H Ooba

Okay, Love of Kill you aren’t as predictable as I thought and yet I’m not actually sure that’s a good thing. In my episode 6 review I speculated that the stabbing of Chateau’s boss would set up “a really obvious scenario where Chateau will have to decide whether to trust Song or believe the worst about him” but it turns out that the boss didn’t die and both Song and the boss more or less told Chateau that Song didn’t do it.

So if we aren’t setting up a massive misunderstanding to pit our two leads against one another what is Love of Kill doing?

Well it turns out that after a perfectly good chance for an obvious misunderstanding was cast aside, we’re just going to have the bad-guy flat-out blackmail Chateau into attempting to neutralise Song and hand him over with her mother’s life in the balance. Same result but more convoluted path to get there really. Though it did at least leave Chateau with actual expressions on her face this week.

(Spoilers coming below.)

What is Love of Kill’s end game?

I’m more than a little confused at this point whether a romance between Song and Chateau is even the point despite Love of Kill being listed as a romance. Chateau makes a weird declaration this week that Song is always on her mind but otherwise they seem to be in the same holding pattern they’ve always been in. Worse if you factor in that she tries to kill herself before he chokes her unconscious this episode.

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On that note, Chateau is still playing the damsel in distress and any illusion that she might be a strong female lead had fled the building. It’s the ‘I don’t know what to do’ and ‘I can’t solve this problem so I’ll throw myself off a cliff’, actually shoot herself in the head, complex and honestly I am really disappointed with her character as this series has gone on. While she was pretty flat in the earlier episodes there was so much potential in her to be an interesting female lead and she’s since either been perpetually kidnapped, outclassed, or just given up.

Even her attempt at suicide is underwhelming and I’m not entirely sure it would have solved the problem. Would they have actually not killed her mother if she killed herself? Would Song be able to avoid them even if she didn’t bring him in? It definitely seemed like running away and it most definitely seemed, given she knows how fast Song can move, like she wanted him to stop her or perhaps she would have acted faster and more decisively.

Wow, critiquing a suicide attempt… Not exactly what I had in mind when I picked up an action/romance for the season.

And honestly, that’s about all that happened. The Boss was evacuated but the ship didn’t pull into port and have police investigate the attempted murder of a guest. Everything just continued on. It isn’t until near the end of the episode that some of the bit players in Love of Kill speculate that things might be a bit weird on the cruise given a passenger nearly died and no one seems to care.

With five episodes left it is probably a little late to hope Chateau becomes a more interesting character. Even Song has been a lot less fun recently. And the young stab-happy villain this week wasn’t exactly a show-stealer (nor was his brother who seems to be trying to do an L from Death Note impersonation).

So instead lets just hope they at least tell us a bit about Chateau’s past and maybe Song ends up at least getting a kiss. That’s about as high as my hopes for Love of Kill go at this point.

Images from: Love of Kill. Dir. H Ooba. Platinum Vision. 2022

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Karandi James

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Love of Kill has gone from feeling a little lost in episode 5 to feeling very much like it is treading over tired ground in episode 6. Song’s unique courtship of Chateau is no longer enough to carry the story as it has become predictable background noise that barely registers so all this episode has left is a really shallow plot that sets up a really obvious scenario where Chateau will have to decide whether to trust Song or believe the worst about him.

Even the ‘victim’ at the centre of the conspiracy is obvious, telegraphed early in the episode where we see how stupidly happy Ritzland is with his wife on the cruise. Its kind of like in war movies where the young recruit shows his friend the picture of the gal he’s going to marry when he gets home and you just know he’s going to catch a bullet in the face in three, two, one…

Love of Kill needs to find some fun fast.

While the first episode Love of Kill was a little rough around the edges, it was kind of good fun. The action felt entertaining to watch and the interactions between Song and Chateau were enjoyable enough. But six episodes in they’ve made little progress and every conversation they have seems to go much the same way to the point where it doesn’t even feel like you need to tune in.

Song suggests something. Chateau scowls. Song continues to talk and suggests even more outrageous things and Chateau ends up doing whatever it was he first suggested.

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Despite the lack of progress there, Love of Kill could have kept the enjoyment afloat if any of the other cast members had stepped up but Jim remains one of the single most annoying support cast members I’ve ever encountered and Ritzland has been all but a space filler. Even the episode where he finally makes some kind of move, speaking with Song directly on the phone and organising a meet, we really get no sense of who this guy is and so feel very little when the inevitable occurs.

Also, I mentioned that Love of Kill has been rough around the edges since the beginning but I can assure you at the mid-season we’ve definitely hit a new low with pretty much every other human on the cruise ship failing to move for the entire episode. Whether it is a ball room scene or watching Chateau and Song stroll past shops, every other character is stock-still. It creates an eerie and empty feeling to the whole scenery.

