From April to September 2007, there ran an anime-original action show aiming more or less for the shonen demographic, focused on plucky fighters on a ruined Earth. The punchline is that this time I’m talking about Kissdum R Engage Planet (Sometimes styled Kiss Dum Engage Planet), not Gurren Lagann.
And right out the gate, I am not expecting this to be on par with Gurren Lagann. Few shows are. I could always be pleasantly surprised, but it’s not to be anticipated nor required for passing or even good marks. It’s interesting that they ran during the same seasons, but only as a little bit of trivia. And speaking of trivia, I have it on good authority that there are some Lovecraftian references and styles in this one, so let’s take a look.
So, the opening of this one throws a ton of story at you at once. To piece it together it seems like, after a mysterious and deadly shipwreck (in 2031, our main story taking place 20 years after), some creepy mutation stuff has been drifting with the currents of the Pacific. The Powers What Be, here known as the NIDF, talk about “Hadeans” and the core of the phenomenon “the Book of the Dead” when it suddenly takes on a very different character with swarms of mutant flies gathering into giant orbs that rain freaky kaiju down on Tokyo.
Throughout this we follow several lines as a professor tries to find the Book of the Dead, but some goons try to hold her hostage for it. Then the central authority thinks she’s betrayed everyone and thus sends out their best transforming-fighter-mecha-pilots to recover the Book (which is more of a sword, but who’s asking). Except one of these, Shu Aiba, seems to be the partner of the scientist lady, Yuno, so suffice to say things get pretty complicated.
As Yuno – guarded by a different Shu, Shu Nanao – races through Tokyo for undisclosed purposes, Aiba and his team catch up and try to save her. This ends up with Aiba dying and Yuno, in her grief, pulling out that book of the dead sword and stabbing him with some mystical significance that seems to result in his resurrection with a mysterious voice calling for the “Necrodiver” to awaken.
As the mundane military does their best to prove that mortal weapons are ineffectual against the Hadean threat, we get our exposition, how after the shipwreck, scientists started to discover and decipher pre-human alien artifacts that together told of a conflict set from before humanity that would determine the fate of the species. Typical destined showdown stuff.
So what does the Emissary, or Necrodiver, actually do? To be honest, the direction they seem to go for his powers (as revealed thus far) is a nice little mix of power fantasy and horror as we see his flesh seethe and roil to absorb weapons he touches, which he can later reproduce from his body, letting him turn his limbs into guns and such. If you’re familiar with Warhammer 40k this might sound a little familiar as it’s basically what Obliterators do, but I’ll set that tangent aside this time; we’ve got different insane otherworldly gods to deal with here.
This comes with the usual superpower suite of insanely enhanced physical abilities (leaping up building floors like nothing and such) and usefully but perhaps annoyingly with the appearance of that mysterious voice who bade him awaken, the ill-tempered spirit guide Varda.
Also, because this is the kind of show that can’t refuse having a million irons in the fire, we also get that there’s some comic relief swimsuit girl who might know and scheme things, and of course we get the hint of a love triangle as Nanao reveals to the audience some jealousy regarding Aiba’s place with Yuno.
The high-speed first act continues with a counter-offensive against the Hadeans in which Shu and Yuno get in and out of trouble fast enough to make your head spin, culminating in a battle against the real traitor to humanity, their (former) boss, Kyoka, the one who ordered Yuno killed if that was what it took to retrieve the Book of the Dead. This seemingly gets Yuno killed (along with kind of everybody else) and appears to bring victory to the global Hadean assault.
Cut to six months later in a distinctly post-apocalyptic world, where human survivors have to utilize the fact that Hadeans are nocturnal in order to operate. In Egypt, Aiba shows up to rescue a couple of girls who are poking around the ancient ruins of Luxor too close to curfew, one of whom, Noa, is eventually revealed to be Yuno’s little sister and thus in the know about all the weird esoteric stuff. In the ruins, running from a boss monster Aiba can’t yet beat, they find the “Bones of Abhoth”, a weapon specifically for the Emissary that Shu is thus able to absorb, at least as he and Noa both contribute plot trinkets towards activating it.
