Is Angels of Death Scary?
Angels of Death is a horror adventure anime but is it actually scary? Horror is a genre that is intended to frighten, scare, or disgust it’s viewer by creating feelings of terror and uneasiness. Angels of Death doesn’t quite succeed in inducing feelings of horror and it is NOT scary. However, it does make for a very entertaining adventure. If I had to make a comparison, I would say Angels of Death is similar to James Wan’s classic horror film Saw. However, it lacks the gore, detailed plot, and character development to truly be a great horror anime.
Angels of Death started off as a Japanese adventure horror game by Hoshikuzu KRNKRN (Makoto Sanada). It was created using an RPG maker and was eventually adapted into a 16 episode anime television series produced by J.C Staff. The anime is directed by Kentarō Suzuki with scripts overseen by Yoshinobu Fujioka.
Angels of Death is about a 13 year old girl named Rachel Gardner who wakes up without any memories and finds herself trapped in a building with several floors. She meets the serial killer Isaac Foster (voice actor is Nobuhiko Okamoto who voiced Bakugo from My Hero Academia) who tries to kill her but she manages to escape. Later on, Rachel no longer wishes to live and asks Isaac if he could kill her. He agrees to kill her as long as she is successful in helping him escape the building. So Isaac (nickname is Zack) and Rachel go through the different floors in order to escape.
The THREE things that make Angels of Death an interesting horror anime is:
- It’s Great Setting
- Zack and Rachel’s Traumatic Past
- It’s an Entertaining Adventure
1. Angels of Death Has a Great Setting
One of the interesting things about Angels of Death is it’s setting. Since it is based on a video game, the viewer feels as if they are in an actual video game as Rachel and Zack go through the various floors. The setting is usually dark and grimy. In the beginning scene, Rachel wakes up in a massive abandon building. The entire floor resembles a deserted, dirty network of alleyways. As Zack chases her, it paints the feeling of being a rat trapped in a maze. Each floor has it’s own floor master that oversees the activities of that floor. The owners of the floor are free to kill any intruders that enter and they are deemed as “angels”. The intruders are often seen as “sacrifices”.
Zack and Rachel usually have to complete a test and/or confront the angels of the floor to move on to the next floor. One floor that’s very interesting is Edward Mason’s floor. Eddie is a young boy who wears a pumpkin mask over his head. He loves making graves for people and his floor is modeled after a graveyard. Eddie’s backstory is that he was the child of grave-makers. He was proud and skilled at his job, but became dissatisfied with the fact that he was never given anything that could truly belong to him. Most of his things were hand-me-downs passed from one child to the next. He then began to kill his pets and bury them in his own graves, feeling that things only truly belonged to him once they were put in graves dug by him. When he became a floor master, he began building graves for those killed by the other floor masters, hardly ever killing anyone himself. The graveyards he builds are usually very decorated and specific. When Zack and Rachel stumble on his floor, they see nothing but graves and it is a very creepy atmosphere. What makes it even creepier is Eddie’s playful scary theme that plays when he appears.
Another interesting floor is Catherine Ward’s floor. Cathy was a former jail guard before being a floor master. Her floor is modeled after a huge jail cell, along with her private room where she controls the various traps on the rest of the floor and monitors her victims. She is very sadomasochistic and she enjoys uncovering her criminals’ crimes and delivering punishment to them through torture that usually ends with their deaths. She is most comparable to the serial killer Jigsaw from Saw. There is a scene where Zack is tortured that closely resembles a scene from Saw and Rachel is forced analyze the situation under pressure and tries to save him before he dies.
The setting and the characters are one of the intriguing aspects of Angels of Death. Despite the interesting backstories of the floor masters, most of them tend to act like stereotypical villains and are very flat. Doctor Danny is the worst example of this. The villains in Angels of Death never truly feel scary and they tend to just be over the top. The most interesting floor master was Abraham Gray, the reverend. Having scarier and more memorable villains would’ve brought more depth to the story.
2. Zack and Rachel’s Traumatic Past
Both Zack and Rachel have a troubled past. Learning more about them as they go from floor to floor is one of the good things about Angels of Death. One of the key questions is what did Zack and Rachel go through and how did they end up in this building?
Rachel starts off as a seemingly normal girl but she later gains some of her memories and her personality changes. She becomes more calm and completely unafraid of death. As a matter of fact, she actually craves death and urges Zack to kill her. She finds it difficult to express human emotions and often says what’s on her mind. It’s also noticeable that Rachel believes in the existence of God. She doesn’t simply kill herself because she believes that suicide is bad. It is very clear that something occurred in Rachel’s past to make her want to kill herself.
Zack is an infamous serial killer who is completely covered in bandages with a grim reaper like scythe. Zack takes pleasure in destroying the happiness of his victims and filling them with despair. He is a ruthless killer who kills simply because he wants to. However, he is what he is for a reason.
Throughout the show, Zack’s past is revealed through flashback and we get a sense of why he turned out the way he did. Rachel’s past and reason for wanting to be killed is also revealed.
3. Angels of Death is an entertaining adventure
Sometimes it’s not about the destination. It’s about the journey. Watching Zack and Rachel navigate through the floors really feels like playing a role playing game. The more you watched this series, the more you felt compelled to see what events await them.
Not only did Zack and Rachel go through an actual journey to get out of the building, they also went through an emotional journey. This is where Angels of Death shows it’s parallels to Saw. Both Zack and Rachel have to face their past and deal with whatever trauma they went through. For example, there is a scene where Cathy, the sadomasochist floor master, has Zack recreate an event from his traumatic past using dolls in order move on to the next floor. Rachel also goes a series of test where her character is judged by Abraham Gray, a floor master and reverend. Unlike Saw, Angels of Death falls short in this regard because many of the scenes lack the proper blood, gore, or tension to really induce horror from the viewer. This prevents it from being really scary.
Conclusion
Angels of Death works more as a psychological thriller than a horror. Just like horror film Saw, Rachel and Zack go through various obstacles or “tests” in order to avoid death and move on to the next floor. The pacing is very slow and the dialogue could be better but Angels of Death is a very entertaining watch.
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