6 Angels

Deep in the deserts of southwestern United States lies "Neo Purgatory." Formerly a nuclear waste disposal site, the facility has been turned into a prison for hardened criminals; that is, until the prisoners weaponize the nuclear waste and riot, turning Neo Purgatory into an international disaster.

Maki Aoba, Doris Nicholas, Marilyn Moreau, and Naomi Jones make up the "Guard of Rose," an all-female special police task force. Along with stowaway Katherine Hook and multi-purpose robot Link, the Guard of Rose is on patrol investigating rumors of an "angel" near Neo Purgatory when their helicopter is shot down. As the crisis within the prison rapidly devolves, the Guard of Rose members might be the only ones who can stop the prisoners before they unleash nuclear armageddon.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Hook, Katherine Main

Shiratori, Yuri Japanese

Aoba, Maki Main

Orikasa, Fumiko Japanese

Canyon, Donn Supporting

Watabe, Takeshi Japanese

Nicholas, Doris Supporting

Okamura, Akemi Japanese

Moreau, Marilyn Supporting

Asano, Mayumi Japanese

Jones, Naomi Supporting

Neya, Michiko Japanese

Kobayashi, Makoto Director, Mechanical Design

Akimoto, Yasushi Planning, Executive Producer

Amano, Masamichi Music

Katou, Hiromi Character Design

Reviews

Jan 8, 2018

anime_chibi1290

Mixed Feelings

Ok, so I'm gonna try not to dump on this anime too hard seeing how it's just an ONA.

Story 4/10

This had so much potential but the way they executed it was weird. It had an interesting enough concept, but the transitions weren't very smooth and it was hard to keep track of what was going on. The synopsis does a better job explaining the anime than the actual anime. There were definitely times where I went "This scene isn't too bad. Too bad I don't know what's happening..."

Art 5/10

It wasn't spectacular and it wasn't terrible. It was everything I expected from an anime that ... came out in the early 2000's.

Sound 5/10

Ehh, nothing to write home about.

Characters 5/10

As surface level characters they were just ok. Aside from the the main antagonist, you don't really get a backstory/motive. All the characters were just there and it was hard to feel bad for any of them when something bad happened. They also were bad about introducing characters in general, you don't know the mains too well or even what their job is on the ship, and whenever they introduced a support character, it wouldn't be until the next couple episodes that you kinda had an idea of who they were.

Enjoyment 4/10

Well, I watched it to the end didn't I?

Overall 5/10

Overall, it could've been better. I wanted a little more than what I got out of it. Maybe if they had more money and gained a little more popularity, it could've reached a level of it's good but is easily forgotten about like Earth Girl Arjuna or Giovanni's Island. Would I recommend this? Only if you absolutely had nothing better to watch or despite the poor reviews, you wanted to watch it anyway (like me), otherwise don't waste your time (also like me ^^*).

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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Nov 10, 2015

gophercg

Not Recommended

Show is awkwardly on the "so bad it's good" threshold. MCs are likeable with nice comedic moments. But overall it wasn't bad enough in a way to make the serious story unintentionally funny. I'm also left with an uncertainty whether I enjoyed it or not.
Story:
Main themes include human nature, pollution/environmental awareness, & feminism (only slightly about Guard of Rose). The story/message are simple, happy end, but presented in a convoluted, multi-party/betrayal/reconcilation way. Best watch it as a 90 minute film, to connect pieces from the rough & messy editing/directing. [MINOR SPOILER] For example, the MC team's crash land is interrupted by a long multi-scene flashback. ... After landing, a few random short cuts of different time & place appear before returning to the team. Exposition heavily relies on dates/text & may seem preachy. Many sudden character actions are confounding. What's their motive, why suddenly change their mind, why betray, etc? Some motives are explained by backstory, best being the main villain Tone, and others you can somewhat imply since characters aren't deep. Another villain explains conflict involving Columbia, Moscow, US & them that remains vague (possibly due bad translation). [MINOR SPOILER] For example, a grounded helicopter's being focus fired on in a large war, but the girls run back into the copter, still trying to fix broken internals, then 2 unarmed random bishounens stroll into the cockpit trying to flirt with them.

Characters:
Nothing deep, no mc backstories, all likeable. Unique/weird designs, interesting dual-colored hairs. You'll likely enjoy the ride with fun characters + a jolly robot bunny mascot, and hopefully forget the story mess.
Best MC: a jolly robot bunny mascot. He even parodies those preachy texts.
Villain's about the only one with backstory, & tied to the themes. He's not truly evil, but perhaps misguided. Again poor storytelling suggests all the world governments & the villain are all evil. And it gets unclear which government/party has what motive, who's betraying who, why etc.

Art:
For 2002, has nice art, but often inconsistent/lazy animation. They try, but with lots of budget corner cuts, and bad fight choreography. It deserved better viewing than my 240p streaming, which was too dark overall, crushing details. Scenery has good scifi feel, & explosions (perhaps too many & smoke everywhere) are well animated. Mechanical designs are thoughtful with details, and not over-the-top. CG helicopters look just a tad more cool. Humanoid mechas look standard but refined & strong. Mecha fighting is hand drawn. 2002 CG is bad, but detailed designs & chaotic war makes up for it.

