The series moves quickly to its conclusion with a bang and then proceeds to almost whimper for more than two episodes until it closes out gracefully.
What They Say:
With no good job prospects and no girlfriend, Goro has only a fondness for animals to help him get by. Goro has pretty much given up hope when he meets a fortune teller who informs him his luck is about to change. Suddenly, three very attractive girls show up for the express purpose of taking care of him. At first a bit overwhelmed by the sudden entourage, Goro deduces that these girls are reincarnations of his childhood pets, and they have returned to become his guardian angels. As the show progresses, all of Goro’s many pets return to him in the form of cute girls. In this volume, Goro’s harem has grown to 12. Though most of them laze about the house dressed in bikinis, Goro finds the domestic arrangement to be remarkably challenging. Goro meets a saint from the netherworld who reveals something poignant about his past life that informs his present. Also, when someone unexpected visits, their complex cohabitation is at risk.
The Review:
Audio:
The audio presentation for this series brings us the original Japanese language in stereo along with the English dub. The show gets a stereo mix here that does a good job of working through the material since it’s all pretty dialogue-oriented but with some moments where it gets to stand out a bit more. The mix is good though and utilizes the forward soundstage well as the dialogue plays out and you get more characters on screen as it progresses. Dialogue is also well placed when appropriate though it’s not quite as noticeable. Overall, the dialogue is clean and clear throughout and we had no problems with dropouts or distortions during regular playback.
Video:
Originally airing back in 2001, the transfer for the first four episodes of this twelve-episode series looks very good. With as many characters as there are in here with the varying uniforms, the color palette is richly filled and there’s a great depth and solidity to them. Cross coloration is very minimal, creeping into only a few areas and aliasing is minimal in general. There isn’t a lot of action in the show and mostly just mildly moving characters so the transfer doesn’t run into many issues with the encoding. Backgrounds look great and maintain a very solid look and avoid pixelating.
Packaging:
Similar to the earlier covers in more than a couple of ways, this volume has two of the older angels getting some time on the cover along with the trio of young angels which is one way to get more on there with less. The artwork for it is nice and clean and pretty simple with a blue-green pastel background to it that keeps the focus on the characters and the bathing suits. The back cover has only one small area of shots from the show but manages to squeeze in half a dozen images. The back cover is pretty full with a summary and a large section of small print production credits. The episode numbers and titles are clearly listed though (along with volume numbering on the spine and front cover) and the disc extras and basic features are prominently listed. The insert replicates the artwork from the front cover and opens to a two-panel image that has a really great-looking detailed shot of all the girls in their standard outfits in a circle. The back of the insert has a surprisingly clean and open-spaced listing of the main staff of the show and a bilingual cast list with full English credits for the actors.
Menu:
The menu layout is very simple with just a shot of three younger girls/sisters on one side with selections using halo icons, all of which are set against a pink/blue background and to some instrumental piece from the show. Selections are quick and easy to navigate with immediate episode jumping and fast access times. The disc properly read our players’ language presets as well.
Extras:
There are only a couple of extras on this volume. A brief summary is included about the Saint Beasts which is no more than a couple of pages of character profiles with a single black and white shot of each character. The Venomous Tails extra is here again with a few more “mini” episodes of the cast doing things in super-deformed mode and just acting goofy or somewhat out of character. Unfortunately, the extra isn’t dubbed and is in Japanese only with soft subtitles. It’s a mildly amusing piece but nothing terribly critical to the show as it’s basically the four panel comics done to minimal animation.
After three volumes of Angel Tales, with only the last volume really starting to show anything of a serious plot with the introduction and arrival of the final Saint Beast, the series has three episodes left to really hit things with its plot and bring it all together. So when it wraps up the real plot in the first episode and then spends two episodes going back to what they did in the majority of the series it feels really odd to do so.
The opening episode is rather engaging and probably the most interesting one of the series, especially since the women are pushed back from the forefront and the men get a chance to actually talk and figure things out. With Goro in the picture now and defending the girls from the advances of the Saint Beasts and trying to negotiate a way to get the “four brides” back from them, he’s showing more spine than in the rest of the series but it’s not exactly unexpected from him. What changes is that we start to learn more of what the Saint Beasts had gone through in the past when they were forced to lose their powers and become imprisoned and what role Goro played.
As it turns out, Goro is a reincarnation of a great power named the Sage. In days gone past, he was the one who had taken the divine powers of the Saint Beasts from them and locked them up, something he needed to do as his power and life were waning at the time, so that they couldn’t get out until he had been reborn in a time where his powers would be strong enough to handle them. Naturally, it’s best thought that an uninformed Goro would be better so as the truth gets revealed it’s a shock to him but he handles it well. Too well in fact as his good-natured side gets the better of him and he tries to give back the powers that he has contained inside of him to the Saint Beasts, which will allow the fighting to stop and everyone to go back to being what they were.
The very amusing turnaround to this is that the four are so surprised by this and the way it all turns out that they end up offering to serve him and move in with him for a short period of adjustment. It’s a great change of pace to watch the four of them become subservient and try to do what they can to feed and make Goro happy while the girls are away. Even better when they do return and try to one-up each other for the brief time that they are all together. There are some nice little moments between some of them that indicate places to go in the future and just the interactions are comical and sweet at the same time.
The one subplot that comes up during the final episodes that’s interesting and puts the entire set of girls in their place is when Goro’s mother starts to set him up with a marriage meeting. Though he blows it off and heads back to the city, the young woman finds her way to him and ends up spending some time with him. It’s a nice twist since even though he’s unsure of the entire thing since he’s got so many girls in his life already, he finds himself having a really good time with her and the others have to actually deal with it and possibly realize that they can never truly be what she can be to him. It’s a bit bittersweet but it plays out nicely for the last episode.
In a way, the last two episodes are a really extended epilogue to the show that didn’t necessarily have to exist and normally isn’t done for a lot of shows. With all the big moments and revelations done with the first episode, the drop in the tension and activity really lets a lot of the wind out of the show that had been built up. While I’m not looking for two episodes of fighting and the usual back and forth, the layout and planning of the last episodes just felt like it came and went in the wrong way. There are some really good moments throughout all of the episodes that help mitigate it, but the ending to this show will always feel off.
In Summary:
Angel Tales has alternated between mildly amusing, very creepy, somewhat touching, and then pretty interesting for a few minutes before it decides it just wants to wander through its ending episodes. The series is pretty consistent however and it’s hard to fault it for that at the end as it does what it did at the beginning and there is definite character growth for some of the key characters along the way. The way it all got resolved just felt like it was a letdown however and it dropped the wind from its sails far too early, leaving us dangling along to resolve things that could have had more impact in far shorter sequences.
Features
Japanese 2.0 Language, English 2.0 Language, English Subtitles, Text/Photo Galleries, Illustration Gallery, SD Comedy Bonus Video
Content Grade: B
Audio Grade: B+
Video Grade: B+
Packaging Grade: B+
Menu Grade: B
Extras Grade: B
Released By: Bandai Entertainment
Release Date: December 14th, 2004
MSRP: $29.95
Running Time: 75 Minutes
Video Encoding: 480i/p MPEG-2
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1 Anamorphic 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.
