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Tenshi ni Narumon
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Title Info
- alias: I'll be an Angel
- seen: 1-26 of 26
- type: TV
- grade: flawed
- made: unknown
- Review created: Tue Oct 17 13:23:31 EST 2000
- mod: none
The translation of the title was "I'll be an angel" (although on the tape I saw it was "I'll be an angle", very kinky). It's an interesting title, but due to various production decisions will not be to everybodies taste. The first element of this is that while the show has a serious story behind it many, even most, episodes are largely unrelated. The core story, in any case, is that a `spiritual' egg was being carried (by stork) when it was intercepted by a rather bad tempered buzzard. The egg dropped and was broken into three parts and the various parts seperated. At some later point, in the mortal world, a young boy is cycling home when he finds a strange naked girl. On rescuing her she turns out to be an astoundlingly cheerful, completely naieve, airhead. Even worse not only has she decided that she loves (and is married) to him but her incredibly freakish family has taken over his home to live with the newlyweds. Add in that she's interrupted the boys dreams of romance (totally unrequited) with a `normal' girl. Then top that off with the fact that she appears to have powerful enemies, and dangerous allies, and our human hero is in for a very tough time. Still, while Noelle is definitely a space case she has the heart of innocent, a deep love for our hero, and (after an overheard comment) a strong desire to be an angel.
It sounds pretty good, doesn't it? And the core story has strong possibilities. Likewise the writing and characters do, at times, acheive some quite strong scenes and a definite sense of atmosphere. Their definitely is skill evident in the production of this video. Unfortunately it is hamstrung by some bad decisions and some suprisingly variable writing. To start with noelle is a truly freakish character. In order to get comedy they have made her way over the top and totally unbelievable, with the brains and survival instincts of a lemming. Then there's the family which is constructed by raiding western fairytales (witches, vampires, frankenstein) but are clearly designed almost entirely for comedy value. Those who have seen the `munsters' will see many similarities, while the rest of the world will wonder who came up with the idea, and why they made is so loud and chaotic. It turns out there is a explanation, but you'll have to get through many episodes to find out, and it still doesn't explain why they are so loud. Then, to fill the action quota, there are occasional wacky invention sequences and wacky city-stomping comedy mecha (such as a huge rice-cooker mecha) fighting it out. Although thankfully even the creators start getting bored of that element. And through all this surreal comedy the `normal' world doesn't blink an eyelid. Even so, this might be excusable but for one fatal flaw, it's not particularly clever, or even amusing, leading to the show feeling very `broken' and unbelievable for little gain. And then to cap it off we get flashs of the villain which are astoundingly dark and gothic. Really cool in itself, but further enhancing the feeling that we are watching a show full of many good ideas that fail to connect. It gets all serious at the end, and isn't a bad ending (and is a fairly watchable series in general) but this is definitely one to see several episodes of before you buy. In my case I loved the villain, and the serious ending, but found the `comedy' very grating and the `light' episodes to feel like really badly written filler.
And then we can get onto the thing that will hit you the hardest as you watch the opening. The entire animation style for this is very, very strange. It's very cartoony and incredibly bright. While normal humans look alright all the `monsters' look, and move, with the evidence of heavy style. This style gets even stranger when you look at things such as clothing, machinery or architecture. It doesn't look at all real, and indeed looks like someone either trying to be as weird as possible (or under the effect of certain substances). It's loud, it's bright and, to me, it's very unattractive. On the positive it's quite well unified, the same style is used throughout and has the same feel. Indeed the very unearthly style works quite well for the `villain' scenes. To back this up the music is relentlessly cheery and the voices are agressively adapted to the character being represented. This results in noelle's voice, and insane dialog, being a potential instrument of torture. I can't help feel that they are trying to be cute, but doing a particularly unconvincing job of it. Still, it might be worth watching a couple of episodes just to experience this very unusual style.
The only review I can find at the moment is from the dependable Lord Carnage. It's an interesting review, although seemingly still early in the series. His comments about the style (also obvious in the pictures) indicate how `insane' it is, and his comment that this is one of the worst `intro to anime' options, seem pretty spot on.
Words by Andrew Shelton, Web by Ticti, Last Compile: Wed Aug 5 12:39:25 WST 2009