Engage Kiss

Episode 8

This is the dumbest episode of Engage Kiss yet. To be clear, very dumb is not the worst thing Engage Kiss can be, but it certainly doesn't help this week's twist-ridden aspirations towards the dramatic. Consequently, most of the revelations here are very silly, the parts that try to be silly are very cloying, and I don't get nearly enough of the spicy romantic pickles I'm eating this trash burger for in the first place. And speaking of romantic pickles, no, I'm still not over Shu's dick poison thing. If the show gives me nothing else, at least I will always have the dick poison.

Basically, this whole episode revolves around sussing out the identity of Shu's mysterious informant and, presumably, the identity of the person furthering the demon's agenda in Bayron City. We know from the beginning that this is a matter of betrayal, but that's where Engage Kiss' dramatic hopes fall apart, because we simply don't have enough fleshed-out characters to care about a betrayal. Only Shu, Kisara, and Ayano have been given an appreciable amount of depth (which, to be frank, ain't all that much), and there was never a chance any of them could be the traitor. We just haven't spent enough time with anybody else to be given a reason to care. This is one of the perils of plotting single-cours anime; if your writing is anything less than watertight, the whole narrative apparatus can fall apart.

Regardless, Engage Kiss still finds some moments to have fun. I really enjoy the Hannibal-aping questioning scene with the behind-bars Sharon, who relishes the opportunity to be smug at Shu's expense. And she brings up a salient point: if Shu's memories are being messed with, then he can't completely trust the validity of the remnants still rattling about in his brainpan. And neither should the audience, for that matter. If there will be a big last-minute twist, dollars to donuts, I guarantee it's going to involve a faulty memory. Furthermore, Sharon's attitude in this scene recalls the kind of sexually-infused powerplays that Engage Kiss does best. Elsewhere in the episode, we only get more tired gags about Kisara being yandere, which is a disappointingly juvenile regression.

Back to the matter at hand, Engage Kiss intends its first big shock to be the identity of Shu's informant, Surprise, it's none other than the police director general, a.k.a. the annoying classmate who's been in all of like three scenes up to this point. As a twist, it has all the explosiveness of a whoopee cushion. There's just nothing to chew on here. A character we didn't care about is actually another character we also don't care about. The only toothsome morsel Mikhail brings to the table is his peeling back the curtain on Bayron's dystopian surveillance state. Even that, however, is played more for a lame gag than for any kind of salient observation on the existence (or nonexistence) of privacy in the 21st century. There's some dialogue that tries to acknowledge the disturbing irony of the situation, but it's too shallow to have any kind of bite. Chalk it up as another one of Engage Kiss' missed opportunities.

The second big twist is the identity of the traitor. This arrives on the heels of Mikami's murder, a big character death that the show fumbles embarrassingly. This dude was probably the series' most important secondary character, and he gets about as much sendoff as the pet goldfish you flush down the toilet. Forget the traitor; Engage Kiss' cloying sense of humor does the most heinous hit job here. Apparently, poking fun at Mikhail is more important than instilling emotional weight in a comrade's untimely murder. The camerawork also may as well be pointing a giant red arrow at Miles in his scene before he whacks Mikami, but the episode still strings us along until the last moment. And again, the worst part is there's no reason for me to care. Miles has been humanized all of two times prior, and both instances were in relation to the same story about him taking in Shu after his parents died. He's a cardboard cutout of a father figure.

I mentioned last time that the whole demon conspiracy aspect was the least interesting part of Engage Kiss, so an entire episode focused on that was going to be a hard sell for me, no matter what. Even given my biases, though, I think this installment does lazy work slathering on the twists for twists' sake. Bring back the tasteless erotic melodrama. That's the fun part, and without it, Engage Kiss is nothing more than a sloppy peck on the cheek.

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Engage Kiss is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

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