Love of Kill – 07 – Overboard

Aside from an all-too-brief chase between Song and the kid on the deck of the Artemisia, this episode moves at a glacial pace, which almost had be hoping for an iceberg. Coming as a surprise to no one ever, the kid, not Song, is the one who stabbed Euri in the neck. That he’s not dead but taken back to land by medevac seems like backpedalling afer making a bold move…but at least it means there’s a minimum of Jim talking, since he accompanies the Ritzlands.

Song alerts Chateau to the fact something’s up when he speaks to her through Euri’s earpiece. Euri tells her Song isn’t the one who stabbed him, and she soon meets the kid who did: Won Jinon. Won is armed with nothing but a sound recorder of Chateau’s mom answering the door back home. Won offers Chateau a deal: she sells him Song, and her mom lives. This scene and the one where Chateau meets Song back in the stateroom are needlessly chopped up mixed together.

The overzealous editing doesn’t do much to change the fact that very few things actually happen this week—most of which are boring—and can’t mask just how streeeeetched for time everything feels. Before Chateau enters the room, Song is repairing his gun, and the camera takes a leisurely pan across the plain room for no particular reason.

Chateau, who is as much of a wreck as we’ve ever seen her, can barely hold her gun steady, and once the wheels have turned in her head, she decides maybe the best thing to avoid people getting threatened because of her is to off herself. This angers Song to the point he not only disarms her, but chokes her out. Honestly, I could have done without this excruciating choking scene, which seemed to go on forever.

Then bang, we’re back in another Song flashback. We learn that he was trained by one “Mr. Donny”, the same guy who sent Won Jinon, who has a brother named Mifa back at Donny’s mansion. Nothing like dipping into a flashback of someone you just watched choke a woman until she passed out, as if I cared anymore about him. Honestly…I think I’m done with this.

Love of Kill – 06 – Death On Denial

Chateau isn’t aboard the Artemisia long before she encounters Song, and immediately takes him aside to ask what he’s up to. He’s his usual coy self; his target may well be her client—who also happens to be her boss Euripides’ wife, the billionaire tycoon Hawk Ritzland…(these names). But he does offer Chateau this: he won’t do anything on this cruise as long as she keeps her eyes on him.

This results in the two being practically inseparable for the remainder of the voyage. After clearing it with Euripides and setting up surveillance cameras, she agrees to share a stateroom with Song. While she initially insists on sleeping on the couch, her inability to fall asleep results in him carrying her to the bed, where he promises he won’t try anything.

The next day Song takes Chateau to one of the many shops aboard the ship where she’s fitted for a proper evening gown, the better to blend in with the other passengers. She remarks how she feels weird having her shoulders exposed and would prefer something “more modest”, but Song assures her that it’s about as modest as evening gowns get.

I’m still not buying the “love” half of Love of Kill, owing to the complete and utter dearth of romantic chemistry between the two leads. While she’s learned to trust Song more, Chateau still merely tolerates his presence as a necessary condition of her mission.

Euripides reaches out to Song through Chateau’s phone, ostensibly to meet and talk about Chateau’s past as Chateau Noble. However, before they can meet Euri gets a butterfly knife to the throat. Song, who we last saw putting a gun in his tux, is clearly not the sneaker-wearing culprit, who is the boy assassin we met last week and didn’t see at all this week.

I can’t say I’ll really miss Euripides, who didn’t make much of an impression the last five weeks other than “long-suffering boss with a goofy name”. But even though his marriage to a billionaire* came out of nowhere, his death surely heightens the stakes aboard the Artemesia.

*It’s entirely possible Hawk Ritzland is worth ten billion yen, or $86 million US, though if the whole damn boat is hers, she might well be worth ten billion dollars. In any case, she’s down a husband.

Love of Kill – 05 – A Pest On Land and Sea

Hou takes Chateau hostage and sticks her in the back of a car with a bomb, but as soon as she spots the bomb, she’s able to escape the car before it explodes. Despite being only about ten feet from the explosion the most she suffers is some glass in her leg, which I’d call a win.

