This Week in Anime

What the Hell is Going On in Freakangels?

Jean-Karlo
There have been a number of tempests in teapots over some of the Crunchyroll Originals and how bad they are, all of which ignore the realities of producing an animated series (budgets are never big enough, production never has enough time). So my heart goes out to people who are trying to produce original shows, it's just never easy, and the peanut gallery sure doesn't help.

But also: couldn't you guys choose better content? Do we have to resort to decade-old webcomics?

Well, that's pretty crappy news. But I can't pretend this is some kind of fall from grace for me in particular. I know folks love the Netflix Castlevania serialized action cartoon because it's super-horny and Alucard is sexy, but I couldn't listen to a single character on that show utter a single vowel without wanting to put my fist through the screen. Castlevania is an extremely anachronistic series, so it's not that they "made it goofy" or "ruined the canon with goofy dialogue," I just have to wonder how stoned or thirsty you need to be to think "Eat shit and die."/"Yes, fuck you" is the epitome of character writing. It's okay to like a show just because you're thirsty for the cast, you don't have to pretend otherwise!

Well, it takes place in the UK? So it at least has a Guy Ritchie-kinda deal to hide behind? But Ellis himself wrote the webcomic the show is based off of, so there's never going to be any redemption for the dialogue. (PS: for the younger folks, a "webcomic" is what we called "Webtoons" before we let a single brand become the name for an entire medium.)

I do want to take a moment and give a very stern admonishment to Crunchyroll for FREAKANGELS. Ignoring the content: it's inexcusable for a show to be released without subtitles in 2022. Full-stop. We even watched the show with the subtitles option on, nothing. This isn't a "sub vs dub" issue, it's an accessibility issue. How the heck was I supposed to watch this show if I had a hearing disability? We are long past the point where closed captioning can be passed off as an add-on. However soon those subtitles are patched in will be too late—that stuff needed to be there Day One.

Huh, what a prescient-yet-agreeable statement to come from this show!

Okay, so like... this is one of those "twenty minutes into the future"-type deals. The United Kingdom was rocked by a disaster; scores of people are dead, massive chunks of the country are flooded, and infrastructure has been devastated. A girl named Alice is mentally deluded by a wanderer named Mark into thinking that it was the Freakangels: a gang of psychics that protect the town of Whitechapel in the ruins of London.

Oh, wait, pardon me, it's "Shite-chapel". God damn, Ellis, you brilliant writer, you did it again. ...I'm being sarcastic, by the way.

Connor is a good bean. When Alice comes around brandishing a shotgun and howling for Freakangel blood, he simply incapacitates her because he can tell when Mark has messed with someone—and he and Mark have bad blood.

Also: Alice goes to Whitechapel in a red hood like she's a B.B. Hood cosplayer.

It's cool to see a raven-haired metal chick who'd break my face, and KK apparently is a lifelong wrench wench for helicopters. But also: meh.

Sounds like everything else Ellis has written, hey-o! Jack would be cooler, but he's also much more of a jerk—in a tragic way. He mostly keeps to his fishing boat. He has a nice heart, but he can be a real violent prick when he want to be. You can see bits where his sensitivity comes through, he'd make for a cool older brother. But he has a lot of ducks he needs to get in a row—and he never does.

The implication I got was that Sirkka was always a libertine, which is part of Jack's issues with her. She really loves Jack, but Jack makes that really hard. As Connor put it, they'd be very happy together if they ever sorted their stuff out.

A bit part of the story is how the powers of the various Freakangels is affected by their personality: all of them have the same set of abilities (which they call "the package"), but they're slightly different in application. We'll come back to Sirkka and how her deal could have been much cooler, it factors into the show. Just know it's a letdown because this is an "Anime™" and anime is not kid stuff.

Luke being a tremendous piece of crap is a major focus of the story and drives much of the main conflict. And Ellis should have taken a few cues from what Luke learns as a result of his asshat-ery. But oh well. Arkady is a much nicer character and a good example of how "packages" vary; a hippy, she's been "off" ever since she temporarily died from an overdose. Much like in Flatliners, the four minutes of oxygen deprivation messed with her brain but also expanded her connection to her powers. She spends her days having weird visions about tadpoles while thinking up three impossible things to do before breakfast.

In a better story, her connection to her powers would be much more poignant. We don't get that story.

Alice points out she has amazing biceps, but that's about it from her. Kirk and Carl here (pictured with KK) are similarly quite wasted in this story. I couldn't even tell who was who, they mattered so little. Apparently in the webcomic, it was implied that they were gay and in a relationship with each other. Here... well, one of them can stimulate growth in strawberries? And that's about it!

Mikki is a doctor and she's used her powers to learn everything she can about mending bones with telekinesis, and Kait uses her powers to deeply wish to be a cop and apparently has a ladyboner for Quincy, M.D. (which is webcomic-only lore).

And that's about it. The Freakangels for the most part go their own way and do their own thing to keep Whitechapel intact, using their powers to help however they can. Which is where Mark comes in: he used to be their leader, but was exiled when he started using his powers to manipulate people's minds directly. While the Freakangels all have some degree of telepathy, they can't control people—at best, they can only encourage thoughts that are already there. Mark can full-on plant false memories, which the Freakangels had established as being the highest taboo.

Also, Jack and KK secretly pushed Mark off of a cliff at Stonehenge when he was exiled because they knew he'd try to worm his way back. They're quite surprised it didn't stick.

Mark's plans are honestly halfway-decent, if only because he's an actually intelligent villain. Far from some Machiavellian who's accounted for the brand of toilet paper they'd use, Mark is able to make his plans work by virtue of knowing how to best manipulate his friends' shortcomings. When Mark sends a gang of raiders to sack Whitechapel, he knows Connor would take pity on their families and offer them refuge—even though Whitechapel can barely accommodate them. Connor's just that much of a bleeding heart.

