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No. 35705
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Angel Beats is a 13 episode, 2010 anime about highschoolers in the after life fighting against a mysterious force trying to make them live normal school lives. Except not really. Fair warning, there's going to be lots of spoilers in this review. If you don't care, I'll save you some trouble and tell you it's actually a "deceased people with unfinished business finding peace" story. That doesn't become apparent until later though and it's kind of concealed for most of the run time.
Angel Beats doesn't so much as have a story as it does small events strung together. Every episode or two, the direction changes, so it's impossible to get a handle on what the story is "really about" until the ending. There was hints of it near the start, but other things worked like red herrings. It's okay to switch gears this many times if it's a 70 episode epic, but it's not. Apparently, the number of planned episodes was cut in half, so if they didn't completely change the story in response, that would explain this a bit.
Angel Beats seems to have an identity crisis with all its disjointed, clashing components. The Guild, which we see in episode 2, is the first big example of this. Some of the humans in the afterlife slave away underground, making the weapons used by other characters in "the battlefront", out of dirt somehow(don't ask), in this super high-tech factory they managed to make. They also have extremely dangerous traps along the way to defend against Tenshi, the battlefront's main opposition. Tenshi is a white haired, female student with special powers. This episode has the most grotesque violence by far, but being episode 2, I expected more that sort of thing(which there wasn't).
Them bothering to go this far makes the battlefront's goal and opposition seem very serious. If you haven't seen Angel Beats, you may be asking what the battle front's goal is; what do they want to accomplish? That's a very good question. I don't know myself. The best I've got is that they want to seize control of the afterlife school from Tenshi, because reasons. They do this by throwing light rock concerts and using a fan to blow away all the other student's lunch tickets. They need guns to stop Tenshi from interfering. What this plan actually accomplishes and why they bother to go so far for it is a total mystery.
This type of petty "disruption" doesn't explain why a bunch of guys are willing to slave away underground for nonsense plans that don't accomplish anything. Two episode later, the main characters play baseball against Tenshi. We don't see guild members after this much at all, so I can assume they spend all their time in their underground fortress. It's not really addressed ever.
Tenshi is probably the biggest problem with Angel Beats. Episode 2 makes her look like a terminator, but we see she's not actually that tyrannical. Later on we're supposed to sympathize with her and she even becomes friends with other characters. If somebody was permanently trapped after they blow up the guild in episode 2, which could have happened, that would kind of throw a wrench into that. The way they oust her from power also doesn't involve any weapons, they just fake her tests so she wont be student council president anymore, afterwards she stops bothering them. Tenshi is also later "revealed" to not be an "angel" or any special being. She's a human exactly like the other characters, and had no special authority.
This begs the question of why nobody else can or does use her powers(which she programs herself in a computer). It also calls into question any of the information she previously gives about the world since she shouldn't have any special knowledge about its nature. Also, there's a last second romance between her and the main character. Yes, really. Previously, he showed inexplicable concern for her right from the start, but no strong indication of romantic feelings until five minutes before the end. Can't have the main character not be in a romance though.
So, the school. Some unspecified number of students are the deceased souls of young people, we barely see them. The other students and teachers are "npcs". Supposedly soulless automatons that act the part of students. When the main character enters this world, this is explained to him by the battle front's leader, Yuripee. He doesn't believe her and walks around looking for an adult to ask questions. For some reason, he can't find anybody, not even npcs. There just are none. Later there's plenty. Why he can't find any at this point is never addressed, but after that he goes along with whatever Yuripee says. We don't know if there's anything, or even a whole world beyond the school, because nobody ever checks and it's never addressed. There's no looping terrain or unpassable barrier like this type of setting usually has.
If I was in that situation, I would question Yuripee's and my sanity before going along with anything she had to say. Seeing the main character test for himself if the npcs were souless, talking to them, following them around, and confirming for himself something is horribly wrong, would be more entertaining and create a nice, disturbing atmosphere. Considering how time is spent later on(a baseball game), a bit more investment into world building and showing instead of telling would have been nice.
This IS a comedy though. There isn't jokes here or there, it's one of the main focuses. I forgot to check the genres, but it was still disappointing since the premise suggested a surreal, thrillerish experience. Some of the jokes land, but others don't and are really repetitive. Also, it's a drama. Angel Beats was made by Key. Judging from the Clannad anime and this, I might just not be a fan of their work. While Angel Beats doesn't even compare to After Story, the champion of self-masturbatory, manufactured sadness, they do pull the same sick little girl dying while it's snowing trick. At least it's real in this one and not in a hypothetical daydream.
I didn't grow to care about the characters. I didn't find them interesting or particularly likable, though the main character has nice backstory. There's was too many, and even the ones with more screen time still felt flat. The others existed to tell the exact same joke over and over. The story lacking focus is also likely a culprit for this. So the sad scenes and ending were tedious to me. The final conflict only served to shepherd all of the humans past the after life(into reincarnation), because now they need to "move on" and fast, so we can have that clean, sappy kind of ending. I also felt a strong Haruhi influence. Yuripee is reminiscent of Haruhi, though fortunately far less obnoxious. The group dynamic also felt similar. Haruhi though, in her favor, didn't have much of a concrete goal, whereas Yuripee is initially presented as so without a lot of follow-through.
The presentation is nice. The ost is alright and the op is very pretty. The art style didn't impress me as much and some characters looked too similar to each other(the two blue hair guys). It was nice, but lacked style. Shigofumi, at points, had more of an after-life feel than Angel Beats just by making the lighting more exposed.
Do I recommend Angel Beats? This turned out really long, but I don't think it's that bad. It's not that good either. Coming into it, I expected either total bleakness, like in Texhnolyze, or a wild, high-octane ride where they actually confront god or something. I didn't get either. There wasn't much impact or excitement. If you're not looking for that though, and you like Key, or want a fairly light, Haruhi-esque anime with an unusual premise, I guess I would recommend Angel Beats.
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