Angels of Death ep 11 – Stay of Execution

• Genre : Josei, Horror, Mystery, Psychological Thriller
• Studio: J.C.Staff

This is frustrating. Here we are, episode 11 and I still can’t tell you whether this show is good or bad. My original post title was going to be, “Down to the Wire” since I assumed this was a 12 or 13 episode season but I looked it up and it’s in fact 16. For some reason, this calmed me down a little, hence the new title. Not only do we get a more reasonable amount of time to wrap things up, but the unconventional number of episodes makes me hope that the story line wasn’t haphazardly constrained to fit a format. 16 is really an odd number for anime. This must mean that it’s the exact number of episodes they needed to properly tell the story, right???

I’ve been saying this for a while now, Rachel is the one to look out for. She’s the wild card and the true dangers in his story. Although we still don’t have explicit confirmation I think it’s pretty clear: I was right all along. I just got a stroke of genius, that’s what I want on my tombstone!

In any case, Rachel’s callousness which was mostly hinted at is spelled out loud and clear. Rachel’s morality is entirely centered on herself and her needs. She likes Zack and will therefore sacrifice anything and anyone for Zack. But this begs the question, why does she like Zack.

We do not have any reasonable narrative explanation for why Rachel is so attached to Zack. In her own words, he promised to kill her and as a death seeker, that’s useful. But a lot of people are trying to kill her. Why s she stubbornly sticking to the one that has all these annoying conditions attached to his murdering ways. Now we have Rachel proclaiming that Zack is her God. As an aside, I particularly enjoyed Zack’s very reasonable reaction to this declaration, basically calling her a creepy loon.

Declaration like that are sort of a plot obfuscation. From now on, if she acts irrationally devoted to Zack, we, the viewers, can simply tell ourselves, well that’s normal since she thinks of Zack as her God, but the real question is still why?

I’m guessing the simplest explanation is probably the right one here. Rachel is not all there, and she probably wasn’t to begin with. We sometimes mistake calm for rational and quiet for reasonable. That’s a mistake. Remember what the neighbours always say: They were always so quiet and polite….

Rachel is  delusional and dangerously obsessive. She regards people as tools and considers them only in terms of their usefulness. She’s also hiding something because she thinks it will make an unrepentant serial killer mad at her. When you lay it out like that, Rachel does become rather intriguing.

Two things jumped out at me this episode. First the notion of different and individual gods. Rachel does mention the Bible and Mr. Grey is a Reverend. Even with my very limited knowledge, I know this means we are talking about Christianity. A generally monotheistic religion. Not too hot on the false idols and all that. So this notion of everyone having a different god with different values, and this god being personified at that, seems to go counter the established dogma. Do you like how I’m throwing all these big terms around? Have I used any of them right?

The second thing, is the show continuing to feed scraps into my crazy theory.  Rachel’s trial and subsequent conviction and burning at the..cross.. was all an illusion as expected, but still, it had some repercussions. Fiction loves the idea of self-imposed psychosomatic wounds created simply out of belief. The mind is a powerful organ, the notion may not be as far-fetched as you think. Nevertheless, little Rachel walked away idemn for her ordeal, only to immediately discover burn marks on Zack.

We got a shred of horrific back story to explain it (of course Zack’s step dad tried to burn him alive when he was little for no apparent reason, of course his mom reacted by selling Zack to an orphanage… Zack is a prototypical deranged murdered. Way too normal for this place really). But even with the explanation, the timing of the reveal and the insistence of it, was obviously there to create symmetry between Zack and Ray once again.

Their shared bound goes beyond what we see on the surface. It almost as if the share a…soul?

The short unexplained flashback that seems to be the source of Rachel’s guilt also stuck with me. It was a good move to give us only the slightest of tastes. There was no one recognizable in the scene at all. We simply saw a woman getting stabbed during some type of struggle. From context we can’t tell if this was a break in or a lover’s quarrel. There is no real clue yet how the scene relates t any of the characters.

This, coupled with the number of episodes, leads me to believe that he plot knows where it’s heading. There’s an actual clear destination in mind and everything is on track. That still doesn’t mean I’ll like where we end up, ut at least I’m no longer afraid that we aren’t going anywhere at all.

I wanted to find a way to include the feather in the post. It just didn’t fit anywhere.

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