As Teeklin said below, "the show is about fighting the good fight even though it's a fight that will never, ever be won."
None of us gets out of this existence alive. Nothing we do matters in the grand scheme of things before we're beaten down and erased by time like everything else... so it matters a great deal how we choose to spend our brief stint here. It's the only thing that could possibly matter from our tiny perspective. The resilient spirit that stares down Oblivion even though we know it's inevitable, that's our legacy. That's what makes people (whether they are human or not) great.
To borrow from Buffy, the hardest thing in this world is to live in it. Dying's easy, it's the end of every show, of every story, of every existence. Of yours. Of mine.
Of course they die in that alley (whether or not it's where they 'actually' would meet their logical demise) but that's not what's important, so it's not what's shown. What's important is that they lived in that alley. That they chose to take on the destruction, rather than run from it. Rather than bow down. They faced ultimate darkness with bravery, not because they were invincible and not because they were were unafraid, but because they were vulnerable and because they were scared. And they made the right choice.
It's a bit like the allegory of the man and the starfish. It doesn't matter that they can't go on forever, and that they can't possibly 'win'. It matters that they made the difference they could make.
Probably the easiest thing to start with would be Angel: After the Fall which comes in 4 trade paperback volumes, like This. From there I'd go to Buffy season 8. That one you can get in trade paperbacks (8 volumes) or the bigger hardcover library editions (4 volumes) but I find those clunky and difficult to read - it's up to you though. There's a few little mini-series and one-shots that fall chronologically between those two but I'd say they're not essential if you're just starting.
If you want to start with something even smaller, maybe consider starting with Fray? It comes in one paperback volume. I think technically you're supposed to read it between After the Fall and Season 8, but it would still make sense if you started with it. Plus it's nice and compact, and personally I really loved it!
Why would souless Gunn be like souless Angel? Most vampires are not.
Angel was more an exception than a rule. The judge said Spike, Drusilla and the vampire he burned still had some humanity in them. The judge could not burn Angel. He was much more methodical, he liked to mentally break his victims first, for fun! Examples: Buffy and Dru.
The Master: "Angel. He was the most vicious creature I ever met."
Most vampires just fed on humans. Angel delighted in their suffering. Spike was mainly on the watcher's list as the number two vampire because he targeted slayers, not because he was as "bad" as Angel.
"SPIKE Yeah, know what I prefer to being hunted? Getting caught. ANGEL That's brilliant strategy. Really, pure cunning. SPIKE Sod off. When's the last time you unleashed it? All out fighting a mob, back to the wall, nothing but fists and fangs? Don't you ever get tired of fights you know you're gonna win? ANGEL No. A real kill, a good kill - it takes an artistry. Without that, we're just animals. SPIKE Poofter."
"So, that begs the question, what is the role of the soul in the Buffy-verse, if one can love and do good without one? Says Whedon, also from March 2001, "A soul is the thing that separates a human from a demon. It's the thing that points you north instead of south, that makes your instinct to do good instead of to do bad." "Therefore a vampire can feel love. They can have all the whims and quandaries of a normal person, if they're a vampire or a demon, but their basic instinct is to create chaos and evil and destruction, instead of love and bonding and nurturing and stuff. That's the basic difference." "A lot of demons, like Spike, for example, are not that different from a lot of people we know. It's not cut-and-dried. He is capable of great love, but great love is usually a very selfish thing, but he's trying." https://web.archive.org/web/20011118210557/http://tv.zap2it.com/sciencefiction/otherworlds.html?20561
Get gifcam
It's dead easy. Just size your capture window and hit record. You can then delete the frames you don't want. Not as powerful, but way easier, than a lot of the other gif creators.
Here's the Amazon Smile non-affliate link.
Please use this link and don't support spambots like OP by using the posted link.
Note that this is roughly the same price it's been for the last 6 months.
In fact, I'm a mod so fuck off /u/ungarsf. I'm killing this post and repostin with a better link.
You could just get the Angel: John Byrne Collection hardcover which includes Music of the Spheres, among others.
For reference, After the Fall is a twelve-volume comic book series set directly after Angel's series finale. You can find the first volume here.
I haven't actually read any of it. My media-filter roommate indicates it doesn't match my tastes. But if you want more Buffyverse plot, there's plenty there.
P.S. Time rewinding? Cheap trick! Boo!