#kisara ek

[hopeymchope]

Engage Kiss totally *brings it*.

A-1 Pictures is on a ROLL lately. After finishing the third season of “Kaguya-Sama: Love is War,” I can hardly believe that they immediately put out both “Lycoris Recoil” AND “Engage Kiss” in the very next seasonal cycle! And IMO? All of these are well worth your time.

I went into "Engage Kiss" knowing shockingly little about it, and I come here today to promote how VERY emotionally invested I got in it. It’s one of those shows where at a certain point, EVERY episode ended on a cliffhanger moment that had me dying to watch what happened next. It worked me up to a point where I was tearing into each new episode as soon as I could squeeze them into my day, even if it meant playing parts of them on my phone while brushing my teeth or something. YEAH, I got addicted to it, and that's always the best feeling with any anime or any TV series in general, I think.

The core trio of Kisara, Shu, and Ayano. Also: The focal love triangle. The initial polycule, if you will.

I think the series’ biggest weakness is that it’s slow to roll out information on the initial status quo. They just sort of drop viewers in blind and let you gradually catch up on what’s going on as they drip-feed context across the first four episodes. So I’m going to try and bypass that problem by giving y’all a vague outline of the setup:

Decades ago, a new ore was discovered on the ocean floor that had the potential to be an amazing new source of energy. Today, an artificial island city has developed here to support the mining initiative. Unfortunately, this city has also developed a problem with monstrous demon attacks, and — cue the sarcasm — I’m sure that the deep mining and the unleashing of demonic forces are totally unrelated. The government tries to cover up evidence of these demons and their attacks while simultaneously keeping a number of PMCs on call to kill the invaders... or, to be more specific, the lowest bidder for each case is sent out to kill them. 

Twelve years ago, one such demon attack blindsided the city, and 28 people were lost. Only one survivor emerged from the site where it happened: A boy named Shu. 

We follow three lead characters: Shu, Ayano, and Kisara. Shu runs an extremely small PMC consisting of just two people. He looks like a real loser from the outside, but those who get to know him come to really respect his dedication to his personal goals and the people he cares about. The only other employee in Shu’s PMC is Kisara, and she’s actually a demon herself! And on top of that, Shu and Kisara are in a relationship! To date, Kisara has possessed enough power to handle almost any kind of OTHER demonic threat that comes into town... but the strength of those threats is rapidly increasing.  And Ayano? She’s the point man for a competing PMC, and she used to be in a relationship with Shu. Now she’s just trying her damnedest to maintain a friendly working relationship with him... despite both of them still clearly struggling with lingering feels.

Why are the demons even here? What really happened to the vanished people from 12 years ago? Why is Kisara willing to fight and kill her own kind? Why is Shu dating a friggin’ demon? All these things will be answered, brand-new questions will arise... and in the interim period, you’ll get some kick-ass action scenes, some frothy relationship/love-triangle humor, and increasingly high-stakes drama.

Kisara is also a one-winged demon, FYI. Eat your heart out, Sephiroth.

Although I found the universe kind of interesting, the humor cute enough, and the action pretty damn cool, none of those traits are enough for me to get seriously invested in a series. What really got me here is the CHARACTERS. There are a bunch of them, ranging from some fun/charismatic supporting players to the big three I just outlined. Two of them especially got under my skin and into my head... but one moreso than the other. 

The lesser of the two? A highly flawed yet weirdly fascinating person — someone that’s willing to make just about any compromise to pursue their own justice. And the other character, the one I really couldn’t shake from my mind? As the series went on, their motivations and actions became so complicated and conflicting that I felt compelled to sporadically sit and ponder what was driving them and what they might decide to do next.

....yeah, I’m clearly dodging revealing too much about them because I don’t want to call out my faves point-blank. I don’t want to raise anyone’s expectations or get them to particularly focus on any given character in the foreground OR background. Anyone who tries it is better coming in with minimal expectations, I think.

And yet... I still want to give you SOME expectations. That’s what my aforementioned summary tried to do. But on top of that, let me offer some additional warnings.

Noteworthy Warnings/Advisements:

Please understand that "Engage Kiss" is essentially a Word Salad Title. By the end of the series, I could kinda see how it could be justified... but the show sure as hell ain't going to give you that justification itself. Don't sit around awaiting for someone to explain to you how they're engaging in kissing or whatever. This is some popcorn eyeglasses shit.

The tone of the series can swing wildly from VERY light to VERY dark. What starts out as a pretty goofy show focused on relationship comedy and financial struggles eventually shifts into something much more dramatic as we escalate the various players' personal motives alongside the increasingly world-threatening stakes.

Content Warning: Along the way, you can expect to see sporadic blood and gore as well as a few episodes containing blatant sexual content (no nudity, however). .......... Oh, and those kissing scenes you only ever see in anime where the people get a string of drool linking their mouths while making out? Mmm-hmm — the saliva-phobic need not apply here. .......... Also? Kisara fronts at being a high-schooler — dressing up like one and even occasionally attending a school — which means our story includes a young adult man dating an (ostensible) high-school girl. And it also includes, via flashbacks, a young adult woman dating an (actual) high-school boy! These relationships would both be quite taboo in the U.S., but if you’ve watched enough Japanese media, you know by now that they don’t really flinch at this at all. Cultural differences and all that. You can either accept that they see the world differently or resume previous disgust; you’ll get no judgement from me either way.

Oh, you might want to know that this is part of a theoretical “mixed-media project.” Said project currently only includes this anime, an ongoing manga that is adapting the anime, and a Square Enix mobile RPG titled “Engage Kill” that is expected to hit devices later in 2023. At least in Japan. I’m not sure if there’s any confirmation of it coming anywhere else, but here’s hoping!

Ayano has MANY reasons why Shu sucks ready to fire off at a moment’s notice. Sadly, this doesn’t change that she’s still sorta hung up on him. As they say, “the heart wants what it wants” — even if it what it wants is dumb as fuck.

By the end of it, I felt like they didn’t quiiiiiiite stick the landing in the finale. It wasn’t the ideal wrapup for my tastes, and that’s partly because it felt like they were setting up one thing until the last couple of eps convinced them to do the OPPOSITE of that. Even so, I definitely wouldn’t say it was a failure of a finale OR a series!  

And when the last scene ended, I found myself STILL very emotionally attached to these characters. Frankly, I'm just a couple steps away from writing shippy fics about some of them. It be like that.