"Morning."
An anime about a girl who is forced to do romance. There's no way an anime like this can possibly get nightmarish, right? You'd be surprised...
Despite being mostly about romance, Romantic Killer plays Realism-Induced Horror horrifically straight...
All spoilers are unmarked, you have been warned.
- Mori, a one episode antagonist who appears in Episode 10 (“Other Way Around, Dummy”) which happens to be Saki’s focus episode. When he first appears in a flashback sequence, he is established as an upperclassman with whom Saki is on friendly terms with, although she isn’t sure of her feelings for him after he asks her out several times. They maintain a cordial relationship nonetheless and go on several dates, but things change when they both decide to study at Mori’s house.
- When Saki enters Mori’s room, he inexplicably covers up a picture frame of him with a male friend and a trio of girls from school. As they study, Saki recognizes that while Mori has done so much for her, she does not have any romantic feelings for him, when all of a sudden he attempts to kiss her without her consent. Saki tells him to stop, but he forcefully grabs her by the arm and tells her to “not be such a baby” and that she “knew exactly what she was doing” by coming to his house. Realizing quickly that he is trying to sexually assault her, she hits him in the head with a book and immediately runs out of the house.
- Unfortunately, by the time Saki arrives at school the next day, Mori has already spread vicious rumors about her to other students. According to these rumors, Saki had “other boys on the side”, followed Mori to his home and made him beg to take her back, and punched him when he refused to let her in his house. These rumors upset Saki, as none of the students who confronted her witnessed what actually took place between them. Anzu, knowing that these rumors are false, stands up for her, telling everyone that Saki is not a violent person and to stop spreading the rumors before confronting Mori in another classroom, calling him out on his behavior and warning him to never underestimate Saki. Mori is shown to have a nervous expression on his face after the confrontation.
- Later in the episode, now set in the present, Saki goes to a summer festival alongside Anzu, Riri, Tsukasa, and Junta. After meeting and having a brief conversation with Tsukasa’s friend Makoto, Mori and his friends notice her in a line when he greets her. This immediately makes her freeze up and begin to panic, and as Mori mentions that she is a “real ice princess”, his friends taunt her by making comments about her looks and asking her if Makoto is her new boyfriend. Their presence bothers her enough that she wants Anzu to save her again like before. Makoto notices what is going on, however, and comes up with a distraction to get her away from them and they leave the line. Once they are far away, Makoto apologizes, but Saki thanks him for what he did, only feeling bad that he lost his place in line because of her. Makoto says that it’s no big deal, then asks her if she wants to grab some food. Mori is never featured after this scene and does not appear in the series again.
- Although the audience is unaware of who exactly Yukana Kishi is in her first appearances, the way she's introduced into the story already makes it clear she's a deranged adult with a horrifying infatuation with the teenage Tsukasa and that the latter is haunted by her in some way. She manages to spot him by chance when browsing social media and identifying him in the background of someone's selfie at the summer festival, and she immediately finds out where he lives and travels there to confront him. She recognises Anzu and tricks her into showing where she and Tsukasa live, and when she sees the latter she rushes to him in an unhinged manner and sends him into a panic — and the whole time she keeps rambling about being his "original girlfriend" and that the two of them can no longer be kept apart anymore. Even when Anzu comes to Tsukasa's rescue and escorts him inside their house, Yukana just eerily stands outside the door before eventually walking away. The series plays up the intensity and terror in this sequence of events, showing just how easy it is for someone to stalk a person they have an unhealthy obsession with and how horrifyingly delusional they can be.
- Tsukasa reveals his backstory to Anzu, revealing that Yukana is his stalker and that she traumatised him during his middle school years. The details of her stalking and the way the series frames Tsukasa's trauma from having to deal with her are incredibly disturbing:
- Tsukasa showed what was meant to be a harmless act of kindness towards Yukana when she hurt herself falling over and he gave her back her bag — however this was all it took to trigger her stalking ways. At first she just stood there creepily in the exact same spot with a blank smile and eerily greeted Tsukasa whenever he and his friends walked past, which he initially shrugged off. It soon escalated to her sending him packages of clothing on his mother's account and commenting on how good they looked on him, and Tsukasa became perturbed as he realized how closely she's actually been watching him. Yuakana was unfortunately already beyond help at this point, as not even his requests for her to stop following him and stop sending him packages did anything to deter her from staying around him.
- Yukana at one point drugged Tsukasa while he was studying at home. She came into his room after he passed out from his spiked drink and took photos of herself looking intimate with him, and even used his social media account to post them. This caused Tsukasa to get a ton of clout for dating her and he even got slapped by his father, who pushed the blame on him rather than the woman herself.
- Despite having restraining orders made against her, Yukana still didn't understand how she was in the wrong and at one point eerily approached Tsukasa outside his home to complain that the others didn't understand their relationship. She then rushed toward him with the craziest Nightmare Face imaginable, to Tsukasa's understandable horror, and was only stopped when Arisa stepped in and knocked her down.
- The trauma from being stalked was so bad for Tsukasa that he stopped going to school out of fear and eventually moved far away to his current location in hopes of getting Yukana off his tracks. Unfortunately, as Tsukasa reveals, her impact on him is still so severe in the present that the reason he acts distant towards other girls (to the point of being reluctant to help them) is all because he gets terrifying hallucinations of Yukana every time a girl tries to approach him.
- After the crisis is resolved, Yukana is shown creepily slouching in despair behind bars. Despite her imprisonment and all the havoc she wreaked, she's still clearly delusional and talks in a disturbing manner when she mentions that after getting out she'll find Tsukasa again because they are "destined for each other." Ultimately, Riri in her girl form, pays Yukana a visit, and uses their magic to erase Yukana's memories of the last several years.
