Engage Kiss – 07 – Fullmetal Exorcist

While Shuu and Ayano were small fry to Sharon, being cornered by both Kisara, Ayano, and armored AAA units proves enough to force her to retreat, but only for the time being. Kisara and Ayano’s next priority is Shuu.

Kisara’s first instinct is to kiss him, but before their lips meet Ayano yanks her away by her hair. It’s the first indication this will be one of the hornier episodes of Engage Kiss, and I don’t mean demon horns.

While watching over a still-unconscious Shuu at the hospital, Kisara fills Ayano in on her and Shuu’s history with Sharon—using a great number of double entendres. Shuu seduced and teamed up with Sharon in order to find Kisara, but while Sharon wanted her dead, Shuu wanted her alive so he could use her power. When Shuu decided to run away with Kisara, he poisoned Sharon with a neurotoxin—through intercourse.

Sharon may say this is strictly Abbey business, but the fact we know the means by which Shuu scorned her means I’m not surprised there’s a personal element mixed in there. Of course, were their roles reversed, Sharon would have certainly done the same thing; she was just momentarily distracted by, well, sex.

The horniness continues as the detectives investigate a cargo ship that was robbed of “mechanical parts”, which we know to be a mech suit that contains demon flesh. In order to put it on, Sharon naturally has to strip in the moonlight, then allow the demon flesh tentacles to envelop her and pull her in, which results in a combination of pain and pleasure. This is pretty high-level shameless ecchi raunchiness, but it totally works.

It’s with this demon tentacle mech suit that our sexy scorned blonde battle nun intends to fight Kisara on equal terms. Kisara happily responds to Kisara’s text invitation to an abandoned warehouse for the duel. Kisara comes in her normal schoolgirl form with her sword, which is just what Sharon was hoping for.

She continues to exploit Kisara’s confidence by only showing off the suit’s conventional lead-bullet gun and tough demon sword-blocking armor, then whips out the demon flesh, which creates lasting wounds on Kisara’s body that slow her down and sap her energy.

When Kisara is impaled in the midsection by a demon tentacle, it’s looking like an upset victory for Sharon (who maintains her only objective is eliminating demons), but then Shuu manages to get Kisara away to a secluded hallway of the warehouse.

When Kisara comes to, she maintains her pouty face over what down with Shuu and Ayano—which, as we know, Shuu knows nothing about. We also know he doesn’t remember being lovers with Sharon. Kisara doesn’t want his apologies, he wants to know what she is to him.

After she rejects his request to table the issue for now, he assures her that if it wasn’t her, he’d never even think about kissing another demon. Yes, he’s deceiving and using her, but it doesn’t matter; his simple sentiment is enough to motivate her to keep fighting beside him.

After they make out, Kisara engages her Hot Topic form, which proves too much for a mere human in a suit, demon tentacles or no. As with all battles in Engage Kiss this one is thoroughly fun and, well, engaging, and you can really feel the momentum shift when Kisara ups the speed and power of her attacks.

Sharon ends up beaten unconscious at the bottom of several stories worth of warehouse rubble. She’s found by the police with her mech suit half-melted off, revealing half her naked body, because of course it does.

Shuu and Kisara end up making up, with the latter suggesting they hit up the diner without even changing her blood-soaked uniform. Ayano shows up half a beat too late with coffees, irritated that the rift between Kisara and Shuu didn’t last.

Finally, a captive (and fully clothed) Sharon tells Mikami that Celestial Abbey isn’t done in Bayron City. There’s an even larger Demon Hazard than Kisara that’s coming, and if eliminating it means destroying the city, so be it.

On paper, Bayron lacks the strength to oppose an ancient international organization of exorcists—including eleven other “Living Relics” like Sharon. They still have Kisara on their side, but will she, and what’s left of Shuu’s memories, really be enough? Also, how many other women was Shuu involved with, about whom Kisara wiped all memory?

Engage Kiss – 06 – Sixpence Nun the Richer

It was only a matter of time before an Index-style battle nun showed up on Engage Kiss, which is fortuitous because it comes at a time when there’s been a significant power shift in the Ogata Shuu love/possession triangle. Ayano is back in his home cooking and cleaning (memory loss or not you’d think dude should be able to help out with chores).

If Kisara insists on sapping Shuu of his memories of her, this is just her making more, while enjoying the time she still has with Shuu. Kisara, understandably shaken by Ayano’s manipulation of her dynamic with Shuu, is skulking in the streets, but knows she’s unable to stay mad at Shuu, who after all has no recollection of cheating on her with his ex.

Kisara remembers back to when she first met Shuu, when he had apparently traveled to an arctic wasteland to find her frozen in stone. When he pulled the demon slayer from her and she attacked him, he told her he wasn’t there to fight, but because he needed her. But does he still need her now?

