Of course you don’t expect the “big” romantic kiss until the last episode, but still there seems to be a strange prejudice against it. I think the weirdest instances of this were two recent anime series I watched where dozens of girls run around nearly naked throughout the series, yet not once do any of them kiss the romantic lead. What’s up with that?
There is a fair bit of kissing in romantic and comedy anime, but in Japanese culture kissing is a bigger step forward in a relationship than it is in western culture. In particular, for girls especially, the first kiss is a very important event. (But that meme gets sabotaged when that first kiss is accidentally with someone of the same gender, with an animal, or even with a robot.)
There’s always the episode when the hapless nerd trips and falls over the hot but inexilicably bad-tempered girl with their mouths accidentally touching.
Gravity must be different in Japan or something, because this sort of thing happens quite a lot.
Yeah, kissing is a Big Deal.
Two anime tropes come out of this…indirect kisses, where using the same straw, or fork, or eating the same ice cream is a really, really big deal, and ‘stolen’ first kisses - which could be not only the sort of thing that Giles mentions, but at least a few times, characters think of it after receiving (or giving) CPR, or it could be a real kiss that just happens to be from the wrong person, and so on.
“… but I don’t understand! We laugh together, we care for each other, we have highly proficient sex…why can’t we get married?”
So if the “first kiss:” is such an important milestone, how do they view their first “tentacle rape”?
"Dear Diary,
The demon from Hell finally took our relationship to the next level today and penetrated me in all three holes!"
Because anime characters don’t have lips.
I think you’re wrong – they often don’t have noses, but the lips are there, even if the mouth is smaller than the eyes. For example, Haruhi Suzumiya, Belldandy, Yukino Miyazawa.
I’ve always thought that it would extremely weird and interesting to see a living person who looks like an anime character.
Valete,
Vox Imperatoris
Because animated kissing is retarded.
Dude, anime, not Metal Hurlant.
Yes, but it wouldn’t be as funny. 
You know, with normal people, the lips are a different color than the rest of the face. I’m just saying.
I’d be afraid to kiss those babes - I’d be liable to cut myself.
Just after I posted the OP I came up with two theories. A lot of these types of animes are based on Computer games. In computer games usually once you kiss the girl you’ve chosen her for the rest of the game. So maybe the people who produce animes are reluctant to choose a girl for fear of angering a fan of one of the other girls. Either that or there’s more humor in the girls competing for the guy than in the final romantic kiss.
What really irritates me with romantic anime comedy is that even though there are usually a bunch of suitors for the main character, you know within the first introduction who exactly he or she is going to choose 40 volumes of manga later. So there’s zero dramatic tension about who’s going to wind up with who, it’s just whether they’ll kiss or just come to an ‘arrangement’. I’d like to read a manga with some actual mystery in it some day.
There’s HUGGING!
Isn’t that enough for you?
Actually, I have seen kissing in Japanese anime, but remember that to Japanese, a hug is a bit like a kiss to us.
I don’t know a whole lot about anime, but I used to live in Japan and I have a lot of Japanese friends and I think the answer is that the Japanese don’t kiss casually and they don’t kiss in public. It’s my limited understanding that kissing in Japan has long been seen as falling into the foreplay category, something that belongs in the bedroom. Younger people over the past 10 years or so have a somewhat more relaxed attitude, but I don’t think I’ve ever personally witnessed a Japanese couple kissing. It’s fairly rare even to see a couple holding hands in public.
Remember that while in various Western cultures it’s common to shake hands, hug, or kiss when greeting or saying goodbye to someone, the Japanese bow. As a culture they are not big on public, social touching.
Um, what Lamia said.
I remember reading somewhere that to the Japanese, kissing is reserved for someone you’re serious about, so a young Japanese person looks forward to their first kiss with even more anticipation than an American youth would. That’s why most romantic comedy anime don’t show the main character kissing the partner of their choice till the very end, 'cause that’s when he (usually it’s a he) picks the girl he’s going to stay with. Not really so much in shojo anime, from what I’ve seen - quite often, the heroine has a kiss stolen from her by some handsome guy who’s not necessarily the guy she’ll eventually end up with. (See Vision of Escaflowne, for example -
Hitomi gets kissed by Allen Schezar, but later realizes she’s in love with Van Fanel.)