I know, I haven’t been posting about kimikiss as of late, but I’m sure I explained that in the past few posts or something. Reserving the best for the last when it comes to my viewing schedule always has that effect, and while I’m late to all the discussion and hubbub generated by what seems like an impending anime disaster, I hope to rectify that in a bit with my predictions about how things are going to be wrapped up.

So here’s what the experts have been saying: Jen thinks that love is over after reading spoilers (much like any chances that Kyou et al had of hooking up with Tomoya in Clannad circa episode 18). Michael thinks that he can see it just a little (like all good shounen protagonists do their antagonist’s impossibly quick movements, just before a surprise power-up takes place). CCY’s waffling between endless possibilities (not unlike Tonegawa’s gametheory that ultimately cost him).

What can I possibly add to all three trains of thought at this point? As my friend with benefits Caffeine has pointed out to me in a sleep-deprived haze during my viewing of Kimikiss ep 22 earlier today, there’s more to it than meets the eye. There’s a greater possibility out there that vindicates one opinion, puts paid to another one, and makes the last one seem ultra-conservative in comparison.

Here’s my thesis summed up in one line: The ending is that there is no ending. Got it? Let’s try that again. What I’m saying here is that the ending will presented in a way that constitutes an ending yet not at the same time, a non-ending ending that will append a somewhat bittersweet tang to the lighthearted and saccharine consistency throughout, propelling kimikiss to the ranks of classic-but-not-quite. Considering that means sharing a space with ef, I’d say that’s good enough.

We’re living in the 21st century, and with modern times come modern relationships. The flippant liberty of the individual, when coupled with society’s anathema for responsibility means that a girl can string along a guy indefinitely without being called out for it, because hey, it’s her life, and who are you to meddle? A guy can lead on numerous girls at the same time, and it’s okay as long as he isn’t aware of it, because you can’t take responsibility for something you’re not aware of, can you?! And vice versa, and etcetera.

“tongue tied and oh so squeamish/you never fell in love”

Remember the non-ending ending of Honey and Clover? It failed according to normal (read: peasant) standards due to its lack of a concrete, definable relationship between most of the main characters. Morita and Hagu were kind-of together but not in that way, Hagu and Shuu definitely weren’t together, but what they had was irreplaceable. Hagu and Takemoto weren’t that close, but they shared a kindred understanding in the form of the amazing gift she hands him at the end. What about Shuu and Rika? Or Mayama and Yamada? I can’t, and don’t want to attempt pigeonholing them.

Michael is right in that regard. What he says about the end possibly being portrayed “with grace and tenderness” is, I’d like to think, the way in which this is headed at the moment, but that just stops at the surface of possible ramifications. His earlier and equally excellent post which I neglected to read till now due to being behind on kimikiss, hints at this possible route, Kai being one particularly ominous sign of what might just happen. Kai as a character embodies what kimikiss is all about — idealistic realism.

In case you’ve gotten the wrong idea all along about what facet of reality kimikiss has chosen to portray, look no further, for Yubisaki Milk Tea’s a great reality check, with Kodomo no Jikan coming in at a close second with underhanded satire to finish. Sex is a very real thing with regards to today’s youth, and YMT’s got it down pat — most teenagers think with their sex drive and emotions, not their brains, and for kimikiss’ cast to remain relatively chaste throughout it all can only mean that it’s trying to showcase another side to things that no other series has attempted before.

School Days is an another amazing example of teen sexuality taken to a slippery slope of depravity and violence, a new way of playing the old game of harem that says that there must be absolutes, and that the guy has to make a choice (or get stabbed by a psycho ex). What kimikiss seems to be trying to do here is the polar opposite in terms of both possibility (it’s as pure as SD is perverse) and ideology. SD plays with traditional constants — the guy has to choose, and he’s got to choose by the end of the series.

kimikiss doesn’t seem like the type to be bound by such overt, by-the-book conventions for old time’s sake, or its fanbase. I want to think that our beloved director’s trying to tell us to look past the two-cour structure of the anime by telling us through his potentially non-ending ending that the complicated nature of relationships in this day and age can’t possibly fit into a man-made vehicle of storytelling, and that sometimes, dating sim adaptations don’t have to have proper resolutions, not if those making the adaptation have anything to say about it.

