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Angelic Layer is a strange show. It looks and feels a lot like a show that exists to sell the viewer toys (like Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh), but as far as I can tell, no toy line exists independent of the manga and anime.

The basic premise of this is that players can buy and fight Angels, which are like mobile Barbie dolls. The fights take place in a ring and seem to allow a variety of styles of martial arts and technomagical powers. The Angels don't seem to have any form of life outside the ring (called an Angelic Layer), and it's not too clear to me how much of an independent existence they have inside the ring.

The story of this show follows a girl, Misaki, and her angel, Hikaru, as they fight their way through an Angel battle tournament. Along the way, Hikaru collects the usual stable of former-competitors turned allys, and also deals with an unusually complex backstory.

This show roughly consists of two parts. The first is the fighting, which dominates much of the show. I'm not that big a fan of fighting, so this was a downside to me. The vast majority of episodes had a fight in them, and most were concluded in a single episode. So it's a fight-of-the-week show.

The other part is the interesting story involving the child and adult characters, and that's what really was interesting to me in the show. I actually really liked the way in which the show explained the motives behind the creation of the Angelic Layer fighting game, in a way that makes it seem almost noble. There are also several relationships that are formed along the way, and a really good story involving Misaki and her family. It's just that we have to sit through interminable fights to see this story.

I loved the way the ending (the last two episodes) went. The story could have ended with the end of episode 25, but the makers of this show chose to keep going with episode 26, featuring the only fight in the show that I liked. When the final credits began rolling, I thought there were a bunch of loose ends left open, but the last 30 seconds of animation under the credits tied them up in a remarkably satisfying way.

Overall, I rate this series okay (perhaps pushing good if one fast-forwards through the fighting), with a good ending.