Engage Kiss – 01
At this point I’m starting to conclude that White Album 2 was a fluke, because nothing Maruto Fumiaki has written since has grabbed me. Engage Kiss is a weird and not terrible premiere, competently staged and produced, but neither the story or the characters did anything for me. I was modestly interested for about 10 minutes and after that my attention started to flag pretty quickly.
The gist of this is a slacker guy named Shu, who shamelessly sponges off the women in his life to keep him from starving to death. One of them is the daughter of the president of the company he more or less quit, the other a yandere-ish high school girl who seems to have superpowers. We find that out because Shu’s “job” is teleporting to another dimension and fighting demons, and when he finally gets desperate enough to (low)bid on a job for the company, the yandere (Kisara) has to come and save his and the daughter’s (Ayano) asses when the demon turns out stronger than expected.
None of this is grimace-worthy, but I didn’t really like any of these people and the premise has a lot of light-novel in it. There might just be the hint of something very modestly interesting here, but if I’m already bored I’m probably not going to be sticking around based on that slim hope.
Lycoris Recoil – 01
There was really only one reason I watched the premiere of this series (every time I see the title it reads as “Licorice Broccoli” in my head). That’s Imigu Muru, the mangaka behind the wonderful Kono Bijutsubu ni wa Mondai ga Aru. He did the character designs here and I love his art. Unfortunately he had nothing to do with the narrative side of the series, which whiffs with me in a big way.
Technically this was fine – rather good, even. The animation from A-1 was fluid and the art design was interesting. Director Adachi Shingo is highly experienced and it shows. But the script, woof. That part comes from Asaura, best known for Ben-To. It would be hard to overstate how much I came to loathe that series after the first couple of episodes, and Licorice Broccoli didn’t even take that long to grate on me. The whole moeblob as noble murderer trope is a dumpster fire as far as I’m concerned. Not only is it completely played out by now, but it’s pretty twisted and disturbing in the first place.
So yeah – I hated this, pretty much. It’s a dumb idea competently executed with a decent budget. I won’t waste any more of your time or mine on it – there are plenty of places to go for recaps and such if one is looking for them.
Lem
July 3, 2022 at 9:39 pmThe problem with Maruto is that he’s great at writing relationship drama, he wrote a lot of eroge of that ganre up until WA2, honing his skill, but after more than a decade of writing relationship dramas he got borred of it and doesn’t want to write it anymore according to some of his interviews. So he tries to write different things a bit with mixed results.
I hope you will check out Bastard.
Guardian Enzo
July 3, 2022 at 10:30 pmI’ve been toying with it but I haven’t been able to convince myself. What’s the argument in favor?
sonicsenryaku
July 4, 2022 at 1:11 amEh, it’s not something that falls into your wheelhouse of anime. It’s a campy B-movie type of show that embraces all the shounen tropes of the early 80’s and 90’s, for the most part to its benefit, but also to its detriment in certain areas. The show knows it wants to be a campy dark fantasy and I think that works well for the kind of show Bastard is, in the same way that dark tone offset by comedy worked for evil dead 2…..except the 90’s OVA adaptation did it better. I really don’t want to be that guy that’s like, “80’s and 90’s anime were the best”, but I truly do believe that the OVA’s handled the content they covered more deftly; it’s almost like anime’s rebooted into the 21st century loose that nuance and touch that were characteristic of decent 80’s/90’s. A tighter script and more competent directing elevated what was already fun material and made it a bit more engaging. This 2022 anime has its moments of fun and grandeur, and overall I’d say it can be a good time, but this adaptation lacks the polish in the script and directing department for me to be able to recommend it confidently to people. But hey, it’s just my silly take so get others’ opinion on it (people who know your taste) before you decide. Ultimately, i think it’s the way that characters are handled as well that just won’t vibe with your tastes
sonicsenryaku
July 4, 2022 at 9:36 amOf the A-1 produced shows that you covered here, I thought Licorice Broccoli was the better of the two, and I came out of it thinking it was decent and was less charitable to tEngage kiss because the characters in that show weeellllll….they kind of suck. I don’t have any extreme praise to throw at licorice broccoli exactly, but I actually thought the way the script conveyed information throughout the episode and handled the back and forth between our leads helped the show avoid the pitfall of being a boring dumpster fire. There were so many opportunities this first ep had to mishandle its premise and shit the bed entirely with exposition; yet instead, it found ways to avoid that and decently unraveled pertinent information through organic conversation and background dialogue in a way that allowed the viewer to infer quite a few things without needing to be told directly. If anything, I give the script credit for that, and making Chisato come off as a sensible person despite her overly cheery airhead-like disposition (and being 2-dimensional so far). Is your problem with the script that you think it doesn’t make sense how its written; that there are inconsistencies in the writing? Or is it just the premise that rubs you the wrong way?