This is also our first name drop towards the Mythos, “Abhoth” being a creation of Clark Ashton Smith, one of the members of Lovecraft’s literary circle. What does the entity have to do with an Egyptian bone weapon and, apparently, mysterious goddesses (Varda’s similars Valar and Vaire)? Nothing! This isn’t Demonbane so I don’t expect every reference to be weirdly on-point. Also, Valar and Vaire seem to grant Aiba the ability to do elemental attacks and to be protected from enemies, so we’re down to doing a lot of shouting and calling attack names in big fights. This will be what most of the Lovecraft references are like – you’ll catch the names of gods and aliens but they won’t particularly come to much.
Even as this happens we get more of those extra irons in the fire with Kyoka making cryptic comments in her control room about rebirth and the survival of humanity and the girl who was stuck in a swimsuit in the first few episodes still seemingly stalking Aiba without being noticed.
Thus, we engage with the village that the rescued waifs were staying at, with Noa acting pretty close to Aiba and the other girl, Iera, having angry and mistrustful as her one note.
An attempted weapons salvage operation turns out to be a trap as a plant Hadean wakes up in the target location, and everyone who I have not named gets axed, including all the villagers that Noa and Irea liked and wanted to protect, because we have to get this show on the road.
This is followed by the reappearance of one of the other members of Aiba’s squad who seemed to bite the dust in the first arc. He reconnects with Aiba a little and then reveals that actually he’s here to kill Aiba because Reiko (better known as Rei and previously referred to by me as Swimsuit Girl) is pulling his strings. Not that he gives that up to Aiba, they just fight with the guy having both Hadean powers and a trinket he was provided to negate the three V’s. The V’s end up taking physical form to escape the bind they’re put in and as the jerk is put back down, wouldn’t you know it, it turns out that’s a one-way transformation so now everybody else can see and hear Varda and she exists in physical space. The other two can still take spirit forms.
Next up, we get another of Aiba’s former friends. This one is a bit of a meatier arc, covering multiple episodes with time spared to backstory (both Aiba’s, which he’s stewing over after the first revived former friend fight) and the arc boss’s. This guy was the stick-up-his-rear loyal type. He’s mercifully smart enough to not still be a catspaw for people trying to wipe out mankind, and is instead playing hero over a group of survivors. Unfortunately, his no-death run gets busted, causing him to push for a vengeance campaign that gets even more of his charges killed, ultimately ending with him losing control of his Hadean side and killing the rest of the people he once saved when they call him out for getting loads of people killed with needless offensive combat.
He tells off Rei when she tries to get him to go kill Aiba… Only to pretty much go with exactly her plan to kill Aiba and steal his powers, only to self-destruct after losing a battle of ethics and being faced with the weight of his own sins.
But we’re not out of former squad members yet! Next is the pretty boy. His sideshow is that he picks up a stray girl who starts to go by Rine, and really bonds with her. At first it’s teased that this is a setup for a tragedy just like the previous, but the twist is that Rine herself is actually a Hadean core, belonging to a giant Hadean that’s causing frozen weather in the entire region.
Yeah, stepping aside, the designs of the Hadeans are actually pretty delightful. There are some mooks that are your typical squiggly animals, but most of the big ones freely mix animal, plant, human, and “other” designs fairly well, though often incorporating structures that resemble – or are – human females. There’s a consistent theme to them, but it’s pretty deep in nightmare horror. And with this, there might be more to it plot-wise.
In any case, if the previous arc was all about responsibility, and this one is stoking the fires of puppy love on the bad guy side, you might suspect something similar to be happening with Team Aiba. And sure enough, we get some ship tease. Oddly enough, it’s not with Noa, the little sister of Aiba’s lost love, but rather with the sharp-tongued and unemotional Varda. We get a scene where the other girls play dress up with her, and one where she inadvertently teases Aiba and seems to possibly be beginning to understand humanity.
The boss fight is fairly sudden. Rine gets separated from her keeper, and back in human form picked up by Team Aiba and their new buddies, the suddenly introduced ship crew who are hunting the weather changing giant Hadean like Moby Dick references are going out of style. In the battle with her main body, Rine gets reabsorbed by it. Aiba initially hesitates to strike her down and when he finally works up the urge to, his old friend appears to protect the new waifu. Rei may have shown herself but she didn’t even need to do anything this time.
