Kowloon Generic Romance – Episode 1

Content Warning: fan service, nonconsensual kiss

What’s it about? Kujirai Reiko works at a tiny real estate office in the Kowloon Walled City, a place that draws people in with its nostalgic allure. Kujirai’s only coworker is Kudo Hajime, who she secretly nurses feelings for. Sometimes it seems he feels the same…but they seem to be connected by a past she can’t remember.

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Back in the infant days of this website, when I was much greener as a critic, I gave a pretty brutal appraisal of Mayuzuki Jun’s other series, After the Rain, a story about a teenager displacing her trauma by crushing on a middle-aged man. While I still think the anime leaned irritatingly hard into playing up the crush fantasy from the guy’s side, I’ve come to respect more of what Mayuzuki was exploring with her heroine in the years since. I felt like I owed her a second look after reading her extremely thoughtful approach to how she went about building Kowloon Generic Romance. I’m very glad I did, because this is a rich premiere that bubbles with a mix of affection and suspicion for that thorny concept of “nostalgia.”

It’s clear, long before the final minutes of the episode, that something isn’t quite with Kujirai. Her vision reverts to 20/20 overnight, and she shrugs it off. Kudo refers vaguely to someone he knew while looking portentously at her. By the time she echoes the fish tank shot from Perfect Blue, I had to bow to how effectively the deluge of hints worked to create a choked atmosphere.  

I assume the Perfect Blue shot is deliberate homage, given how pointedly the show evokes the wave of sci-fi that came out during the (first) Lost Decade. The rotting walls and tattered signage of Kowloon would be right at home in Cowboy Bebop or Evangelion, while Kujirai’s design echoes Major Kusanagi’s famous bob. It’s a loving tribute to a time and an aesthetic—which also encompasses Hong Kong itself. I’m not the person to get into anime’s complicated history with utilizing the trappings of other cultures versus portraying the people from those cultures, but I do think just from this brief glimpse that Kowloon Generic Romance is interested in how that romanticized vision is a double-edged sword.

Kudo speaks warmly of the people, the food, and the unchanging romance of Kowloon—but their real estate company is also constantly running around trying to render tiny, decrepit rooms into something livable for future tenants. The preservation of an idealized image is at war with the ability to build a new life (it’s like that’s connected to the main relationship or something). I suspect the story won’t touch overtly on the link between the city (which was partially gutted for parts during Japan’s occupation of Hong Kong) and Japanese imperialism, but I’m not sure it has to be on the nose for that theme of “toxic nostalgia” to evoke that strain.

Kujirai herself is compelling to watch…and the camera thinks so too. Maybe it’s because I’ve been beaten down by a thousand shows that are horny for 14-year-olds, but it was pretty easy to shrug off the smattering of fan service moments involving our adult heroine. The most egregious is the cold open, in which we’re treated to a full several seconds of Kujirai’s lingerie’d butt lowering into a chair, but it dials things back considerably after that point. Not entirely—her bosoms are decidedly heaving in a later scene where she almost gives herself heatstroke trying to fix up an old apartment—but to a level that feels much more connected to the attraction between our leads. Hopefully it can maintain that balance,  as there’s potentially a lot that can be said here in a story about treating your girlfriend like a dead goldfish.

Kudo making out with Kujirai while half-asleep hit me with similar “don’t love it, could be worse” feelings—they’ve built in the excuse that he’s seeing the old her (THEMES), and she’s already confirmed that she has feelings for him, but it’s still uncomfortable to see her grow increasingly overwhelmed and panicked (presumably from lack of oxygen). Kudo’s walking a very fine line on the old archetype of “guy who says casually insensitive things but makes thoughtful gestures,” helped by the fact that he seems to be trying to keep his distance from this new, different person while presumably still grieving. Is she even the second Kujirai? How long has this been going on?

My only real concerns are twofold: first, that the manga is ongoing, which does not bode well for the adaptation of a mystery/conspiracy show; and second, the brief glimpse we get of clear future antagonist Hebinuma, head of an Obviously Evil Megacorporation. He only appears on a billboard here, but the trailer for the series drops what viewers will may recognize as the very 90s version of The Queer-coded Villain Voice. Maybe it’ll work out that he’s a complex and layered character as well, but I still sigh a bit at having to wade through those loaded signifiers to get to something more interesting.

With so much on its plate, I’d understand people wanting to take a more wait-and-see approach with this title, but I think it’s going to be particularly compelling to watch on a weekly basis as things unfold, and to appreciate the claustrophobic atmosphere in small chunks. This is an easy lock for three episodes, and hopefully it has a plan to see its intriguing threads through to the end.