Spoiler-free review: Kiss or Die is an improv comedy drama cleverly disguised as a thirst trap

This review discusses a series with mature themes and sexual humour. Viewer discretion advised.

Kiss or Die sounds like the perfect late-night trash TV: six Japanese comedians are told they’re filming commercials, then blindsided with a game where famous adult video actresses try to steal a kiss from them. Resist and they survive (it has to be ‘deservingly-earned’ plot-wise); succumb and they’re out. It sounds like perfect disposable thirst-trap slop, but instead, Kiss or Die somehow morphs into one of the most chaotic and creative improv dramas you’ll see this year. Fair warning: there’s no nudity, but the show leans heavily into adult themes and suggestive setups.

If you like tightly written plotlines, look away now. Kiss or Die is for people who enjoy watching others flounder in fish-out-of-water setups — especially when the comedians have zero leading-man energy, which the producers gleefully exploit by pairing them with actresses they clearly idolise. The tension is both real and absurd: you are led to believe that they can’t possibly resist, which makes their attempts to play it straight while floundering to exercise their comedic chops even funnier.

A seemingly innocuous setup that keeps evolving

Here, it’s the setups that make the series. Each comedian is unceremoniously dropped into a corporate drama where everyone around them knows their character — except them. They have to improvise roles, navigate fake office politics, and keep a straight face when the actresses enter to crank the seduction levels to eleven.

The producers have no qualms making things as awkward as possible for our would-be protagonists.

But what makes Kiss or Die unique is that it doesn’t stop at office melodrama; at the risk of spoiling the fun, just when you think you’ve figured out the formula, the show shifts gears and genres, and the constant escalation is what makes the show a spectacle. By the time you get to the finish line, you’d have realised that the whole thirst-trap premise was essentially a Trojan horse, and there’s actually plenty of meat on this bone — no pun intended.

To some extent, Kiss or Die feels somewhat like Murderville or its British parent Murder in Successville: a scripted skeleton carried by actors, with one clueless guest improvising with guidance from a ‘handler’ for the scene. But where those shows spoof police procedurals while introducing a Cluedo element, Kiss or Die parodies J-drama tropes — melodramatic boardroom speeches, soulful stares, grand confessions and much, much more — and collides them with heavy-handed adult video-style seduction.

The series is at its best when even the handlers and supporting cast are thrown for a loop and have to ad lib when the comedians go rogue, best exemplified by comedian Gekidan Hitori’s standout performance. He leans into the absurdity from the timestamp 00:00, playing the straight man with fervour to sell the scene, then dropping unexpected clangers that derail everything and everyone. His chemistry with Nana Yagi, one of the standout adult video actresses in the cast, creates moments that almost pass for legitimate drama. At the same time, he picks key moments to let his intrusive thoughts win — often with hilarious results. His petty spats with fellow comedian and co-protagonist Noda Crystal, in particular, tank entire scenes while the supporting cast scramble to salvage continuity. The supporting players deserve a large share of the credit for holding the house of cards together when the comedians sabotage emotional setups.

The hosts serve as a surrogate audience, helping viewers who may find the series confusing.

Meanwhile, the three guest hosts act as the surrogate audience, contextualising the chaos  — they basically say the quiet part out loud — and tempering moments that might otherwise veer into creepy if you take it at face value.

However, the chaos isn’t for everyone. Some gags flop, some setups fall apart, and cringey one-liners don’t escape the ire of the hosts. Sometimes you’ll even find yourself screaming at the screen as obvious plot twist setups are wilfully ignored entirely with no explanation or closure — but that unpredictability and deliberate subversion is the point. You’re watching a train wreck unfold, yet every so often, it clicks into sublime comedy-drama: the perfect blend of earnestness and absurdity.

An acquired taste in the best possible sense

Kiss or Die thrives on tension: between adult video actresses and mostly awkward comedians, between scripted tropes and unscripted chaos, between earnest performances and deliberate sabotage. What starts as thirst bait quickly evolves into a meta-parody of Japanese drama itself, buoyed by moments of genuine chemistry with surprising payoffs for unexpected setups while kiboshing expected ones. The ending is particularly apt and is the perfect litmus test for whether or not this show is right up your alley.

There are moments that make me suspect that it’s not 100% ad-libbed, yet the illusion holds because the cast keeps pulling you back into believing it is. One minute it’s parody, the next it’s credible J-drama — even the hosts are left cry-laughing at the whiplash.

Would a sequel work? Probably not. The lightning-in-a-bottle quality relies on the cast’s chemistry and the audience’s surprise. But for now, Kiss or Die stands as a rare case where average comedians who have to exude main character energy in an absurd seduction improv drama, produce something more memorable than it has any right to be.