The Spring 2025 Anime Preview Guide

Kowloon Generic Romance

Welcome to Kowloon Walled City: a dystopian townscape where the people are brimming with nostalgia, and where the past, present, and future converge. Amid the hidden emotions and extraordinary daily lives of the men and women working in its confines, a tale of romance begins to unfold for real estate agent Reiko Kujirai—one that feels as familiar as Kowloon itself.

Kowloon Generic Romance is based on a manga by Jun Mayuzuki. The anime series is streaming on Crunchyroll on Saturdays.

I have a long-standing fascination with the Kowloon Walled-City—not to mention its influence on the cyberpunk aesthetic. At least a few times a year I flip through endless pictures, watch videos, and check out maps of the place. It was a truly fascinating locale and one that now only lives in people's nostalgic minds. And thematically, nostalgia's what this first episode is about.

In this place of nostalgia, we have nothing but people who reject anything else. They eat the same foods, go to the same places, live in the same old tiny apartments, and never even think of leaving the confines of their little city. You could say they are goldfish trapped in a bowl of their own making. (SYMBOLISM!)

From the start of the episode, there is an air of something being subtly wrong with what we're seeing. The TVs are all CRTs, but the news speaks of sci-fi levels of new technology—and that's before we see the giant diamond floating in the sky. Given that the talking heads mention a new virtual world that people can live in for all eternity—along with all this taking place in a location that no longer exists in the real world—I think we can probably start to connect the dots as to what's really going on here.

Then we have the central love story of the show between Kujirai and Kudo. While Kudo is a bit of an ass, he's also charming. And the more we see of him, the more apparent it is that his asshole-ish actions are a way of getting Kujurai on what amounts to secret dates—you know, “to make it up to her.” Yet, at the same time, there is the constant distance he keeps between them, never letting her get too close even as she falls for him. And all this leads into the big mystery of the show: why does Kudo's ex-girlfriend look exactly like Kujirai.

But despite the location, atmosphere, characters, and mystery, I felt a bit let down by this episode. There's a difference between a slow burn and something feeling too drawn out. I can't help but feel the set TV runtime and the decision to end on a cliffhanger stretched this episode beyond what it should have been. I legitimately got bored waiting for the other shoe to drop and thus wasn't truly satisfied even when it did.

All that said, do I think this show is bad? No, not at all. Will I keep watching? Yes. Perhaps it just relied a bit too much on wallowing in nostalgia to hold my interest in this first episode—no matter how thematically perfect such a directorial choice may have been.

I have to confess, I didn't get it when I bought the first volume of manga back when it was released. The book is too far buried for me to pull it out and try to decode what it was that didn't work for me that wasn't present in this episode. In fact, I don't event remember if there even was anything or if I was just being a hater for no particular reason. Because watching it now, the first word that comes to mind for Kowloon Generic Romance is “effortless.” Effortlessly cool, effortlessly mundane, effortlessly mysterious, effortlessly sexy. Ironically, it takes a lot of effort to create this sense of effortlessness, but the effect is worth it: a production stripped of the adolescent excesses endemic to much of the medium, instead carrying itself with the same mature confidence as its 30+-year-old characters.

It's challenging to even articulate, because every element is so wrapped up in one another, I'm struggling to even pick it apart enough to discuss it. The characters, the setting, the story… it's all of a piece—tightly woven into a stunning tapestry. It doesn't necessarily come across that way at first: Reiko and Hajime, two realtors in a distant-future revival of Kowloon Walled City, chit-chat and have mildly belligerent sexual tension as they work together. Reiko craves novelty and adventure but Hajime admires the nostalgic sensibilities of the run-down old city. Kowloon is appealingly worn, full of crowded streets, faded signs, and alleyways where children play. There's a sensuality to them and their space as the episode moves through brief vignettes of their time together—Reiko painting an apartment in skimpy clothes to try to fend off the heat, the two of them gorging themselves at street carts and treating the viewers by proxy to some of the finest food porn ever animated, and the two standing on the roof smoking. Their easy chemistry makes it believable instead of jarring when Reiko thinks to herself, “I love this man.”

But this is far from a slice-of-life show. There's an octagon floating in the sky above them and a mysterious pharmaceutical company with eyedrops that appear to cure Reiko's vision. Sometimes Hajime looks at Reiko but seems to see someone else. These drips and drabs mixed with the nostalgic sensibility of Kowloon create a defamiliarizing effect—preventing me from ever getting comfortable with what was happening. It's such a relief to have a science fiction series that doesn't use eye-smarting filters to create a sense of otherworldliness! The bits of strangeness come at a faster and faster pace right up until the bomb of the episode's final shot.

