Anime Pilgrimage RTT

Angel Heart – episode 19

August 6, 2006 on 9:22 pm | In Angel Heart | Comments Off

“Elder Chen’s Restaurant”

The true combat waitress comes to the fore!

Elder Chen opens a restaurant next to Cat’s Eye and, after Ryo learns that Xiang Ying and Xin Hong don’t like eating with other people, both former members of Qing Long are hired as wait staff.

The first part of this episode is devoted to Xiang Ying knowing absolutely nothing about the service industry and boggling at the fact that the customers in the restaurant appear to enjoy the company of each other as they eat. This is all well and good, particularly when it comes to the instance of Xiang Ying saving a falling dumpling, but an episode of Angel Heart without the threat of violence is, well, an episode of Angel Heart without the threat of violence.

To that end, we get the yakuza coming up and trying to harass Genbumon. Yes, it’s wise indeed to threaten a restaurant run by one of the elders of one of Taiwan’s biggest organised crime organisations. Mochiyama, my most behated Mochiyama, spots Xin Hong and Xiang Ying which leads to him biting his boss. What the heck is up with that? Don’t ask me to explain the logic of the yakuza; in the universe of City Hunter they’re all notoriously stupid. I’m actually surprised that Hojo Tsukasa hasn’t been whacked yet.

The fact that the situation doesn’t make any sense doesn’t mean that it’s not entertaining: it’s a lot of fun. Xin Hong’s revelation of Chen’s ultimate plan was not exactly hilarious, but it was definitely novel. Despite the fact that one table kept on eating there in every scene, the animation and character design is ramped up significantly over the last few episodes, with the only real cosmetic problem being the shape of Umibozu’s head in several shots.

So what we’ve got is another episode in which Ryo teaches Xiang Ying a valuable lesson and chopsticks get shoved up someone’s nose. Deadly things, chopsticks.