Angels of Death is a series I have revisited over the years to varying degrees of enjoyment, catching things I didn't before, and even understanding things better as I've grown older. It has always been a comfort series for me to rewatch and just enjoy. But as of the fourth time watching this, and after playing the RPG Maker game it was based on, I do believe that it does not utilize its medium of anime rather than video game to the fullest potential it could have had. Nonetheless, it still improves vastly in all sorts of other ways, having its own memorable soundtrack, stellar
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voice acting, and good direction.
The story and characters are extremely unique to anything else anime has to offer. A cast of entirely killers, psychopaths, and lunatics in a world where the worst sides of humans are highlighted to the extreme. A death game in a sense, but with such a varied cast of characters all with fantastic designs and floors that makes it seem less like a death game and more like a set of completely independent obstacles. I also appreciate the very spared use of any backstory or flashback, only being shown when a character themselves are seeing it, and with this approach, many of the characters don't get one, shrouding their origin in mystery and we're left with only the assumption of what their life was like that led them to seeing the world and people the way they do (please go play Angels of Death: Episode Eddie, I swear its very good).
I also believe that the anime suffers from not being able to explain things properly sometimes. I understand that the way they explain most of the character's mental states changing from an analogy of red and blue and always revolving around the moon, but what do the colors and moon represent? What's their significance? I'm not too sure myself, and in doing so, specifically Rachel becomes a mess of contradictions that the show acknowledges that she doesn't make any logical sense, and Rachel herself agrees to this sentiment. In most cases, this is a huge red flag for me to say, "saying you know it makes no sense doesn't alleviate you of the problem." However, Angels of Death is aware that the characters are genuinely mentally not there. Being obsessive to the point of lunacy and completely shifting their world views to something most people would find alien. Zack makes the perfect example of why the contradictions exist, "Unlike you and Danny, I don't waste time running and thinking about pointless shit!" While everyone in the show has something that they obsess over, Zack is, funnily enough, the insight we have as an audience as he is "simple and pure." To us as well as him, the things the others say and do, he finds both completely insane but downright stupid. With this, my point is that I don't have too much of an issue with how Angels of Death uses its character motivations in a way that seems unconventional due to the fact that every character is openly blind to their own very flawed and self-serving motivations.
And to conclude the review, I'd like to discuss the ending very in depth and on a personal level. So if you haven't watched it already or played the game, spoilers ahead. The ending of Angels of Death this fourth go around felt a lot more powerful towards the overall feel that this series and world has, and that falls in the fact that Rachel is the most severe case of someone who needs mental support, so of course she's sent to one of those mental hospitals where she spends months there. As someone who's been in one before, the melancholy and false sense of normalcy is clear as day. Towering walls with barbed fencing, the counseling sessions where they ask basic and by-the-book questions that have no real meaning to them, all while the issue of having to deal with other patients. Not being able to do anything, obeying everything someone says because you have no choice, as there is zero trust between the two parties. It felt very realistic, and I didn't give this segment of the show enough credit for how the setting of a mental hospital doesn't feel much better than any other kind of prison.
Then there's the last scene. Originally, I was contempt with the fact that Zack came back and they finish their promise. Then the interpretation changed to Rachel was either hallucinating or dreaming, ending her own life by cutting through the bars with the knife Zack gave her. But there's a huge problem with both of these interpretations. In the first, Zack comes back with his scythe, but in the second to last episode, he discards of it after it breaks, and it most certainly wouldn't have survived the wreckage, let alone had stayed there. Meaning Zack is probably not actually there. Plus, he wouldn't have known where she was all this time in the first place. And in the second, how would Rachel had kept the knife is close to impossible, especially when she was there for months on end (we see the seasons change from fall to winter). Therefore, both of these interpretations have very clear flaws to them. Yet, I still push myself to lean towards the latter, as the way Zack is shown, is more like a angel than a human, floating and with his death scythe. With that, I do believe is that Rachel hallucinates Zack after learning he was sentenced to death, where the only way he's avoided death up to this point was because he had someone else there to save him or patch him up. And in doing so, she ironically does what she never wanted to in the first place, commit suicide.
Those are my thoughts on the end, I find these open-ended endings fun, as it leaves the viewer to make up their own interpretation while still being a complete package of a story. Angels of Death is a series that I hold in high regard despite its flaws due to its colorful and engaging cast, the fantastic soundtrack, the original story, and the legacy of an RPG Maker game.
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