This initially gets Aiba dunked on, but despite the other V’s not caring that he seems to be dying, sinking in the storm-wracked sea, Varda decides to go swim down and give him the kiss of life to get back in there and kick ass for round 2
Naturally, this goes pretty well for Aiba, and he skewers his old friend back to his senses and lets the boy and Rine die together, sending their souls sinking happily down to Davy Jones’ Locker.
Another arc, another former friend: the next two episodes reintroduce Nanao, the other Shu. The basic setup is that Rei comes to troll Aiba directly, which provides a hint of the potential direction and distance of her lair. However, this is at the same time as a plot hook for rescuing villagers being taken and stockpiled by Team Hadean Ant appears. Shu says heck with sidequests and goes after the big boss, leaving Noa and Iera behind to try to do heroics on their own.
This is when Noa comes across Nanao, who saves her after Iera gets grabbed. The big twist for the audience is that Yuno is alive and living with him, albeit in a state where she pretty much has no memory of her former life and Nanao is sort of inserting himself into the role of Her Shu. Nanao doesn’t manage to introduce the sisters, though, since the ants got her while he was out.
In the nest, Iera manages to do a pretty good job of rescuing herself for somebody who has spent most of this show whining and being needlessly abrasive, and even manages to start freeing a bunch of other captives, including Yuno. About this time, Shu finds out the enemy base is on a ship of some kind, which has already left, meaning the trail is cold. Regretting his previous decision, he turns back, and everybody meets up at the Hadean nest.
The Two Shus get to fight together as badasses, Nanao gives Aiba the main boss encounter allowing him to smuggle Yuno out without the two meeting, and the two part on good terms except where Nanao is knowingly keeping Aiba and his lost love apart just so he can have a chance at the romance he didn’t get the first go around. So we’ll file that for later.
After a “downtime” episode (a Hadean-induced shared dream where the whole gang is back at base before the world went to hell, those who weren’t there included), we get something of a shift in Kissdum. There’s a new intro fairly shortly, and I’m pretty sure the animation changes a little. What’s hard to say is if it got better or worse. On one hand, I think the stills are somewhat more likely to, say, not bother with faces in long shots. On the other hand, the action choreography is better, so it actually looks more impressive even if the raw drawing is cheaper. They do decide that now is the time to start supplying some gore to keep people watching, though.
We also get plot arcs that can go past two episodes and that actually change the status quo. It’s about time. If this were Gurren Lagann, Lordgenome would be dead by now.
It doesn’t look like it at first, though – the downtime dream was sure to remind you that there was another squad member, the token girl. However, it turns out that she’s not actually Hadean infected, she’s just a super-cyborg because her dad gave her a life-saving operation when she was a moody teenager. Because apparently being a cyborg with a nearly indestructible body and super powers with no obvious or explored downsides, not even a hint in her appearance, is a bad thing, she hates her dad and wants to die, planning to make a suicide by cop with Aiba when Rei tries to make her fight people by holding said dad hostage.
Aiba, meanwhile, is kind of on his own after leaving Noa and Iera with the plot hook: a group of scientists who have developed a sonic weapon that can stop Hadeans cold. Noa has the knowledge to help, Iera wants to protect Noa, the lead researcher of this subgroup seems to have a crush on Iera despite Iera maybe having a crush on Noa… typical stuff.
Noa does manage to call Aiba back to protect her when the cyborg goes rampaging, with it explained that this is possible because Aiba’s powers, including apparently psychic ones, are finally developing. To be fair, from here on he starts using more impressive transformations and pulling off more superhuman feats. This leads to the battle between the cyborg (Itsuki. I’d better start using her name) wherein she’s grievously wounded by an involved Hadean but not killed. This lets her be saved by Nanao, who was tasked with doing so by her father after Rei just kind of let him go. Dad bites the dust giving up some unspecified organs to ensure Itsuki’s survival.
Thus, Noa and Iera go off with the scientists, Aiba goes on the hunt for Rei and Kyoka on his own but on good terms with the girls this time, and Nanao recruits Itsuki to join his team. A lower deck episode (with Noa’s team providing the action) shows all is not well with this, since Itsuki takes a very natural dim view of what Shu is doing with poor amnesiac Yuno.
Before their argument can really come to a head, Yuno is hurt in a skirmish with Hadeans, wherein she gets enough flash of her own memories to reveal the truth: an unknown number of other worlds before Earth have faced this same trial with the Book of the Dead, and those who have failed have been turned into the Hadeans, hence why they have those human-like cores or appendages.