Kowloon Generic Romance could easily be the best show of the season, if not the year. Do not miss out.

Wow. I already had a feeling that I would enjoy Kowloon Generic Romance, because I am predisposed to enjoying any halfway-decent romance anime about actual adults that are my age and share actual chemistry and sexual tension with each other. On top of that, I've actually become rather fascinated with the real-life history of Kowloon Walled City recently (I highly recommend City of Darkness, the photographic chronicle of the city made in its final years by Greg Girard and Ian Lambot). In short, Kowloon Generic Romance had everything set up for its success, so far as I was concerned, and it still managed to bowl me over in surprise with how much I loved it.

Our heroine, Reiko, lives in one of the many densely packed, jagged buildings that made the real Kowloon Walled City so infamous.This isn't a period piece, however, because while the real Kowloon was razed to the ground and turned into a public park over thirty years ago, this version of the Walled City is alive and well in the year…well, that's not entirely clear. It feels like a vaguely modern amalgamation of recognizable technology and fashion, though there is clearly an intent to make this place feel like it exists outside or beyond any time period we might recognize. Then there's the fact that a giant floating polyhedron monitors the entire city on the behalf of a company called Generic Terra. According to Hajime, Reiko's colleague and love interest, Generic Terra is using their tax dollars to “create a fake Earth.” So, clearly, there's nothing to be concerned about on that front. I'm sure it is a plot point that won't ever become relevant again, even if Reiko's entire world is shattered at the end of the premiere when she discovers that…well, you'll see for yourselves when you watch this premiere.

Which you absolutely should do, by the way. What makes me absolutely adore this first episode of Kowloon Generic Romance is the fact that, even if we set aside the ominously dystopian sci-fi twists and turns that the story takes, the show would still be a must-watch based purely on its success as a romantic drama. Hajime and Reiko make for a great pair of romantic leads, with Reiko's understated but still forceful personality pairing well with Hajime's rakish antics. I could see some folks being turned off by Hajime acting like a bit of a dumb man-child sometimes, but I think the show makes it work, especially when the episode's last-minute reveals give you cause to question how much of the real Hajime we've actually seen at all.

There's a lot of talk of the mystifying but undeniable power of nostalgia in this premiere, which is not just a great hook by which to play on the fascination with cultural landmarks like Kowloon Walled City; it's the perfect throughline to explore that selfsame intangible magnetism that makes for genuine, complex romance. I cannot recommend Kowloon Generic Romance enough. It's the best surprise of the new spring season, so far.

The goldfish are a metaphor. That's perhaps not a surprise; by nature, a walled city is similar to a goldfish bowl, keeping its residents confined within a small space, unable to breach the boundaries. But why Kujirai is bound by the walled city of Kowloon is the greater question, and it's one that this episode does a brilliant job of forcing us to ponder. Everything about the setting is suspect – even if you didn't know that the area was demolished in the mid-1990s, the vibe of the place is very much of that time. There are no smartphones, no sleek laptops, nothing that really indicates a time beyond 1994. Well, except for one thing – the strange, cyber-style structure in the sky. Called “Generic Terra,” it's almost the source for the answers this episode is posing.

Everything about this episode encourages us to question the reality we're looking at. I was instantly struck by the way Kujirai kept taking off her glasses; as someone who needs them to see pretty much everything, it feels like an odd gesture. The way she presses on her nose indicates pain, but it also looks a bit like she's trying to remember something, pushing her fingers against her head in a bid to shake something free. Even before she finds the picture or before the man who runs the tea house says he recognizes her as Kudo's girlfriend, there's just something barely on the edge of perception that she's trying to focus on, and that makes us suspicious that we're missing something as well. It's a fascinating set up for what's either a mystery or a science fiction story – possibly both.

It's probably worth remembering that the word “romance” didn't originally mean “love story.” It meant something closer to “fantasy,” so while there does appear to be a love story in here – or maybe a lost love story, since Kujirai doesn't remember Kudo – it's that other, older definition that could be more important. If something happened to Kujirai to cause her to lose her memory, Kudo could be living a fantasy version of his life with her, spending time with a woman he loved but who no longer recalls their relationship. She knows ehs loves him, but she doesn't seem to know why, and the brief mention of Generic Terra holding memories is really making me question what's actually happening.

Is it a fantasy? A mystery? A bittersweet love story? I'm not sure, but I'm definitely interested in finding out.