Is Engage Kiss Based on a Manga or Light Novel? Story's Source Explained

What started out as a pretty average anime with a basic premise is quickly growing on anime fans. As soon as episode 3 dropped, opinions on Engage Kiss quickly went from "It's okay" to "What happens next?!" It's agonizing having to wait a whole week to know, so is there an Engage Kiss light novel or manga to get answers from?

Read on to find out!

What is Engage Kiss All About?

On the surface, Engage Kiss is your run-of-the-mill romantic comedy where the male lead has two girls aggressively pining for him. In this anime, the aggressiveness is quite literal since it also has action elements to complete it.

Shuu owns a company that goes on jobs to exterminate demons in Bayron City. The city never runs out of such jobs, and he and his half-demon girlfriend, Kisara, are the company's only employees. It's easy to assume that they would be living in luxury.

Unfortunately, that couldn't be farther from Shuu and Kisara's reality.

Due to Shuu's spending habits, he's always in a rut financially, and he counts on both Kisara and his ex-girlfriend, Ayano, to help him survive.

That would make anyone hate Shuu. After all, what kind of man leaves a high-paying job in order to go for a lifestyle he couldn't afford, and then extort two sincere girls at the same time?

As it turns out, Shuu has quite the reason.

Shuu left his company where Ayano was his colleague. Though not explicitly mentioned, he is assumed to have made the decision so he could focus on his revenge mission of finding the demons that killed his family.

It's for this revenge plot that he chose to get into a contract with Kisara in the first place. Since humans could only do one contract in exchange for their souls, Shuu offered to give up his memories to Kisara so he could give them piece by piece.

The story is ways off the producers' early marketing of the anime being a "slapstick romantic comedy," and the Shuu-Kisara-Ayano love triangle is a lot more tragic than the creators had us believe.

Is Engage Kiss Based on a Manga or Light Novel?

Engage Kiss is an original anime by A-1 Pictures so there is no light novel or manga to watch while waiting for the next episode.

It is part of Aniplex's Project Engage, a multi-media project that also includes a mobile game by Square Enix called Engage Kill. As of this writing, the game is still in production.

The anime is directed by veteran director Tomoya Tanaka (who directed numerous anime episodes, including ones from Spy x Family, Hunter x Hunter, and Kaguya-sama: Love is War - Ultra Romantic).

Working alongside him are original character designer Tsunako (Date A Live series) and scriptwriter Fumiaki Maruto (White Album 2, Saekano: How to Raise a Boring Girlfriend).

Since Engage Kiss is an original anime, everybody is in the dark about what happens next in the series. This further adds to the excitement that fans are feeling toward the show.

Now that the story is finally starting to take its intended shape, the fact that nobody can spoil anything is proving to be a great thing.

Fans can stream Engage Kiss with an active Crunchyroll subscription on Saturdays. Though already previous announced, there hasn't been any recent update about the release of an English dub for Engage Kiss.