Engage Kiss, also known as Project Engage as the very Japanese Wikipedia page calls it, since it is a mixed-media project that got an anime, a manga and an announced game at the same time, this is definitely not the first time you see something similar to a mixed-media project that works exactly this way, and if you were tuned in for the Fall 2021 season then you should have heard of Tatk Op Destiny, I think I learned that too late. So, for a short TLDR, when you give a semi-interesting plot to an insufferable cast of characters you get what Engage Kiss is.

Shu is probably one of the least likable MCs I have seen in a while, when watching him for the first time you can see that he is some kind of lame scrounger guy that everything he does is beg people for favors and apologizing to them while being also extremely poor for making the lowest bets possible in demon hunting which irritates the other demon hunters. But then you discover he is a scrounger that is fine with leaving everything behind including his memories as long as he can know the cause for his parent’s death and to save his sister that he thinks that is still alive due to some dreams he has, doing all of this without caring about the girl that he himself admits to love (even if it doesn’t seem that much, but more about that later) or literally not caring if he remembers anything at all because the thing that powers up Kisara is losing part of his memories.

Also, I wonder if this series can stop for a second to show me how much of a Casanova Shu is really, first we get that Ayano is Shu’s ex-girlfriend and that he lived with her, not long after breaking up with her he got into something with Sharon having sex with her but after dumping (read as: poisoning) her he got Kisara who he named by the name of the first girl he kissed. Also apparently he had sex after drinking and paid the hotel he and the girl stayed in with Ayano’s credit card and probably many more that weren’t mentioned, this series really went through such lengths to mention that he was with any girl on existence. And for some reason girls like Ayano are still crawling on their feet to be with Shu that she goes on her way to have sex with him again because he is just that “awesome” to have girl after girl going for him, I want to say that I feel bad for her but she is the one that is trying to keep going with that no matter how many times Shu disappoints her. No, showing your character having sex doesn’t make him suddenly good or cool, I don’t need his sexual relationships thrown down my throat as if he were a hentai protagonist.

I started watching this series because a friend of mine said “hey, you like Date A Live watch this series, they are similar”, so I decided to take a watch because why not? And by the end of the very first episode I realized that this series is not like Date A Live at all. I don’t want to engage in too much DAL talking, but since it was basically what made me watch this series I’ll make a little point, just take a little comparison to the main character of Date A Live, Shidou and the main character of Engage Kiss, Shu. Shidou is a guy that lives with his sister, they are basically alone since their parents seem to always be busy, he is the one that takes care of domestic labor in the house, his power is to kiss a Spirit and seal their powers, he is a playboy that keeps around his girls to have them happy. Meanwhile with Shu the girls he knows have to do everything for him from cooking, paying his debts, etc and this is not only done from 1 girl but for 2 girls, his contract with Kisara makes it so that she gets stronger with a kiss, he is also a playboy but one who has basically no problem dumping the girls he has been with if he already did his objective with her. Now, I’m not saying that I want every MC to be like Shidou or that he is a masterclass protagonist, but really, he is far better than what I’m watching in Shu.

I think the funniest joke of this series was in episode 12 when they said that Kanna, Shu’s little sister, never matured emotionally past the age of 3 and wants to kill the girls that are around Shu because she was apparently connected to him all this time in his dreams and saw how he had sex with them and that's why she is angry at them, it was definitely hilarious... but then I saw how everyone on screen was dead serious on that, I had to stop the episode for a moment to realize that it was actually 100% serious and that it was sadly funnier than the other jokes this series did.

Now, now, not everything is bad, the part of the story that addressed Miles and Shu’s relationship was something I liked, I think it was nicely done the way they showed the bond between people that are not blood-related but who can have a parental relationship.

Engage Kiss tried to be a normal romcom with action at the beginning, then it tried to be more serious with its plot but it failed miserably doing so by the point that even at the final battle they are making terrible jokes and even the serious stuff being unintentionally funny. The characters alone make me not want to take a look at this series since aside from Shu’s lameness and his harem they were pretty vapid to me, there’s a reason I didn’t even touch the side characters on this review, they might as well not exist and not much changes. Really, the only thing you will get from this series is some eye candy with some little cool animation here and there, but at the end of the day this is just a 4 hours commercial for the game that is still waiting its launch at the time of writing this.

Thank you for reading.