
Kill Me Baby (キルミーベイベー, Kiru Mī Beibē) is an interesting comedic anime for its tiny cast of three main characters, Yasuna, Sonya and Agiri, and the events that transpire between their lives in higher education. It manages to strike a balance between humorous, slapstick moments, between genuine, emotional moments between Yasuna and Sonya, as the hard-blooded and abusive-towards-Yasuna assassin shows that she actually cares about her.
I find it admirable in how it gets you intrigued to care about the inner-workings and functions of its utter-nothingness of a cast; how they synergise off each other, over its 13 episode run, with how repetitive and limited the show is in terms of its writing and animation quality.
However, that's the huge gripe I have with the show. I generally have no issue with a show somewhat following the same episodic structure and formula, but what gets me about Kill Me Baby is that no matter how much it tries to diverge from the written path, it still ends up being the same rotten and beaten horse comedic joke of Yasuna getting abused by Sonya, which is funny for about two episodes, then it gets tiring quick when you realise that's all it has to show for any sense of comedic value.
I understand that it's not an anime to be taken seriously, but when its main comedic bit is repeated ad nauseam for every episode (which typically lasts 24 minutes), it gets sickeningly old fast, and anything an episode throws in to try to give it more "nuance" (such as Yasuna and Sonya playing hide-and-seek with a small girl, or them messing around Agiri's house, which is filled with hidden traps that only Yasuna is affected by) barely makes up for it, because at the end of the day, it just ends up being more of an excuse for the show to constantly shove in our face how much of a stupid, unaware dumbass Yasuna is, which was already made clear by the first episode.
It makes an already limited show teeth-grinding to sit down and watch, especially if you're watching every episode back-to-back (which I did, and it was tiring as hell). It's a show that begs to be enjoyed in short bursts only, and even so, it does not change anything about itself.
Kill Me Baby does nothing to make it worth watching. It does not reward the consumer the push to stick with it, nor does it have anything to push itself forward past a mere formulaic gimmick.
But I still stuck with it, because at the very least, it was intriguing and somewhat enjoyable.
One of the only saving graces of this show was Agiri, but even then, her own existence was a gimmick.