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115. Gabriel Dropout
https://myanimelist.net/anime/33731/Gabriel_DropOut
Winter 2017 (12 episodes)
My Score: 6/10, MAL Score: 7.45/10
Best Character: Kurumizawa McDowell Satania Satanichia

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfiU6b8LZb0

Premise: Tenma White Gabriel was the top angel in her class, at least until she went to attend high school on Earth. Now she's addicted to video games and has turned into a lazy slob.

The Good: Gabriel Dropout is a comedy about two angels and two demons who are attending high school together on Earth. All four have their good moments, but overall I like the demons way more. Satania is amazing, as I'll cover in her write-up below. She's basically a chunibyo (even though she really is a demon) and a lot of great jokes come from her unwarranted overconfidence. Vigne is also good. Despite being a demon, she struggles to do anything even slightly bad. It's a nice contrast compared to the two who are supposed to be angels. It's fun when the four of them are together and their personalities are bouncing off each other.

The Bad: I don't dislike Gabriel and Raphiel, but they're definitely the weak links in the cast for me. Gabriel is a grumpy, gaming-addicted slob, and she's proud of that so she never changes and a lot of her jokes feel samey. Raphiel likes tormenting Satania for her own amusement, but those scenes are mostly fun because of Satania. I also never felt like Raphiel actually added much. Satania was perfectly capable of failing in a humorous way all on her own without any outside help. If anything, the Raphiel scenes were a bit too meanspirited for me.

Overall: Gabriel Dropout is a solid comedy, and all four main characters add something to the dynamic. Satania is still easily the best. When I was watching it, I remember thinking that it would be great if the entire anime was about Satania... and then, a few years later, The Great Jahy came out and was basically that. Jahy and Satania even have the same voice actress! When I rewatched Gabriel Dropout recently, I couldn't help but feel that it has been made redundant. The Great Jahy had more of everything I loved from this without any of the parts I found mediocre. Having said that, Gabriel Dropout is still worth watching for Satania alone.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/4/6/1/AAcDcBAADuZN.jpg

CHARACTER: Kurumizawa McDowell Satania Satanichia (Gabriel Dropout)
https://myanimelist.net/character/143076/Satanichia_Kurumizawa_McDowell
Voiced by: Oozora Naomi
TOP 100 RANK: 47th

VIDEO LINK (short, no real spoilers): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiW3hGTalG8

SPOILERS FOR GABRIEL DROPOUT

Satania is introduced proudly announcing to her teacher that she deliberately didn't do her homework, and that she isn't sorry for it. Then she lets loose her iconic demonic laugh... right up to the scene transition where she's crying in the hall because she got in trouble. Basically, I fell in love with Satania right away. She acts like she's evil incarnate, like she's destined to become the ruler of hell and all must bow before her superiority. In reality, she's barely any better at being bad than the good girl Vigne. In one episode where Vigne is trying to be more demonic by *gasp* leaving her ribbon loose, Satania is literally the only one to notice and compliment her on her wickedness because she's at about the same level.

Almost every great moment in Gabriel Dropout involved Satania. She bursts into each scene with her amazing laugh and delusions of grandeur, then usually gets hilariously bullied and brought down a few pegs. Nothing ever goes right for Satania. There's a fun running gag where a cute dog keeps stealing her melon bread. She's a frequent target for Raphiel's trolling. She can never get the best of Gabriel (the scene where she tries to shoot Gab with a magic bullet that will make her laugh for ten minutes is great for how easily Gab manages to turn the tables and shoot Satania with it instead). Vigne seems to tolerate Satania more out of pity than actually enjoying her friendship. Satania never lets anything get her down for long, however. She always bounces back by the next scene, which usually leads to more hilarious suffering. I like the scene where Gab and Vigne realize Satania has been eating lunch alone in a secluded corner of the school. For all her bombastic speeches towards her own greatness, Satania on some level seems aware of her shortcomings.

All of that is enough to make her a great character, but there are two other things that elevate her for me. While the angels have Tapris and later Gabriel's sisters as examples of a typical angel (meaning, one that isn't a troll or a slob), the demons only have Vigne, whose whole gimmick is that she's a bad demon, and Satania. That's why I love the scene with Satania's family when she's visiting hell. Her parents are exactly like her, drinking blood in a lavish dining room and laughing maniacally about their evil daughter's progress towards becoming lord of the underworld. Meanwhile, her younger brother is cringing because the blood is tomato juice, most of the lavish dining room is an optical illusion painted onto the wall of the tiny room, and their family runs a bakery and will never be lords of anything. That scene provides some wonderful perspective into Satania's character and confirms without any doubt that Satania isn't a typical demon either. She just enjoys pretending to be one.

I also liked the arc she has with the bread-stealing dog. It torments her for most of the season, showing up in even the most ridiculous places as if put there by the universe to prevent Satania from having any joy (in reality, it's implied Raphiel trained it). Finally the dog gets picked up by animal control and Satania will be free to enjoy her melon bread in peace. Only, she instead rescues the dog with zero hesitation after learning it might get put down. Satania justifies herself in her usual delusional way, that she wants to defeat her nemesis personally by making it her familiar. However, it's clear that she's actually just a good person deep down. When she breaks her melon bread in half, Satania gives the dog the bigger piece. I love Satania's chunibyo declarations about being the pinnacle of evil, future archdemon, destined ruler of the underworld... but I also love how, when it comes down to it, she's a good person. Of the four main characters in Gabriel Dropout, Satania gets the most character development by far. That, and the fact that she's always hilarious, is what makes her one of my favorite anime characters.