Six Angels - Reviews

Story
After sitting through approximately 90 minutes of episodes (6 in total), I can tell you that I still have no idea what the hell just happened. At first, it woos you with pretty CG images and a decent intro talking about how the world has abolished capital punishment, is basically going down the toilet as far as nuclear waste and threats of war, and how there is a rumor of a fallen angel. Sounds interesting, right? Unfortunately, past that point, the story takes a nosedive and goes down faster than a chihuahua in a cage match with an elephant.

Since nothing is spelled out very well and we don't care enough to pay attention anyways, there are some fragments you can still glean from the supposed plot. There are a bunch of prisoners down in a place called Neo Purgatory. These prisoners all have bandaged faces and huge eyes, which look exactly like one of the monsters from the Mermaid's Forest TV series. Do we know why the prisoners are all bandaged? No, not really. Do we care? No. The Guard of Rose are a group of six freakish looking women that protect women from men's violence (why the hell was this even put in the series?), and they somehow get involved in a sinister plot by the villainous Donn Canyon to destroy humans, since they are polluting the planet at too fast of a rate. At this point, you'd probably be fidgeting at light speed and wanting nothing more than to go watch reruns of the worst show ever (besides 6 Angels) to escape the pain, but alas, it continues. We also have an angel who comes out of nowhere (that we know nothing about, except that she was found in a reactor... I think), odd interjections from the President of the United States, a robot alarm clock that flies around helping everyone out, lots of helicopters, nuclear missiles in space, and lots of other completely random things. Stir it all together with a heavy dose of suckass, and you have the plot attempt of 6 Angels.

I honestly don't think many people out there could understand the plot better than I did, because it's weak and terrible to begin with. Around the halfway point I stopped reading the subtitles as intently and focused on laughing at how bad it was. And when I say bad, I don't mean hilarious in a good way bad like Baoh, I mean really bad like Wild Cardz. I wasn't laughing in enjoyment, I was laughing in pain that I had to keep watching it. Death by ham sandwiches would have been preferable, but alas, I am out of ham at the moment.
Animation
Visually, 6 Angels alternates between really interesting and really, really terrible. There is a great deal of CG to be found throughout most scenes, mostly of sci fi looking things like panels and robots, or aerial shots of helicopters, or nuclear missiles in space. Some of this was fairly seamlessly integrated with animation, and other times it was Panzer Dragoon style bad, with a cheesy fake looking floor with anime characters running along it. The regular animation looks decent from far away, but scares the hell out of you once you are close up. The character designs in particular were especially scary, with Marilyn, one of the main characters, looking like the manliest transvestite I've ever seen. Seriously folks, her body looked like a man, her face looked like a man, and Dave and I were convinced she was a man for a long time. All the characters had these strange detachable looking breast cups on the outside of their outfits, though in one woman's case, once we see her breasts exposed FOR NO GOOD REASON AT ALL, they are way larger than the detachable cup thing would have suggested. I kept wondering what the hell this aspect of the armor was there for, but alas, I never could figure it out. The hair colors looked like they were chosen at random out of a box of crayons, and looked silly to boot. Marilyn, for example, had bright platinum blond hair with PURPLE highlights. The evil Donn's hair not only stuck up and made him look like a tree trunk, but his hair even changed color between two of the episodes! Last I checked, Hypercolor died in the 80s. I should know, I owned two shirts. Gee, what else. There's the eye highlights which were shades of such things as bright Dune spice eyes blue, or bright red. Who the hell has red highlights, seriously?! Combined with potentially blue or purple hair, this looked incredibly ridiculous. Maybe the art designers were bleeding all over the frames, that's a potential hypothesis to explain what otherwise would be a completely ridiculous decision. The angel's character had huge bug eyes that made me think she was going to suddenly transport herself to S-Mart and scream "I'LL SWALLOW YOUR SOUL!". Too bad Bruce Campbell didn't pop in for a cameo to blow her ass away with his gun.

The robot clock was cute, but had no real purpose. The designs of the prisoners, as mentioned above, was weird and strange for no reason at all. I've decided that everything about 6 Angels was engineered to make no sense. This way, the odd graphical things combined with decent CG makes sense, just like everything else in the series... .. .. . right?
Sound
The audio for 6 Angels really wasn't that bad given what type of show it was (girls kicking ass against bad guys), but it wasn't great by any means, either. It consisted of mostly synths that were quite cheesy in general, but again, the cheesiness fit the overall tone of the series. I didn't have a problem with any of the voice actors.
Characters
Well, we've already discussed how freakish the characters looked, and unfortunately, I don't have as much to say about the characters themselves. Everyone to be found was completely shallow and lifeless, and we didn't know pretty much anything about any of them. There was zero character development, and plenty of shallow roles to be filled for both the primary and secondary characters. The weird random character of the day award goes to the robot clock, whose purpose I still don't understand. Many of the characters were introduced, and die or go away without you knowing who they even are, let alone why there were in the series to begin with. Other characters are with you the entire series, and you still don't even remember your name (or perhaps you are just blocking it mentally in your mind because of traumatic shock of having to watch this). The characters seem random and have random quirks (not in a good way), though the entire series is random so this makes sense I suppose. Truly laughable characters with absolutely nothing to redeem them. NOTHING!
Overall
6 Angels was bad, very, very bad. I gave the overall score a 2 for the pretty CG. Normally if a show just had pretty CG, I'd rate it a little higher, but 6 Angels was so bad that the rest of the bad stuff overpowers that visual score. The characters are ridiculous, the animation style is HORRID, the music is average, and the plot is nothing more than various samples of vomit that have been mixed together to form a new strain of supervomit. This vomit is then forced down you, the viewer's, throat and then regurgitated heartily. Seriously folks, I can't think of anything good to say about this except that the CG is decent. Other than that, my god.. why are you even watching this? It doesn't even have enjoyment value for being so bad it's funny... this is so bad it's just... bad.

