Engage Kiss

Episode 13

After the dust settles on Engage Kiss' last skirmish, Shu, in a rare moment of self-reflection, ruminates on how he really hasn't accomplished anything in spite of all the sound and fury of the climax. I couldn't come up with a better capstone for this series if I tried. Engage Kiss succumbs to its own pointlessness in its final act, concluding with all the triumph and finality of a wet noodle slapping against a kitchen wall. There's no journey to celebrate, barely any character arcs to speak of, and the character arcs that do exist are unilaterally upsetting. It goes through the motions of a finale, but there's no heart behind it—just an empty husk and a few gaunt reminders of when the show could be fun.

You could whittle down most of the series' problems to Shu being a nothing protagonist. The narrative leaves so much on the table by not exploiting his scummy sleazebag behavior more often. At least that side of him led to some lasting memories (yes I'm referring to the dick poison again), but he mostly just mopes and lolls. There are no consequences for his single-minded pursuit of revenge. He doesn't learn anything or grow as a person. He got his memories back solely through Kisara's sacrifice, through no effort of his own, and that marked the end of his “development.” I honestly can't imagine a less interesting resolution. It basically nullified the show's entire sense of tragic melodrama—one of the only things it had going for it—for no reason.

Actually, I guess there is a reason: so Kisara can lose all of her personality and revert to a demure demon wife for Shu. I wasn't huge on her jokey yandere side, but hell, at least that was something. And as the series progressed, I thought her toxic codependence with Shu evolved into one of the show's precious few components with legitimate emotional heft. So it's frankly baffling for the story to have completely blanched their relationship for no good reason. There's nothing romantic about watching a freshly amnesiac Kisara blush and stutter in Shu's presence. It feels like bad fanfiction, and it reeks of the lazy entitlement that leads to that kind of bad fanfiction. And it's so boring! The old, fiery Kisara is dead, and nobody mourned her, because the story's too busy smushing its two leads back together, who combined now possess about as much personality as a stale potato. It's an utter downgrade and utter disgrace.

Don't expect any secondary characters to lift Engage Kiss out of this mire either, because nothing else of note happens to anybody else. Everything shifts back to the status quo. The changes that are alluded to are of no real consequence, and Bayron City will presumably just continue attracting demons as per usual. It's nice to see the other PMCs finally accept Kisara's help, but this happens offscreen during a battle we don't get to see. It's like Engage Kiss is weirdly committed to ensuring there are no satisfying character arcs. Is this because they wanted to set the stage for the eventual mobile game? That's the only answer that makes sense to me, but it's a poor excuse. Or to put it another way, it's kind of evil to tank your anime's story on the 0.01% chance the gacha tie-in pops off.

I really did have to laugh when Shu visited his parent's grave and had that moment of clarity. Nothing he did mattered, and he learned nothing from any of it, so he's back at square one with nothing to show for it. As if to drive that point home, the episode ends by recapitulating the goofy moments from the premiere, only with Kanna and her brother complex added to the mix. This, of course, accomplishes nothing besides making the scene even louder. And in the end, I just don't understand what it is that Engage Kiss wanted to accomplish. If it wanted to be a comedy, it wasn't very funny. If it wanted to be a tragedy, it undermined its own sadness at every corner. It was at its best when it tried to be a spicy romance, but even those moments were too scarce to prop up the series on their own. Engage Kiss ends with about as much impact as a kiss blown directly into a hurricane.

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Engage Kiss is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

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