Song wins his duel with Hou, but it’s not much of a fight, as the main issue is that Hou’s “nerves are fried”, which means it just takes a couple of minutes for his body to realize its riddle with bullets. In those minutes, Song manages to get himself pretty torn up, but he too doesn’t succumb to his wounds until he’s seen Chateau out of the burning warehouse and into his car.

Chateau may be extremely irritated by this guy most of the time, but she still follows a code that won’t allow her to let the man who saved her life bleed out. Thanks to her co-worker Jim (who is the actual most irritating character in the show—like, why no mouth, and why does he talk like that?), she gets him to a mob doctor who stitches him back together.

Chateau sits by his bed and “sleeps”, giving him a chance to slip out. It’s a cute little exchange. The next day she wakes up from a recurring dream where a man, whose hair kind of looks like Song’s covers her face to keep her from seeing his. Then her phone rings that horrible incessant ring, and it’s Song, announcing he’s going on a trip.

It happens to be the same trip Chateau goes on with her boss and Jim after she once again begs his forgiveness for getting into trouble during her suspension. That suspension is apparently suspended for the mission on the megaliner Artemisia, where their job will be to pose as tourist while protecting a VIP.

Along with Chateau and Song, there’s a third assassin aboard: your bog-standard childish happy-go-lucky murderer type. I mean, since he reminds me of Souma Momiji he’s at least a little more interesting than Hou, whose most distinctive feature was his dumb face tattoo. More interesting still will be whatever hijinx Song and Chateau get up to, and how they’ll team up to thwart this kid.

Love of Kill – 04 – Noble Pursuit

Chateau, off-duty and on probation, returns home to visit her mother and to visit the grave of her father, content to be rid of Song Ryang-ha for a bit. Naturally, he follows her there, and it’s probably a good thing too, as she wasn’t sufficiently prepared for the assassins who come for her.

While Song deals with the cut-rate killers, Chateau runs back to her father’s grave, where Hou, the guy she met after her car crashed, is waiting. Once again, Chateau is overpowered, as her stun gun is ineffective against Hou, whose nerves are a bit fried from the drugs he’s taken throughout his life. He knocks her out, again, turning her into a damsel in distress in need of rescue, which is a bit of a downer.

The frustration of Chateau constantly getting her ass kicked is somewhat tempered by a look back at her past, when one Detective Dankworth, one month from retirement, finds her sleeping in a car driven by a boy, apparently dead, named…Song Ryang-ha. Dankworth and his wife end up adopting her, as they’re the only ones she trusts. Let it be said without hesitation that Lil’ Chateau is cute as hell.

So is this Song the same Song who was found apparently dead in that car by Chateau’s eventual adoptive father? Or did the present-day Song simply take his name? I’m inclined to believe they’re one and the same, and that this is the reason Chateau got into bounty-hunting…so that she’d one day encounter him.

It could be he killed her parents, which would make him her arch-nemesis; someone to be killed. So I understand if she suddenly has conflicted feelings about killing him when he continually comes to her aid. Lame car bomb fake-outs aside, I’m intrigued by what Chateau is still hiding from us regarding her deadly admirer.

Love of Kill – 03 – Chez Château

After a recap of last week’s episode that seems specifically designed to pad the runtime, Song opens the curtains of the motel room and learns that Chateau isn’t a morning person. She takes him up on the offer of a shower, only to find he’s taken her clothes to wash them. Chateau’s reactions are fun, and actually suggest she has a pulse, which is nice.

Their motel comedy gives way to a flashback to five years ago when Song, who is about to be promoted to executive in the criminal organization of which he’s a member, betrays his boss by shooting him in the head. But being presented with his treachery doesn’t explain why he did it, or why we should care.

After getting a talking-to from her boss (who is awfully one-note as exasperated bosses go) Chateau heads home to her tiny studio apartment in what looks like the 24th Ward’s Shantytown. Naturally, Song is waiting for her to invite him in—like an annoying vampire—but at least he brought some high-end cream puffs.

