The Love of Kill Season 2 anime TV series will have Chateau, Ryang-Ha, and Jim trying to unravel the mystery of Chateau Noble’s past with the help of a new unexpected ally. But when will Koroshi Ai Season 2 come out?
And with the Love of Kill manga’s ending having been released in January 2023, what does that mean for the anime TV series?
The first season of the Love of Kill anime TV series was produced by Studio Platinum Vision. A relatively new company, the studio is best known for anime such as Dr. Ramune -Mysterious Disease Specialist-, Kono Oto Tomare!, Devils Line, and Servamp.
The first anime project was helmed by director Hideaki Ooba (Dr. Ramune). Writer Ayumu Hisao (Kono Oto Tomare!, Dr. Ramune, Osamake: Romcom Where The Childhood Friend Won’t Lose) handled the script and series composition.
Character designer Youko Satou (7 SEEDS, Dr. Ramune) was also the chief animation director. Composer Kei Yoshikawa (Mobile Suit Gundam AGE) created the music.
The Love of Kill Season 2 OP (opening) and ED (ending) theme song music hasn’t been announced yet.
For the first season, the Love of Kill OP “Midnight Dancer” was performed by Toshiki Masuda, while the ED “Makoto Period” was performed by Aika Kobayashi.
Crunchyroll’s Love of Kill English dub release date was on February 23, 2022. Erin Yvette played Chateau Dankworth, while Ryan-ha Song was voiced by Ryan Colt Levy.
The first season’s finale, Love of Kill Episode 12, was released on March 30, 2022.
- Updated December 21, 2022: Love of Kill manga ending in 2023.
- Updated March 31, 2022: Love of Kill Volume 13 might be the manga’s ending.
- Updated March 29, 2022: Added interview quotes.
This article provides everything that is known about Love of Kill Season 2 (Koroshi Ai Season 2) and all related news. As such, this article will be updated over time with news, rumors, and analysis. Meanwhile, let’s delve down into what is known for certain.
Koroshi Ai Season 2 release date predictions: Did the first season kill its chances?
As of the last update, Kadokawa, Toy’s Factory, Studio Platinum Vision, or any company related to the production of the anime has not officially confirmed the Love of Kill Season 2 release date. Nor has the production of a Love of Kill sequel been announced.
Once the news is officially confirmed this article will be updated with the relevant information.
In the meantime, it’s possible to speculate about when, or if, the Koroshi Ai Season 2 release date will occur in the future.
The Love of Kill reviews have been good but not great. Some anime fans may have been turned off by the slow progression of the first several episodes, never mind the initial creepiness of Song Ryang-ha’s actions toward Chateau Dankworth since audiences didn’t yet understand his motivations.
Many in the anime fandom still follow the “three episode rule” where they need to be hooked by Episode 3 or they’ll drop a show. Unfortunately, the anime’s first season didn’t really begin to pick up the pace until after the first several episodes when the story began to delve down into the mystery and intrigue that’s the foundation for Ryan-ha and Chateau’s relationship. It also didn’t help that most of the episodes started with long recaps that dragged out the story even more.
Worse, the way Love of Kill Episode 12 ended left the anime’s first season feeling incomplete. The story progression felt cut off rather than terminating at a natural resting place in the overall plot… which the actual source material provided several manga volumes later.
This issue could have easily been avoided if the script had simply conserved screen time by not playing the OP/ED video every episode and removing the overly long flashbacks and recaps. Such content wasted almost 6 minutes per episode. If the ending was an extended Love of Kill Episode 13 that would have allowed for a much better conclusion since the effective runtime could have increased by over 60 minutes.
With all of these issues negatively impacting anime fans’ reactions to the TV show, it doesn’t seem likely that the anime production committee will have Love of Kill renewed for a second season. But it would be nice to be wrong since the second half of Chateau Noble’s story really needs to be animated in order for the anime experience to be fulfilling (please see the manga comparison section below for more details).
