Angels of Death ep 16 – Dafuq

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

Full disclosure, it’s Friday evening. I started a new visual novel last night and I just can not wait to finish this post so I can slip on my soft onsie, pour myself a glass of wine, and dive right back into it. That shouldn’t affect the quality of this post…no not at all. In case you’re wondering, said visual novel is definitely not Angels of Death

I’ve been saying for a while now that for me, the merits of this show will be decided in the final episode. And decided they were… I’ve been playing it close to the vest so you probably have no clue where as stand on the issue right now but read on. I’ll tell you all about it!

Angels of Death decided to start us off on this ultimate episode with this huge exchange between the Doctor and the Priest. They have names but you know what, let’s just go with this. My first thought was “oh no you guys, that’s the characters we don’t want to see”. My second thought was: Boy that’s a lot of exposition this ate in the game…

This entire scene was just one big mess of nonsense cuckoo exposition and not the fun type. The (see title) type. In fact, instead of going on about how bad this was, I’m going to share with you a completely different and unrelated bit of nonsense prose. I learned this in grade school to learn English and because it rhymes I still remember it:

And is it true? It is not True.
And if it were it wouldn’t do,
For people such as me and you
Who pretty nearly all day long
Are doing something rather wrong.
Because if things were really so,
You would have perished long ago,
And I would not have lived to write
The noble lines that meet your sight.

There, not only do i honestly believe you just had more fun reading that, than you would have watching that first act, but I also think you learned as much about the plot of Angels of Death.

The last thing I thought about this scene was whelp…they’re dead…again…

Against my expectations, and all the plot insinuations, Zack and Rachel just waltz out of the building in what appears to be the “real world”. Cops and fire engines all surrounding the place. A whole bunch of bystanders just waiting around. Why is everyone there? Who called the cops…. Ok maybe the noise of the autodestruct attracted a few people but the scene looked like it had been a long drawn out hostage situation r something. I dunno… Nywho, Zack gets arrested and Rachel is sent to a ward. Both reasonable outcomes.

From there, we see a series of interviews with various people catching us up on the events that happen in the aftermath. Nothing we don’t know. The detective on the case tells us that Zack confessed to a series of murders but not to killing Rachel’s parents or kidnapping her. The psychiatrist caring for Rachel calls her inexpressive (oh man, thank goodness someone brought that up. I wouldn’t have noticed…) They still consider Rachel a poor traumatized little girl.

Although I liked the structure of these scenes and the interviews was a decent storytelling device, we unfortunately didn’t learn anything at all. Once more it was a lot of exposition but it didn’t even convey information. I did appreciate the outdoor scenes with fluttering autumn leaves. It was a colour palette we hadn’t seen in the series so far. But other than that I was at a loss. Mysteries are fun only if there’s a least a chance to solve them. 

We still have no clue what that place was or why it seemed somewhat impervius to physics. There’s no explanation or even mention of the other characters. Maybe Sackboy and Cathy were just plain old psychos but Danny was definitely some type of Highlander and the Padre secreted hallucinogene gas. That’s not an everyday thing. You should talk about that… I couldn’t help but think (see title).

Completely overtop and unexplained absurdist elements are fine in a story that is essentially surreal. Recently I watched Zvezda that also has a lot of unexplained crazy things going on but the narrative structure and basic plot progression works quite well with that. Angels of Death establishes itself as a fairly serious thriller mystery. Figuring out the puzzle is what keeps the audience engaged, if the plot spirals into gibberish, there’s little point to it.

And after all that, we don’t even get the benefit of proper closure. After days/weeks/months(?) in the asylum, Rachel is slowly losing it. I was going to say losing hope but I realized that wasn’t the right word and I couldn’t find one that fit with what I wanted to say. In any case, despite her shrink’s assertions to the contrary, she seems to have regressed back to the Rachel of the first episodes.

When she hears that Zack’s been sentenced to death, she can’t seem to even muster a reaction. If the show had been better written and more consistent with it’s characterization, this would in fact have been a heartbreaking moment as the little bit of (admittedly very twisted) humanity that Rachel had managed to scrape together throughout the season, had now obviously seeped out of her once more. As i is though, I just shrugged along with her.

The grand finale showed us – Spoilers(?)- Zack breaking into her room through the window, having escaped jail somehow. They have a little completely barney chat about murdering each other and promises. I was all like (see title), don’t you have bigger issues right now… The police are swarming the hospital/asylum, I don’t even know. The Zack picks up Rachel princess style and the Jump out the window…fade to black. Really…They pulled a Sopranos on us. I don’t know who you think you are, show, but you are definitely NOT the Sopranos. Fun fact…I never saw the Sopranos yet I 100% stand behind this statement.

Since my brain refused to process what had just happened, I waited until the very end, convinced that an after credits tag would give me a something…anything… but nope. We got a still shot of the knife. Goodby Mr. knife, you’re no Ikea lamp…

In conclusion, I leave you with the words of Inspector uy who’s name I don’t remember: “The only answer I have for you is I don’t know…”  and also: dafuq?

Here’s a little gallery for you. I have snarky comments for almost all of these…

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