Engage Kiss – 13 (Fin) – Bless This Mess

Shuu, Ayano and Sharon are fighting as a cohesive unit, but against Kanna the best they can do is maintain a stalemate. Enter Tabula Rasa Kisara, who despite having no memories decides on her own not to let what seem like nice people die in a battle with a not-so-nice person.

The addition of Kisara to the battle definitely gives Team Shuu an edge as Kanna starts to flounder a bit, but then she summons three powerful demons, which means all of the other demon hunting contractors spring into action, for the city that’s the only home they have, for honor and glory, and money too.

When even Kisara can’t quite get to Kanna’s heart to seal her, Shuu lends her power in the form of a kiss. Turns out their old contract terms work just fine, and the newly re-Hot Topic’d Kisara has a stiff second wind at her back. She keeps Kanna occupied enough for Shuu to fire his demonic bullet. Asmodeus flees from Kanna, and Kisara carves her into ribbons, sending her back to whence she came.

In the aftermath, while some demons made it to the city, there were no civilian casualties, so the contractors call it a victory. Sharon admits the Abbey will still be coming for Kisara, but at least today, Sharon won’t be the one to kill her. Wondering where a demon girl fits in a human world, Kisara gets a supportive hug from Ayano.

The Hachisukas continue their sibling rivalry for control of the city—and international coverup to maintain their autonomy. Sharon makes a joke to Ayano about spending the night with Shuu before boating off to face inquisition. Shuu visits his parents’ grave and promises his work isn’t done, but he’ll do it the right way this time.

As for Kisara, she wants Shuu to teach her all the memories she lost, which apparently includes fulfilling the role of his girlfriend. Things are about to get hot and heavy in his apartment when the lights come on to reveal Kanna gobbling up all the food in the place. While the authorities kept her restrained in the bowels of city hall, this is only the latest of several escapes.

Those escapes result not in her unleashing demons on the city or causing any damage, but inserting herself back into Shuu’s home and life and voicing her disapproval of Kisara. Now Kisara has in Kanna what Ayano has in her: a younger rival for Shuu’s attention.

With Kisara, Ayano, and now Kanna all pointing weapons at him and asking whose side he’s on, Shuu’s in the messiest mess yet. And frankly, that’s the best way for this series to end: never taking itself too seriously and gleefully embracing the mess.

Engage Kiss – 12 – Atomic Tantrum

Kanna awakens from her brief nap at the crack of dawn and announces her intentions by attacking Bayron City’s airport. The airport is virtually abandoned, and the Hachisukas order everyone within a several-mile radius to evacuate, but since all that happens off-camera the stakes are localized to Shuu and the women in his life: Ayano, Sharon, Kisara, and of course Kanna.

Kisara is a complete amnesiac after severing her contract, having even given Shuu her memories from before they met. He calls her an idiot, but he won’t listen to the Kisara before the memory transfer, who told him to run and save himself. After all she’s done for him, she’s going to protect her this time, sealing that promise with a kiss on her forehead.

Sharon pulls up in her motorcycle to say goodbye to Ayano, since a church battleship is on its way and it won’t be sparing Kanna’s life, so they’ll be enemies next time they meet. However, between Sharon getting a call and Shuu receiving a new delivery, a plan is afoot.

For now, AAA and Ayano throw everything they’ve got at the approaching Kanna, who seemingly starts to target Ayano personally. She almost blasts her into oblivion from point-blank range, but Ayano is saved at the last second by Shuu swooping in to princess carry her away on his Eureka Seven-style hoverboard; the next-minute delivery he charged to Mikhail.

Shuu confirms to Ayano that all his memories are back and more by scolding her for seducing him when she knew Kisara would take those memories. But while Ayano is embarrassed, she’s also clearly elated that the Shuu she knows and loves is back and of sound mind.

As for why Kanna is targeting her, Shuu says he and Kanna have been connected through dreams throughout these twelve years, so she’s had to witness all of his romantic exploits without being able to affect them. As a result, she’s still three years old emotionally and scarred by those dreams. Since Sharon is also a target, she decides to come back and fight alongside Shuu and Ayano since Shuu called and apologized for forgetting her.

