Surviving these floors isn’t going to be easy for this unusual pairing.
What They Say:
When Rachel wakes up in the basement of an unfamiliar building, she finds she’s lost all her memory. As she tries to get clear of the basement, she runs into Zack, a scythe-carrying serial killer wrapped from head to toe in bandages. A bizarre promise brings these two together, and they become irreplaceable partners to each other. The journey of life and death begins…
The Review:
Audio:
The audio presentation for this release brings us the original Japanese language track in stereo along with the newly created English language adaptation, both of which are encoded using the Dolby TrueHD lossless codec. The show has a pretty solid balance between action and dialogue with what goes on here. There’s a lot of dialogue and character interaction moments where it’s a straightforward center-based material to give it a full feeling. It has some nice placement from time to time but is otherwise solidly what you’d expect. When we get to the action side, mostly in the virtual world, it has a more engaging stereo design with the way the fights are set up and the impact from them. It’s a good sounding mix that keeps it moving about as needed and with some good depth and bass to make it feel like it’s working things well. The dialogue itself is clean and clear throughout and we didn’t have any problems with dropouts or distortions during regular playback.
Video:
Originally airing in 2018, the transfer for this TV series is presented in its original aspect ratio of 1.78:1 in 1080p using the AVC codec. The sixteen episodes for this season are spread across two discs with eight on each disc. Animated by JC Staff, the show has a pretty good look about it even as it tries to keep things under control with some minimal backgrounds. The design of the show is focused on murky building interiors and a lot of darkness so there’s definitely some heavy lifting going on with the encoding ere. The transfer pretty accurately conveys the look of the show so we get some striking sequences throughout with great color and pop and some really good detail. But there’s also a bit of flatness about the show at times as well, which is properly representative of the material as details bleed off into the darkness. The color levels are solid and pleasing, there’s no noise or grain to be found that’s not intentional and it’s generally a solid looking transfer that has enough pop to give it life, especially compared to streaming.
Packaging:
The packaging for this release does the rare thing I like with slipcovers by having different artwork for it and the main cover. The slipcover has a really nice textured feeling to it that puts our lead pair together and sets them against a grimy and spraypainted background that just creates a dark and murky world for them to exist in. Adding that the logo has its own quirk to it in design makes it all the more interesting. The case cover goes with a look at the greater cast spread around while keeping to the same kind of background, but more of the background is visible here and by lightening it up because of it the cover loses some of its menace. The back cover goes for a good dark look overall as it reworks the slipcover artwork of the leads and has a few shots from the show. It makes clear the larger than normal episode count – which is good – and has a solid summary of the premise done in that typewriter-style font that adds to it nicely. The remainder is given over to the technical grid that covers the release clearly. The reverse side artwork has the two leads getting headshots with their own panel while the four art cards look great as we get two versions of the two leads with look and background.
Menu:
The menu design goes for the static approach here as we get our two leads along the left with their designs coming across well without a lot of detail while to the right we get the blood splotch approach for the navigation block, which sets the mood easily enough and is amusing when used during playback. The background is given over to a kind of rough concrete look that blends into black and uses purples and greens to give it a kind of street feeling. The end result is a menu that’s functional and easy to use during playback and at the top level that sets the mood fairly well too.
Extras:
The extras for this release are fairly standard but quite welcome. For English language fans, we get a commentary track from the English production side talking about the episode and choices made. We also get a couple of the Japanese promos along with the clean opening and closing sequences for the show.
Based on the Japanese adventure game of the same name, Angels of Death has had a pretty good life. The game arrived in 2015 on Windows systems and has expanded out since then to other platforms. It spawned a twelve-volume manga series in 2016 that just wrapped up this week in Japan with twelve volumes and it has two other spinoff manga series and a three-volume light novel series. So, when an anime adaptation dropped in the summer of 2018, it’s the kind of property that felt like it should have gotten a lot more attention. The animation was produced by JC STaff and Kentaro Suzuki was brought in to direct it based on the scripts managed by Yoshinobu Fujioka. Suzuki has some solid credits as an episode director and taking this on as I believe his first or second full control series shows someone coming into their own.