But, enough of that. Yuno’s injury seems to involve poisoning, so Nanao rushes off to the city with her because that’s where equipment that can treat the condition is. Meanwhile, Aiba is fighting in the same city, having hunted down Rei, who is apparently something like the three V’s but anathematic to them. In any case, her last move is trying to drop a satellite on the city, which we get a pretty neat superpower scene of Aiba flying into not-quite-space to tear it apart and stop the mega damage, albeit still with bits raining down and getting us some pretty destruction.
When Aiba has enough gas in the tank to corner Rei after the satellite drop fails, she reveals that Yuno is alive in order to seemingly barter for her own survival, only for a chunk of random satellite debris to interrupt the scene and do a number on Rei.
This leads to Aiba managing to find his way to where Nanao and Yuno are, which is also where Noa and Iera have gotten themselves. The conflict there is… not really good for anyone. Nanao proves he is absolute self-centered scum, Aiba has to deal with everything being topsy turvy, Noa repeatedly fails to antivenom her big sister, Iera gets some spontaneous backstory about being angry and hate-filled even more so than previously addressed, and Yuno, when conscious, is mostly just confused and terrified because she’s suffering, maybe dying, in her underwear, and being handed off every time she becomes collateral damage from the boys fighting (it’s mostly Nanao’s fault, in terms of area attacks that clip her or collapse floor under her, but that’s neither here nor there, he’s trash without it).
Ultimately, Hadeans get involved, which causes Aiba to sacrifice himself protecting Yuno. He’s presumed dead by everybody but Noa, who believes in him because they’re playing up that angle, and frozen in carbonite along with Varda.
On his way out he tells Nanao to protect Yuno in his stead. Nanao takes this to mean “Use your superpowers to take her to humanity’s secret underwater base because that’s how we get medicine, then lose her to the crushing black oblivion of Davy Jones’ Locker in one episode flat.”
To be fair, said underwater base was a bit of a war zone courtesy of Rei taking her serious business Hadean form. All in all we kill off a lot of tertiary characters, like the scientist who had a crush on Iera, and at least make most of the leads look dead for a moment. Noa, specifically, is pulled out of drowning by Kyoka. You know, Rei’s boss (and apparently mother) and the main antagonist we’ve been building up? Yeah, she’s saving people now.
This gives her a chance to explain both what’s going on and what set everything up. The lowdown she gives on the whole mumbo jumbo is basically that every sapient species eventually faces this challenge, touching the force behind it all and being sent the Book of the Dead to have one Emissary fight. Win, everybody gets some esoteric evolution. Lose, the whole planet’s life is devoured by those Hadean flies, the Beelzebs, and reprocessed to be the cannon fodder in the next match. The situation on Earth has progressed enough that the Beelzebs are swarming in earnest, even turning on the Hadeans. And of course the Necrodiver is dead, which makes things difficult. Basically stuff we already knew.
As far as backstory, evidently Kyoka was on the prelude ship wreck and was the one to touch the mystical force, which both showed her what was coming and gave her an immaculate conception of Rei, the creepy devil child who nonetheless still loved her mommy. That’s… okay? Not sure it was worth an episode. I guess Rei’s no longer the absolute worst since Nanao has been back on scene, so maybe we can feel a little sympathy for her, but she’s already turned into a giant snake monster so I don’t think this ends well for her.
And, wouldn’t you know it, as Noa believes in the heart of the Necrodiver, Shu wakes up, shatters his prison, and goes back to looking for Yuno (presumed dead now) and all the other friends who are somehow still alive, flying in to help turn the tide against the Beelzeb swarm.
He dives in, gets the lowdown on Nanao being as bad at his job as could be and decides, heck with it, might as well save the world to thumb my nose at Yuno’s killers. Thus we get our big climactic battle where Rei summons every Beelzeb in the world to destroy what remains of the resistance, only to not realize that summoning every Beelzeb in the world into one place would allow the V’s to all take physical form, Varda to give Aiba one last weirdly effective shippy hug, and the trio to sacrifice themselves taking all the Beelzebs to space and esoterically blowing them up.
Meanwhile, Aiba (with some moral support tier help from Noa) skewers Rei. The end… is what it would be if this show didn’t have a few more episodes in it.