Overall:
+ Not really evil villain with unique backstory, comedy, fun non-op/whinny characters, interesting art designs, hand drawn mechas, save the earth theme, random plot twists to keep from boredom.
- Good simple story mangled through poor execution, overcomplication, unclear motives & random events. Lazy animation, dated CG look.

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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Oct 2, 2015

vigorousjammer

Not Recommended

6 Angels is a contentious work, it gets a lot of flak from the community, and I feel like much of it is deserved. However, I went into it without any pre-conceived expectations, and in this review, I shall judge the show based purely on it's own merits.

Set in the year 2031, the show tells the story of a special task force named the Rose Guard, who apparently patrol all over the world. However, we never see any of that, as this tells the story of them crash-landing in a specific place and trying to fight off some crazed cyborg terrorist.

The story is kind of ... basic, which isn't great, but I would be fine with it if it was presented well... however, it's not. The story is presented in a fairly slapdash manner. One scene jumps to the next, not giving the viewer much time to focus on anything, turning the whole thing into this big jumble of events that felt like the creators just wanted to show one thing, and then another, and then another... instead of taking the time to craft a well-told tale. They also throw a theme into the last episode that feels very forced, coming off more like a public service announcement instead of an actual theme of the show. This is likely due, in part, to how the theme was not even hinted at until that one moment in that last episode, so there's no buildup to it, it just comes out of nowhere.

I feel like it's also impossible to do a review of this show without mentioning just how poorly done the subtitles are. Only one group did the subtitles for this show, and I doubt anybody else will give it a shot in the near future. Still, the poor subtitles aren't the fault of the original creators, so I'm not factoring it into my score. Some may feel like the subtitles play into how the quality of the story is perceived. However, with my limited knowledge of Japanese I was still able to work my way through the subtitles to understand the story well enough, and even in doing so, it still wasn't very good, or well-presented. Thus, I still feel the story is poorly done regardless of the poor subtitles.

The characters are just about as basic as the story, but I feel like they are at least a little bit entertaining. They all have very one-note personalities, but they play off of each other decently and tend to be moderately enjoyable, despite being completely unmemorable. They are also somewhat inconsistent, their motivations from episode to episode don't really seem to mesh, and this weakens them, making them feel just... poorly done. I do think there are a few good character moments here & there, though... so they're not entirely without merit.

The art is pretty mixed. There are moments where the show can look really good, and moments where it looks like total garbage. A lot of the poor side of the art comes from the incredibly outdated looking CGI. The 3D animation looks like some pre-rendered PS1 cutscenes, and it makes some amount of sense based on when this anime was made. However, it clashes so heavily with the 2D elements which altogether look much better.
The 2D art has a pretty decent art style to it, with the main characters having designs that look very common for the era, with a few villain designs that look kind of cool & cyberpunk in some cases, making the art feel almost like a mix of old & new. The few times that they had 2D drawn backgrounds, they looked pretty nice as well. However, in most cases, the backgrounds were done using CG, which kind of ruined the appeal of many scenes of the show.
The animation itself was also a mixed bag, some moments definitely look like they were animated on a tight budget, with still-frames and not much movement, while other moments actually looked fairly good, with nice looking 2D animation that complimented whatever moment it was being used in. However, the latter became less common after episode 3, and the second half of the series felt even less impressive from the animation side of things.

The soundtrack in the show was pretty decent, as were the sound effects being used... however, it's kind of crazy how much lower the volume was on both of these compared to the voice acting. The overall audio mix made the music & sound effects have less impact... despite them actually being somewhat well done. The voice acting was above average, but kind of had an amateur feel to it. Some characters felt more natural than others, but a lot of them seemed to have performances that were just slightly wooden, without as much life as you'd expect. There's a few performances that stand out, but none of them really shine at all, making the voice acting feel very average.

In the end, 6 Angels is an anime that feels like it has more potential than it's actually able to deliver upon. The art occasionally looks nice, but occasionally looks bad. The characters are pretty one-note, but can sometimes be entertaining. The whole thing just feels very inconsistent. If they were able to execute on their premise with just a little more finesse, I think I would have enjoyed this a bit more, despite the horrid subtitle work. However, in it's current form, it's simply a show that had potential and managed to end up as a disappointing pile of garbage... with only a few glimmers of what could have been, remaining present underneath it all.

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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	Poll: 6 Angels Episode 6 Discussion vigorousjammer - Oct 2, 2015	1 replies	by Ebo »» Sep 9, 2021 12:47 PM
	Poll: 6 Angels Episode 1 Discussion vigorousjammer - Sep 28, 2015	1 replies	by AllenVonStein »» Dec 15, 2015 2:59 PM
	Poll: 6 Angels Episode 5 Discussion vigorousjammer - Sep 28, 2015	0 replies	by vigorousjammer »» Sep 28, 2015 10:27 AM
	Poll: 6 Angels Episode 4 Discussion vigorousjammer - Sep 28, 2015	0 replies	by vigorousjammer »» Sep 28, 2015 10:22 AM
	Poll: 6 Angels Episode 3 Discussion vigorousjammer - Sep 28, 2015	0 replies	by vigorousjammer »» Sep 28, 2015 10:10 AM