Summary: This anime begins with our main character Kotoko Aihara who is a third year high school student. She's in class F which is known as the "stupid class" in the school. She has fallen in love with fellow senior Naoki Irie who is the smartest, most popular and most sought after guy in school. He is in the elite class A. In an embarrassing turn of events Kotoko gives Naoki a letter confessing her long term feelings for him which he immediately rejects. When she returns to her newly built home later that night, an earthquake strikes causing her entire home to fall apart. This leaves Kotoko and her father with nowhere to go. Last minute, out of the kindness of their heart, Mr. Aihara's old high school friend offers to let the two of them stay in their house until the Aihara home can be repaired. Who is Mr. Aihara's high school friend? None other than Naoki's father. Now Kotoko has to live with the embarrassment of her recent confession while living under the same roof as Naoki.
I give the plot on this one a 7/10 because it is just so typical! There are so many shoujo animes that are about the dumb, ditzy girl falling for the smart, popular, perfect guy that everyone likes. The one thing that redeems it is that it takes a turn that's different than most animes of its kind. Itazura Na Kiss takes Kotoko's story through not only high school, but college and adulthood. It spans over a solid 15 year time period which is really nice to see. The high school portion of this anime actually only lasts through the first seven episodes. So that difference in pace is why I like this anime over others.
Characters 6/10
The characters in this anime really annoy me to be honest. Kotoko's ditzyness really wares on your nerves after awhile. Actually it doesn't even take that long to tire of her. Yet, as the story progresses they do an excellent job of progressing her character. She never completely changes but gets a lot better. Naoki has his own set of problems. He's just rude. There's really no other way to describe it other than that. You watch the entire show hoping he's going to get better, and he does, but not too much. The other side characters also get annoying and random at times. Some of them become unnecessary toward the end. They pop up randomly and you almost forget they existed. That being said, the overall story progresses the characters well. In the end, you get to see what happens to each one of the ones who are actually important parts of the story. It leaves no loose ends which is something a lot of other animes do.
Music: I really can't give music a proper score on here because it doesn't really exist in this anime. I mean, yes they have background music in it but it's nothing I can really pinpoint as being bad or good. It's just... there.
Animation: 6/10
The animation in this isn't bad by any definition of the word. It's decent enough. There's just nothing about it that makes it more than average. It's just basic, fairly fluid and has decent use of colors. At times I did find it almost to have a blurry unfocused quality about it. So I found it just, meh.
Overall: 8/10
You may be wondering, why did you give this anime such a high overall score when you didn't give any of the sub categories a super high score? If I was making this review after I watched it the first time I would have given it a 5 or 6/10. But I actually rewatched it and enjoyed it a lot more the second time. I feel like with this anime, the more you put into it, the more you get out of it. To properly enjoy it you have to really read between the lines and think about why the characters are the way they are. I noticed a lot more about Naoki especially the second time around. There is a decent amount of comedy to balance out the drama as well. So to me the negative aspects that I mentioned above are mostly outweighed by the things I enjoyed. If you watch it once and like it, definitely try watching it again after a couple of months or so and you might like it even more.
