released 01 oct 07 / last mod 01 oct 07 / greg goebel / public domain
* ANGELIC LAYER is a Japanese animation series consisting of 26 half-hour episodes on 5 CDs. The series takes place in a near-future Tokyo, with the heroine, a youngster named Misaki, arriving there to live with her aunt. Misaki's mother has been absent for some number of years, and though Misaki gets money from her, she doesn't get much in the way of news and doesn't know much about what her mother is doing.
After arriving in Tokyo, Misaki observes a sports event on a public video screen involving two robot dolls engaged in single combat with each other. She is fascinated by what she learns is called "Angelic Layer" -- the dolls are "Angels" and they are only operational on a playing board called a "layer", hence the name. She then runs into a "Dr. Icchan" who all but abducts her and takes her to a store to buy her own Angel.
She names the Angel "Hikaru" and, on beginning her sessions at an Angelic Layer arcade, proves to be a natural at the game: she runs into a sequence of increasingly capable adversaries but rises up the learning curve each time to win the bouts. She becomes known as the "Miracle Rookie" and makes many friends -- particularly little Hatoko, a prim kindergartner who happens to also be a top-ranked Angelic Layer star, noted for her lightning attacks. Misaki rises up through the tournament circuit, never exactly realizing that her ascent is gradually bringing her ever closer to her absent mother.
OK, that sums up the basic idea behind ANGELIC LAYER. The series has much going for it: it's imaginative, pretty -- the production quality is not movie-class but it is good for a video series -- and Misaki is entirely endearing, a petite good-natured cutie who is self-conscious about the fact that people mistake her for a third-grader when she's actually a middle schooler. The story is nonviolent, if fisticuffs between robot Barbie dolls are disregarded, and has a certain flavor of some of the stuff Isaac Asimov wrote for kids.
Unfortunately, ANGELIC LAYER also suffers from a distinct lack of dramatic tension, which leads it to roll in emotional fluff at times. All of Misaki's opponents, even those who seem unpleasant up front, end up being won over by her ingenuous charm; the story also tends to fall into tiresome soap-opera contrivances. The worst misstep is "Dr. Icchan", who is supposed to be something of a hero -- when he's actually an obnoxious geek with a streak of mean-spiritedness.
The Angelic Layer fight scenes do help keep some momentum going, but between bouts the story tends to mark time. It's maybe difficult to see how the story could have been made much more exciting given its basic premises, but it's still a bit disappointing to go through a series that has a lot of potential at the outset and never quite lives up to it.
