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Valeria is a normal 17-year-old, or so she thinks, till a tragedy of her own making changes her life and she learns she is an angel. Now, she has a bunch of powerful Fallen Angels after her soul and the people she loves, the boy she likes has a girlfriend, she is failing school and her Angel-mentor wants her to risk her life saving souls with only a book as help.
Warning: Contains some shameless spoilers, because I'm proud of sharing, but I won't ruin the whole thing for you...heck, if you knew what I know, you'd still want to watch it, because the crazy is worth seeing unveiling as it goes rather than just reading about it.
Yes. It's in Spanish. I speak Spanish. But, newsflash? I don't watch ANYTHING in Spanish. I mean, fine, I used to watch really bad soap operas with my grandma when I was in my early teens, but that's it. A thing of the past. Now this? Belongs in the present. Thanks to
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force_oblique, I discovered this show which is
not a soap opera. This show gives you "WTF" moments, one after the other, and just when you think things can't get worse, they
do. Oh, do they ever. And it is frustrating as HELL (pun intended).
Let's start with the
characters, shall we?
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Valeria is your typical high school student---sort of. I mean, her dad draws (graphic novels), her mother is a doctor, her little brother can be a brat (but she loves him and protects him, a lot) and did I mention her older brother is missing? Yeah, he was in a band, then poof
and you are right if you think the writers don't throw facts like that without a planned plot twist, EVIL BEINGS. She has a crush on a boy
who has a girlfriend and is a bit...mysterious. She has two best friends and, well, life is okay...that is until she is grounded by her parents, sneaks out after an angry shouting match with her parents and meets this weird lady
Iris that starts putting ideas in her head about...killing her family.
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Natael is a "Malac", a fancy word for "Guardian Angel", if you ask me, but they're a bit more...well, into it than the cute/innocent cherub-faced angels. He's not just Valeria's assigned mentor, but he is one of the
best. He gives Valeria a second chance---not just a life, but in helping her accept her destiny as a "Malac", a guardian angel. He's also got the patience and strength of billions as one of the "Fallen Angels", aka demons, that plague their daily lives used to be a guardian angel that had been under his care---that he fell in love with and vice versa---but all that went to the crap-hole when she turned to the dark side
Star Wars reference, for the win! Do you remember how I sneakily wrote the writers evil ways to tie in plot surprises every so often? Yeah...sigh.
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Damian is the high school boy Valeria has a crush on. He's also a demon. Shh! It's supposed to be a secret. He's not
evil, not really. He was, you could say, tricked into it in the worst possible way and would live a life of regret because of it, always thinking it's too late for him and that he might as well embraced eternity as a servant of hell, but then comes Valeria...at first, he doesn't think much of her, but she becomes this pillar of strength, this beacon of light, that even he starts to hope, but can it ever mean anything? And will their feelings damn her soul?
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She's a special kind of evil, the kind you really don't want with her hand around your throat, because before she actually starts choking you, you'll feel like you're dying, period. Alexia has no patience, a head wrapped in arrogance and driven by jealousy, not that she'll admit it. She has a particular dislike against Valeria and while she has no intention of killing her, she wants to turn her into a damned one, especially once she knows Natael is her mentor. Kind of makes you wonder where the resentment comes from? *eye-roll* You can guess.
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Don't let her appearance fool you. Really. Don't. She is the oldest and the most perverse when it comes to evil. That girl will stop at nothing to do the most horrible things...and she has a thing for ordering pizza...and then having the delivery guy for dinner.
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He's the king of deceit. He can pull off lying like no one else and he's completely masochistic. He often gets beat up by either Alexia or Iris, and he
likes it. He's also full of snark. If he wasn't such a sick little demon, I'd even say he has this cute quality about him (and no, I didn't ship him with Valeria once. Nope. Never. Whatsoever.)
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She's the voice in your head you don't want to hear. She enjoys hurting people far too much. There are no lines she won't cross. Even if it means disobeying her superiors, she will do whatever she feels like, and whoever she feels like. She and Grazier have a bit of a sick, twisted thing going on, but as can be expected of demons, monogamy is not really an option.
What About the Cast?
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I have to say...I can't imagine this cast any other way. Carmen Sánchez as Duna, for example, is a kid...like 9-10 years old, but the horrible thing that girl does/says and the voice she uses makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand. It really does. Aura Garrido as Valeria is perfect, actually, still acting the role of a young girl trying to hold on to her family and normal life while she tries to juggle everything else. Manu Fullola as Natael...you can feel the age in his voice. Like, he's tired, but still going? And, if the series is anything to go by, he could by as old as Duna, or older. Jaime Olías as Damian is not something I warmed up to, at first, but when things really start to hit the fan, he shows more emotional range than what you first think him capable of. Everyone else (Carla Nieto as Iris, Mar Saura as Alexia, Jorge Suquet as Graziel) become the characters, effortlessly. They're a face of evil, driven by different facets of it, and they deliver it so well.
But Carmen Sánchez is the winner. I mean, really, that kid? Freaks. Me. Out.
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Fallen Angels Have More Fun?
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The Things Evil Will Do
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A "Magical" Book
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And by magical, I mean, if someone is bleeding to death, the pages will bleed...if there's something burning, well, as you can see, the pages will burn. The book is annoying because, not only is it written in a secret language (and evil cannot touch it---Charmed, anyone?), but it doesn't tell you where to go, only what's happening, part of it, and you have to decipher what it is and how to stop it. Vague. Irritating, when you're a guardian angel.
Season 1, Episode 2 "El Demonio de los Celos//The Demon of Jealousy"
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This episode really stuck with me throughout the series because it gave me the overview that the rest of the show was not going to be all sappy, happy ending, everything turns out okay.
Valeria is facing her life changes as a "guardian angel/malac" and finds that her first task is...not as easy as it may seem---especially when demons don't play fair (no, really, they don't). Lucia is a dolphin trainer at a zoo, she's also deaf-mute, with a boyfriend she loves very much but...evil preys on her insecurity and her disability to see something that isn't there...and everything goes downhill from there.
Relationships (Or not)
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Battle of Angels
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Ángel o Demonio: The Life of an Angel
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What I love about this series is that no one is perfect, not even Natael, and yet, you expect them to be, because they're angels---even the demons should be perfectly evil (well, Duna is. And Graziel. And Iris), but they're not. They all have their stories, their tragedies, and it makes them
so human.
Valeria's constanst struggle between her life as a daughter, a sister, a friend and an angel is, fine, not something you can easily relate to, but you can watch and understand how you would struggle, were you in her shoes, and how crazy everything is. Would you survive it? Could you resist temptation? Could you choose between your "fate" and your family? Can she?
film_land's challenge of "One is Not Enough".
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