Flanked by Ayano and her bazooka and Sharon and her mech suit, Shuu flies up to meet Kanna and tries to play things softly at first, trying to appeal to her brotherly love and actually getting her to stop dead in her tracks. Shuu declares to her that he’s going to save her without losing anything—not his memories, and not any of the other people he loves.

Since saving her involves sealing her, Kanna can’t have that, and fights back. Shuu, Ayano, and Sharon make a great team and the battle looks great, but at the end of the day she’s still an S-Class demon, and none of them are.

Not only that, she’s clearly trying to kill them, while Shuu is determined not to kill her. When he’s about to deal a crucial blow with Kisara’s sword, Kanna shrewdly breaks out the waterworks, which causes Shuu to hesitate for a moment. That’s all she needs to blast him into the tarmac.

This happens just as Kisara arrives on the scene with a slight limp, but after how Shuu treated her in her hospital bed, not to mention the note on her hand written by her past self that says “Believe in him and fight together”, it looks like she’s ready to contribute if she can. She may not have any memories, but she’s still a demon.

I’m pleased that Shuu is now in such an optimistic place with all his memories back that he no longer wants to throw anything away in a lonely struggle to save his sister. With Ayano, Sharon, some form of Kisara, and presumably those other contractors who feel bad about sitting out the fight so far, Kanna is now the lonely one backed into a corner, and he’s got a fighting chance to get her back with minimal loss…assuming he survived that last blow, of course.

Engage Kiss – 11 – Last Kiss Goodbye

When Kisara is stabbed with Demon Kanna’s spear and she touches it, she suddenly gets a rush of her memories, which include a young Shuu. Kisara tells Shuu to flee at once, Sharon grabs him and grabs hold of the runner of Ayano’s chopper to take them away.

Kisara charges at Kanna, but at the last minute is stopped dead by another memory of Kanna as an innocent child. In that instant of hesitation, Kanna strikes Kisara down and she falls into the sea. Kanna soon follows her down there when Mikhail fires the satellite beam at her twice.

Kanna is dormant on the sea floor, but could reawaken at any time. Meanwhile Kisara is in hospital and won’t wake up or heal at her usual speed. All Shuu and Ayano can do is sit there, wait, and contemplate what comes next. Sharon makes clear that as far as her bosses are concerned Kanna is an S-Class Demon that must be destroyed.

The problem is, none of the contractors in Bayron City are sure they can deal with an S-Class even with a united front, and instead place their hopes in Kisara, who they don’t know is in a bad way. While alone with Kisara that night, Shuu makes a heartfelt plea to her for what he should do, and she wakes up and kisses him.

Unlke previous kisses, this one seems to transfer Shuu’s memories back to him. Starting with his sudden breakup with Ayano and resignation from AAA, to teaming up with/seducing Sharon, to finding Kisara, whom we learn is a distant blood relative of his, thus making their contract possible.

Forming a more efficient and practical contact with Kisara involves a lot of trial-and-error, along with an actual paper contract that’s several hundred pages long. Before they make things official, Kisara reads the whole thing through and, unbeknownst to Shuu, makes a couple of changes.

For one, she makes a kiss the means by which the limits of her demonic power are unleashed. This wasn’t how the contract was initially written up, but the kissing gesture was inspired by how Shuu “formed contracts” (i.e., bedded) previous humans like Ayano and Sharon. And once she kisses him, there’s no going back.

That brings us to the other thing she changed: if they kiss while their hands are intertwined just so, their contract will be terminated. That’s what she seems to do in their present-day kiss in the hospital, and unless I’m totally misjudging things, this results in all of Shuu’s memories returning to him.

This also means all the memories leave Kisara (they were moved without being copied), so when their lips part and Shuu asks her what the hell she just did, her first words are “Who are you?” Kisara believes Shuu has fought enough and wants him to leave the island and live the rest of his life in peace.

Breaking their contract is how she believes that happens. How she’ll deal with Kanna without a contract remains to be seen. But if Shuu indeed has all his memories back, that means all the drive and motivation to carry out his original mission must have returned as well. In any case, I highly doubt he’s about to abandon Kisara, Ayano, and Bayron City.

