Engage Kiss

Imagine taking a French fry, and putting sugar on it. Imagine getting a bowl of cereal, and pouring orange juice into it. Imagine eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, but the jelly was replaced with mayo. Now grab a plate, and put all these foods together and eat it all. Are you utterly confused by what I just said? That's how much I felt confused watching this show. This recipe is what I call the “Engage Kiss”, which was a plate of every trope imaginable in the most nonsensical and dumb ways sometimes, plus a lot of plot points crammed together. Harem, check! Cutegirls, check! Demons, check! Dumb waifu wars, check! Ecchi, check! Little sister, check! Rip-off Naofumi, check! Say hello to yet another A-1 Pictures original airing this summer season, and once again, the animation and music did not miss. Everything else though, had its share of frustrating and generic moments. This show really does not start well in my opinion, and because of that, it really lost me for a good chunk of the series, except for a few very good episodes, which made this a passable series overall. If you were wondering which A-1 Pictures original from this season was better, it would easily be Lycoris Recoil. Funny enough, I’d thought for sure it’d be the other way around, but guess I was wrong. My grading criteria: Story: /25 Art: /10 Music: /10 Characters: /20 Enjoyment /15 Thematic Execution /20 STORY: 9.8/25 To give a quick overview first, this show takes place in Bayron City, a rather futuristic and extravagant looking place that strives to give every citizen a lavish lifestyle. However, for wannabe Shield Hero MC Shuu Ogata, that is not the case. He struggles to make ends meet, and is taken care of by his demon partner, Kisara, who holds down the fort and takes care of chores. These two work side by side along with the military forces to take down demons who pose the biggest threat to the city. In order to gain enough power to defeat these formidable creatures, Shuu and Kisara must kiss for her to turn into a more powerful being. This arrangement comes at a cost for Shuu, and it whittles him down bit by bit throughout the story. So this seems interesting right? So it seemed, but this show has quite the identity crisis in that instead of having some world building for us to understand how the city works and why the demons are here, it focused a lot of the romance aspects instead, of a lazy deadbeat and his harem who for some reason are smitten with him. To be honest, an exposition dump of why the demons were here would have been better than whatever was presented. In a show like this, you would expect that the romance would come second, and the story come first, but nah, let’s just have girls getting jealous for a big chunk of the show. There are some good parts about the story, and some emotional bits too, and while the emotional scenes were honestly executed well, if everything was developed properly, it would have hit even harder. Otherwise, the plot is quite ambitious, but because of a lack of world building, nothing felt very significant, it just felt like many things crammed together in an attempt to make a good plot, but felt like a pile of things that didn’t mix well, just very messy. ART: 8.9/10 The animation is quite worthy of praise. The action is fluid and the character designs are decent, except for Naofumi 2.0. The colour palette also works well. Lots of pinks that give the show its uniqueness. MUSIC: 8.4/10 The sound is pretty solid too. The OP and ED were both great songs, and the soundtrack fit well in each scene. CHARACTERS: 9/20 The character development in the show was quite abysmal, because first of all, there was so little backstory, so we had no idea how why all the girls like Shuu, and that made it hard to justify their motives. Kisara was the cute character, and helped Shuu make ends meet, and was also the military’s biggest weapon in countering the demons. Ayano was the more mature character who also played a role in fighting the demons. Some of the supporting cast felt more well developed than the mains honestly, especially Miles, who was Shuu’s caretaker when he was little. Shuu, while he starts out being extremely frustrating to watch, ends up being a solid character in my opinion, but all his goodness came at a point where I already lost most of my interest in the characters. ENJOYMENT: 8.7/15 There were good moments in this show, but few and far between. I did enjoy the action sequences too, but not much else. Pretty average throughout. THEMATIC EXECUTION: 8/20 Like I have mentioned throughout, the lack of world building made a lot of the themes dull, and the plot points insignificant and I just found myself not caring a whole lot. The show attempts to make you feel a wide range of emotions, but it doesn’t work out very well. OVERALL: 52.8/100 There is some minimal enjoyment to be had here, but there wasn’t a whole lot to enjoy except for the action. If you like waifus, go ahead and give this a try, but the dysfunctional plot had me bored at times, although there were a few great moments in this show. I don’t exactly know what we were served up here, but it ends up just feeling messy and tropey.