Love of Kill manga ending in 2023, but a sequel is already out in the webcomic
The story for the anime is based on the Love of Kill manga series by creator Fe. Serialized in Media Factory’s Monthly Comics Gene magazine since October 2015, the shojo manga is up to Volume 12 as of March 26, 2022.
When Volume 12 came out, the author revealed that the Love of Kill manga’s ending will be in the next volume. The manga series reached its climax chapter on November 15, 2022. The final chapter will be released in Monthly Comics Gene February 2023 issue on January 14, 2023. The Love of Kill Volume 13 release date will be in 2023.
The story was originally first self-published as a Love of Kill webcomic on Pixiv beginning in October 2012. The original title was literally I Wanted to Read a Manga About an Assassin Couple in Love so I Started Drawing One (Koroshiai Kappuru Manga ga Yomitē nā to Omotteta kara Nanka Kaki Hajimeteta).
North American publisher Yen Press is releasing the Love of Kill manga’s English translation. As of April 26, 2022, the English manga will already be up to Volume 7, and Volume 8 is scheduled for June 21, 2022, and Volume 9 for August 23, 2022.
There is already a direct Love of Kill sequel called A Short Story About the Assassin Couple in Love Manga that I Just Wanted to Read About (Koroshiai Kappuru Manga ga Yomitai Dake no Shōsetsu).
In a December 2020 interview with Comic Natalie, the creator Fe discussed how she wrote the manga as a side job until the first volume was published. “The busier I was at work, the more motivated I was to draw something!” Fe said. And when Fe was initially contacted online by an editor, the webcomic creator was wary of being deceived by a fake, but Fe’s sister confirmed the contact was a real editor.
Fe was actually conflicted about using the title Koroshi Ai, which is literally a pun likened to the concept of a “killing love”.
“This term is not my idea at all,” she explained. “It is a situation that describes a character’s relationship, and it has been popularized by a certain segment of the population.”
In an interview with Anime News Network, Fe explained that the pixiv version was a “prototype” that “only tells the story with fragmentary situations” without considering the chronology of events. She thought that simply connecting the dots for the manga “wouldn’t work as a commercial product” so she reworked the story from the perspective of Ryang-Ha and Chateau’s first encounter.
The manga creator also explained the process for how she decided to develop their relationship.
“Instead of developing their relationship dramatically through a specific scene, the situation unfolds organically through the buildup of events leading up to that moment. That might be how it goes. As for the degree of relationship progress between Ryang-Ha and Chateau, those two characters don’t really listen to the author telling them what to do. So I’m being honest when I say that even I have no idea what’s going to happen to them next.”
-Fe
Koroshi Ai manga compared to the anime
The anime adaptation was fairly faithful to the Love of Kill manga. However, Director Hideaki Oba explained why some comedic special bonus/omake chapters were skipped due to the abrupt tonal shifts between action and comedy.
“It’s one of the big appeals of the manga, so I tried to replicate it as much as possible, but some of them worked, some didn’t, and some we didn’t adopt from the beginning because we thought it was impossible,” Oba said. “When I looked at it from that type of perspective, I felt that it was trickier than conveying action in some respects.”
Another major change was that Indian-kun’s name was changed to the very generic Jim for whatever reason.
The biggest problem was the pacing. Unlike almost every other anime out there, this adaptation dragged everything out by taking every scene very slowly. While this might make manga purists happy, there were recaps and flashbacks galore to the point of annoyance (especially if you binge-watched the episodes as I did).
It’s not like the plot necessarily needed to be this belabored. There was more than enough source material. When the anime was released there were over 70 chapters released in Japanese and the English Volume 6 included Chapters 31 through 35.
It would have been better if the anime’s plot in earlier episodes had moved faster by incorporating more of the manga’s comedic beats from the special bonus chapters. But by Love of Kill Episode 10, the anime had only begun adapting Chapter 31, which meant the last three episodes needed to cover two whole volumes at normal pacing.
Of course, the main reason for the initial slow pacing was that the anime was essentially stalling for time so the big reveal was timed for the climax of the first season. In order for the first season to feel somewhat complete, audiences needed to learn the (partial) truth of Chateau and Ryang-Ha’s connection as children, and why Ryang-Ha killed the triad leader Seung-Woo as the killer of Chateau’s father, but those events happened fairly early in the manga series.