Ayano twists the knife and keeps Kisara away (and into Gasai Yuno yandere mode, if only visually) with a mocking Insta post flaunting her return to domestic bliss with Shuu. I must say considering what Kisara has done to Shuu (even if he let her do it), Ayano deserves to hot-dog a little on her victory lap.

The need to enjoy oneself while one can is underscored by the arrival of Nun Lady, who immediately demonstrates her power when she gets the jump on The Justice of GUTS while they’re responding to a D-Rank Hazard. Not only did she dispatch the demon before they could with her bare hands, she’s able to toy with one of the toughest exterminators in the city with ease.

At Inspector Mikami’s urging, Shuu finally sets up a clandestine meet with his informant who must have government connects. Indeed, this unidentified person presents him with GUTS getting beaten up by the new nun in town. As Mikami and Miles listen in on Shuu’s bug, the informant nails the fact Shuu was egged on into this meet, and would rather Shuu simply continue wasting demons and not looking a gift horse in the mouth. But Shuu is warned to “be careful of the Celestial Abbey”.

After the next exterminators’ meeting, Shuu tells Akino that the a nun attacking GUTS, and she momentarily forgets that Shuu doesn’t remember the Abbey due to his contract with Kisara. So she fills him (and us) in on the fact the Celestial Abbey has been doing what their little companies in Bayron have been doing, only worldwide and for over a thousand years. They also have zero tolerance when it comes to demons—including demons that are helping humans exterminate other demons like Kisara.

That night, Akino is confronted at her office by the nun, but isn’t afraid. Instead, as she’s on the phone with Ayano when the nun appears, she keeps the line open in her pocket and stalls. The nun is clear about what she wants—info on the whereabouts of the pink demon—but Akino ain’t talking.

Before the nun resorts to the hard way, Ayano crashes through the window in full Action Daughter mode. Akino doesn’t even flinch as Ayano’s bullets search for the nun while avoiding her mom entirely. Alas, the nun soon kicks her gun out of her hand, and her hand-to-hand skills are superior to Ayano’s.

The nun also exacts psychological warfare by observing that Ayano fights like Shuu, whom she apparently knows. This gets Ayano all flustered due to her recent tumble with her ex, and once the nun accepts that neither Yuugiri will say anything, she just snatches Ayano’s phone and peaces out.

The nun uses it to spam Kisara’s phone with messages and a selfie asking if she remembers three years ago. Kisara does, and remembers her name too: Sharon.

Ayano uses her mom’s phone to warn Shuu, but he doesn’t listen when told not to go in his office. Sharon blasts through the door, shoves him out the window, and the two fight in the alley. Since Shuu indeed fights the exact same way as Ayano, Sharon makes quick work of him and is soon straddling and choking him with her garterbelt-festooned thighs.

Sharon tells them they last met three years ago and insinuates that they were lovers at some point. Naturally, Shuu doesn’t remember due to Kisara, but Sharon considers it a personal affront and starts pummeling him. That’s when Kisara swoops in to get Sharon off Shuu, thereby accomplishing what Sharon was after all along: Kisara’s location.

That’s when the arrival of Sharon has Kisara looking back to that time in the arctic cave when Shuu released her from her stone prison and asked for a contract. Turns out that wasn’t all that happened, as not long after Shuu frees her, Sharon stabs her in the back with the slayer. When Kisara fights with Sharon, Shuu shoots her, all but proving that at this point in time the two were at least partly on the same side.

From contracting with ancient demons to allying himself with international exorcists, there’s nothing old Shuu wouldn’t do to clear his family’s name and find his sister. Now that Sharon is back, I imagine it will take Shuu, Kisara, and Ayano working on the same side to neutralize the threat she presents. Considering what’s gone down between Kisara and Ayano, that’ll be no mean feat.

The Day I Became a God – 02 – The Skies, the Sun, the Earth, and Time

“Odin”, AKA Hina, makes herself at home at Youta’s, and to his shock neither his mom nor dad have a problem with her staying as long as she likes, both of them insisting she’s a relative without evidence we’re aware of.

Could the fact the Narukami’s all have god-like names be a hint that they’re related to gods? Whatever the case, her interactions with Youta, his parents, and his little sister Sora are wonderfully animated by P.A. Works and performed by Ayane Sakura.

Youta elaborates on his long relationship with Izanami, who became extremely introverted after her mother died young. Once preoccupied with basketball, Youta committed to spending more time with her, and that’s when he realized he loved her—and really had always loved her.

