Seasonal First Impressions is a column where I detail my thoughts, however brief or long, about a currently-airing anime’s first episode or so.

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Look at them individually, and no part of Kowloon Generic Romance seems all that strange. Its setting, the historical Kowloon Walled City, is probably the most individually unusual factor, but still, oddball places to set a romance series are hardly a new idea. The romance itself? An ice queen and a guy who’s too pushy by half, maybe more. Nothing strange going on there, even if it really is leaning into the self-deprecating part of its title. The atmosphere? Wistful. Thoughtful. Slow. But still, nothing too out of the ordinary.

Tying these things together, and making it clear that we have something strange on our hands, is the final element. Kowloon doesn’t actually take place in the historical Walled City, you see. It takes place in an alternate past-future present of it. The year is nineteen-exty-something, and a bizarre 3D-rendered floating octahedron hovers above the city, looking for all viewers like a nepo baby whose mom played Ramiel in Neon Genesis Evangelion. A mysterious pharmaceutical company has a hand in everything. Everything too, true to life, is old, used, and hand-me-down. Reiko [Shiraishi Haruka] our protagonist, points out that new shops rarely last in Kowloon, as though the city itself rejects the march of time. That may well be true of Reiko herself, too, although if it is, she doesn’t seem to be aware of it.

Reiko has a hot-cold relationship with her coworker Kudou [Sugita Tomokazu], she knows that this is a crush, but hasn’t acted on it. I can’t personally sympathize with that because, honestly, Kudou, easily the weak link here, is an unlikable dipshit, but people who aren’t me have crushes on unlikable dipshits all the time, so, fair enough. (Sidebar: He is clearly hiding something and I’m sure the narrative will take great steps to paint him as pained and with a heart of gold. This is whatever to me, I am passingly interested at best in the Generic part of Kowloon‘s Romance.) Their rapport works as well as it needs to, which is to say, I buy that Reiko genuinely likes this guy even if I wouldn’t. More interesting is where they go, after a day of work, Kudou takes Reiko out on the town, to a variety of small bars and eateries, before eventually showing her the Goldfish Tea House, a place with an eerie, unstuck-in-time atmosphere that feels very intentional.

The bartender—an odd term for a guy in charge of a teahouse, but I can think of no other—makes a comment that Kudou, evidently an old friend of his, has brought his girlfriend along again. This flusters Reiko, who is further perplexed by Kudou’s lack of a reaction. This sticks with her even more after an incident at their workplace, where Kudou, half-asleep, pulls Reiko into an impassioned kiss. (He seems half-asleep anyway. I don’t really buy, and I don’t think we’re supposed to buy, that this was entirely accidental. While forced kisses like this are an unlikable and common element of much romance fiction, the context makes me think we’re supposed to find this strange. If not, well, there’s no accounting for taste I suppose.) All of this then comes to a head when Reiko uncovers a mysterious photo among Kudou’s belongings, which seems to depict him with….her. But the woman in the photograph is smiling and cheerful, and it’s clear that even though the two look almost identical, physically speaking, Reiko doesn’t feel a direct connection to this other woman. The episode ends there, leaving us to ponder the mystery of what, precisely, is going on here.

The mystery, and the various visual bits and pieces that float through the episode, that is. Goldfish, watermelons, cigarettes, the moon juxtaposed with Generic Terra, the aforementioned octahedron, cramped city alleys marked with numbers, including 8s, which Kudou makes a habit of brushing against, defining it as a personal quirk. Plus noisy neighbors, traditional music. The episode’s slow pace and emphasis on the visual and aural, despite not having what we might traditionally call a “strong production”, makes it clear that it intends to plant them in the minds of its viewers, this array of symbolic objects contains, somewhere within it, the key to understanding just what exactly is going on with the woman in the photograph. A drifting mix of signifiers meant to rouse our interest without answering too many questions upfront.

Kowloon Generic Romance is based on a manga, so if one wanted to, it would be trivial to spoil themselves silly. Even the anime’s Anilist recommendations tab tells a story, being populated more by the likes of Sonny Boy and Summertime Rendering than any romance anime. This all but spoils that there’s something weird going on here, something weirder than simple coincidence. The involvement of a pharmaceutical company makes my educated guess induced amnesia, but honestly, who can say?

Something I’ve learned over the past few years of doing these previews is that there are two kinds of anime whose premieres strike me less as good or bad and more as puzzling. Those where the mystery is clearly an intended hook to rope in the audience, and those where I—and sometimes others as well—are reading in a subversiveness or intrigue that’s not actually there. Shoshimin Series (despite its mundane subject matter) and Summertime Rendering are the former, Reign of the Seven Spellblades is the latter. These categories are only obvious in hindsight, so while I think Kowloon is the former, only time will tell. Still, its mystery is enough for me to stick with it for now.

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