Also I highly doubt the show is going for the kind-hearted murderer trope at all. This first ep makes it clear that there are people who are against the whole licorice program, and these people happen to be our heroes. Chisato is known as the problem child of the syndicate and the implication is that they are at odds with her because she’s had a change of heart and now refuses to kill. The syndicate still values her, so rather than eliminating her, they let her fuck off and do her own thing while still keeping an eye on her. Now Chisato and her gang at the coffee shop go out of their way to help others, with Chisato aiming to make sure she takes down “evil” without having to murder people and hopes to convince Takina to practice a little bit of that as well. Chisato’s beginning narration hints at how she USED to think when she was still indoctrinated in the broccoli program. With the way she is now, something happened to make her not want to eat her vegetables, hence her pacifist-like nature by the end of the ep. Keep in mind she didn’t kill the dealers, deciding to neutralize them instead
Guardian Enzo
July 4, 2022 at 4:05 pmIt’s more the premise than the writing itself but yes, I did think there was a lot of stuff that patently didn’t make sense and some inconsistent behavior from the cast.
The larger issue is with the whole schoolgirl as avenging assassin trope, irrespective of whether the series fully endorses it. It’s just creepy and fucked up.
I can see where on some level Licorice Broccoli was “better” than Engage Kiss. It looks better and is directed with more stylistic intent, and those characters in EK are curiously unlikeable. Like, seriously.
tinderbox
July 6, 2022 at 12:59 pmI really dug Licorice. I liked that it was happy to show and not tell, and the dialogue felt very natural. That park bench conversation scene between the two protaganists was fab in the way that what the characters said left much about the program unspoken but implied. Plus I loved how the character animation supported that.
I think that’s probably where I jumped on board, and I think that ambiguity gives it the potential to be a solid exploraiton of ends and means. I also liked the support lady making snide asides about recruiting a loli brigade. Time will tell if we get more of that, or if it was throwaway.
The one thing I felt was too much was Chisato’s over-the-top cheeriness. Yet… I wonder if that’s a mask, too.
I don’t think this will be a Gunslinger Girl, but I’m happy to give it rope and see what it explores thematically.
sonicsenryaku
July 7, 2022 at 2:56 am“I really dug Licorice. I liked that it was happy to show and not tell, and the dialogue felt very natural. That park bench conversation scene between the two protaganists was fab in the way that what the characters said left much about the program unspoken but implied. Plus I loved how the character animation supported that.”
Yo that’s so funny because that’s the moment I was sold as well on the script being competent. It kinda just made me be like: “Iight, I’ll give you this rope to show me whether you can climb up to my expectations.” It sucks that your average anime script and the way it handles dialogue between characters is so rudimentary that I have to be this surprised when an anime ends up decently handling a conversation that’s also supposed to be exposition. Chisato’s little interrogation of Takina’s mindset at the cafe when she disobeyed orders was also a nice touch in demonstrating that natural back and forth
Another scene that stood out to me script-wise was when Chisato tells Takina not too worry too much about screwing up the gun heist and that the syndicate would lackadaisically cover it up somehow; then just about a minute later when we meet Saori and she explains how she ended up taking the photo about 3 hours before the shootout went down, she refers to the incident as a gas explosion, to which Chisato giggles to herself and repeats “gas explosion” in this almost, “of course they covered it up as a gas explosion” kind of way, finding the whole thing humorous. This moment adeptly captures Chisato’s sense of humor, seeing that the look she gives Takina while giggling is clearly her poking fun at the syndicate covering up Takina’s gun-crazy behavior during the incident as a gas explosion, almost like a, “hahaha, your impulsive decision caused so much damage that the syndicate was able to pass off your destruction as a gas explosion you barbarian.” And this is coming off the heels of Chisato solemnly monologuing about the ways in which propaganda distorts the truth of things.
It’s a real short interaction that kind of flies under the radar but if you were paying enough attention, you end up appreciating the effort. It’s details like those that illustrate elements of attentive script writing and what ultimately lead me to thinking: “you know, this show ain’t bad; I’m interested to see where it goes. A well-handled script has good setups and payoffs, knowing how to utilize cause and effect efficiently to unravel character interactions and plot details.
Also dug the way the animation choreographed Chisato’s movements as she gunned downed the arm dealers; it looked like they were going for some kind of Gun-fu style or some shit. If this show ends up having gun-fu fights in it, I might be fully sold on this show
Joshua
July 8, 2022 at 8:22 amWell there’s one word I can use to describe Engage Kiss. And that’s “content”. There’s nothing I saw in this episode that told me that it had anything to offer, other than the need to keep coming back weekly to consume the next episode because it fulfills the bare minimum of what people expect (hot waifus, convenient plot devices, obligatory sakuga fights), rinse and repeat until it ends, and then it’s thoroughly forgotten soon after. Takt Op and PriConne are two egregious examples of this I found, and Engage Kiss looks to be the same: no art to be found here, just “content”.