Barring a plan to save the world, Hina comes up with a fresh plan to help Youta win Izanami’s heart and help Sora with her film project. After the baseball fiasco Youta is reluctant to participate, but when beloved little sister asks if he’ll help with her project he immediately agrees.

What results are three wonderfully blatant rip-offs of Armageddon, Rocky, and Edward Scissorhands. Hina’s scripts don’t just open Sora up to unwanted legal action, but the dialogue is written in a David Mamet-esque scattershot rhythm that saps any emotional resonance the scenes had in the movies they’re aping.

Nevertheless, Izanami is surprisingly game, though her movie dialogue seems sprinkled with lines that are actually her own words, like “Doesn’t your father have work?” I found these scenes, and both Youta’s and Izanami’s commentary, hilarious, Sora is licking her chops at the footage she’s amassed.

However, the project utterly fails to move the needle for Youta vis-a-vis Izanami, so Hina comes up with something knew. And again, Youta learns he doesn’t know Izanami as well as he should, as Hina tells him Izanami’s dream is to be a musical director for movies. She ends up writing a moving piece of music that Youta intensely practices at the music store over a period of days.

Youta asks if he can come to Izanami’s house to play it for her, and she seems genuinely intrigued. When he can’t quite get the tempo right, she sits beside him and plays it perfectly, revealing to him just how lovely a piece it is. More importantly, Izanami really seems to come alive, wearing a placid smile as she plays it.

When the time comes to again tell her how he feels, Youta isn’t able to do so, but he at least buys himself another opportunity down the road when she agrees the two of them should study more. I kinda wish he’d actually told her his feelings, so that if she rejected him again he could at least find out why—even if it’s as simple as “I don’t like you that way.”

That night Hina castigates Youta for choking, but just as his father is asking where Sora is and expresses his worry, his mom drops and shatters a plate, increasing the unease. Then Sora’s classmate shows up at the door with a bruised and barely conscious Sora. What could be afoot here, and with twenty-four days before the End of Evangelion?

The Day I Became a God – 01 (First Impressions) – O Ye of Chibi Faith

From Maeda Jun and Key (Air, Clannad, Angel Beats!, Charlotte) comes a new show with a wonderfully simple premise. Ordinary high school senior Narukami Youta encounters a little girl in nun cosplay claiming to be a god, Odin specifically. She doesn’t explain why she’s approached Youta, just that she has, and that the world will end in 30 days.

Their dynamic is pretty predictable, and your mileage may vary on its level of irritating, but Youta is understandably skeptical of this kid with apparent Chuuniboyou, and his attempts to treat her like a kid are met with shrill tantrums. It works for me, and Ayane Sakura and Hanae Natsuki have good comic timing and chemistry. Then you have Youta’s childhood friend and unrequited love, Mikasa Ack–err, Izanami.

“Odin” hacks away at Youta’s doubting bit by bit, first by predicting rain, then a bus getting stuck in traffic, and finally the entire order of a horse race on TV. Youta removes her from the ramen stand and demands an explanation, but he’s already given him one: she’s an omniscient god.

Now that she’s with him, he has the power of the gods. When asked for his wish, Izanami’s heart comes to mind. Odin can’t make her fall for him, but she can help him to become someone she will fall for.

They start with her love of baseball, with Youta challenging the entire team to a one-out game. Odin correctly predicts every pitch but he strikes out looking since she was unaware you only get three strikes. When he approaches Izanami, who was watching, and asks her out with a dramatically gorgeous and romantic backdrop…she rejects him.

Youta remains in a heap as the sun sets, and Odin eventually says they should be heading home. When Youta declares his parents would never take her in, she has him call them, and his mother swiftly approves once he says she’s an grade schooler in a nun outfit. Does his mom know something he doesn’t?

All of Odin’s predictions indicate she’ll also be correct about the end of the world in 30 days. Maeda Jun’s works usually make you laugh at first and then cry a lot later, so the world’s end may be unavoidable. Perhaps the goal is not about preventing the apocalypse, but Youta simply living the last thirty days to the fullest, with the help and power of a god by his side. We shall see!

Fire Force – 03 – Hero or Devil

Enen no Shouboutai took a week off out of respect for the victims of the Kyoto Animation fire. There was probably never going to be an ideal way to return to regularly scheduled programming, but it felt particularly awkward to frontload the first episode back with repeated accidental gropings of poor hastily-introduced Kotatsu Tamaki, the show’s new resident Revealing Outfit Girl. I could forgive the empty fanservice if the episode had better points to focus on…but sadly, it didn’t.

What this disjointed episode did have was a whole lot of plot and table-setting. The Rookie Fire Soldier Games begin with all the fanfare of a quaint high school sports festival, but the episode abandons the games almost as quickly as it introduces them, by taking a sharp right onto the tired “Evil Clownlike Villain” road, introducing “Joker,” a name I think we can all agree is not the most imaginative.