What more did you have to say? I know it looked at the end of this one like Rei had one more hit left in her, but that’s something that could easily be resolved as the credits rolled, and the ending would be perfectly serviceable.
Instead, we continue with weirdness. The next episode starts with cuts to alternate worlds where the other squaddies were made Necrodiver, showing us Yuno giving them the first stab just to head off the fanfics that will never exist. We then cut back to the real scenario, where Aiba has vanished and something bizarre and threatening is happening. Enough that we catch up with Aiba in what for this show is an uncharacteristically beautiful esoteric colorscape.
Turns out the big scary something in the real world is Rei taking on some new ultimate form, while in the color world her godlike alter-ego Varei tries to explain. Or put the moves on Aiba. Or antagonize him. Honestly she’s pretty much the poster child for “Lunatic babble that’s supposed to sound enlightened.” Meanwhile, Rei’s big monster form unleashes some ultimate power to turn everyone in the world (some exceptions apply, including the resistance being able to use their sonic weapons to prevent this) into swirly runes.
This leads to, frankly, a massively long battle with the resistance in the real world hitting Rei with everything they’ve got while Aiba battles in the spirit world, mostly getting his butt kicked until the souls of his fallen friends give him the strength to fight back proper. He takes out Varie’s protector, Abhoth, and then we get this weird sequence where Nanao and Aiba, in the physical and spirit worlds, are each tempted by the version of Rei with them offering Yuno – Varei that Aiba can be with her again if he breaks the veil of life and death, and Rei that she’ll let Yuno and Nanao live if Nanao declines to finish her off. The two Shus get weirdly perfectly synchronized through this and, as Yuno awakens enough to do something esoteric to “release” them, both reject the offer, resulting in Rei being simultaneously struck down in both her incarnations.
We get a bit of a tail where we find that Yuno, by another name, was Varei’s important master, whose death started Varei down the path of pursuing eternal life through this whole planet consuming emissary system. Rei’s human side is embraced by Kyoka’s spirit as she dies, which I guess is a nice touch for really letting our main antagonist go out with one last scene. Though the number of times she could have exited the stage before this is comically large.
Six months later, the resistance survivors are busily rebuilding human civilization, we meet a kid who looks weirdly like Varda, and we learn that Noa with the magic plot trinkets from the first act is leading a research team in the hopes of breaching the Necroworld and fishing out Aiba and Yuno.
The end… sort of.
You see, as I have been made aware, Kissdum was always 26 episodes, but those 26 episodes are different from the first run to the home video release, with the latter (which I have) cutting a recap episode… and including a one-episode epilogue. So if the six months later cautiously hopeful moment feels like you could stop there, you totally can. But the folks who put what amounts to the definitive edition of this show felt the need to tack another thirty minutes or so on, so I might as well see what they’re going to do with it.
So, a good deal of running time is spent by recapping the show in music montages, but what’s the meat? Well, Iera and Noa have swapped hairstyles, which makes Noa look a lot like Yuno. Also, humanity is back at factional conflicts since evidently there’s some serious resource or power shortfall despite the humanity we saw at the end of the show being one survivor colony, tops, that would have to grow a great deal to start worrying about Earth’s resources again. There’s an idea to draw power from the Necroworld, because using esoteric mumbo jumbo for electricity couldn’t possibly go wrong, but I’ll be honest the entire idea is totally orphaned bait for a sequel that’s never going to happen.
Instead, the meat is that Noa and that kid who kind of reminded people of Varda (named Mana) are using Noa’s science babble to astral project into the Necroworld, with the first trip for Noa rather than test subject Mana being the focus of the episode.
We see a cut where Varei and Varda argue over their respective masters, but they never really appear. Instead, Noa first meets some shade who is both Varei’s ancient master and Yuno, who pretty much says Yuno was an automatic system who never had free will or real feelings and that Shu has been freed of the burden of remembering her.
And what about Shu? I use that name, because apparently Aiba and Nanao have done some kind of fusion deal that pretty much seems like Aiba got Nanao’s hairstyle. Not even the color, just the sort of shoulder-length mess. And frankly that’s hopefully all he took from Nanao. And, with Yuno’s implicit and explicit blessing, Noa takes on her post-timeskip form, naked for some reason, and runs into Shu’s arms as they declare their love for each other.
