I’ll be honest, fighting games have never exactly been my scene. I’ve played a fair bit of Smash Bros., and that’s about it. I can see the appeal, I’m just no good at them. On the other hand, at least as a spectator, I was big into Battlebots at one point, so I can appreciate the idea of sending custom rigs into a sort of competitive combat.
Angelic Layer (brought to you by some of the creative forces behind Cardcaptor Sakura) envisions a near future world where a new sport, somewhere between fighting games and gladiatorial robot death matches, has taken the world by storm. This is the titular Angelic Layer, where competitors (most of whom seem to be schoolgirls) can do battle using customized humanoid robots (“angels”) that, in the special arena (the Layer) are able to be controlled directly by their master’s mind.
If this does not immediately sound awesome, like a concept that would in fact sell to boys and girls alike if it were possible, I don’t know what to tell you. In my book, Angelic Layer at least gets full points for that.
The story properly follows Misaki Suzuhara, a 12-year-old girl who discovers Angelic Layer when she comes to the big city to live with her aunt. She sees a match on TV and is then led to get her own supplies for entry by a very sketchy mad scientist sort of dude known as Icchan (He gets arrested in the first episode while she’s not looking. He gets off and never cleans up the appearance of his act). With this, Misaki is able to create her own Angel, which she calls Hikaru. Like Misaki herself, Hikaru is small and light, but Misaki is convinced that she’ll be able to fight all the same.
Now, to go over the plot of the show would be… fairly repetitive. Most of the show is an episode or even a couple episodes dedicated to a particular match, in which Misaki may learn an important lesson but in which she mostly learns how to beat her opponents. This progresses through casual matches and then an ever-higher set of tournaments that make up the backbone of the show, as Misaki goes from total newcomer to world champion.
More interesting are the human relationships in this show. I will just go out and say right now that in the actual show, they’re very well paced and the reveals are drawn out over the course of many matches. But since the matches are something that’s far better if you’re watching, I’m going to dispense with the interwoven slow rolls and just address the characters.
Misaki’s first actual friends in her new home are Kotarou Kobayashi (The obvious romantic interest), Tamayo Kizuki (his overly energetic tomboy best friend), and Hatako Kobayashi (Kotarou’s kindergarten-aged little sister, and also a top-ranked Angelic Layer player). To address Hatako first, out of many characters who adopt something of a ‘rival’ role (most of Misaki’s friends start out as her opponents on the Layer), Hatako is the friendliest, who does the most to teach Misaki what she needs in order to win success.
Tamayo and Kotarou, by contrast, are mostly there to cheer Misaki on – something she needs fairly often, but also a less active role. Tamayo at least teaches Misaki a few fighting moves that she’s then able to have Hikaru use, but by in large these two are scene-fillers when it comes to the plot. When it comes to the non-plot sorts of exchanges, though, they’re actually pretty well-handled. Kotarou seems to be into Misaki, and at first Tamayo practically plays matchmaker. But, as it turns out, she’s nursing a massive childhood friend crush on Kotarou herself, and is forcing smiles while setting up for heartbreak.
And of course, we all know how this goes. Misaki is the more traditionally feminine girl, the main character, and the new girl on the block – three factors of which any one would normally secure a romantic victory without question. And so, naturally… Tamayo manages to give Kotarou a really good confession, he accepts, and the two of them are an item for the tail of the show while Misaki deals with a much more critical relationship than budding childhood romance.
Yeah, didn’t see that one coming. Tamayo wins, and while Misaki herself had been more demurely lukewarm to the idea rather than actively competing for hearts, it’s still surprising that Kotarou isn’t stuck forever looking her way. And kind of refreshing, really. I’ve mentioned before having a big soft spot for the childhood friend archetype, so suffice to say I’m happy with Tamayo being thrown a bone.
Speaking of that important relationship for Misaki, I may have mentioned how she’s moving in with her aunt. She lived with her grandparents before that, but that doesn’t mean her parents are dead. Well, her father might be, we never see nor hear a whisper regarding him unless I’ve forgotten some incidental conversation, but Misaki’s mother is alive, and in fact live in the same city where Misaki has just moved. So, naturally, Misaki is hoping to actually see her mom again some time, it having been long years since mom left home for “work”.
Mom – Shuko Suzuhara – turns out to actually be the current Angelic Layer champion, and the controller of the Angel whose match first made Misaki want to play. She conceals this from her daughter until the last stage of the last tournament, and also refuses to meet up. You see, she’s also an important person in the development of Angelic Layer, and for reasons that leave her quite distressed.
The backstory, which we eventually get directly but could infer well before that point, begins with Shuko, who is wheelchair-bound due to her legs being paralyzed by an unexplained condition, working with Icchan (then a respectable doctor) to attempt to create cybernetic prosthesis. This had some promising results in trying to get mind-machine interface down so that Shuko would be able to walk naturally, but the money ran out first. Icchan, resourceful and also falling for Shuko, took the prototypes and worked them into the basis of Angelic Layer in order to make a whole lot of money and continue their research.
