[Anime Review] Angel Beats

“Life is for the living. 

Death is for the dead. 

Let life be like music. 

 And death a note unsaid.” 

-Langston Hughes

It's these kind of shows I hate. Oh no, not the kind of anime I literally hate, because of that's the case I can just pick up this Tommy-gun that just happens to be laying next to me and completely destroy the show's plot and characters. No, I'm talking about the kinds of anime that you can't help but like; something about the colorful characters and intriguing plot, or the excellent animation and brilliant OP, just grabs you, taking you on an emotional journey through the afterlife. Unfortunately though, it's also the kind of anime after you've finished it, look back on and think, "Wait...how long did she have freakin' have to wait?!"

     Angel Beats is a 13-episode anime that aired all the way back in the spring of 2010. It was directed by Seiji Kishi, known for directing both my guilty pleasure Danganronpa, and Carnival Phantasm, a show I won't even try to begin to explain for fear of the schizophrenic opening driving me insane. The animation was handled by P.A Works, the animation studio who put themselves on the map with True Tears in 2008, and would go on to create the popular "horror"(these quotations are about the size of blimps by the way) anime Another in the year of 2012. The original story was conceived by the one and only Jun Maeda, who hasn't done anything more in the anime creation department, but did the music for series's such as Kanon(2006) and Clannad. Now with that out of the way, you might be asking yourself, "what exactly is an Angel Beats?". Well, let me explain...

Our story begins with our orange haired hero Otanashi, waking up in a manner those who have played any RPG's would be rather familiar with. He has complete amnesia, and doesn't know where he is, who he is, and what the hell is going on, seeing that when he glances to his right, there appears to be a girl carrying a rather large gun. The girl introduces herself as Yuri, and informs Otanashi that he apparently went and got killed at some point, and is now in a high-school purgatory with Yuri and a number of other students that have died as well. Also, she seems to be pointing that gun at what she claims to be an "angel", but who looks like a normal girl to Otanashi. Understandably not quite understanding what exactly is happening, Otanashi approaches the "angel" despite Yuri's warnings, and sees if she can clear up anything. She too says that this is indeed purgatory, and just to convince Otanashi, she stabs him through the heart with a sword. Of course though, neither Yuri or Angel is insane or lying to Otanashi; this is purgatory, and that means you can't die. After waking up in hospital room, and not sure of what else to do, Otanashi joins up with Yuri's group the SSS, to fight Angel, and see if he can eventually recall memories from his own life and learn what tragic circumstances brought the rest of the school's occupants to this purgatory. He still finds himself drawn to Angel, why she acts the way she does, and if she is actually an angel, sent from God. The answer will affect Otanashi, and drag this entire purgatory high-school into a conflict with an outcome that will be unpredictable for everyone.  
     Now as you can imagine, all these little mysteries make the first episode and premise of Angel Beats so interesting. There are ton of intriguing questions to be answered, and I found the characters, especially concerning the past of the unfair lives they led, a really interesting catalyst for character development, even if the show never really decided to go that way. Now, it's worth mentioning that the show follows a plan-of-the-week type setup, where Yuri would come up a plan to defeat or resist Angel, only to see it go wrong, at least for the first half of the show. These little adventures make up the bulk of the episodes, and yes are fun and entertaining while they last, showing the daily shenanigans of the SSS with fairly entertaining comedy, but here's where the main flaw of the show's plot and ideas comes into focus. The show completely lacks a sense of direction, going from one unrelated arc to the next, with no clear goal in mind. This means the final arc of the show has no build-up, makes the final villain a character we've never seen before, and suddenly ends as the show drops an emotional bombshell completely out of left field. And then the show just ends, like it forgot to tell us that, "yeah, this is the finale by the way. k' thanks bye". You'll get a clearer idea of what I mean when you go watch the show. This emotional bombshell tries to tie everything up at the end while fulfilling its manipulative plan to make the viewer cry. And yeah, you might cry at the end of the series, the freakin' emotional music playing and lens flares is practically engineered to make you cry, but this emotional twist at the end opens a plot-hole so big that it almost completely ruins the show for me, once I started to think about it after the show ended. 

Angel, with a piano she never has in the series.