This review was made after 5 episodes, because I don't know if I can bring myself to finish it. (Edit: I finished it.... I wish I hadn't) It's just... well, let me detail this for you.

Story: The story begins with the world on the brink of war between the US, Russia, and New Purgatory, which is an underground prison somewhere in the US. Then, a quartet of kick-ass ladies show up in a space age helicopter and get into a air fight with some marines. At this point, the story swerves drastically into bland backstory, and never recovers the action of the first 3 minutes. Yes, there is action and drama and what-have-you, but there's no heart to it. And even after watching all of it, I can't tell if this is a PSA for anti-nuclear war, or a PSA against violence towards women....

Animation: To premise this, the anime was made in 2002, which is about the time Stand Alone Complex, Princess Tutu, and Chobits came out. This show looks more like it was made in the late 80s, animation style-wise. And there are some anatomy questions that I have, especially concerning the girls' battle suits and their hair, which is nearly on par with Debut. And the villain, just, it hurts my eyes if he's on screen for more than a few seconds. I don't know if he's because his character design is just awful or because the animators couldn't execute a better design. Either way, ew. 

Sound: There are times when the voice actors clearly weren't given direction, and they come off as rather non-plussed during action sequences. Other times, the voice acting is ok. Most of the anime lacks background music, and either didn't have an OP/ED or the stream I watched simply cut them out. Either way, could have been better. 

Characters: Completely boring. All of them. Except maybe Link, the robot rabbit. Him, I liked. Everyone else could be replaced with different people and the show would be the same. 

Would I recommend this? I wouldn't wish this anime on my worst enemy. 

PREFACE
The first minutes of the series were really promising. Terrorists, high-tech weapons, conspiracy to destroy the world, sexy SWAT girls to the rescue… You name it! But, it quickly bogged down to a typical b-movie boring adventure.

THE STAFF
- The animation was done by a petty studion named Arcturus, which also happens to be their only fully animated work as well. Meh, they clearly lack the budget to do anything significant.
- The director of the show is Kobayashi Makoto, a nobody whose only other work is the equally horrible Ice ovas. Clearly a guy the majority of us won’t even notice if he dies.

PRODUCTION VALUES
- The artwork is flashy, based on models of awesome meckas, kick-ass weapons and sexy women. But in the end they are just nice ideas based on the norm of most sci-fi titles. It also sucks big time as the robots and the characters move out of balance on many occasions, like they are not walking on the ground or simply don’t move along with it (a typical problem when you work with many separate layers of animation and pay no attansion to physics).
- The 3D models are done very good, but they move unrealistically most of the time and have rather crude lightning/shadowing effects (because of the low budget, I presume).
- We also have the eternally present problem that all amateur series have: The characters all look the same! Cookie cutter! Same body-type, same eye-type, same way of moving… Takes away the feeling of individuality and uniqueness; but at least the original mold is sexy enough to look at.
- Mediocre voice acting and forgettable music themes and sound effects. I find nothing to say.

SCRIPT
Bad guy ecologist-like terrorists take control of a base. Anti-terrorist army attacks to stop them. Good guy chicks bust open some noses. Villains reveal their plan to destroy the world with radiation and then repopulate it with radiation-proof artificial beings. A few speeches about the girls’ bodies, their pasts and the future of the planet are given and then we have the final battle… That’s pretty much, it.
- It’s straightforward, clichéd, and doesn’t really make you worried about the ecology of our planet.
- Its small duration made it predictable and impossible to have any twists, despite the attempt to focus on multiple characters.
- The plot moves way too fast. No time to appreciate what you are offered. Half the time alone is wasted on pointless battles and ecchi.
- Maybe it makes sense if you are still 10 years old. If not, it is as real as the things you see when you are stoned.
- It ends in a pretty obvious way; nothing you won’t expect to see from the start. But at least it HAS an ending.

CAST
- Completely carton characters. Most characters don’t have a personality and exist only as cannon fodder for the battles and ecchi for our pleasure. Others, who do, die anti-climactically towards the end by their own ally (a rushed solution for not leaving loose ends in the story).
- There are a few attempts at trying to give them a backdrop story but the result is simply lame. There is simply no time for that!
- Other than the leading girls who look sexy, no one else has a strong presence in the story.
- All the characters end as they begin (excluding those who were killed, of course).

LEGACY
There is nothing original or likeable enough in this title, in order to deserve a second try. Its only reason for existence is for the die-hard collectors who will put it in a dusty shelf and leave it there for good. You may like its art concept and sexy girls, but you will forget pretty quickly all the rest.

SUGGESTION LIST
Gunslinger Girls
Ghost In The Shell
Battle Angel Alita