This one works on you slowly, the way a heaven that's already rotting does. Zeus builds a three-tier hierarchy of angels while insisting everyone is equal, and the show never lets you forget how much of a lie that sentence is. Go, Shin, Rei, Guy, Yuda and Ruka get their titles as Saint Beasts, seiryu, genbu, suzaku, byakko, kirin and hoo, and the whole time you're watching the empty spaces where Kira and Maya should be standing. Two angels skipped the selection tests and walked to Earth, and that absence hangs over every gentle, sun-drenched episode like a verdict waiting to be read. If you came for plot velocity, wrong door. If you came to watch beautiful men be tender with each other in a system designed to break them, this is your thirteen episodes.

Long ago, the great god Zeus arranged the angels into three tiers, upper, middle and lower, even though they were meant to be equals. He also chose six angels as Saint Beasts, charged with ruling over the animals of Earth. The seiyu is Go, the genbu is Shin, the suzaku is Rei, the byakko is Guy, the kirin is Yuda, and the hooh is Ruka. Two others, the shooting star Kira and the fuga Maya, skipped the selection tests and headed down to Earth instead. The six carry out their duties loyally, but as Zeus's rule turns more and more tyrannical, they start to lose their trust in him. The result is a fantasy story set among angels and gods, built around faith in a ruler starting to crack.