I wanted to write a review on GabOut in the eve of it's finale episode, I don't really expect the last episode to change my opinion that much.

Gabriel Dropout is a show that caught my attention early on in the season when I decided to try it. It had somewhat of a bad reputation coming into this season because of it's relationship with Himouto! Umaru-chan since the same studio and a lot of the same staff worked both on Umaru-chan and GabOut. I was disappointed to see that, while I didn't finish watching the entire season of Umaru-chan, there wasn't anything wrong with the adaptation itself. The presentation was good, it had a colorful artstyle and it was well-animated otherwise. The problem was the material, if you give the staff of Umaru-chan something good to work with for an adaptation, well, you get Gabriel Dropout.

GabOut was a breath of fresh air for me, because I actually like skit comedy anime, or at least I like it when it works. A particular anime from a recent season that I had watched made me almost give up on skit comedy for a while, being This Art Club has a Problem!, or Konobi for short. The problem with Konobi as well as other skit comedies that I've seen recently, while in this case it's a bit different since it's a romcom and GabOut isn't, is that the author doesn't write the individual skits well. In every ten or so Konobi skits, two out of ten might have been good. Some were boring and some were so stupid that it was frustrating. For the material in GabOut, the mangaka is particularly good at writing skits, that is putting pen to paper and taking funny characters and putting them in interesting scenarios.

Part of the wit in GabOut is the way it plays around with the concepts of morality, in a similar vein to Sayonara Zetsubou-sensei, though not as tongue-in-cheek. When I say "concepts of morality", I don't mean it is "deep" but that it simply takes some traditional imagery between angels and demons and does funny things with it. The writer mixes the aspects of good and evil between angels and demons in the main four characters.

Gabriel, the main character, I believe is particularly written for a large number of people to identify with, possibly including a lot of otaku. She is a teenage angel from heaven (literally, not making a creepy metaphor) who comes to Earth in aspirations of doing a lot of good in the world. Over time she eventually becomes defeated by her inability to change the world, even for a powerful angel as herself. So she becomes obsessed with online gaming, a fantasy away from the reality she couldn't change. Although the way I describe this might seem "edgy" without context, the way it's presented is very light-hearted which makes it actually seem down to earth.

The other characters have the same fundamental dynamics. Vignette is a demon who is kind-hearted and is quick to help others. Raphiel is an angel who has a mischievous side and she likes to concoct events for the other characters in order to laugh at their expense. Last, but certainly not least, you have Satania who is hilariously chasing the aesthetic that is a demon, but she is so naive to the point where she couldn't hurt a fly if she wanted. You bounce any two to all four of these characters from plot ideas on paper scraps from a hat and you have hundreds of funny skits that almost write themselves. The characters also have a lot of charm to them, like Gabriel who from time to time shows her kindness in subtle ways even though she is thought as someone selfish.

GabOut is not for everyone I suppose, for people who aren't fans of the all-moe characterized cast types of genres, you might not see what it does right in comparison to it's contemporaries. People always bounce around the phrase that comedy is subjective and that you can't really compare it to content that is meant to be taken "seriously". Although I would combat that statement with this: skit writing is a form of writing that you can appreciate, even if you don't think the genre or delivery is funny for you.

With all the charm, likeable characters and various moments that made me laugh, I give GabOut a