By Dustin Cabeal

With a story that is borderline depressing it still comes as a surprise to me that Engage Kiss has already had one of the best action sequences of the summer anime cour. Its weaknesses in the first episode are addressed in the second episode but that is not to say that the first episode does not stand out or entertain or bring you back for another episode.

It is the fact that there is a deeper story told here that makes Engage Kiss interesting to watch. On one hand we have the typical anime tropes of a slacker loser who shows no signs of deserving any sort of love and affection and yet finds himself in a love triangle with two women he is very undeserving of. The first being the daughter of a business conglomerate. She’s rich, she can have everything she wants, and she instead chooses to fight on a demon eliminating squad and chase a hapless loser that will never give her the time and affection that she so desires. The second is a teenage demon when kissed can change her clothing and grow a half wing and basically fly around and phase through everything. She looks like Shadowcat, and Lockheed had a weird gross baby. Why do they love our main character that chain smokes even though he has no money for food? I have yet to figure that out, but I’m sure it’s because he’s an orphan and his parents were thrown to the wolves to hide the secret of demons or some such crap.

The first episode is broken into two parts the first part introducing our main character and his lifestyle of having nothing. That includes having no electricity, no food and no job. He meets with are corporate conglomerate daughter over lunch as she tries to convince him to come back to work for the corporation he seemingly once worked for. The details of this aren’t clear as it is the first episode and we’re intentionally being thrown in the middle of a conversation. What was more interesting was the strange pushy conversation happening at the table next to them about a contract being signed and come on, come on you gotta do it and then we find out that demons are signing contracts all over the city. From there our hapless loser heads home to discover the beautiful demon teenage girl has broken into his home to make him dinner and has sat in the dark waiting for him. He promises her that a good bid is coming in and he can just feel it, the work is going to come. What is this bid he speaks of let’s find out as we head to our demon introduction?

The demon pops up in a casino in the center of the city and apparently just chills there and waits for demon illuminating squads to log into a VR system and make bids. The lowest bid gets the job. Enter our hapless loser who under bids everyone significantly. The rest of the more established demon slaying squads leave in disgust. Except for corporate conglomerates mom who he has a sub deal with in which she will supply back up for an 80% cut of the profit. Our main character has no idea what he’s doing with his finances and I’m not even sure he’s trying to make money. I think he’s trying to stay poor so that these two women will never actually ask him for any sort of commitment. There is a course a contingency that if there’s any excess damage it will come out of the bottom line as well which basically foreshadows what’s about to happen.

All our characters suit up in a matter of minutes and head to the casino where the demon is waiting very patiently. The demon is casino themed with poker chips but has a dumb design. The one cool thing about him is that he has a hand over his face almost as if someone had grabbed him and left an imprint and very on-theme it can summon demon dogs that have this same imprint of a hand. I’m still not sure why they’re dogs and not little evil poker chips. A battle breaks out and our hapless loser doesn’t get the killer shot he thought he would so Corporate Conglomerate Mom’s daughter and her team basically do-nothing in light of this development. Half of them just stand in the background shooting their guns at the wall until half demon teenager shows up. She has a badass word and makes quick work of some of the demon dogs. Unfortunately, she runs out of juice quick, and she needs to be engaged with a kiss and now you know how the show got its title. Hapless loser and teenage demon girl share an exceedingly long and enthusiastic kiss which sees her costume change. A horn grows out of her head and a half wing as well and I’m pretty sure her underwear is gone or lacy. Her and corporate conglomerate daughter then begin to shoot and slice at each other while killing demon dogs and having an argument over the hapless idiot who has passed out because of the energy spent from the kiss.

We have finally reached the amazing action sequence which is mostly amazing because of them dodging each other and still killing demon dogs all this proves to be enough of a distraction that our hapless idiot can get behind the demon with a fancy pistol (I use that more as a question than a statement) and he shoots the demon killing it. Even though this battle has been pretty well contained to this one floor in this one area of the casino they still nearly destroyed the entire casino somehow which results in the teenage half demon flying around in the sky and cutting rocks in half and watching them blow up or some bullshit,  to prevent as much damage to the city below.

Well, it’s not a perfect first episode. It is well animated and that is the strongest aspect of Engage Kiss all the characters, while trophy and almost borderline average still stand out due to the level and quality of the animation. The fight sequence alone is worth watching the entire episode for but even the subtle movements like when hapless loser goes for his empty wallet to try to pay. The fluid movement of his arms and hands as he looks through his wallet, to the movements and design of the demon dogs themselves which also move realistically like dogs. While I didn’t particularly like the main character, I did really enjoy the two women in love with him. Their banter and demeanor towards him, their badass nature and battles made them stand out and be impressive. It also helps that there are quite a few chuckles to be had watching this show from the teenage demon girls saying they should kill themselves like Romeo and Juliet and posting it online. To corporate conglomerates daughter asking the hapless loser to not even pretend that he’s going to pay when she already knows that he has no money. Little things add charm and personality to our characters and the story.

And while it seems weird to buy a VR headset to get into a lobby, then virtually bid on eliminating a demon for a fraction of the cost of every other person in the lobby… that’s the world. 

Score: 3/5

Next Time: The Island of Desire