The premise starts off in a way that definitely feels familiar in that videogame way as we’re introduced to Rachel, a thirteen-year-old girl who started off initially by going to the hospital to deal with having seen a murder. Her life ends up going in a whole other direction when she wakes up in a dark building with no idea how she got there or what’s going on. Just that as she makes her way out into the decrepit and darkened halls that there’s a man out there wrapped in bandages with a scythe that seemingly wants to kill her. It’s an interesting way to start off, both in the anime and I imagine in the game, as it has a real energy to it with the kind of psychotic approach of the bandaged man that we discover is named Zack, just as he learns that Rachel prefers to go by Ray. Their opening relationship is one filled and fraught with violence but it takes a turn as it progresses.
While Ray does her best to escape from him and ends up on a different floor where she comes across her counselor again, that goes for only so long before Zack ends up crossing to the floor himself and kills the counselor. But this only happens after Ray has made her small but important breakthrough to not be afraid of death, allowing her to shift the dynamic with Zack so that they can work together. This is important because Zack’s having crossed floors marks him as someone that needs to be eliminated as well, a “new sacrifice” as the case may be. Survival makes strange bedfellows sometimes and with these two looking to survive – even as Ray asks Zack to kill her in order to show him that she’s prepared to die – and the cute if a somber girl and the darkly clad older many dynamic never ever gets old. It’s tried and true for a reason.
A lot of this series, which ran for twelve episodes broadcast and then the final four online, is about the journey through the floors. This is definitely interesting and has a really good horror/violence feeling about it because of the lighting design and differences between the floors. Not every episode introduces new people who control a floor, such as the woman who is a warden of one floor with a sadistic view of the world or a boy who is pretty much the epitome of a psycho stalker in regards to Ray. We do get an episode that spends its time focusing on Zack to see how he became this way and while it certainly doesn’t excuse who he is, being brought up in a terribly abuse environment brought him to a snapping point, and eliminating his caretakers just pushed him over the edge. It’s not really deep or anything when you get down to it, but it’s the kind of simple and realistic explanation in regards to what made him like this.
The show works a really good kind of survival-horror piece over the core run of the twelve episodes that were broadcast. Time is spent on several floors, we meet several people with their own darkness and agendas, and the dynamic between Ray and Zack is certainly not easy or friendly even as they need each other for different reasons to survive. I do like that the twelfth episode provides for some exploration of Ray’s past and why she ended up being hospitalized to begin with, digging into the truth of it which isn’t entirely unexpected that she may have been complicit in something herself as opposed to an innocent victim. It’s a little weird in that the final four were online only in Japan and that her backstory finishes out there before these episodes go about with our leads doing their best to finally put an end to all of this. It has the right energy mixed with the creepiness of the location (and, quite honestly, Zack) to pull it off. It’s not exactly grinding its way from level to level like a slog but it’s also the kind of series that’s best to not binge because you get more out of it with its psychological terror and horror in smaller doses as we see everything the pair faces in their journey.
In Summary:
A lot of shows like this would end up going for something a lot more blunt and colorful, something like Danganronpa. What we get here is a bit more “grounded” in a sense but still goes for the full psychological survival-horror bent that works so well. I’ll admit to not being thrilled with the age of the lea but it’s working a particular angle and coming from the game it makes sense as well. The pairing works well, I love all the darkened and murky locations that we get here, and the strange array of characters that exist across these floors. This release definitely delivers well with a good package, a solid dub, and as clean and solid of an encoded as you can get with such darkness in so much of it. There’s a lot to like here if this type of show is your jam.
Features:
Japanese Dolby TrueHD 2.0 Language, English Dolby TrueHD 2.0 Language, English Subtitles, Episode 1 Commentary, Promo Videos, Commercials, Textless Songs
Content Grade: B
Audio Grade: B+
Video Grade: B+
Packaging Grade: B
Menu Grade: B
Extras Grade: B
Released By: Funimation
Release Date: October 22nd, 2019
MSRP: $64.98
Running Time: 300 Minutes
Video Encoding: 1080p AVC
Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1 Widescreen
Review Equipment:
Sony KDL70R550A 70″ LED 1080P HDTV, Sony PlayStation3 Blu-ray player via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.