When Mark brainwashes a trio of locals into bombing Whitechapel, Jack almost catches them—but Sirkka is such a trusting ingenue that she waves off Jack's suspicions, even though he's right. They even tell Sirkka she's "too kind."

Well, at least the psychic sex is better than what they have going on in World's End Harem...

There are all kinds of bizarre shortcuts taken with the animation that just come off as bizarre. Take this scene where Luke is talking to his beleaguered girlfriend Janine; you'll notice Janine's head looks a little off compared to everything else. For whatever reason, Janine's head in this scene was rendered in 3D—and only her head. Then they just just slid it around to replicate animation. And it's far from the only time: cigarettes that are clearly 3D props placed over someone's hand, or 3D eyes that don't line up with the line of sight... I prefer 3D VTubers to 2D, sure, but this is all just puzzling.

Priorities! It doesn't help that the story is so scattershot. Maybe it's because of how the webcomic had more than just nine half-hour episodes to cover its story, but so many plotlines seem to peter out. The stuff with Janine is a great example: she and Luke had a fiery relationship, but just when Luke seemed to be worming back into her pants Janine turns up dead and Luke is the main suspect. The Freakangels having to distrust one of their own only helps Mark further his own goals.

Sanitized indeed, this version of the story reveals that Mark had killed Janine and that Luke had only, like... cut himself by accident and the blood got on his shoe. Luke is still a heel, mind—while he isn't completely mind-controlling Janine, he's still guilty of using his telepathy to strengthen how much Janine loves him (which, she actually did). There's more pathos being that Luke genuinely loves Janine and just doesn't have the emotional intelligence to maintain a healthy relationship; there's a scene where he's utterly distraught because an illustration she had done of the two of them was trashed. Guy's sorting through a house full of Van Goghs because this painting was "the only one worth anything." Doesn't stop him from being a piece of crap, but it's at least better than the webcomic.

But yeah, it's not until Luke makes it look like he might hurt Sirkka that Jack shoots him in the face.

I do want to pause here because while Luke did deserve the bullet, he makes a very valid argument against Sirkka: while Sirkka uses her powers for love and to help people overcome their trauma, he points out that what she does is just as manipulative as anything else. After all: she's just strengthening the positive thoughts in people's heads. He's not wrong, but it's one of those "The Worst Person You Know Has A Good Point" things. Even I'm loathe to give him credit for this because at least Sirkka lets people say "no."

Yeah, Luke is back up and running after getting his brain shot through. Poor guy even has to plug up the bullet hole before he can use his powers! As Kait said, "please don't finger the corpse-hole."

Arkady threatens to put Luke through five minutes of her experience from overdosing if he ever "forgets what consent means" again, but that still feels like a slap on the wrist.

The Freakangels, as it turns out, were the ones who "broke the world." All twelve of them were born with their powers at the exact same time and were sequestered by the government for it. Pushed to their limits and hunted by literal armies, they combined their powers and created a shockwave that basically ruined everything, leaving London under a magic veil. The veil appears as an aurora in the night sky.


Mark was key to this: he wanted to do some damage, similar to how he thinks non-psychics ("basics") are worth mentally manipulating. His trauma gave him an ego trip.

Don't worry, we've given it all the attention it deserves Anyway, Mark manages to worm his way back to the Freakangels with a proposition: with all the locals terrified and about to leave Whitechapel given how much of a mess things have become, Mark proposes that they all be traumatized into avoiding the Freakangels forever, because... apparently, people wouldn't leave them alone unless he made them think the Freakangels were literal demons?

That's just Warren Ellis for you. Your debate about altruism vs a strong-handed approach isn't balanced just because your altruistic people are constantly getting sucker-punched.

Yeah, all that crap about Mark and ultimately they just... let him off. Dead bodies are dangling from the guy's neck like millstones but it's okay, because Arkady has a plan: teleporting outside of the Veil.

Something keeps telling Arkady to "grow the frogs and feed the crows", which is supposed to sound deep but it just sounds forced.

This is some webcomic lore that the series doesn't do a very good job of explaining: the Freakangels are effectively immortal and killing one makes them come back stronger—hence why Arkady came back with growing powers. Mark actually did die when he got pushed off the cliff, his body just healed itself. (Also, the webcomic explained that he came back evil because his brain repaired itself while soaked in filthy water.) Arkady can teleport the lot outside of the veil, but Mark knows that this is a bad idea. We don't get any explanation as to why that is.

If you had any emotional investment in, say, the resolution of Luke's story with Janine or Jack and Sirkka's relationship, this show has nothing for you. Even if it was snarky and gave you a middle finger over it all, that'd be something. Instead, all you get is... this weird attempt at being poignant.

Not having captions is bad enough to where honestly the show isn't worth watching on that alone. But if I'm charitable... this still isn't a good show. Points for a show trying to be An Anime™ that doesn't resort to Studio Mir (I'm quite burnt out on their art style), but FREAKANGELS just doesn't have anything to show for itself. The aesthetic is functional, with a lot of gaps. The writing is only good if you're the kind of guy who thinks "Eat shit and die" is the height of writing. And it puts zero effort into earning its attempt at an ending. I feel for the folks who worked on this because they tried, but I still don't know what they were going for. And whatever it was, it just doesn't work.

It's such a disappointment that they had their chance and all they could do was "Chronicle with pointy chins." The Crunchyroll Originals deserve better, and it's not the fault of the many hardworking animators or writers that the shows are so lackluster. By all means, there are a lot of things that the anime industry can do better in the U.S. It's not too later for them to do that.