Chateau isn’t in the mood to talk, and remains befuddled that Song insists on all this contact with her. His comment about her smell not digusting him is something I’d hoped would be followed up on, but a call from Chateau’s mom puts Chateau in such a state that Song excuses himself for the time being.

Sigh…I don’t think I’ll ever forgive a show for such poorly drawn and animated cars, but I remain sufficiently intrigued by the mysteries Love of Kill is coyly dangling to stick around a bit longer.

Love of Kill – 02 – Slow Road Ahead

When two of the four shows you’re reviewing are Attack on Titan and Demon Slayer, you tend to have a higher baseline when it comes to production values. Love of Kill did not impress with its visuals this week, and oftentimes, especially when a car model was involved, it downright stunk.

But I’ll watch an ugly show if it has something else to grab my interest. Alas, this episode doesn’t move the needle all that much with the weird quasi-romance between Song and Chateau. He gives her the location of a dead target and a living woman, but a mysterious motorcyclist starts shooting at her, and before she knows it, she’s driven off a cliff.

The woman dies, and Chateau survives. First the motorcyclist pays her a visit and shoots her phone, then Song arrives and takes her to a hotel, where she’s running a fever. She still doesn’t trust him, but she’s in no condition to reject his help. Despite how little the show is giving us and how terrible it looks, part of me still wants to see this through…but I should probably resist that urge.

Love of Kill – 01 (First Impressions) – With a Song in Her Heart

Bounty Hunter Chateau Dankworth (Oonishi Saori) comes afoul of a killer more skilled than she: Song Ryang-ha (Shimono Hiro). He overpowers her, but it’s not her life he wants to steal; it’s her heart. So he lets her go in exchange for her name and number.

While Chateau’s options were limited that night, she quickly comes to regret the one she chose. Song proceeds to constantly text, call, and even send her a video of a target of hers he caught first, and is willing to offer her in a trade.

They meet at a juice bar Song digs, but as you’d expect, Chateau wants to get down to cold, logical business, not juice. Her gambit involves surprising and then stunning him with a taser, but he’s to quick, and almost seems to predict her movements. It’s gotta be frustrating for a skilled killer like Chateau to more than meet her match.

Song’s terms for giving her her target are nothing monetary. Rather, he wants to go on a date with her for Christmas Eve. Chateau, who distrusts anything free but can’t pass up the opportunity to cross a name off her list, goes along with it, showing up an hour late doing the bare minimum needed for their encounter to be interpreted as a “date”.

Song takes thing to a fancy hotel room with a gorgeous city view, complete with dinner and a 1982-vintage wine. Chateau wisely remains at a remove, wondering out loud how Song plans to “use her” and why she’d be “of interest” to him. To Song’s credit, he doesn’t try anything truly vile, and when Chateau wants to leave, they check out.

Before parting ways at the station, Song does get in a quick farewell hug to “confirm” something: her “scent” doesn’t bother him, while everyone else smells “putrid”. We end with a cryptic voiceover portending a “final stop” in their romance “ending in tears”, then a flashback to a young Chateau in the back of a car, presumably her parent murdered in the driver’s seat.

Love of Kill had me feeling a lot of things. Contempt for Song, mostly, and sympathy for Chateau, who couldn’t escape his clutches if she tried. I love stoic, logical characters like Chateau; even though she doesn’t really say or do much, she exudes a wonderfully cool detached aura, which makes Song’s stalking that much more upsetting.

The thing is, as someone rather desensitized to antiheroes (Soprano, White, Draper, and Dexter to name a few), I didn’t despise Song, and even kinda sorta came to understand why he decided to pursue Chateau with such gusto. If everyone in the world “smelled” terrible to you and made you sick, what would you do if you suddenly found someone who didn’t?

So far I can’t really see Chateau falling for this guy, but at the very least they seem to be kindred spirits: killers keeping themselves at an expansive remove from the rest of humanity. Regardless, I definitely want to see where this goes.