Love of Kill

Episode 11

This is the episode where we finally begin to start getting our questions answered after weeks of buildup and I have to say…it's honestly a little underwhelming so far. Granted we only get what feels like the first half of a longer flashback, so there's a good chance any questions that I have after finishing this episode could be answered next week. Plus there was some nice subtle stuff that helped reframe earlier parts of the series which is honestly the bare minimum that I wanted this flashback to do. I like the implication that Ryang-ha was never really romantically interested in Château at the beginning of the series and that he was just looking to confirm whether she was the same little girl that he saw all those years ago. I also like how Ryang-ha already displayed really good intuition and survival instinct even at a young age. It's not too far of a leap to imagine that he would be a skilled hitman as he got older and I really do like how the episode ends by extensively mirroring Château as a child with her in present day as I can only assume she finally broke her mental block of those memories.

That being said, I guess my biggest complaint is that so far, these revelations don't feel like an adequate enough payoff to 10 episodes of buildup. The show is basically trying to tell two stories at the same time. The first is the present-day story with all these rivaling hitman organizations going after each other with Ryang-ha and Château in the middle. The other story is that of a little girl who ends up being transported by two young men that are slowly sinking deeper into the dark underbelly of the world. I can see where these two stories would line up but my problem is that they don't mesh together as cleanly as I think the show wanted them to. We got little hints about what happened in the past throughout the show and while it was intriguing, they made it so I could already infer a lot of the stuff we saw in this episode…so there aren't a lot of major new revelations here. Secondly, aside from Donny having an interest in getting Château, which I can only imagine is because that was a job that technically failed, there isn't really a lot in the present day that we could look forward to plot-wise. Remember the first half of the show was just Ryang-ha harassing Château and bringing danger towards her under the guise of protecting her. We have one final episode left and I'm starting to have trepidation that the conclusion won't be as satisfactory as I think I wanted it to but at least it might end up satiating my curiosity.

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Love of Kill is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.