or constipation. That's my honest opinion of it. i don't want to delve too much into the long list of details, but primarily, the characters and plot were laughable enough for me to wonder if the creators of this series were trolling.

Story - 4
shows unrequited love and the "one and only" type of feel to it. they stick ... with these themes right to the end while attempting to make half a decent plot out of it

Art - 8
good enough, but not great

Character - 2
the only reason why i'm giving it a 2 is because of the guy mc's mom. if she weren't there, score would be (-100).
First, you meet the male mc. you will soon realize that he's a selfish and abusive piece of shit. it's fine to go for the whole "cold" character, but this was forced on the audience too much.
then you meet the female mc. she is a hardcore masochist for toxic relationships. her obsession is also laughable.

enjoyment - 3
had to force myself to finish watching it cause i already started, hoping it would get better. i was very wrong

overall - 4 (average)

this felt like a cheap anime version of 50 shades of grey, except with shittier character and development.

In a word : 'awkward'.

Itazura na Kiss is an anime that wants you to genuinely care for the relationship of a girl with the intelligence of a sea urchin and a guy with a capacity for love equal to that of a dead fly. Worse yet, that riveting "love" story is set against the background of even more equally nonsensical and brain numbing tales of how two completely incompatible people can be brought together for no reason whatsoever. You will gain a new ability after watching this cocktail of outlandish romance - the ability to pulverise anything with a single headbutt.

Warning, some SPOILERS ... might be involved.

In summary, the male lead is an ambitionless, heartless and emotionless monster. Then there happens to be a brain dead girl who falls in love with him because he's "cool". Now how the lack of ambition, empathy and emotion can make one "cool" is beyond me but what follows afterwards is a story that was pulled straight from someone's ass.

In essence the guy doesn't give a shit. He treats her horrendously, humiliates her in front of others and generally waits for the moment to give her the slip. The girl on the other hand keeps repeating the same retarded statement all throughout the show "I love him, he's cool." That's it - end of story.

Well, end of main story that is. We (the watchers) will still be treated to other anally extracted sub-stories throughout this 25 episodes of pure misery. A woman from the British royal familly marrying a Japanese chef (we know that happens every day). A perverted sensei who wants to get into the pants of his students. A kid who grows up to be an asshole because other people are... assholes. Absolutely riveting. In some cases, some of those sub-stories could have been interesting if executed in the proper way, Itazura na Kiss does everything but that however.

The coup de grace comes in the last few episodes of this anally grand anime. Enter Keita Kamogari. The ONLY rational, realistic, and emotionally engaging character. The only one to truly care for another human being for what they really are. Nah, fuck him. Swept under the carpet by the writer like an irradiated cockroach.

Finally, the drama that binds all these characters and allows the progression from one plot device to another just doesn't exist and when it does it's unbelievably superficial and feels as though it was written by a 6 year old. Same goes for comedy. It is by far the worst I've seen in any anime to date. As an example - in one of the episodes the brain dead girl is stopped, grabbed and nearly dry humped by a burly american policeman. When the emotionless monster intervenes it turns out she didn't understand him (the policeman) and he only wanted to know if she got lost. HA-HA-HA. Take notes kids. If you want to know if someone got lost, grab their arms, get as close to them as possible and thrust your pelvis into their abdominal area.

The only two good points would be the art and sound. The OST did contain some interesting pieces, too bad they had to be accompanied by such an awful anime. The art itself was alright although it did lose its focus fairly often. The most well drawn characters were the sea urchin and emotionless monster. Every other character was drawn with less care all the way to the insignificant background characters which took on various shapes, from lamppost like figures to curious levitating black blobs.

All in all, Itazura na Kiss is the equivalent of an exploding anus. It's full of shit.