Anime Pilgrimage RTT

Angel Heart – episode 12

March 23, 2006 on 9:31 pm | In Angel Heart | Comments Off on Angel Heart – episode 12

“Encounter and Farewell at Sea”

The old dock sounds return and, as usual, every crime lord has their own tanker.

Master Li holds Qian De’s funeral at “sea” – in reality just a little way away from the docks – and invites Shan In and Ryo to attend. Li and Ryo reminisce about how great Qian De was, and how he is essentially responsible for Shan In’s existence.

This is a simple episode that again attempts to bring more sympathy to Master Li. I’ve still got that block, in that I would find these stories much more sympathetic if part of his stock in trade wasn’t the manufacture of killer children. This is a battle I’m never going to win.
The stories of Qian De were good because you could tell that he probably had little or nothing to do with the “killer children” scheme and was probably a “good” criminal. Easily the best part of the scenes between Qian De and Master Li was in their club, which was very much like an early Wong Kar-Wai film.

Li’s logic is a bit faulty – going into organised crime will create a life without hardship is a bit of a difficult idea for me to handle – but the rest of the episode is fairly tight.
Ryo’s own experiences, despite the fact that he’s never really been a fan of criminals, prove that Qian De was a good man and, unsurprisingly, Shan In has affected all three of them deeply.

The other highlight of the story was seeing that Kaori’s room was exactly as she left it – with a 100t hammer in the closet. Despite the whole death thing, Angel Heart really is City Hunter fan service: delivering so much more of the stuff that I loved most about that series.