Galaxy Angel is a deliciously dated, half-episode-length sci-fi gag comedy worth the time of wide-eyed teenagers and hollow-eyed jaded anime wizards alike.

d premise

Five girls work in a small 'special forces' type unit in some space military organisation. Galaxy Angel is a scifi in name only; it being "scifi" is really just an excuse to have any and all locations be available at the drop of the hat for whatever idea the writers have in mind to manifest in the next episode. The moments where something truly sci-fi happens can be counted on your fingers and not even toes. The premise is five girls do things ("missions"), and it is very episodic with only one two-episode story arc. While there is usually some kind of twist or climax in each episode, it often (especially in the earlier episodes) feels like an episode begins, things happen, and then an episode finishes. You will see episodes centered around finding a lost recipe for a mystical pastry, a baseball match, getting a failing pizzeria back on its feet to pay off debt collectors, and occasionally "thematically appropriate" Star Trek-type shit such as the cast dealing with a kidnapping or finding their way out of a supernatural space blimp. The comedy is sickly sweet, full of non-sequiturs (Ah! A bully!) and dumb jokes, and really is executed much better than you would expect from a show like this. It's not grating or repetitive or formulaic and is guaranteed to catch you off guard, especially if you are a seasoned veteran of low-quality 2010s anime comedy, which I wish I was not.

stylee

The creators of Galaxy Angel really give no fucks on all fronts. If they think it's funny, they will put it in, and not worry about the consequences that any particular decision could have on the pacing or tone of an episode. This is done consistently and confidently so it becomes a part of the show's character and not to its detriment as it would be with something as 'grounded' as, say, FLCL, which I think is saying a lot. By "deliciously dated" I mean visuals and sound. Anyone who has played games or watched movies from this era will recognise dozens of stock sounds, the visuals are very attractive in that late hand-drawn era kind of way (with ridiculous colors on the characters but without (many) ridiculous proportions), and the music is instantly recognisable as coming from the turn of the millenium (and Japan) with its corny digital-ska BGMs and extremely quiet bass. See also the descending-thirds motif at the very end of the ED. The OP is the pinnacle and culmination of the musical style of this anime and is easily one of the best of all time, one of the rare ones that you will feel guilty for skipping.

anything else

There are many things I like about Galaxy Angel, the interactions between the characters being another that deserves mention here, but really its one gleaming strength is the confidence of its carelessness and it is worth anyone's time just for that. Above I implied that there was a "ridiculous proportion" in this anime, that is of course Forte's tits, which are - and this is a comment you will hear often, but rarely carries any actual weight coming from whatever loser online posted it - absurd looking and decidedly ugly as well. They are not a problem because they are big, they are not a problem because there is so much skin showing, but they are a problem for the way they are drawn and animated. She truly is an orb smuggler before she is a woman. Forte's design as a whole is baffling to me, think 'gap moe' but with way too many ideas haphazardly juxtaposed. At least she is memorable for it - as are the rest of the crew, except Vanilla (the least interesting kuudere you have seen yet (not that i have seen many kuudere characters in all my bundreds of anime)). They are all a liiiittle bit one-dimensional, think Ranpha's obsession with men, Forte's obsession with guns, but like I said above, the interactions between them are interesting enough to make it worth it. Other point while I am talking about characters - the screen time distribution is remarkably inconsistent. Mint and especially Vanilla have much less than the other three. For Vanilla this is not a problem because she is so far into the kuudere hole that she contributes literally nothing to the majority of scenes she appears in, but Mint perhaps got the short stick here, to the point that I still found myself surprised by her flying ability the second and last time it was shown, most of the way through the show.