Angelic Layer and why I loved it

[nighteevee]

I trust you all noticed that I was watching Angelic Layer and loving it hard. The reason I watched it is all there in the manga review commentary, and is basically "because the Misaki/Kotaro thing really fucking annoyed me in the manga". But: 26 episodes, took me less than two weeks. I even watched the last disc (ep. 21-26) twice, so yeah: I

Comments

[sarajayechan]

YES. The Angelic Layer manga moved waaayyy too fast for my liking, I was disappointed at how it was over *snaps fingers* like that with barely little in the way of character development. And Shuuko's reason for avoiding Misaki in the anime makes SO much more sense.

[nighteevee]

Yeah, the AL manga is really weird that way. I've noticed that a lot of action manga has a tendency to be moving way faster than what feels right, but it surprised me to see it coming from CLAMP.

I guess that they just didn't consider Shuuko to be a point of drama as much as a kooky plot twist in the manga, so I'm not really complaining about her part there as much as I'm happy about how the anime made so much better use of it.

[silverthunder]

I'm just trying to figure out how dumb I was for actually believing that they'd be killing of Sakura Kinomoto for real, anyway

I kinda figured they'd either be brought back to life or not really be dead in the first place. Well, I was hoping for it.
I'd also enjoy the sappy reunion. I adore ridiculously happy endings.

Angelic Layer is wonderful - and I agree, the anime is way better than the manga. I wouldn't have minded Misaki/Kotaro, but the manga didn't do it the way I wanted. Misaki/Oujiro I could take or leave; I'm not really feeling the chemistry there. Tamayo/Kotaro was brilliant (maybe because Tamayo was my favorite character). And Icchan/Shuuko was incredibly cute! I never read Chobits, though... I hear he was married to someone else in that series.

[nighteevee]

With all the crap that has been going on in Tsubasa, I really wouldn't be putting it past them to have killed their most iconic couple as well. I admit that part of the reason I don't want any reunions would be that I also don't want to see Syaroan and Sakura as adults. But also because it would be really, really weird when the series never once has shown Watanuki as having any sort of longing for his parents - he has been portrayed as somebody so used to being alone that he long since came to accept it and moved on. The big moral of the story has kind of indirectly been about the issue of loneliness, self-elected or not, so bringing in the parents dead for half his life would have to take an amount of elegance that I have never seen CLAMP posess.

Tamayo was my favorite character, too *g*

Icchan is dead in Chobits (as is a certain other AL cast member), and mostly just present in the story as the motivation for the actions of his widow.