Love of Kill

Episode 8

Honestly, given the implications from the previous episode and the content of this one, this week's Love of Kill felt a little bit more drawn out than it needed to be. Which is interesting, considering how my initial primary complaint about Love of Kill at the beginning of the show was its rather confusing tone. While the past couple of episodes leaned more into the serious mystery side of things that I appreciate, the overall pacing of the second half of the show is a worrying sign that the actual contents of that mystery might not have been enough to fill out a standard television run.

This is probably most evident with the scene involving Jim seemingly getting shot in the car which honestly felt like a really careless bit of lazy writing. Not only has Love of Kill already shown us a more convincing main character death fake-out just two episodes ago, but the actual setup for this fake-out just doesn't make sense: how does a trained hitman fail to realize that he didn't actually shoot a person in the head at seemingly point-blank range? We got some flashbacks to when Château was seemingly first picked up in the car by Ryang-ha as it seems like she's recollecting moments from her past that were originally fuzzy. The sudden return of these memories felt terribly convenient, but I'll let it slide if it actually leads to a revelation. Everything else is just literally setting the stage for what I hope is the major confrontation of the season. Is Ryang-ha the same Ryang-ha from all of those flashbacks? Does he genuinely know who this crime boss is and he's just putting on appearances or is this just a huge case of being at the wrong place at the wrong time? There's really not many other places the show can go at this point, so I'm looking forward to the remaining episodes with renewed anticipation.

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Love of Kill is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.