Cut to Noa waking up in the hospital after her dive. Mana is fine too. So, what, that was all some kind of wet dream about the boy she liked and a little bit of that one she barely met who had the same name? Not quite as our final stinger shows Merged Shu in the real world, apparently integrated as a member of the new organization he and Noa are both a part of, taking a fighter jet to go off and meet her.
Okay, that’s it for real this time, exit’s to your right.
So, let’s begin the postmortem on Kissdum with its problems.
The beginning is overloaded and races insanely quickly through the opening arc, barely taking time to establish its characters.
The fighting is bog standard at best despite some creative ideas at the outset.
Most of the characters aren’t particularly likable, nor do they have real arcs that make you empathize with them. The best of the lot is Varda, the extra-sour alternative to Skyward Sword’s Fi. Her learning about humanity and coming to empathize with, perhaps even love her master, gaining emotions for a bond that will ultimately end in tragedy… it’s not the best character drama put to film, but it is legitimate character drama. I guess Noa is at least pleasant to have around, which is more than I can say for Iera until the second intro times decide to give her a personality beyond being just contrary and hostile all the time. Aiba isn’t great, but at least for most of the show he thinks Yuno is dead so it’s not 80% of his lines that are just her name. I guess he’s likable enough that I can believe that Noa and Varda like him even if I don’t really care.
Oddly enough, the silver medal for character and a bit of a pat on the back goes to Rei. Her sort of double life as both the agent of the apocalypse and Kyoka’s precious little daughter, when we were finally let in on it, played decently well. The pat on the back is for perhaps the one non-trivial and legitimately smart move the show made: having Rei serve as the final boss.
Recall, in the early arcs, Rei was nothing more than a loyalist goon serving the understated supposed ultimate villian Kyoka. But she was the forefront of what we saw in terms of an actual relatable antagonist rather than just a roaring monster, and as the show developed she demonstrated a glib sadism where she was fun to watch because she was clearly having fun with this, but at the same time you really wanted to see her get punched some time or other.
It would have been easy to just keep with the idea that Kyoka was the big bad (rather than making her complex, or something that would have been complex if it was better developed or explained) or to just have Aiba fight bigger and bigger monsters until we got a big boss Hadean with the same personality as all the others. The fact that it was Rei, and she kept her own theme and persona until the end, meant we actually had a connection with the ultimate antagonist beyond it being a big nightmarish whatever that was going to destroy all life on Earth.
And while we’ve segued to strengths, the ending of Kissdum, while not great, is one of the better executed versions of the “big esoteric nonsense” climax. It had the same sort of emotional energy as that weird tail in Blue Gender, but it actually had a decent slugfest, a zillion-stage naval battle, and enough important-sounding words to convince me that someone somewhere along the line had a clear idea of what Varei was trying to say. And, with the scope of the story, it did kind of need this esoteric end to actually wrap things up in a way that felt worthwhile. Could it have been bigger or more ambitious? Of course! Remember, this thing ran parallel to Gurren Lagann, which kind of shows you how it’s done. But for what it is, it works fine enough.
Since this is my month of Lovecraft, I guess I have to say a thing or two about the connections there. Researching shows that I could include in this month was how I learned Kissdum even existed and frankly, on that score (which has no bearing on its grade), it’s a disappointment. They pillaged some cool-sounding words from the Expanded Mythos without caring what those words were and called it a day.
But… the show does touch on some fitting themes to at least exist adjacent to the Cosmic Horror bracket. The Hadeans are suitably alien, and the fact that even the main hero’s powers involve a good deal of what could be construed as body horror? That checks out. So I can say at least they pillaged mythos names for things in a property that sort of thought about the universe in a similar way for most of its run time.
And that brings me to the grade for this production. I thought a long time about this one. Would I recommend it? Would I rewatch it? Will I remember it? And on most of those, I came down on the more negative end. Not necessarily because Kissdum R Engage Planet is actually that bad, but because it’s a mediocre offering in a genre and theme that demands excellence in some regard to stand out of the morass of countless other imitators. It’s a little like Yozakura Quartet, a show I felt no ill will towards and that I could easily see grabbing someone who was either really into the genre or really new to it, just for a dark superpower brawler rather than a masquerade adventure. I’ll offer Kissdum the same basic C grade.