It’s not often I have such an intense and visceral loathing of an anime protagonist the moment he first appears, but Engage Kiss managed it. Let me explain.
When we first meet Shu, he’s messily stuffing his face at a dinner with his ex-girlfriend. Apparently he used to work for the company her mother owned but started for himself. She’s worried about him, asks if he’s been eating, whether he’s gotten any work in the three months since he left. He replies that this is his first meal in three days and that he worked only recently, on the scale of a human lifetime. She presses that being principled is good but not if you cannot eat. He blows her off by spouting some high minded crap about only wanting to do the jobs he should be doing. It’s not very convincing that all this is done out of idealism when she not only pays for his lunch but also his cell phone bill. He returns to this dingy flat, which earlier we saw another girl preparing dinner in only to discover the electricity had been cut off. They have dinner together and once again his situation is discussed. She has paid off the electricity bill, he promises he’ll pay her back once he has some work, she points out he hasn’t had work in three weeks. Shu counters with a promise that the case he’s been waiting for is finally here, but she tells him that’s the same thing he said last month. And the month before. Before having to pay again for an unexpected delivery.
Shu is right however, the case he’s been waiting for has occurred. That’s why he met up with his ex, to give her some intelligence and rope her into the plan, which is set in motion the very same day. A demon has attacked a casino and an auction is held to determine which anti-demon company gets the contract to get rid of it. Throughout the episode Shu had been busy setting up his plan to get the perfect job and his grand strategy turns out to be …under-pricing everybody to the tune of roughly $70,000, then hiring his ex’s company to support him, who take most of the fee? I don’t feel you need to buy intel to do this, especially if it leaves you with barely 4000 dollars for yourself. He could’ve doubled his fee and still won the auction. Also, what made this particular demon attack so special that he needed to wait for it?
None of this is answered because Engage Kiss isn’t interested in it. On we move to the actual demon subjugation. Note that the attack happened at 15:55, the auction was completed at 19:00 and Shu only shows up at the casino under attack at 20:11. what has the demon been doing all this time? Apparently he’s just been hanging around doing a little bit of roulette? The fight itself, once it finally happens is well animated, though the monster design and the cannon fodder are just meh. It’s now that we learn that Kisara — the school girl making dinner in Shu’s apartment — is actually a demon herself, much more powerful than the one they have to get rid of. Again, not sure why Shu’s ex and her minions are actually dare as all that was really needed to end the fight was Shu powering up Kisara by making out with her, after which she just wiped all the monsters out with one big blast. But not before getting into a cat fight with Shu’s ex, Ayano. Nothing in this plot makes sense.
I have the terrible feeling that all this was meant to be funny, that this is intended to be an action comedy, but it’s all done so straight and boring that it’s just not funny. Shu’s an asshole, his girlfriends are doormats with no personality than being thirsty for him and as a viewer I have no idea why I’m supposed to like this. Yes, there are plenty of action comedies with a loser protagonist: Date A Live, Strike the Blood or even A certain Magical Index spring to mind, but none of those are unlikeable assholes leaching off their ex-girlfriends. This episode goes through the motions of setting up Shu as one of them, ticking all the boxes, but without understanding how such a character can work and still be sympathetic. I want to like Engage Kiss because this sort of sci-fi action nonsense i smy bread and butter, but Shu’s making it hard. I’ll give it a couple of more episodes and see if this first one was just a bit too try hard and he becomes more bearable.
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