Angel's Feather

I have never before seen such a horrible OAV. I'm usually a very open-minded person, but I honestly could not tolerate this.

The story and charcater developement was dreadful. I could not grasp what the storyline was at all. I have a feeling that the characters were not very well planned. I didn't understand the main characters backgrounds, and I got confused as to who was what, who loved who, and so on.

The only positive thing about this was the art and sound. I daresay they are pretty decent. The characters and background are fairly well drawn. The music, I deem appropraite for the scenes. It ... was pretty decent.

This OAV was absolutely not worth my time. I got bored on the first part and wanted nothing more than to close the window and get on with another anime.

Valentine's is approaching and you guys know what that means, something with romance. In this case, we're looking at Angel's Feather. A 2006 romance, fantasy OVA based off of a visual novel. The studio behind it was Venet, which I'd never heard of before watching this. And the game was from Blue Impact, which I have also never heard of.

Story:

Our tale takes place in an all boy's school where our protagonist, Shou, comes in search of his long lost twin brother, Kai. At least they're not Gundam pilots or one of them would be killed and then replaced by the other and they ... wouldn't be allowed to have different personalities at all. But moving on, Kai doesn't remember Shou, leading Shou to wonder if he actually is his brother even though they look virtually identical aside from the length of their hair. But I digress. Unbeknownst to the brothers, they're from a different world which they only discover when Shou sprouts white wings during a ghost hunt.

Let's start by delving into the problems with this things. The biggest is that the world building is very weak. A lot of the elements are hurriedly introduced and either not explained or given a rushed explanation. I'm sure in the actual visual novel they spend upwards of a dozen hours of scrolling through text meticulously explaining everything with walls of text and dialogue, but in the anime that isn't the case. The anime also likes to have "intense, shocking" moments as part of its big conflict in both episodes, but they don't really work because they centre around characters we've seen for all of a couple minutes. There's just no real impact in spite of the attempt at having an impact.

About the best I can say about the story telling is that I could see some of the ideas working if they were well developed and properly extrapolated on. There's also nothing really heinously bad about it which is more than I can say about a lot of the OVAs I've reviewed this year.

Characters:

The big issue here is that there are a lot of really under-developed characters running around and to make matters worse, a lot of them look similar. Like the two guys with short blue hair or the three somewhat older guys with dark hair and glasses. It's a case of quantity over quality with there being a lot of characters, and very few who are memorable in any regard. The only characters who left any kind of impression were the twins, because they're the focus characters, and the silver-haired effeminate guy with the healing flute. And he's only memorable because it's weird to see him in the back, playing a flute during action sequences.

Art:

As a whole, the art looks fine. At its worst, there are a few too many close ups of specific parts on the boys that are clearly meant as fan-service and there's the aforementioned issue with characters who look overly similar. The OVA could have potentially gotten by with that if they were written in a really memorable way, but their also being under-written leads to a bunch of characters you don't care enough to distinguish from one another. At its best, it has some action sequences that work pretty nicely and the backgrounds look pretty nice.

Sound:

The acting is fine. They got some pretty big names like Yamaguchi Kappei, Midorikawa Hikaru and Miyata Kouki to name a few. This just isn't among their best performances. It falls more under the, they did the bare minimum to be competent. And, in all fairness to them, I think that's largely due to their characters being dull and unmemorable. The music isn't very good. It's not terrible but it's not good.

Ho-yay:

There is a lot of flirtation among the guys. With several being heavily implied to be lovers. I don't mind it being really gay at all. What I mind is that none of the relationships are strong. You'll see one of the boys either briefly flirt with another or in a situation with sexual implications but you'll never see a proper conversation or anything substantial to the relationship. So, they kind of give you the implication and just leave it at that.

Areas of Improvement:

1. Have fewer characters and more development. Look, I do understand that they're trying to adapt a VN and that VN probably spends more time on its introduction than the entire OVA lasts. However, when you're making an adaptation, you have to accept that there are going to be viewers who haven't seen the original. Which means it has to be able to stand on its own. And a major way they could have simplified things to make it stand on its own, would have been to cut out some of these non-characters and used some time to actually develop the ones they kept in. At least a little bit.

2. Have some proper build up. These big betrayals they have in each episode don't really work, because we barely see the people in question with the guys they betray beforehand. You need to show us enough to strengthen those character dynamics so that it means something when they get completely altered. Not a minute of them together and then some random flashbacks of their past after the betrayal.

3. Do more to illustrate the fantasy elements. Part of the problem with this OVA is that the fantasy setting is largely downplayed and it seems like a regular ass boys' school until things take an abrupt shift into fantasy during the action sequences. Which makes it a little jarring.

Final Thoughts:

This isn't a good OVA. It's better than a lot of the OVAs I've watched during this past year, but when you're being positively compared to Mad Bull, Iron Virgin Jun and some of the other tripe I've reviewed this year, that isn't much of an endorsement. It's still a below average work. As such, I'm giving it a 4/10.

Oh god. (Shakes head and begins laughing out of pity...)
If you want an anime that desperately attempted to squish story-lines together then have a go. If not, well, then you're sane. Or, not bored enough yet. Either way. They had the astounding idea that even if they couldn't have a twelve to twenty four episode series, they should still try to get all that story into two thirty minute episodes. Wow, that totally didn't seem like a bad idea from the start! (This is where I start running in a circle screaming 'baka!' while multiple people question my ... sanity.)
Not to mention every predictable bad guy is a bad guy. Random characters obtain random information from god knows where. No one has any common sense. They never explain why people are fighting in the first place or how anyone is traveling to any world. I still have no idea of what time period this takes place in. And why the fuck are half of these characters blushing for no goddamn reason? Seriously. No. Fucking. Reason.
Also throughout this entire two episode OVA the main thing that was on my mind was their goddamn hair. Kai you are not a person who looks good with really long hair. I'm not saying cut it super short, but can you just go with the hair cut you had as a kid? That's the most tolerable hair cut of any of these characters. Please somebody give them good haircuts! It looks like they all were looking for scissors, couldn't find any, and thus decided to cut their hair with garden sheers.

Honestly pathetic all around. Two episodes and there was no plot like they want you to believe. All this anime has going for it is the cute guys and that is it. I didn't see anything I would classify was yaoi related, but that's just me.

I'm not really going to go in-depth with this review. All I have to say is that the story was really choppy and jumpy. It barely qualified as a Shounen-ai. The fight scenes were a joke, and the dialogue was terrible. It was so cheesy and unoriginal. If you're into all that, then that's fine, but even then, I think that it would make more sense if you played or know about the game.