A Boring Video Game Walkthrough (Angels of Death Review)

Genre: Psychological, horror, thriller

Rating: R-17

Studio: J.C.Staff

Episodes: 16

Overview:

Angels of Death follows Racheal Gardener, a thirteen year old girl who wakes up in an unknown place. She has no memory of where she is or what is going on. She wandered around into the rest of the building to be met with some sinister characters. She meets a man by the name of Issac ‘Zack’ Foster who carries a reaper like sickle and he is covered from head to toe in bandages. Zack wants to kill Racheal at first but they eventually strike up a deal in order to make their way out of the building.

Review:

This series was a strange one. Both in terms of the story and the episode format. I, originally planned to review this after the episode twelve finished airing as I assumed the series would wrap itself up then. Instead it left on a cliffhanger and carried on with an extra four more episodes which seemed like an unnecessary drag out of an already dying series. From watching I can say, without a doubt that I’m sure they could have shortened the series to a regular 12 or 13 episode slot. It didn’t need to be dragged out for 16 whole episodes.

I, like many others was excited for this series when it first started airing. As someone who had read the first couple of volumes of the manga and had fallen for the overall art style portrayed in the manga I was curious to see what the anime would bring to the table. I have to say that the appeal of this series wore out fast when it first began. What started with an intriguing concept of  a girl waking up in an unknown location with everyone around her trying to kill her turned into a rather dull walk through of the building with a handful of crazy killers to try and spice the series up.

The first few episodes were repetitive. After Racheal and Zack team up they work their way through each floor and defeat the other kills who inhabit said floors. It’s a pretty standard set up for something you’d see in a video game and when looking at it form an anime perspective it doesn’t really work. As a game concept it works fine as you are engaging the player by challenging them to defeat each level and boss. As an anime however, it does nothing to engage the viewer and I often felt like I was watching a gameplay walkthrough than an anime series. It didn’t pack a punch and I could basically guess what would happen next as it was too predictable.

At some point about half way through the series took a turn and went from a slow gameplay walkthrough to focusing more on the mystery of Racheal and her past. The episodes which focused more on Racheal seemed much more bland but this is probably due to the fact that Racheal doesn’t have a personality which can hold on its own. When with Zack there seems to be some chemistry but without him the series often seemed dull. Zack, for me personally really kept the series going as his character was genuinely interesting and entertaining. Sure his laugh was a bit grating occasionally at the beginning but he was the best character of the bunch.

Zack was best boy of this anime.

I found the final episodes of the series to be so underwhelming. What I assume was supposed to be a shock to the story with the whole thing around her parents and Danny seemed really predictable. I was surprised at the beginning when, spoiler alert, Zack “killed” Danny in an instant and that was the end of that. It seemed pointless but bringing him back towards the end just seemed like it was for the sake of needing a real villain to the story. Danny was supposed to be creepy with his fake eye and weird tongue thing as well as his obsession with Racheal and her eyes. But for me he just seemed cringeworthy as a villainous character.

The concept of finding a god and Zack becoming Rachael’s god just seemed halfhearted for me. When Reverend Grey and Danny discussed being human and gods and so on towards the end I just kept thinking ‘get over yourselves’. The concept just made me roll my eyes more than anything else. Maybe I was expecting something more but it never came, who knows. I didn’t enjoy the seemingly open ended finale either. I have a great dislike to series when they don’t really confirm or deny anything but leave it for the viewer to decide and try to figure out what happened for themselves. I find that a cheap tactic but that’s just my preference.

Overall, Angels of Death crashed and burned for me. It was boring like watching a tediously slow gameplay but at the same time something willed me to continue on. My curiosity got the better with me on this series and I put myself through all the episodes just to see where they were taking it. Unfortunately this time around my curiosity didn’t lead to anything very promising.

Overall rating: 5/10

Until next time thanks for reading and I hope you’re having a great day!

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