Now, other stories don’t bother to animate their background characters either. Soul Eater didn’t even bother to draw them properly. However that kind of story could kind of get away with it whereas Love of Kill’s plot and setting makes it seem like it needs to have a more grounded visual aesthetic and the absolute lack of animation in so many sequences, not just from background characters, made this episode feel really flat.

Though part of that might be that I still don’t know what any member of the cast actually wants. What is Song really trying to achieve by following Chateau around? What does Chateau actually want from her job and her life? What did Ritzland hope to achieve? And why did no-one suggest tossing Jim over-board?

For all that I was hoping Love of Kill might do after its first episode, I have to admit at the half-way mark, it probably isn’t going to get there. Instead, this will be another anime I remember for holding onto it and wanting it to be better even as it never quite manages to achieve it.

Images from: Love of Kill. Dir. H Ooba. Platinum Vision. 2022

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Thank-you for reading 100 Word Anime.
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Karandi James

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Love of Kill is starting to feel a little bit lost. I noted early on that with the amount of time spent each episode on recap kind of made me worry that Love of Kill didn’t have enough actual plot to fill a season and episode 5 is definitely not making me feel reassured that this story is on solid ground.

The throwaway one villain to find out they were working for someone else who sends another minion ploy is plot stretching at its worst and it makes it really hard to care about any of the interim steps because ultimately you know nothing fatal will happen to a key character until we’re further along the food chain.

Love Of Kill just feels a little bit empty.

Honestly, I really want to like this story and I’m still really liking Song’s character. But it is definitely the more the idea of the story than the story I’m enjoying at this point and if I step back and cast a critical eye over this episode I’d have to honestly say nothing of particular interest happened.

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Sure Song takes out the mediocre threat (the guy who apparently can’t feel stun guns, incidentally they doubled down on the whole fried nerve idiocy from last week with Song making a really forced reference to it after the guy takes multiple bullets before finally being put down) and collects Chateau who had escaped the car before it exploded (as everyone had already suspected) but was now injured.

About the only unique development here is that Song also took an injury and Chateau finally gets to have a turn in taking him to safety.

Naturally Love of Kill decides this is the perfect time to get Jim, the guy from the office who has no mouth and a voice that just does not connect with anything else in the anime, more involved. Thanks, but I could have done without that. From character design to his voice there is nothing about this character that I wanted more of in this story and yet here he is and honestly there isn’t one minute he’s on screen that doesn’t kind of break me out of the story and world.

Maybe that’s being needlessly harsh or nit-picky to a decidedly minor point in the grand scheme of things. Still, it is how I feel about it and to be honest given both the boss and Jim board the boat with Chateau to start a new job at the end of the episode, I suspect both of these so far non-characters are suddenly going to play a larger role (which the OP certainly suggested they would).

But what I’d really like is more Song and Chateau.

I guess we don’t always get what we want. Though I suspect my enjoyment of Love of Kill is going to decline proportionally to the amount of screen time Jim gets.

Besides, who wouldn’t want more of the guy, who despite being stabbed in the side still has enough moxy to flirt with Chateau and isn’t even deterred after she pokes him in his wound.

As much as Love of Kill is offering a different take on romance, it just isn’t a solid enough anime in its own right and there’s too many missed opportunities or decisions that I wish had gone a different way to really say I’m loving this story. But I will persist in watching it because it isn’t a train wreck and those elements I do like are keeping me intrigued and hopeful that maybe Love of Kill can pull itself together for a solid final act.

Images from: Love of Kill. Dir. H Ooba. Platinum Vision. 2022

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Thank-you for reading 100 Word Anime.
Join the discussion in the comments.
Karandi James

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Love of Kill on the surface seems like it is going to build a romance between two quite capable characters only so far Song is the only one pursuing the romance or ever getting to really have any solid moments. Chateau on the other-hand was taken down by Song, has been led around by him ever since, got run off the road and beaten down in the woods, and now in episode 4 she’s been taken captive.

Now I will admit the story never explicitly told us that Chateau was actually good at her job, but she seems to carry herself fairly capably and yet in four episodes they haven’t managed to give her one actual success or win. It really does undermine your confidence in her character. And given she’s kind of playing the stoic professional, if she isn’t actually good at her job you have to wonder what is left of her character.

Other than the fact that she was super-adorable way back when.

Love of Kill needs to let Chateau have a small win and soon.

Before I get more into this episode I find it interesting how often Love of Kill likes to frame its scenes with the character standing in front of a window. In episode 1 we had the hotel room with the great view, episode 2 saw Chateau staring out a train window with her reflection staring back. Episode 3 had both characters at times standing before the window though Song’s sequence was notable given he was standing in the shadow of the curtain he had just drawn with the light streaming in beside him on the left.

That image almost perfectly mirrors the scene this week with Chateau in the church as she stands in the shadow with the light streaming through the church window on her right.

But none of that really gets into what this episode is about so let’s focus.

