This month, our friends at Sentai Filmworks is re-issuing the extremely wacky gag manga-based Kill Me Baby with a spiffy new cover. If you like your violence with the Silly turned up to 11, grab your bazooka and shurikens and grab a seat!
Yasuna Oribe is your pretty standard, bubble-headed high school girl with a klutzy disposition and a propensity to cultivate some very unusual and dangerous friends. Her stoic best friend Sonya, also a high school girl who sits next to Yasuna in class, is a deadly trained assassin and is prone to showing off her killer skills at inopportune times. Yasuna just wants to get the upper hand on at least once though and recruits another fellow classmate, the mellow and easy-going Agiri Goshiki, to help her train in the ways of the ninja. Oh did I mention Agiri is a ninja. Because she is. A ninja. Cuz why not? This sets the stage for many a wacky non-starting confrontation as Yasuna attempts to wage war on Sonya (I mean, sometimes that’s what happens… Other times they just kinda hang out and shoot the breeze, you know?).
As one would expect from its 4-koma manga source (think short non-sequitur comic strip style like US comic strips), Kill Me Baby mostly eschews plot to deliver wall-to-wall silliness. The extremely cutesy animation style (from director Yoshiki Yamakawa who designed the ultra moe characters in Digi-Carat and would go on to director High-Score Girl) is the most immediate indication that we’re not dealing with a show grounded in reality. In a lot of ways with both the high school setting and the character designs, I feel like this one is trying for something ridiculous on the level of the hilarious absurdity of comedy classic Nichijou, but honestly it rarely ever excels quite that well at getting laughs. Having said that, it’s still consistently amusing and intermittently actively funny making it for a pleasant way to spend a few hours if you dig your anime on the more high-energy, light-hearted side.
On the technical side, the 1080p visuals are crisp and clear as one would expect from Sentai. I’m guessing they re-used the existing transfer from the previous release since this is primarily a re-issue/repackaging but why mess with something if it was fine the first time? The audio is serviceable with both an English dub and a Japanese track with English subtitles, both in stereo 2.0. The extras are the standard clean OP and ED animations and some Sentai trailers.
Overall, if you are looking for a serious take on a cold-blooded teenage assassin, then look elsewhere. If on the other hand, you want something relentlessly silly and bubbly that won’t make you think too hard, Kill Me Baby is going to be right up your alley.