     They might have been able to pull the ending(and the anime, off) with the proper steps, but here's the final problem with the show. It's too damn short. 13 episodes wasn't nearly enough time to fully explore the concepts of this afterlife, also taking into account developing the huge cast. This is why the story was so fast rushing through arc after arc, trying to fit everything it wanted in, and why the ending is just so sudden. I heard that the anime was originally supposed be twice the length it actually ended up being, so there's an explanation I suppose, but I can even think of a few filler episodes that could have been cut out without much missed, and at the very least could have been used as "character episodes". More on that later. 
     But yeah, all these problems stem from the show's short run time: the sudden end, the few lackluster characters, and the lack of direction. It's a shame too, because if P.A works had the time and episodes to do what they wanted, and fleshed out all the characters and setting, it could have been great. It just didn't turn out like that. 

The "expansive" of cast of Angel Beats. From left to right: Irie, Sekine, Takamatsu,  Matsushita, TK, Naoi, Otanashi, Yuri, Angel, Noda, Hinata, Yui, Ooyama, Fujimaki, Iwasawa, Hisako, "Christ", Shiina, Yusa...*takes breath*

As you can plainly see, this anime has quite the large cast, which doesn't really help seeing that the show was already rushed. This leaves most of the characters with very straight-forward personalities, with nothing under the one trait they show us. However the show will occasionally take a break from digging plot-holes to concentrate on one character of the large cast, and this usually makes up the best parts of the entire show, which makes me feel like a character driven anime would have been the preferable direction, especially considering the lack of episodes. While the character episodes are fantastic(episode 3, 4, and 9 especially) I'll touch on them later, because I need to talk about the main cast, which ironically, might not be quite as good as some of the supporting cast. 

     First we need to talk about our main character Otanashi, whose bright orange hair might be his most distinguishing feature, because he who just might one of the most blandest people in the entire world. He's very reminiscent of Another's Keouchi, and Gosick's Kujo, a main character that just seems to be there to witness the narrative forward itself, instead of actually affecting it. All his actions are seemingly dictated by a "Main Character Code of Conduct" book; he stands up for what's right, he's noble, caring, etc. etc. My point is, all of his actions throughout the anime, except maybe at the very end, are everything any regular person would do, leaving his character just a blank slate, and nothing more interesting to be said for him. 

     The proud no-nonsense leader of the SS: Yuri, is much more interesting. Unlike Otanashi, she actually has motivation and development throughout the show, explaining her hatred towards God due to her severely tragic life. And I don't know if this is just me, but Yuri reminds me vividly of Haruhi from The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, except without having god-like powers, and being slightly more sane, at least most of the time. I don't know.

     Lastly, we have the queen of "kuuderes" herself: Angel. Now, for almost the entire length of the series, she is the latest member of a group of characters I like to call: The Sisterhood of Rei Ayanami, which includes characters like Yuki Nagato from Haruhi, Mei Misaki from Another, and to some extent Inori from Guilty Crown. Yes, she is the seemingly emotionless character for the duration series, until we actually start to learn about her character at the end of the series, including that emotional bombshell at the end of the anime. However, despite this, I never felt she ever really broke out of her archetype, and the reasoning behind her emotionless personality wasn't a good enough explanation in my opinion. She become an alright character, but this problem really hurts her development, and her character overall. 

     Now the supporting cast finally give me something to talk about. When they aren't providing the comedy for the series, the side characters make up for the actually interesting characters. While of course, there isn't nearly enough time in the show to possibly development them all, the few that do get episodes to themselves are rather awesome. This is where the writing is the best, and as I said before, things might have gone more smoothly as a character-of-the-week show. Unfortunately, of course, once again due to the number of episodes most characters are ignored, but you become interested on what their story of why they're in this purgatory is. You always feel like there's more to them than what the show is showing us, and I found myself wanting to know the back story to more than a few characters, like Shiina and TK. I never got that back-story, but it's kind of fun to make up your own explanation, like maybe Shiina used to be Batman, and TK has a rare disease that if he stops dancing he dies. Point is, it was more fun to speculate on the side characters stories than it was to concentrate on the main character's, which you know, is kind of a shame. And when a side character does get a episode to themselves, like Yui or Hinata, Angel Beats becomes a legitimately really good show, making it all the more painful that we got so few of those episodes.  