Pretty much this week we find out that Chateau has a past full of tragedy and unknowns which we more or less suspected given a previously glimpsed flashback. Turns out someone working that case ended up taking her in but her real name was unknown and that man is now dead, which is why Chateau is out laying flowers on a grave.

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It all seems like they are trying a little too hard to come up with a mystery in the past that ties things together. While I don’t dislike stories that try to be interesting, I suspect Love of Kill is going to end up tying itself in a knot that it can’t resolve in a satisfactory manner. Chateau’s identity being unconfirmed would have been an interesting enough backstory without somehow tying it to Song as well.

And while I quite enjoyed the episode, my issues with the overall plot do not end there. We also have the silly moment when Chateau actually did seem to get the upper hand in a fight, for once, and yet even hitting a guy point blank with a stun-gun did not result in a success because somehow his drug use made him non-responsive to getting zapped. I don’t know if anyone is actually buying that plot development but it just seemed dumb. I would have accepted that his jacket was non-conductive and maybe that protected him but Love of Kill went a different path.

All things considered, Love of Kill continues to be an enjoyable enough watch each week but the plot is moving slowly and unfortunately it doesn’t seem like it is going to be particularly clever or without glaring holes. If the pace was faster it would probably be easier to gloss over some of these things but instead the viewer is left with plenty of time to contemplate things that just fall apart when you think about them.

Despite all the criticism though, I am curious and I am still enjoying Song and Chateau. I wish Chateau would occasionally get a small victory but that seems like a relatively minor issue in the grand scheme of things.

Images from: Love of Kill. Dir. H Ooba. Platinum Vision. 2022

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Thank-you for reading 100 Word Anime.
Join the discussion in the comments.
Karandi James

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Love of Kill has apparently decided that it is going to start every episode with a visual recap of the main events in the previous episode, though at least in episode 3 it doesn’t go for as long as the one that preceded the events of episode 2. And after the focus on danger in episode 2 with Chateau being forced off a cliff, episode 3 switches gears as it deals with the day after as well as giving us a brief (and somewhat ambiguous) flashback of Song’s past.

What is great about the episode is that Song and Chateau do spend most of it together. Either initially after waking up, as Chateau contacts her office, and after a brief visit to her office, Song is waiting for her when she returns home. Yeah, he’s still hitting all the warning flags for creepy stalker and yet somehow he’s still coming off as pretty likeable. Though potentially that has more to do with the flat nature of every other character so far.

Love of Kill still feels like we’re in set-up mode.

Three episodes in to Love of Kill and while Song’s pursuit of Chateau is pretty straight forward, even if she’s still trying to find his hidden motives, it isn’t clear where else the story is planning to go. Sure there’s clearly a group out for revenge against Song as the message Chateau received last week directly called him a traitor and the flashback we saw seems to indicate exactly that. Though at the same time, we don’t know why he carried out that action and it seems unlikely he did it on a whim.

There’s definitely more to the story and yet Love of Kill isn’t in a rush to lay its cards on the table.

Meanwhile Chateau’s past is clearly mired in family tragedy. From the flashback we saw in episode one to the picture’s Song looks at in her apartment to the phone message from her ‘mother’ it is clearly a big part of the reason she’s so emotionally shut-down and disconnected from others. Again though, we’re missing a lot of pieces to this puzzle.

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Part of the puzzle is also Chateau’s boss and why he doesn’t seem to take any specific action against her despite the fact that in the three episodes we’ve watched she pretty much continually ignored directives, at various times just gone missing, and now, despite her apology, she’s outright refused to provide a reasonable explanation for the events that ended with her car going off a cliff. The boss has very little presence in the story at all but it seems bizarre that as Chateau walks out of his office again he just continues on without there being any repercussions.

The various plot threads being woven by Love of Kill seem largely standard fare for this kind of story with shady organisations, favours, betrayals, family ties and so forth and to be honest they probably aren’t interesting enough to carry the story. Really, the only major selling point so far would be the pair at the centre of the story and that’s only if you enjoy seeing their interactions. And with Chateau being pretty emotionless (other than irritation) and Song being just this side of creepy stalker material, I can understand some viewers not finding it all that entertaining.

For me, I am enjoying most of their interactions even while acknowledging that in real life this wouldn’t be the basis for a healthy relationship. I’d actually like to see these two characters get together in Love of Kill. I’m also a little hopeful that as the anime continues some of the backstories and other plots will develop further and become a little more engaging (though that may be a false hope).

At this stage, I’m enjoying Love of Kill but I’m not going to jump up and down to recommend it. We’ll see how the rest of the season plays out.

Images from: Love of Kill. Dir. H Ooba. Platinum Vision. 2022

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Thank-you for reading 100 Word Anime.
Join the discussion in the comments.
Karandi James

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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.

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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

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Thank-you for reading 100 Word Anime.
Join the discussion in the comments.
Karandi James

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