Episode 11’s ending scene corresponded to Volume 7: Chapter 40, which is when Chateau finally remembered her childhood trauma in the present and kept apologizing. But since the episode’s ending combined elements of Chapters 38 and 40 that meant another flashback would finish the story.
The way that Episode 12 juxtaposed the flashback with Chateau’s mental breakdown in the present greatly heightened the tension. The remainder of the episode teased glimpses of future events like Donny meeting Mr. Noble and Nikka targeting Jim that won’t happen until Love Of Kill Season 2.
All in all, the ending of the first season’s finale, Koroshi Ai Episode 12, found a stopping point corresponding to manga Volume 8: Chapter 42 (only the panels focused on Ryang-Ha and Chateau were fully adapted).
Ending at this point was a halfway decent stopping point since audiences finally understand Ryang-Ha’s motivations toward Chateau based on their shared past. While the mystery is resolved, the problem is that the first season essentially leaves audiences hanging since there’s no conflict resolution regarding their circumstances in the present.
The post-credits scene where Chateau sat on the roof trying to think of compensation for hiring Ryang-Ha was an anime original ending that was anticlimactic at best. It’s supposed to imply that they now have each other’s backs now that the enemy helicopter is incoming, but their odd behavior came off as very forced misdirection based on the way they were aiming their guns.
And for an anime that’s ostensibly about a romance between assassins the romantic progression has only barely progressed to the point of learning to trust, never mind falling in love.
Really, the best stopping point was actually Chapter 56 since the intervening chapters fully explained the mystery of Chateau Noble by completing the Donny Bachmann story arc. Manga volumes 8 through 10 volumes were also full of action so they would have made for a much better climax. Chapter 57 would have also been the perfect launchpad for Love of Kill Season 2 since there’s a two-month time gap separating the story arcs.
Unfortunately, adapting all 56 chapters would have required that the anime production committee greenlight a two-cour first season. Apparently, the producers must have felt that prospect was too risky, but not having a Love of Kill Part 2 probably hurt the series’ chances of gaining popularity in the long run since the story didn’t hit its stride until the ending of the first season.
The secondary problem is that 15 chapters are simply not enough content for a standalone second season. It’s the perfect length for a Love of Kill movie, but that seems unlikely at this point.
The good news is that there are already enough new chapters released for making Love of Kill Season 2. Better yet, English-only manga readers can read ahead of the anime when the English Love of Kill Volume 8 releases in June 2022.
Love of Kill Season 2 anime TV spoilers (plot summary/synopsis)
The fog over Chateau and Ryang-Ha’s childhoods finally lifts. During that fateful encounter, they were brought together by a boy named “Ryang-Ha Song”-the real one-but what awaits them now…?
Ryang-Ha and Chateau are forced into a life of hiding and she wants to officially “hire” him in order to restart their relationship on a more solid footing. The two are contacted by Chateau’s partner Indian guy Jim and another man with whom they have a history… the red-haired Nikka!?
While, at first, it seemed like Nikka was threatening Jim’s life, it turns out Nikka is going through a self-described “rebellious phase”. When some of Donny’s men attempt to take Jim they insult the “mad dog” of Donny and Nikka shoots the henchmen dead in response.
Nikka claims he’s now in the same boat as the rest of them, but Ryang-Ha is suspicious of the younger man’s story. However, he is willing to listen to any intel that Nikka might have on “Chateau Noble”.
It turns out that Donny has a connection to Chateau’s father, Liszt Noble, and the elderly Mr. Noble, Chateau’s grandfather.
When Chateau is captured, Ryang-Ha and his friends will infiltrate an isolated island in the middle of the ocean to save her, but the difficulties they face, and Chateau’s roots weigh heavily and deeply on them…
Unfortunately, anime fans will have to wait until the Love of Kill Season 2 release date to watch what happens next. Stay tuned!