Kill Me Baby

I feel I have to write this review because a lot of people just aren't getting it. This show is not meant to be taken seriously; it's a joke. This is not some romantic comedy where the characters drastically change and have inspirational quotes. This show is just randomness. It's like a poo poo joke that never ceases to be funny. So if you're thinking about watching this show ask yourself these questions. Do I like random acts of comedy or do I like strong plots? Do I like generic characters or do I like characters that change over time? This is just for the ... newcomers who I feel might be discouraged by the previous reviewers who just don't understand real comedy.

Kill Me Baby is a practical piece of work. Since it is merely an animation aimed at bringing 4-koma gags to life on the screens of the audience, its budget is a fraction of major shows that focus on graphical excellence, deep and intriguing plotlines, and of course character development that is well fleshed out.

Nevertheless, Kill Me Baby is an anime that competently makes use of the meagre budget as well as handling the transition from 4-koma gags to an anime reasonably well. Considering that it is a comedy show, and as such aimed towards squeezing a laugh out of every person who watches it, ... I have to admit that KmB does a good job in that respect, but is essentially a rather flat piece of work in all other respects. However, I should clarify that that is through no fault of the anime itself.

4-koma gags do not make for a good story that can carry an anime throughout its airing. Based on its source material, we can safely conclude that KmB is not a series that attempts to develop that. It is basically a succession of animated material that is just slapped together and packaged as an anime. However, its main selling point is of course, hilarity. And I can guarantee you, hilarity definitely ensues. That being said, the anime does not have any semblance of continuity and parts of it do not make sense at all to the casual viewer. This again can be attributed to the nature of the source material. If I were to judge KmB while taking that into account, I would say that KmB is actually a game attempt by the studio to create a good anime. Not "good" in the sense of thought-provoking, loaded with heart-aching drama or having bucketfuls of fanservice, but rather that it achieves what it sets out to accomplish, which is to brighten up someone's day.

Hmm... art. Now, the art of KmB is flat. Very flat. The show looks like something drawn by the moderately talented preschooler. However, one needs to remember that the show does not have excessive budget on which to blow on those gorgeous, brilliant graphics that cause people to stare, mesmerised at the screen. Thus, the art being of mediocre standard is actually forgivable in this case.

The sound part is definitely mediocre. The same soundtracks are reused so often that by the time I finished the anime I could almost hum all of 'em. Mention weird songs and KmB's OP comes to mind. Honestly, I could not make heads nor tails of that song, from the animation to the lyrics. However, I feel that the ED is a significant improvement over the OP, not that it would rank in any charts.

I don't believe that there's any need to talk about the characters in detail. Essentially, we have Yasuna = airhead girl, Sonya = paranoid assassin, Agiri = weird ninja and even an Unused Character just for the heck of it. Strange that they called upon Kugimiya Rie for Unused Character though. Overall, the characters are just there doing silly things for the audience's enjoyment. The voice actors were decent and were able to effectively convey the comical moments so that the mood pervades the audience.

Frankly, even though its other aspects were not headed for excellence, KmB really tries very hard in trying to let the audience enjoy it through its funny, hilarious gags. In that, it has succeeded well, in fact exceeding all expectations. The main reason I had for giving KmB my rating was due to me enjoying the series so much and laughing till my sides ached. The hilarious moments will have people literally ROFL.

Overall, KmB is still a decent anime. I'll say this again: its potential was severely hampered by both the funding and the original source material it had to work with. Despite that, KmB makes the most of its situation. Kudos to the people in charge for managing to eke out a thoroughly enjoyable anime from such limited resources. I'm giving it a score of 6, mainly because I enjoyed the comedic interaction between the characters as well as the truly funny gags that successfully made the anime a must-watch for people looking for a comedy anime series.

I remember watching a couple scenes out of context from Kill me baby on youtube months ago and to be fair, they were random enough to be funny. The characters were quirky and the situations were absurd, which is just what any comedy of this type needs to be succesful or at the very least enjoyable. It was immediately apparent as soon as I watched the very first episodes that I was wrong.

Kill me baby is the kind of series that sets a ridiculous premise and then never lives up to it, the kind of comedy that presents itself as completely demented and over-the-top but ... never leaves the comfort zone of character-based jokes, the kind of experience that hypes itself to stardom but settles for mediocrity instead - It simply doesn't have enough to push the show forward.


The ridiculous premise quickly degenerates into a mere gimmick due to sheer repetition of the same trite, formulaic jokes. They all play out the same way: Yasuna does something silly, she gets knocked out by the annoyed Sonya the assassin, while Agiri the ninja does something random, if she is around while that happens… you can generally predict how the joke plays out before it even starts, which is exactly as exciting as it sounds.

But beyond that, three characters are simply not enough to carry a comedy show for twelve full-length episodes. Any succesful comedy series I can think of – let's say Azumanga Daioh – had a diverse enough set of side characters that prevented the show from reaching the point of stalemate and kept the show relatively fresh despite the length.

At this point I wonder how Kill me Baby would have fared if it was a 3-minutes short series… as a friend of mine commented on the series: “it was tolerable back when I watched it weekly”, which is something I can honestly believe, as from my experience, the more often I watched an episode of Kill me Baby, the harder it was to pull through it and by applying that rule on a more abstract level, then you're better off not watching it at all. The opening track, "Kill Me Baby", arguably the worst opening song for a show of all time pretty much represents the show as a whole - weird at first, annoying and repetitive after you hear it once. Stay away.