Engage Kiss is my favourite type of show. Not a really interesting synopsis, and has very mediocre ratings, turns out to be probably the biggest surprise of the season. Engage Kiss got its flaws, but definitely is rated way too low. [Story - 7] I can't tell I don't have objections about the storyline. The show is mixing too many themes at once, and sometimes it's hard to tell, what should you focus on more. Engage Kiss isn't a typical rom-com, as MAL suggests. There's much more action than comedy (fortunately), but when comedy is present, it doesn't help the show at all. Sometimes this comedy aspectin Engage Kiss is fitted poorly, so it ruins any meaning and mood of the moment. There are few emotional scenes in the story. This was something that honestly couldn't have been better, and made me love this show, but because of unnecessary comedy, being put before or after mentioned scene, it's hard to take it seriously. It was something that annoyed me the most during this anime. Action, along with romance is the crucial element of this show, and is good. The fight scenes are presented really well, with a proper approach, and because of that whole anime isn't boring at all. There's a love triangle at the beginning of the story, to become a harem, after introducing Sharon. As far, as I got no issues with Kisara and Ayano since their competition made the anime much more interesting, the existence of Sharon is pretty much useless, and because of that Engage Kiss follows the path of every generic, mediocre rom-com harem. The theme of fights with demons is pretty common in anime, but here I have really little, to no issues with it. The story in the first episode reminded me of SAO. A few episodes later, it was rather Date A Live (defeated enemies become allies, and sometimes even a harem). Kisara is basically Yuno from Mirai Nikki, but much more likable. Even though Engage Kiss is a mix of many things one can imagine in the anime, it's still reasonable and doesn't lose overall sense, which is praiseworthy. [Art - 9] Engage Kiss can easily be a flagship product of A-1 Pictures in the art category. This studio is making amazing work, when it comes to visuals, and Engage Kiss is no exception. Characters are looking really good, colours are fitting perfectly, and environments are reproduced correctly. There are little to no flaws in visuals throughout the whole show. [Sound - 8] Really good job with the sound. Even though I didn't find the opening theme that catchy, the soundtrack fits really well. In more serious scenes, it keeps the mood pretty well. It also builds up tension properly. The sounds during the fight are good and so is the voice. Can't complain! [Characters - 7] It should be higher and could be a higher rating if the show didn't end up being a generic harem, as I mentioned in the story section. Even though I found introducing the crazy nun, quite bad, what can be said about Shuu's sister? I honestly don't know how to treat her character, cause it looks like she's also about to be part of the Shuu's harem. So basically another loli, so that Engage Kiss won't be much more different, than every harem, by an accident. End of the rant, let's examine the main characters. Kisara is by far my favourite character in the series and the fact that I find Engage Kiss enjoyable. Viewers may see her as manipulative, controlling, and not worth the trust, but her real side can be seen at the moment she gives Shuu back all of his memories, even though it means losing her own. She also genuinely cares and loves MC. Kisara always wants the best for Shuu, even if it means, she'll lose out on it. Kisara also shows respect to Ayano in some situations, since she knows how much Ayano means to Shuu ("You are willing to embrace a woman you do not love, to get your objective. You even discard memories of the woman you love, so you can save her"). If viewers dive deeper into her character, it can be easily seen, Kisara is a very nice, helpful, and respectful girl, which makes her really likable. This respect is shown also for Ayano, even if she's her "enemy". Ayano is another girl in Shuu's harem, or rather his ex-girlfriend. Her feeling, however, didn't change at all. She's still in love with her ex-boyfriend. Ayano is a pretty unlucky girl, since her boyfriend supposedly left her, because of the contract with a demon (Kisara). There's not much more about her backstory, other than that, Shuu was pretty irresponsible in many situations in the past. The whole thing with the harem wasn't her fault, but rather the immature behaviour of Shuu, but that's probably a topic for another discussion. Even though they broke up quite a while ago, Ayano still genuinely cares for him and tries to get