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Foreign Farewell

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Simply put, this is when a character kisses another character farewell, but refuses to admit it's romantic, blaming the influence of a foreign nation.

In a lot of Anime or Manga, when a female 'American' character leaves to go back to Eagleland because she wants her beloved to be happy, or for some other reason, and has not yet told him that she likes him, she will give him a passionate kiss farewell—and then deny that it was romantic by claiming that "That's the way Americans say goodbye."

This is, of course, utter nonsense. The American way of saying goodbye to a platonic friend is a handshake, a wave, a hug or at most a peck on the cheek.

While some countries do use the 'goodbye kiss', it is almost always on the cheek (or one on each). But in a manga, the only foreigners who claim that mouth-to-mouth is a proper farewell are called American. In American films, such a kiss goodbye is usually attributed to Europe. For cases where kissing (farewell or otherwise) actually is non-romantic, see Platonic Kissing.


Examples:

Anime & Manga

  • In the Ai Yori Aoshi anime, Tina Foster does this to Kaoru before going back to America.
  • Kamichama Karin: Micchi gives Karin a "Shut Up" Kiss once, but later claims it was "just a goodbye peck!" He's half-english.
  • In the manga, Challengers, Kurokawa kisses Tomoe as he's leaving on the train. When they meet again, Tomoe asks him if it was because he had an American step-father at one point. Kurokawa grudgingly says yes, the kiss was just an American goodbye.
  • In We Never Learn, Uruka kisses Nariyuki on the lips right before telling him she's going to a foreign university after graduating high school, claiming she was just practicing the "foreign goodbye". It's revealed shortly after that she actually believed it was a foreign thing until told otherwise by her friends.

Fan Works

  • Boy With a Scar: Shanks always did this for Makino, and Luffy followed his example with both Dadan (making her faint) and Makino (to her delight). When he suggests that Usopp do it for Kaya and explains his reasoning, Zoro laughs, Nami Face Palms, and Usopp and Kaya both blush. And though Nami tries to prevent it from happening to Nojiko, her efforts lead to Nojiko kissing him instead.
  • Plan 7 of 9 from Outer Space:
    "Yes Tom — I remember your First Contact procedures," said B'Lar Nah sarcastically. "You told me a polite greeting on Earth involved sticking a tongue down a girl's throat!"

Films — Live-Action

  • Played for Laughs in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: Elsa Schneider French-kisses Indy and tells him it's "how we say goodbye in Austria". Right afterward, Colonel Vogel tells Indy, "This is how we say goodbye in Germany," and punches him in the face (which knocks Indy's head into the back of his father's head, as they're both tied up in chairs).
    Indy: I liked the Austrian way better.
    Henry: So did I!

Literature

  • When Lolita gets something in her eye, Humbert tells her of a technique Swiss peasants use to remove it, by licking the eyeball. He then proceeds to do so. On both eyes.

Live-Action TV

  • Farscape. In "I, E.T.", John Crichton gives a farewell kiss on the cheek to an alien woman. Her reaction implies it's a bit too intimate for her culture.
  • In the Friends episode "The One with all the Kissing", Chandler gave his (secret) girlfriend Monica a kiss as he left her place; then they both realized what he did, so he quickly kissed Phoebe and Rachel, too. When this happened for a second time, Monica claimed that it was probably a "European good-bye thing he picked up in London".
    Rachel: That's not European!
    Phoebe: Well, it felt French.
  • WandaVision: Vision brings his boss Mr. Hart and his wife over for dinner. Wanda mistakes Mr. Hart for Vision, sneaks up behind him and covers his eyes while flirtatiously asking "guess who?". When Mr. Hart demands to know what she's doing, Vision covers for her by claiming it's a traditional Sokovian way of greeting one's guests. At the end of the evening Mrs. Hart pauses behind Wanda and covers her eyes while thanking her for the meal.

Theatre

  • Ali Hakim in the musical Oklahoma! gives Ado Annie what he calls a "Persian Goodbye" (dipping her back into a kiss) in front of her new fiance Will Parker, and when Ado Annie asks for another Persian Goodbye, her fiance surprises her with an even more dramatic "Oklahoma Hello".

Visual Novel

  • Happens at the end of Shin's good ending in Morenatsu. Shin, who's half-French, kisses the player character goodbye as he leaves town, to the shock of everyone else present. It's played with, however, since Shin actually knows exactly what he's doing; he and the player character are in a Secret Relationship, and Shin pretended it was this trope to deliberately screw with their friends' heads as a joke.

Real Life

  • Kissing on the lips really isn't romantic in some cultures, and is only often a display of affection towards family or very close friends. An example of this are the Andamanese people, where kissing was only used to show affection towards children and had no sexual/romantic undertones.
    • It used to be almost like a trend in certain parts of Germany for girls to kiss on the lips instead of the usual hug and kiss on the cheek. It seems to have passed lately, but even back then, nobody ever did the same with a girl and a guy while claiming it's not romantic.
    • Also, if you kiss an acquaintance or friend on the mouth as a way of goodbye (or saying hello), prepare to get weird looks/beaten up/slapped. Even family members don't kiss each other on the mouth in most of Europe.
  • Kissing each other on the lips was the formal way for communist leaders from different countries to greet each other on state visits in the former Eastern Bloc. Which led to the joke that after Erich Honecker ousted Walter Ulbricht from power in East Germany, Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev complained to foreign minister Andrey Gromyko: "It's not the same, Honecker seems like such a cold fish. Now, Ulbricht — he could kiss!"
  • In Achaemenid Iran, kissing on the lips was how people sealed deals, including business and political agreements. The action was said to have been blessed by Mithras, the god of promises and loyalty. The one legal contract most people did find themselves signing was marriage, that's actually where the whole "You may now kiss the bride" comes from.

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