On the left: Yuri. On the right: Angel, still with that mystery piano.

I've found P.A works has never failed to impress me before animation-wise, and that makes them one of my new favorite animation studios behind studio ufotable(though to be fair, ufotable is like, god). They've shown me a wide range of techniques with shows like Another, while still keeping the kind of animation that makes them P.A Works. With Angel Beats, no bars are held back, the animation looks superb, detail evident in every scene. I also really like the color palette of the show, which can range from grim dark to easy-on-the-eye bright colors, though I find the bright colors really is where the show shines. The action scenes where the SSS fight Angel are rather cool as well, though personally, I find them a little underwhelming compared to shows like Sword Art Online and Shakugan no Shana, though to be fair, those shows are more action oriented. Oh, don't worry Angel Beats, this doesn't mean I forgive you, there's more than one action scene in the anime and it really should be better at times. All in all, action is neither bad or good, so just call it "meh".

     However if there is a time where the animation really can shine, it's during the concert scenes preformed by the school band: Girls Dead Monster. It looks absolutely superb, not only because a million things are moving at once, but because the music is synced up wonderfully with the instruments and players. There's not too many concert performances in the series itself, but I was more than happy to wait patiently for them when they came. Speaking or music, and speaking of superb...

I've been disappointing by P.A Works when they handle music before, especially with Another, that OP made me want to slam my head into the wall until it stopped, but I'm am delighted to say that Angel Beats has no such short-comings. It's full of songs both rigid with emotion, and up-beat tracks to bring levity to the series. Key did a wonderful job making this soundtrack, so much so that when the writing fails, the music can be the deciding factor of emotional investment in a certain scene. Not all these tracks you will notice while you are actually watching the anime, but I recommend you to go back and listen to the OST by itself, like I did, and be pleasantly surprised by just how good some of these songs actually are. The only flaw in the soundtrack is that some of these songs can potentially sound alike, but I guess that comes to be expected when you need to produce 5+ emotional songs with the same vocalist. It happens. Personal favorites form this track include "Theme of SSS" and "My Most Precious Treasure". Of course you can't forgot the lovely opening, which features extremely high quality animation and a song that got stuck in my head for about two weeks. Looking back on it, I sorta regret not putting it in my Top 10 Anime OP's list, but whatever, it's done now.

   

 

I'm not going to leave here saying that Angel Beats is a bad anime and you shouldn't watch it, because it isn't, but there is many legitimate problems here that really kill the show's chance of being anything more than a typical anime. What it had in music, animation, emotion, it lack in character, pacing and direction. Think of Angel Beats as a poorly made cookie: tastes good, but starts to crumble apart when you hold onto it for too long. My point is, the good of Angel Beats doesn't quite outweigh the bad, leaving an anime to watch and enjoy, but not one to praise and re-watch. What potential it had was killed by the short length of the thing, and ultimately soured what it did right. Perhaps a good anime if you're looking for an emotional pick-me-up, but not one that has any really quality. That's not to say it can't be good, even great at times, but it never lasts too long. 

     Well, with all that in mind, I bring this review to an end. In summary: Angel Beats. Good. Not great. Goodbye.

Final Verdict: 6/10

P.S: Seriously, how long did she have to wait?!!

Recommended Anime:

The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya

If you were fond of the whole school-life with a supernatural twist premise from Angel Beats, and the fun comedy and witty dialogue, this should be the first thing on your list. Instead of all the students being dead however, just one student happens to be an unknowing god. Its fun, you should watch it at some point, really regardless if you liked Angel Beats or not. Oh and watch the movie. The series is good, but the movie...yeah.

Anohana: The Flower We Saw That Day

Not going to lie, Angel Beats and Anohana are two extremely different anime. However if you where rather fond of the drama and emotion of Angel Beats, Anohana does it a million times better and is even nice enough to throw in a little supernatural twist in there if you're missing that. And if it's not your cup of tea, hey, it's only eleven episodes, so Anohana not even a big investment of time either. And hey, there's ghosts. Ghost are cool. 

Goodbye for now guys.

How about checking out some other review? Click here for my review of My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU.

Or here for my review on Mirai Nikki

Follow me on Hummingbird: http://hummingbird.me/users/QReviews