Kiss Him, Not Me! Volumes 2 & 3 Review

Year 2 Kae Serinuma, hardcore fujoshi and otaku, has blossomed into a slim, pretty doe-eyed girl (almost) overnight and now has an entourage of four smitten boys: 3rd Year Mutsumi, classmates Igarashi and Nanashima and 1st Year and fellow Health Committee member Shinomiya. The problem is that Kae – still a passionate fujoshi at heart – just doesn’t know how to handle all the admiration and would far rather her would-be boyfriends felt attracted to each other so that she could fangirl from a safe distance.

So when the School Culture Festival looms, Kae becomes incredibly motivated at the thought of making costumes from her favourite series for the boys to wear. And they reluctantly submit; after all, being measured by their lovely Kae means she’s not only blissfully happy but she’s also hands-on with tape measure. And when Shinomiya reveals he’s playing a princess in the class play, Kae is in seventh heaven. Yet all the excitement proves too much in the end, as each one of the boys demands some one-to-one time alone with her, resulting in testosterone-fuelled sparring and emotional meltdown for Kae as they come to blows. “Th – these real-life events… I just can’t deal with it all,” she wails. Read on to find out if the four boys find a way to placate her and express their apologies…

Then at a comic convention, Kae suffers the unwanted attentions of a male photographer – only to be rescued by a handsome male cosplayer in butler attire. Cue the entry of Shima Nishina, fellow fujoshi, cosplayer and talented doujinshi author who just so happens to be in the year below Kae. Yup, she’s a girl. Shima and Kae really hit it off, causing the four boys much heart-searching: could it be that Kae likes Shima much better than any of them? Having played with BL stereotypes/scenarios, Junko now teases us– and confused heroine Kae – with some yuri possibilities.

But by Volume 3, the preparations for Valentine’s Day chocolates (given by women to men in Japan) are proving extremely stressful for Kae. She’s working very hard to enter a competition with an original piece of chocolate art based on her favourite anime character – but the stress is really getting to her. One unfortunate offshoot of all the stress is what becomes of//she does with all her rejected pieces of chocolate art: she eats the lot. The result? Her weight balloons dramatically and she’s back where she started at the beginning of the story. Or…is she? The reactions of the four boys and Shima are intriguing. Their first impulse is to encourage her to exercise all the excess weight away – but, although Kae gamely does her best, that proves way too big of an ask. Junko neatly contrasts the way the boys face the challenge of losing weight (a problem to be solved) with the female approach (Shima, who is constantly ‘there’ for Kae until Kae begins to freak out) and older, more mature Mutsumi trying to strike a balance between the two extremes. In the end, a novel way to motivate Kae evolves, based on her predilections…but will it work?

As I suspected, Junko is too clever a mangaka to let her high school fairy tale play out along conventional lines. Having teased us with diverting variations on a couple of well-worn high school story tropes: the School Cultural Festival with play and cosplay cafe, she also shows us the dangers lurking for inexperienced and vulnerable youngsters at comic conventions in the appearance of the pervy older photographer who won’t take ‘no’ for an answer. So there’s more than one way to read and enjoy this series: it’s perfectly fine to enjoy it as a light and frothy comedy that plays with certain manga stereotypes anc clichés and has a lot of fun with them. Yet maybe there’s the hint of a more thought-provoking agenda emerging from the heart of the story: Junko asks questions such as, ‘Is it superficial to only like someone for their appearance?’ without doing it in a heavy-handed way. And Kae – whatever her shape – is an undeniably likable, relatable central character. Junko’s track record as an experienced mangaka shows in the neat yet nuanced way she reveals her story from panel to panel (and even on the turn of a page) and her quirky but distinctive character designs make this an eye-pleasing read.

As before, the Translator’s Notes offer a wealth of fascinating information about contemporary Japanese culture and wordplay in the original text so David Rhie deserves praise for a fluent translation as well as the notes. By Volume 3 we also have the bonus of the author’s Character Guide at the front (always a good idea if, like me, you don’t always remember all the names).