When Shinra enters the building, Joker is assaulting two fire soldiers. He also threatens to kill Shinra, but also offers him the chance to join him, becoming a “devil” instead of a “hero.” This doesn’t fly too great for Shinra, partly due to his lifelong dream to become a hero (not a devil) and partly because the Joker assaulted two of his comrades. The two duel (Shinra’s no match for Joker), Arthur and Tamaki pitch in a bit (neither are they) and Joker fills the building with highly explosive ash.

Shinra grabs Arthur, Tamaki and the two injured soldiers and flies out of a hole in the roof. Tamaki’s captain praises Shinra, but doesn’t offer any more info on the circumstances of the fire twelve years ago. Joker hoped to lure Shinra to his side by sharing “the truth,” including the claim his brother, just one year old when he died, is actually still alive.

Some lengthy still shots filled with exposition from Captain Oubi later (seriously; the last five minutes are barely animated), we now learn the 8th Company has a mandate to investigate the other seven as part of an effort to uncover the truth of spontaneous human combustion, the explanation for which may already be known. Whatever their mission, Shinra wishes to remain on the hero’s path. We’ll see how hard Joker makes that.

Fire Force – 02 – About All Any of Them Can Do

With the Rookie Fire Soldier Games coming up, Captain Oubi has high hopes for young Shinra. But he’s not the only rookie assigned to Company 8. That’s right, it’s the Rival/Friend His Own Age Who Is More Like Him Than Not, Arthur Boyle, the self-proclaimed “Knight King.”

Maki and Iris are enjoying the nice day on the roof when the two prepare to go at it, but Lt. Hinawa puts an end to both Maki’s idle fire manipulation (technically against regs, but he’s a stickler) and the attempted duel. Instead, he rearranges the fight so Shinra and Arthur have to go up against their senpai Maki.

While both third-gens are unconcerned about taking on a second-gen, Maki’s military training, experience, wonderful muscles, and most important, her ability to manipulate the flames of others means both guys end up taking quick losses.

Maki may be a little self conscious about her “ogre gorilla” alter-persona, but there’s no doubting her toughness despite not being the latest generation of pyrokineticist. If Shinra’s a devil and Arthur a knight, she’s a witch—and a very accomplished one, at that.

Taken down a few pegs, Shinra and Arthur shift their battle to see who can eat the ramen Oubi treated them to faster…which is not the point of eating delish ramen. There’s also a mention of how much gear a non-user like the captain has to wear (and Hinawa has to maintain) for the job, while Arthur’s Excalibur and Shinra’ feet and Type 7 ax are sufficient for them. Speaking of which, the alarm sounds and the now five-person Company 8 answers the call.

The scene is eerily quiet but the Infernal is inside, the father of a girl who already lost her mother to “infernalization,” and dreads being next as a matter of genes (though it could just be a coincidence). When Shinra and Arthur take out their weapons in public, they are scolded by Oubi. The Infernal they’re about to fight was a human, with family. It’s not a glorious battle, but a solemn funeral. If the rookies think otherwise, they can leave the 8.

Oubi is proven right when they enter the house and find the girl’s infernalized father just sitting quietly at the table, the shrine of his wife nearby. Shinra wonders why they should attack an Infernal that isn’t doing anything, but Arthur corrects him: the person sitting there is in tremendous pain, and they must put him out of his misery.

As Iris says the prayer, all it takes is a single quick strike form behind with Arthur’s plasma sword to send the father to rest. A quick and dignified end, but no consolation for his daughter as she never saw it.

Before they went in, a cloud of flames above the house formed into a smirk, and after they defeat the Infernal, the house inexplicably comes tumbling down; fortunately Oubi is tough and isn’t injured, but he and Hinawa immediately suspect a third party that’s messing with their duties. Indeed there is someone outside among the crowd, who leaves smoke letters in the sky reading “Joker.” Huh.

Meanwhile, Oubi completes his duties by doing what he can to comfort the surviving daughter in her time of greatest despair. He posits that because his parents protected her so thoroughly from the flames, she’ll be safe form now on, even if they’re gone. The fire soldiers didn’t fight a battle this week; the Infernals did, for the sake of their daughter, and they won, because she’s still alive.

Neither Shinra nor Arthur can sleep that night (obviously they were assigned the same bunk bed), realizing that the academy could not prepare them for the most terrifying part of being a fire soldier: getting accustomed to what they do. But as much as they snipe and sneer at nip at each other, they’ve perhaps started to realize that they’d rather have one another by their side than not, to help deal with those solemn times.