Shuko, for her part, seems to be embarrassed by her physical condition, and didn’t want to be seen by her daughter until she was better, and further seems to be ashamed that she’s been playing fighting games while out of contact, meaning she’s worried what Misaki will think of her. I feel like the show more comes down on the side of Shuko being unreasonable, and sells that well, but there is a degree to which her stance, though wrong, is still comprehensible.
As such, Shuko only ends up revealing herself at the most dramatic time: once Misaki is in the finals and has to face her. It provides a pretty good climax to the show that does feel properly set up, where they have to work out their issues on the Layer, talking through their shared interest in the game as much as they hadn’t managed like normal people.
Icchan, as I may have alluded to, remains an important character. He provides comic relief to the show (often abusing his underling with absurd penalties), timely advice to Misaki that she needs to hear in order to grow and succeed (as well as, at the start, technical help to get her registered and competing), and so on – acting as a weird, sketchy, but also fun sort of father figure to Misaki – fitting given his interest in her mother.
Icchan’s little stepbrother is also fairly relevant. One of the only male Angelic Layer players we see, he functions as a secondary love interest for Misaki (though how much he has good intentions is in question, and ultimately she doesn’t end up needing a romance) as well as one of the final opponents, as he has his own issues with Misaki’s mom that he wants to work out by facing her directly.
Beyond that, we have the host of Misaki’s opponents who turn out to be friendly, such as the idol Ringo Seto or the top-ranked competitors Sai Jounouchi and Kaede Saito. They’re overall quite pleasant, which seems to me to be one of the more realistic parts of the show: in a lot of competitive enterprises, players who are rivals in-game can still be friends outside, and often will be given their shared interests. They all teach Misaki important lessons directly or not (the ones that learn lessons from her are more the realm of one-off opponents) and ultimately support her on the road to facing mom.
And, at it’s heart, that’s the show: Misaki goes through local games, the Tokyo Games, the Kanto Regional tournament, and finally the grand championship, taking on an assortment of foes while growing as a person and learning more about herself, coming ever closer to seeing her mother again, little does she know by what means. Icchan tries to help her out, while also running things and tormenting his intern. Misaki, naturally, wins and wins, becoming the “Miracle Rookie” until at last she gets to take on and take down her mother on the Layer, after which it seems like they can be a family again (and possibly bigger than before).
Angelic Layer is a show that has a lot of heart to it, in a way that’s fairly familiar to Cardcaptor Sakura. The shows, despite having very little in common in terms of their plot and structure, have a very similar “warm and fuzzy feel” that I think will mean that fans of one will easily be fans of the other.
The strongest point of Angelic Layer is, without a doubt, its characters; They’re youngsters, but they’re very vibrant, living youngsters, and their web of relationships feels surprisingly mature despite their age. I don’t just mean in a romantic sense – Hatoko may be a kindergartner, but she relates to Misaki and the tournament scene in a way that’s rather adult, or at least on the peer level. I guess you could call that a fault in that the super-young character isn’t exactly written her age, but not every notably younger character has to be Kyoko from Dennoh Coil or the like, and it’s nice to have Hatoko as a full character with her own understandable desires and frustrations.
The weakest point is, without a doubt, the plot. When you get down to it, Angelic Layer is a very “Foregone conclusion” sort of tournament arc. If Misaki loses, the show kind of stops, so you know she’s got to keep winning. True, most shows with any sort of tournament structure have this issue where the meta level can get in the way of the drama, but because Angelic Layer tries to be fairly low drama, you might notice it a little more.
I give the writers some credit in still making Misaki’s matches engaging, but that’s a different topic: the action. In terms of the plot, Misaki doesn’t know the stakes for most of the show and it’s not like a loss will actually permanently end the story, it would just make things drag out pointlessly for the viewer.
As far as the action goes… that’s actually another strength. While Angelic Layer doesn’t look or sound like an action show, enough time is spent with the angels fighting on the Layer that… yeah, it kind of is a light action show, all things considered. And the action is quite solid. I get the feeling that the creative minds behind Angelic Layer enjoyed fighting games, and they captured why such games are fun to watch as well as to play. In most Angelic Layer matches we actually devote time to, there’s a good back and forth and a solid interplay of abilities. Even when Hatoko’s specialty is solving things in one blow, and Misaki kind of picks up the technique from her, we still spend most matches with Misaki and Hikaru on the back foot, gaining tempo, and in the case of hard opponents getting set back by the ace in the hole and having to come back and regain that momentum or devise a trick of her own in order to claim the win.
These may be little dolls fighting on a special table as part of a game for children, but their interplay has down all the basics that make action fun to watch and reasonably dramatic, which is why it’s more a case of the show being thinly sketched than any particular episode being weakened by the deterministic nature of the plot.
On the whole, I rate Angelic Layer at an A-. You really can’t ask much more of it; it achieves what it sets out to do and is moderately memorable and passably entertaining. It doesn’t score higher because, frankly, that’s not its ambition. Angelic Layer doesn’t want to move you or wow you, it wants you to smile. And you do.