Synopsis
Engage Kiss begin at Bayron City, a pioneering metropolis built on a newly discovered energy source, promises every citizen a luxurious and comfortable lifestyle. In reality, young demon exterminator Shuu Ogata’s life is far from extravagant. Despite running a private military business, he often struggles to make ends meet due to reckless expenses. Fortunately, Kisara, his demon partner, is more than eager to help Shuu with household matters—albeit a little too forcefully for his comfort.
The two work side by side, taking countermeasures against demon hazards, which stand as the biggest threats to the city. With danger lurking in the shadows, Shuu and Kisara strive to grant the town’s safety; however, exterminating the possessed comes with a price unbeknownst to others.
Review
Engage Kiss is my favorite 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
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 aspect in 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
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
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
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 favorite 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
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.
