Kowloon Generic Romance is one of the romance anime airing in 2025, and is a series that felt the most like a shojo or josei, but is instead a Seinen series. It’s also a series that I feel like the art style doesn’t quite work out in animation.

Kowloon Generic Romance follow Reiko Kujirai, a 32-year old realtor in a reborn version of the Kowloon Walled City who is also dating her co-worker, Hajime Kudou. However, something isn’t quite right about this Kowloon. Reiko keeps getting flashes of another possible – seemingly ruined version of Kowloon Walled City, and finds a picture of Kudou with another her – another her who is dead. The story also follows various other residents of this Kowloon, like part time worker Xiaohei, seamstress Youmei, bartender Tao Guen, and doctor and businessman Miyuki Hebinuma, who helps (and sometimes hinders) Reiko as she tries to get to the bottom of what Kowloon is.

Consequently, while the story is told in full here, it’s hard to get into the nitty gritty of the narrative, as this is a series that can be spoiled. The overall mystery of the series is set up and executed well, though it does fall into some “mystery box” concepts – as much of the focus of the story is about regret, trauma, and grief, and how those draw the characters to New Kowloon. Thus, if the story has to choose between exploring those themes, or explaining the mystery, it focuses on the themes. This means that one character’s core role in the narrative feels like an afterthought, while another character’s role, while important, also feels unexplained – at least in terms of why they’re able to do the important things that they can do.

The series has a very throwback style in terms of its music and its visual style. There’s some real ‘80 and ‘90s vibe to the music – which fits considering that Kowloon Walled City was demolished in the ‘90s. The art style also feels like something of a throwback to the 80s and 90s as well.

This leads to a bit of the weakness of the show – the manga has an art style that also feels like the 80s and 90s, particularly with the level of detail and, in particular, texture. That texture, unfortunately, doesn’t translate very well into the animation – there are a bunch of shots in the show that feel a little flat. In particular, the finale of the series feels very ambitious in its visuals (taken from the manga), which isn’t executed very well in the anime – not as a real strike against the animation of the show – it feels like they wanted to pull off the visuals from the show – but they either didn’t have the time to or didn’t have the staff to pull this off.

That said, it’s a great story, and what we get in the visuals is enough of a teaser to make me want to read the manga – which is probably a big win for the creators of the manga.

Kowloon Generic Romance is available from Crunchyroll, and the manga is available from Bookshop.org or the Crunchyroll Store. (buying anything through that link will support the site).

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