him back. She's very stubborn, outgoing, and confident, which suits perfectly the role she has in her mother's business. Since her character is written on a really surface level there's not much more to be said. The main protagonist Shuu is a character about which I got mixed feelings. At the first sight, he seems to be pretty likable. After a while viewers can feel, he doesn't really care about other people's feelings. Yet, he uses a demon girl, only to reveal the truth about his family's death, and to find his lost sister. He also left Ayano, for the same purpose. But he's doing this all for his family? So he's justified? Well... Not really. At least in my eyes. His behavior can be seen as a little obsessive, and I know, it is hard to deal with losing your parents, or even your whole family. Unfortunately, it doesn't justify hurting other people. But hey, it is just a rom-com anime, and Ayano is pretty naive, so whatever. Besides that, Shu shows genuine respect for Miles (who is actually a pretty decently written character) and is motivated to fight every demon he encounters in Bayron City since his family died because of them a few years before. He seemed to have the best character development throughout the series. Sharon is the most unnecessary character I could ever imagine. As far as she was a decent enemy, during her first appearance in the anime, her backstory, and behaviour toward MC are at least funny. Just another girl to the Shuu's harem, but this time it's a hot nun, with pretty crazy combat skills. [Enjoyment - 9] Even if the story got some smaller or bigger flaws, I still enjoyed Engage Kiss. There's much romance and much action. Sometimes, viewers were able to witness some more emotional scenes too. I loved Kisara's character. Ayano was really good too. I liked some supporting characters I didn't mention before as well. The story was interesting, and I genuinely wanted to know, what will happen next. Engage Kiss did not bad as a rom-com, but unfortunately, there are many signs, that it is just another harem anime, which are countless in the market already. I still call Engage Kiss pretty original, since it does many things better than other anime from this genre. This show wasn't far from being extraordinary. Summing this all up. Yes, Engage Kiss is a mix of everything. This mix, however, is pretty tasty. There's a bit of everything here, so at the end of the day, everyone will find something for themselves. I wish more people would taste this title. Not only it is not popular, but it's also really underrated. What I can do, for now, is give an honest 8/10, so it will lift the rating just a little bit.

Engage Kiss, also known as Project Engage as the very Japanese Wikipedia page calls it, since it is a mixed-media project that got an anime, a manga and an announced game at the same time, this is definitely not the first time you see something similar to a mixed-media project that works exactly this way, and if you were tuned in for the Fall 2021 season then you should have heard of Tatk Op Destiny, I think I learned that too late. So, for a short TLDR, when you give a semi-interesting plot to an insufferable cast of characters you get what Engage Kiss is. Shuis probably one of the least likable MCs I have seen in a while, when watching him for the first time you can see that he is some kind of lame scrounger guy that everything he does is beg people for favors and apologizing to them while being also extremely poor for making the lowest bets possible in demon hunting which irritates the other demon hunters. But then you discover he is a scrounger that is fine with leaving everything behind including his memories as long as he can know the cause for his parent’s death and to save his sister that he thinks that is still alive due to some dreams he has, doing all of this without caring about the girl that he himself admits to love (even if it doesn’t seem that much, but more about that later) or literally not caring if he remembers anything at all because the thing that powers up Kisara is losing part of his memories. Also, I wonder if this series can stop for a second to show me how much of a Casanova Shu is really, first we get that Ayano is Shu’s ex-girlfriend and that he lived with her, not long after breaking up with her he got into something with Sharon having sex with her but after dumping (read as: poisoning) her he got Kisara who he named by the name of the first girl he kissed. Also apparently he had sex after drinking and paid the hotel he and the girl stayed in with Ayano’s credit card and probably many more that weren’t mentioned, this series really went through such lengths to mention that he was with any girl on existence. And for some