'Angels of Death' Is the Most Pretentious Anime in Recent Memory

I checked out Angels of Death for its very intriguing premise: 13-year-old Rachel “Ray” Gardner wakes up in a strange building with no memory of how she got there.  Each floor of this building is a labyrinth designed in accordance to the personality and tastes of its respective “floor master.”  Every single one of these floor masters is a psychopathic serial killer who has his or her own twisted MO of killing victims.  Soon, Ray enters into a bizarre agreement with one of the floor masters, Isaac “Zack” Foster, a maniacal young man who wields a large scythe and is covered with bandages.  With their lives on the line, the unlikely partners work together to escape the hellish building.  But before they could get to the exit, they must wade through the deadly puzzles and traps scattered across the floors, as well as the demented killers standing on their way.

I had high hopes for this series at the start.  Again, with the video game dynamics of its plot – which is something of a given since it’s based on a video game in the first place – and the psychological horror tone, it had the makings of a potential anime standout.  Then, right off the bat, a sense of mystery wrapped the narrative – which made me genuinely invested during its first episodes.

But as the series progressed, that sense of mystery gradually transformed into a sense of bafflement.  Questions piled up.  And with more and more insane (and not the good kind of “insane”) happenings, the strain on my suspension of disbelief intensified.  As a result, it started getting harder to find enjoyment from following the slow-burn story.

Still, I held on.  I believed that a clever plot twist – which would make sense out of everything in the end – was all it required to redeem itself.  And the narrative carried itself as if there was indeed an earth-shattering plot twist on its way.  With the high-sounding dialogue, title cards with enigmatic quotes, and a storytelling style that was trying too hard to be “art house”-ish, a grand payoff was seemingly being suggested.  And so, I continued watching, even when I felt the episodes were becoming obnoxious already.

Unfortunately, it turned out that watching through all 16 episodes had been a waste of time.  Yes, there was a big plot twist in the end.  But it was pretty weak.  It was far from the kind of plot twist that would have righted the tedious, all-over-the-place, thematically-confusing narrative that built up to it.

Thus, in the end, Angels of Death is my least  enjoyed anime of 2018 so far.  However, I don’t think it’s terrible in a technical sense.  Again, I even found the early episodes interesting enough.  It was just frustrating that toiling through the show had proven to be considerably unprofitable.  Nevertheless, though it isn’t a complete dumpster fire, it’s easily the most pretentious anime I’ve seen in recent memory.