Engage Kiss – 10 – Sister, Sister

Shuu, Kisara, Ayano, Akino, and a suit whose name escapes me meet with Sharon at the safe house where she’s wining and dining herself to go over the present situation. Essentially, Asmodeus is a demon that has existed in the human world for a good long time in various forms, and Miles’ memories confirm the Hive Three Mine incident was Asmodeus’ doing, not Shuu’s dad.

The various Demon Hazards around the city form the same shaped magical circle that circled Europe, and the location of the final ritual is far offshore to the northwest. Official maps say it’s just open ocean, but it’s likely not.

While Kisara and Sharon go on a boat trip to find the island where they believe Hive Three Mine and Kanna (Asmodeus’ gate to this world) to be located, Ayano takes a ride with Hachisuka Linfa to ask her about the secret location. Mikhail sends another group to stop and arrest both Ayano and Akino, but Shuu ruins his plans by borrowing an attack helicopter.

Linfa, proving she’s still a friend to Ayano, gives her the coordinates to the mine site, now shifted since Bayron City itself was moved away from said site 12 years ago. They arrive just as Kisara and Sharon locate Kanna, whom Kisara has to keep Sharon from killing on the spot.

Mikhail then decides to try out an old “Star Wars”-style satellite weapon to destroy the entire site before Asmodeus can pass through the gate, but he’s a bit too late. The weapon is ineffective, and Asmodeus’ colossal hand emerges from the island, and the wound to its palm quickly closes.

Kisara managed to escape the initial explosion along with Sharon, and while they try to fight the hand of Asmodeus (from which hundreds of other arms and hands branch off) Asmodeus summons of all its previous forms, only in stone, including that of Shuu and Kanna’s mother.

Shuu arrives at the scene and asks Kisara to take all of his remaining memories, if that’s what’s needed to get rid of Asmodeus. Kisara bursts into tears and hesitates, fearing Shuu won’t be Shuu anymore if she obeys him. Then she’s impaled through the chest from behind…by Kanna, or at least the Kanna who is serving as Asmodeus’ gate.

Assuming Shuu remembers his sister’s face (and we’ve seen he’s in such a bad way he barely remembers Ayano’s name), this has to be a major mind trip for Shuu, who will now almost certainly have to give up way more than he should to heal and power up Kisara. If Asmodeus succeeds, Bayron City and perhaps the world may be doomed. But stopping Asmodeus may mean killing Kanna. Not an enviable choice.

Engage Kiss – 09 – Demon’s Due

Yuugiri Akino’s AAA wins the auction by one dollar to take out the latest Demonically Possessed: Miles Morgan. Mikhail, it would seem, is trying to get rid of every trace of Asmodeus, including Akino and Shuu. We also get to see Mikami put the pieces together just before dying by Miles’ hand.

When Miles drives Shuu to the middle of a big park, he tells him Asmodeus is his benefactor whom he can never repay. Shuu wants him to apologize to everyone, including him but Miles has no regrets, and transforms into a Demon Hazard.

As a giant demonic monster, Miles proves too much for Ayano and her AAA troops, but luckily Shuu struck a deal for Sharon to lend a hand in taking down Miles in exchange for her freedom from police custody and for the memories of Asmodeus’ puppet, Miles.

In what is otherwise a very dry and dour episode, Sharon at least adds a bit of flair and ridiculousness by throwing a running motorcycle Miles’ way. Ayano repays Sharon saving her life by putting a gun to her head, but grudgingly accepts her help.

While Shuu and Kisara initially stand back and watch what happens, it soon becomes apparent Kisara needs to get involved, even if it ends up killing Shuu’s foster father. So Shuu tells Kisara what she needs to take from Miles and gets to smooching.

Hot Topic Kisara relieves Ayano and Sharon and has a proper rough-and-tumble brawl with Miles eventually piercing him from behind with her sword and putting him in a position to be shot by Shuu’s demon gun.

Shuu’s off-camera shot is followed by a rundown of the events that led to Miles breaking bad. It boils down to his daughter Melissa having a terminal illness and Asmodeus, who possessed the body of Shuu’s mother Sayuri (either always or at some point).