reason girls like Ayano are still crawling on their feet to be with Shu that she goes on her way to have sex with him again because he is just that “awesome” to have girl after girl going for him, I want to say that I feel bad for her but she is the one that is trying to keep going with that no matter how many times Shu disappoints her. No, showing your character having sex doesn’t make him suddenly good or cool, I don’t need his sexual relationships thrown down my throat as if he were a hentai protagonist. I started watching this series because a friend of mine said “hey, you like Date A Live watch this series, they are similar”, so I decided to take a watch because why not? And by the end of the very first episode I realized that this series is not like Date A Live at all. I don’t want to engage in too much DAL talking, but since it was basically what made me watch this series I’ll make a little point, just take a little comparison to the main character of Date A Live, Shidou and the main character of Engage Kiss, Shu. Shidou is a guy that lives with his sister, they are basically alone since their parents seem to always be busy, he is the one that takes care of domestic labor in the house, his power is to kiss a Spirit and seal their powers, he is a playboy that keeps around his girls to have them happy. Meanwhile with Shu the girls he knows have to do everything for him from cooking, paying his debts, etc and this is not only done from 1 girl but for 2 girls, his contract with Kisara makes it so that she gets stronger with a kiss, he is also a playboy but one who has basically no problem dumping the girls he has been with if he already did his objective with her. Now, I’m not saying that I want every MC to be like Shidou or that he is a masterclass protagonist, but really, he is far better than what I’m watching in Shu. I think the funniest joke of this series was in episode 12 when they said that Kanna, Shu’s little sister, never matured emotionally past the age of 3 and wants to kill the girls that are around Shu because she was apparently connected to him all this time in his dreams and saw how he had sex with them and that's why she is angry at them, it was definitely hilarious... but then I saw how everyone on screen was dead serious on that, I had to stop the episode for a moment to realize that it was actually 100% serious and that it was sadly funnier than the other jokes this series did. Now, now, not everything is bad, the part of the story that addressed Miles and Shu’s relationship was pretty good, I think it was nicely done the way they showed the bond between people that are not blood-related but who can have a parental relationship. The animation is also of nice quality with the sakuga going around across the fights, and the kiss scenes are really well done and animated, as I supposed you should expect from a series that has kiss in its name. Engage Kiss tried to be a normal romcom with action at the beginning, then it tried to be more serious with its plot but it failed miserably doing so by the point that even at the final battle they are making terrible jokes and even the serious stuff being unintentionally funny. The characters alone make me not want to take a look at this series since aside from Shu’s lameness and his harem they were pretty vapid to me, there’s a reason I didn’t even touch the side characters on this review, they might as well not exist and not much changes. Really, the only thing you will get from this series is some eye candy with the cool animation, but at the end of the day this is just a 3 hours commercial for the game that is still waiting its launch at the time of writing this. Thank you for reading.

"Engage kiss" is what comes out after an anime is adapted from a fucked up story with no get-go. After watching the first episode one would initially think that this is a erotica bundled with some fucked up sci-fi plot having just to cater the needs of lonely man and their bottom half, and well... it is exactly that. But the thing is that it fails to even do that, i.e the basic purpose for which it is made. The protagonist of the story is a fucking loser with 0 talent and skills, but he is still able to maintain a harem of women head overheels over him just because of his fictional privileges. Not only that, but even the side characters just revolve around the MC and have no self care/ decision making abilities. And on top of that the MC is an asshole and a hypocrite who's basically living controlled by his dick each turn. The fight scenes and the art being the only good thing about this garbage is what made me to stick around till the end. Otherwise, this is an absolute boring piece of trash not worth even looking.