Jen might be jumping the gun on this one. Assuming that my educated guess based on her outline of the last two episodes’ spoilers is true, then what this non-ending ending is isn’t so much a let-down or a change of tone as it is consistency, and it being what it’s always wanted to be from the beginning. If this is the case, then the opaque nature of the theme of “kisses” becomes slightly clearer. Kasai wants, by means of this motif, to illustrate in his no-sex-please-we’re-students sandbox, how there are two parts to a relationship — the emotional and the physical.

In recent times we’ve grown used to blurring the lines between sex and love, and what Kasai here is trying to do is nothing more than saying “Hey, that’s absurd, and here’s why in 24 episodes, so get out!” With kissing as a metaphor for sex and other physical means of expressing affection, he’s trying to tell us that one doesn’t necessarily accompany the other, and that to assume otherwise is a fallacy. Why else would Mao be so apathetic despite Kai kissing her, Kouichi so uncertain despite sharing a romantic one with Yuumi, or Eriko so cold despite her repeated experiments?

“did you get what you deserve?/the ending of your life”

The physical act isn’t everything. This absurdly puritan, fictitious world that the cast of kimikiss inhabits hints at something greater than the sum of its parts, and this might be just it — an allegory on modern-day notions and expectations of relationships, and how the much-ridiculed notion of saving yourself for marriage suddenly makes sense in light of this. Note that in the examples that I gave, all three couples connect with each other through communication of the verbal, not physical variety, and it’s through emotions, not passion, that they find themselves appreciating and appreciated.

Eriko’s a particularly obvious example of this. Kazuki doesn’t get her by lip-locking his way to her heart, he does it by showing that he genuinely cares for her and that she’s more than just experiment material to him. While the initial kiss might have been the spark that turned into a flame, it isn’t his returning of her kisses that unites them, but good old-fashioned courtship by means of tender words and gallant actions, a bona fide interest in her wellbeing that finally melts her heart and drives her into his arms, tearfully at that.

Returning to my earlier point, it appears that CCY’s boxed himself into a corner, albeit unintentionally. I should note that for all his cute Kaiji-influenced writings and amalgams with kimikiss, he’s making a Tonegawa-sque mistake. The question here is, would it be Tonegawa’s first mistake, or second? I’d have to go with the first, for while CCY mulls endlessly about the final couple setup he seems oblivious to the possibility that there might be none, just like how Tonegawa for all his surreptitious watch-reading never thought of how there might be no ear.

I mentioned kimikiss as being too big for its own good, a case of the relationship woes outlasting the anime itself. My point isn’t so much justification for what seems to be a shoddy ending as it is a manner of thinking outside the box, of looking further, like how Sanae in Byousoku 5cm comments that Takaki seems so far away, always aspiring for something out of his reach. In our haste to fret and fuss over how the ending might be botched and an inevitable trainwreck’s but two episodes away, we’ve missed out on how there might be a great ending, just not an ending all of us expected.

Mind you, my apologist leanings have no part in this as I believe that an “Innocent till proven guilty” judgement is in order here. I see the fixation on final pairings at this point as more suited towards a plot-based anime, or “resolution”, as opposed to a character-based anime, or “moment”. Why should we have sat through all those character-driven episodes just to come to some trivial finality if the characters themselves aren’t ready for it? Why the double standards with regards to H&C — how there wasn’t a need for it to end with everyone paired up neatly, yet these same expectations are posed on kimikiss?

I’m under the impression that Kasai did this on purpose, instilling adult-level predicaments into the heads of the teenage cast if only to give it depth where there was none before. It’s a H&C for the masses, an easier-to-relate pseudo-josei that doesn’t need you to stretch your suspension of disbelief where your life experience hasn’t been by means of a high school setting. Complexity with none of the original genre’s implications. A stretch of the imagination, to be sure, but the alternative — that Kasai directed this work to such great lengths only to bring it to its heels at the last minute — seems a lot more unbelievable in comparison.

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 16th, 2008 at 8:09 pm and is filed under Anime. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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