Okay so this week we began with a two minute clipped version of the entirety of episode 1. Why Love of Kill thought people would need the entire thing repeated I am not sure but it does make me wonder how much plot they actually have with this story given you’ve only got twenty-three minutes and you have an OP and an ED to get through. Plus the recapping the entire plot or episode is definitely more a shounen device so seems out of place here. At least they skipped the truly obnoxious voice over narration and just let the events play out.
Speaking of the ED, Makoto Period by Aika Kobayashi is great. I don’t often pay attention to ED’s, or at least not enough, but the more reflective ED here is in stark contrast to the boppy OP, Midnight Dancer, and in honesty the ED seems more in-tune with the content of the anime so far.
What happens in episode 2 of Love of Kill?
Anyway, this episode does pick up pretty much right after the ‘date’ that Chateau went on with Song before we get to the next day where Chateau has gone to pick up the guy that Song agreed to give her the location of if she went on the date and Song is cleaning up the office of the guy who hired Chateau’s firm to find him. Both characters are very much just treating this as another day as she packs up a corpse and a girl who has been held in a room next to him for days without reaction and Song calmly walks through the office killing people.
It’s kind of a sensible approach for Love of Kill given the professions of the two characters. It would hardly make sense for them to be squeamish about a bit of blood or murder or to hesitate as an unpleasant task. Though it does make it a little harder to emphasise with them or to imagine how they could possibly connect emotionally.
Affiliate Link
No where is that point clearer than at the end of the episode of Love of Kill (and yes I just skipped a whole bunch of stuff that I’ll get back to). But the events of the episode left the girl that Chateau had placed in her car crushed to death. And other than one line telling us that this was her fate, neither character really seemed all the concerned about it. I mean, I get coldly doing your job but clearly neither one of them was trying to get the girl killed and they really didn’t seem all that concerned about her horrific fate.
Seriously, she was kept confined in a storage unit with a corpse, found by a woman holding a gun, loaded into the back-seat of a car that went off the edge of a cliff, and died on impact. That sucks.
And yes, I said I’d get back to all that other stuff.
So after the date, turns out Song is being observed by a whole bunch of guys who may as well paint “I’m a villain’ on their foreheads as they smirk in a self-satisfied manner after Song passes by. But they aren’t targeting Song. They decide to mess with Chateau.
Why anyone would think ticking of someone who is that dangerous by harming someone they clearly care about is a good idea is something someone in the movie/anime industry will need to explain at some point. But no, Love of Kill goes straight for poking the dragon in the eye with a little stick and they don’t actually kill Chateau, just drive her off the road, threaten her a bit and then shoot her phone. It’s unclear if they would have cared if she’d died when the car went off the road.
I will admit, that despite my wondering if Love of Kill wants the audience to not care about anyone outside of the leads given so far other characters have very much been treated as disposable, I was thoroughly engaged while watching this episode. And I want to know more about Chateau and Song and I want to see them spending more time together. That said, given the subject matter and the way it is so far being presented I can kind of understand if Love of Kill isn’t the type of romance some viewers are looking for this season.
Images from: Love of Kill. Dir. H Ooba. Platinum Vision. 2022
Thank-you for reading 100 Word Anime.
Join the discussion in the comments.
Karandi James
I’ve only seen the first episode so far, and I thought it was kind of interesting. Not the best anime ever, but definitely something different from your standard rom/com. I’m glad to hear it keeps going along the same theme as the first episode. Thanks for the excellent post!
While there’s certainly some rough edges I am still intrigued.