Engage Kiss #01 — Bureaucracy Before Business

July 2nd, 2022

 

Please get to the fun bits sooner.

This is the last new show of the day (I think), so I'm taking a short break to walk the dogs and devour a muffin before polishing off Tsubaki and seeing if Utawarerumono 2 has finally decided to stop sucking.

Impressions:

I'm deeply concerned about this show's priorities. The last six minutes or so of the episode was a ton of fun. The action was extremely well animated and even better choreographed, the characters quipping while fighting both each other but also the demon dogs, the excessively animated kissing scene and closeups on latex covered butts… well, they are what they are. It is a magical girlfriend show, through and through. I'm less enthusiastic about the rest, but particularly the whole middle scene of having a meeting and auction over who gets the job. Why was that almost a quarter of the damn episode? The whole start was already slow enough before it devolved into bureaucrats arguing. No matter how good the action choreography is, and it genuinely was pretty fantastic, that doesn't excuse spending nearly as much time on a goddamned meeting.

I'm also less sure on the characters, but particularly the protagonist, who is extraordinarily traumatized by contact with the attractive female who wants to dote on him and is largely just a pathetic sack of butts. He's easily compared to Futaba Rentarou (Futakoi Alternative), but Rentarou was nowhere near this much of a mooch or trash person while generally being a dick to his girlfriend(s). They do a bit about how she's also a tad jealous and murderous, but he's at his best when he's being smooth, not having panic attacks from ritualistic spit swapping. It's just that the start is so goddamned slow and there is absolutely no story to speak of. They only even are at the casino because it's a job that they took, which is about as inorganic as you can get, so the whole first 15 minutes is pretty much filler set to carnival music. Even if the episode ended strong, it was a very unengaging way to kick things off and hook people in. 

 

Posted in Engage Kiss | 2 Comments »

2 Shouts From the Peanut Gallery

  • NeclordX says:

    This looked way too good. I predict a budget divenose drop in two episodes tops

  • Joshua says:

    Not getting fooled this time. Takt op may have baited me with its sakuga fight scene in its premiere, but I’m not falling for this “content”.