Was Angelic Layer inspired by Pokemon?

• Titles: Battle Doll Angelic Layer; Kidou Tenshi Angelic Layer
• Genre: Drama, action, sports(?), school
• Episodes: 26
• Studio: BONES

Misaki Suzuhara is discovering a lot of new things. She’s in Tokyo for the first time for one. Ever since her mother left for work 6 years ago, she’s had to rely on others and now, her aunt has decided to take care of her in the exciting big city! Of course, she has to go to a new school and make all new friends. Thankfully, Misaki is a charming girl and she immediately finds a couple of best buds who are willing to stick with her and show her the ropes. Although the biggest change may be that Misaki has discovered Angelic Layer. A virtual fighting game where players control little dolls called angels with their minds and battle it out on the layer. Misaki may be small and she may be new to all of this but size and experience don’t matter on the layer. And now that she’s finally found something she’s good at, she isn’t going to quit until she makes it to the very top!

Angelic Layer is one of those shows that had a lot going for it before I even started watching. Some of you may know that I recently watched and then read all of xxxHOLiC which has awakened my inner CLAMP fangirl with a vengeance. So the simple fact that this was a CLAMP title already had me sold. Not only that though, I wrote a post a while ago about my Top 5 Sports Anime with Mostly Female Casts and the comments were full of people naming this show as their pick. So I knew going in that Angelic Layer would be nothing less than great.

You have to keep in mind that this isn’t a recent series and it shows. Even the aspect ratio is old school after all. The art style is a bit outdated. It does look a lot like Cardcaptor Sakura though but it doesn’t have any of the eccentric CLAMP flares of other titles. This is not to say that angelic Layer looks bad. It was made by BONES so the animation is solid and even though the colour palette is a bit dull, the colours themselves are supersaturated which makes me wonder why so many older shows look washed out.

Unlike what I said about xxxHOLiC where I heaped on the praise for both the Japanese and English voice care, I personally did not care for the Angelic Layer dub at all. To be fair, even the Japanese version sounded stilted at times, especially Hatoko, but it was generally fine. The English version brought me back to the days of distributors paying a random guy’s niece to voice a show over an afternoon so they could send it out the next day.

Now I have to say that if it wasn’t for the fact that the characters look like they belong to the CCS universe, I wouldn’t have known that this was a CLAMP series. Then again, if my readers hadn’t called this one of their favourite Sports! anime, I wouldn’t have known that it’s a Sports! show. It really did remind me of Pokemon most.

The basic premise is that people, mostly girls, by these pretty dolls then train with them and have them attack each other in tournaments. Maybe because they were trying to fit specific events in the episode count or something but the series is structured to pretty much only show battles interspersed with Misaki’s family and romantic drama.

There is no real screen time at all dedicated to training or showing Misaki learn about the game. There aren’t a few multi-episode arcs having her try to figure out a new skill or move to increase her chances of winning. And because Angelic Layer is a solo activity (although Misaki does eventually get a second which is something like a coach), there is no need to dedicate time for teams to figure out how to work together and overcome their differences.

Misaki is also not the traditional underdog. This is an ultimate chosen one story. Misaki sees Angelic Layer for the first time on a TV screen then immediately goes to buy an angel before even finding out what the rules are. After that, she plays one practice game I believe, ends up in a tournament and just keeps winning until she is declared the best in the world. From what we are shown, she doesn’t really practice that much compared to all the other players, she puts in much less study time as well and she doesn’t really know any techniques.

There’s an oft-repeated phrase in the show that size and experience don’t matter in Angelic Layer. a sort of anyone from anywhere can make it! And that’s cool. A fighting show where the hero is really bad at fighting and physically weak does have a very nice appeal. The problem comes when you realize that we are never really told what does matter in Angelic Layer. If it’s not physical attributes, is it mental ones? Like I said, Misaki isn’t the most knowledgeable, she’s not dumb but she is very young and not a genius either. So is it heart? Lots of other contestants put a lot of passion and have more personal and emotional reasons to want to win. In the end, Misaki wins because she’s Misaki and that’s it.

Because of all this, I would say Angelic Layer resembles a magical Girl show most in both tropes and structure. Even the sporadic bursts of romance are reminiscent of classics like Sailor Moon.

The other thing I noticed is that Angelic Layer seems to have been written for a very young audience. Hatoko is arguably the second most important character and she is either 4 or 5 years old. Misaki is the same age as her older brother and the two are on equal footing in their relationship. Misaki doesn’t have any sort of mothering behaviour or anything. So I’m guessing our main character is somewhere between 7 and 10 at most. There is nothing wrong with having characters that are very young, but it does limit the type of story you can tell and it’s often a sign that you are aiming for an audience in a similar age range.

The characters are very simple and don’t have that much development to go on, The events are linear and easy to follow. What I’m saying is that this is a kid’s show. A primarily action-based one with some dramatic moments. And well, that’s just not really my jam, you know. It’s cute and I’m sure I would have loved it if I watched it when I was in Misaki’s age. In fact, if you have a young kid you want to watch anime with, this might be worth a try. But it was not what I was hoping for I guess. Which is more on me.