Angelic Layer takes place in modern day Tokyo. Suzuhara Misaki is a kind, funny little twelve-year old that came to Tokyo in order to live with her aunt. Her mother, who also lives in Tokyo, is apparently 'very busy' and cannot take care of Misaki herself. Misaki hasn't seen her mother since kindergarten, but seems to be fine without her. When Misaki first arrives in Tokyo, she sees a large television screen on a building, showing a fight between two 'Angels'. Angels are dolls that the owner can control by thinking, and through this, have fights on 'Angelic Layer', which is a special table that the dolls can move on. The dolls enthrall Misaki, enough so that she buys a doll herself (with encouragement from a certain weird Icchan), names it Hikaru, and starts to train herself. One day, she might even meet the beautiful angelic doll she saw fighting the day she came to Tokyo…
Since I've only seen the first few episodes of this, I can't really make much of a judgment yet. However, it does seem very cute - although the first episode was exceptionally slow, the other two picked up a lot, throwing in a bunch of new characters. This plot is moving exceptionally fast - in the fourth episode, Misaki is already in an official tournament. It seems that above the main plot of Misaki, there are several sub-plots - one involving her mother, another involving Kobayashi Hotako (a little girl in kindergarten), and even another involving "Icchan-san", who seems to have taken an unusual interest in young Misaki. Because of this, the plot has a lot of potential to turn out very good.
In regards to characters, Suzuhara Misaki herself is fine, I suppose. She's a little too perfect - good at sewing, cooking, polite, et cetera. Since that's based only on three episodes, I suppose it's all right that she doesn't seem to have any faults. Hopefully, in the future she'll develop a bit of a personality - she's almost too nice! Icchan-san (that's not his real name…) is a hilarious character - in episode one, he followed her around by sliding around like a snake, and then pretended to be a cat and played games with them as a cat. Little things like that, even in the background as they are, add a great twist of humor to the show. Although the main character is sort of boring, that's all right so far, as she hasn't even had much of a chance. [Editor's note: Funny, you're not giving her much of a chance. :P Oh, and you forgot to mention any of the potential obligatory love interests. o_o]
As for the Pokemon similarities? I can see where one would get that. Both have official tournaments with battles, and they have to 'train' their 'dolls' or 'Pokemon' to fight. However, Pokemon is a show targeted for younger kids, and Kidou Tenshi Angelic Layer seems to have more depth to it. Whatever the case is, it seems to be an interesting show that I would recommend watching.