Miles did what Asmodeus told him, betraying Shuu’s family, while the mine explosion was caused by Shuu’s dad detonating a bomb. Miles’ daughter made a miraculous recovery, Miles took in Shuu as a mercy, and as he said, his debt to Asmodeus remains active and unending.

Kisara sucks up all of these memories swimming in what’s left of Miles’ human brain, either killing him or putting him at death’s door. Meanwhile, Kisara’s latest kiss has rendered Shuu so devoid of memories he had to refer to a note on his hand to recall that Miles killed Mikami.

Miles is defeated, but no one looks happy as the sun gets low over the scene, while Shuu looks distraught, but also quite lost. Sharon warned that at some point his contract with Kisara would render him unable to remember or even feel anything. We’ll see if Shuu can escape that cruel fate in the final four episodes of the series.

Engage Kiss – 08 – The [REDACTED] is Already Dead

Engage Kiss does not care one single whit about your tonal or genre whiplash. After last week’s poisonous members and tentacle mech suits, we get what amounts to a hard-boiled detective procedural, and the results are…mixed.

While I appreciated the episode’s dedication to showing its work, that work is rarely glamorous. The monotony of what amounts to scene after scene of exposition as Detective Mikami, Miles, and Shuu try to piece things together is at least punctuated by the usual Kisara-Ayano sniping.

Last week’s MVP Sharon is tied to a chair behind bars this week, unable to unleash her full horny/trashy/sacred/profane shtick, but still wields power as someone who remembers crucial information Shuu forgot thanks to Kisara.

It’s pretty significant that Shuu thought Kisara would let him keep certain important memories, but Sharon says that it doesn’t work that way and he’s actually lost a lot more than he knows, and she’s not lying just for spite. All she offers “for free” about the identity of the big bad is an arsonist analogy.

Before Shuu can interpret the scant info Sharon gave him, Mikami has a eureka moment that seems primed to blow this case wide open…just as the trench-coated “Informant X” who’s been feeding Shuu shows up.

Mikami leaves a voicemail for Shuu, and during the recording he is confronted by someone and a gunshot rings out. By the time Shuu and Kisara arrive in the station lot, Mikami is dead, and Informant X tries to slink away. Shuu and Kisara show what a good pair they make by cornering and unmasking the guy…who turns out to be Mikhail.

I gotta say, that’s a pretty cheeky revelation—to dangle this oji-san like high school character who feels like he’s from another anime as the delusional third child in the family pecking order, only to reveal that he’s the mysterious General Director of Bayron City Police, from whom everyone gets their orders.

With his cover blown, Mikhail takes Shuu and Kisara down to his secret surveillance information center deep under the city hall, where he has over three million cameras going 24/7/365, (even on his sisters while they shower and sleep, an observation Shuu is quick to make and condemn).

The other fake-out in play is that Mikhail didn’t murder Mikami, and the camera footage proves it. The person who did is the one for whom Mikhail is merely a puppet, the second human agent who is coordinating the creation and destruction of demonically possessed.

Mikhail’s sudden major player turn takes a backseat to the emotional fallout from Mikami’s sudden murder, and it’s a good reminder of how good the show can be at occasionally taking the goofy/horny elements down a notch and letting these people be humans.

This culminates in Mikami’s funeral, always a solemn affair, followed by Shuu being picked up by his foster father and old pal Miles, who can’t believe Mikami is gone. When Miles talks about Mikami as the rare natural police who was also softhearted and guillible, Shuu drops the hammer: he knows Miles murdered Mikami.

Sure enough, a tattoo on Miles’ arm glows. While I’m hardly enthused by the only brother in the cast being the big bad, his villainous turn isn’t altogether unearned. Like us, Shuu’s had a huge blind spot for the guy, in his case due to the events and conversations he’s forgotten because his contract with Kisara takes away much more than he thought.

Shuu’s been trying to piece together a mystery when his own memory has been crumbling behind him in real time. Now he’s lost a true ally in Mikami and another main ally has turned out to be false. It’s safe to say things are going to get worse before they get better for Shuu.