As for the series I’m not going to blog:
– Ichiban Ushiro no Daimaou is just silly, but in a good way. Still, it’s just a comedy without much substance. There’s a reason why I don’t blog those: I’m much more of a fan of Dutch and British humour anyway.
In any case, Angel Beats is a series that has one HUGE disadvantage: it’s only going to be 13 episodes. It’s got a huge cast. Will this really be enough to get its full potential out? Despite this however, I’m giving it a chance to impress me, because I really like its opening episodes. While this is nowhere near the funniest comedy out there (pretty much like why I decided to blog Kaichou wa Maid-Sama and not B Gata H Kei), but everything around it screams potential. The fast pacing and dialogue is very addictive, and I really like these stories that play around with life and death.
Immortality is of course a tricky thing to do, because if it’s used lazily you just end up god-moding your lead characters. That’s the problem I have with most series that pull those kinds of things like extremely fast regeneration. This time however, while the characters can’t die when you stab them, it hurts a lot, and they’re up to a pretty much invincible enemy. These twists are nowhere done out of cheapness.
As for the comedy, it’s definitely the weakest part of this series. It’s pretty much what you would expect from the director: lots of over the top and quick-fire jokes that either hit the mark or don’t. I’m much more of a fan of the adventure part of this series: exploring different places, in order to get to some kind of goal. There’s a lot of creativity in these scenarios, and that’s what I like best about this series. From the cave with the strange traps to the concert stage in the previous episode, it’s a very fun ride to watch.
Also, the backgrounds. In this episode we got our first taste of it, and while the visuals in Yuri’s flashback looked gorgeous… it was one of those “let’s give her the worst possible childhood muahahaha”-backstories. While it looks like her backstory is going to play a bigger role in the rest of thsi series (heck, her younger sister appeared on the promo-art), at this point it feels a bit pointless and a cheap way to get us to sympathize with her, rather than adding to her characterization. Instead, her characterization came much more from what she did in this episode. You can see that she’s a born leader who worries about her subordinates, and also gets her point across. And really, you don’t really need to have lost all of your siblings in an incredibly traumatic event to emerge that convicted.
Rating: * (Good)
Actually, I think the reason why they gave her such past is to show that even with such past, she is able to stay in good mood and act as a leader, something that many would not be able to do if they lived through something like that. Or they would try to forget it in order to continue living a normal life. Yuri doesn’t do either.
No I think the point psgels is making is that, being a good leader and caring for your subordinates is admirable, and if given right, it can make you care about such a character without giving her the worst childhood ever.
Now it kind of felt like the creators were begging “please care for this character, see she had a really really bad childhood!”. (I’m exaggerating of course, it wasn’t that bad in angel beats, I’m just trying to make a point). I like those kind of backstories to appear later on in a series, where I already know if I like the characters based on what they are doing now, and not be emotionally blackmailed to like them by giving them a supersad backstory the moment you meet them.
the main guy has a large mary sue aura around him
For me,what I didn’t like about Angel Beats is the “loading” screen that the creator use sometimes when they switch scenes(when the screen goes dark and suddenly its another scene already).Sure it makes it more fast paced but it comes off as lazy when used too often and it also disturbs the flow of the episode.
But the characters are likable enough though.End up liking the male lead better than I expected this episode ^^
It’s kind of funny that the two series you mention you’ll be blogging both give us female leads with tragic, tragic pasts that both seem to be thrown in to rush some character development rather than slowly building them up.
But all faux-negativity aside, I’m glad you’re blogging these shows. They’ve been underwhelming to me so far but at least with your blogging I don’t feel like I’m getting a fanboy rant, but just someone who’s genuinely trying to enjoy a series. It inspires me to keep watching them, if only to read the post-show discussions 🙂
“Will this really be enough to get its full potential out?”
Quoting wikipedia on this:
“The Aniplex producer of Angel Beats!, Hironori Toba, was interviewed in the November 2009 issue of Dengeki G’s Magazine, where he commented that a 13-episode anime with about 21 minutes per episode was not enough to tell the whole story of Angel Beats! Maeda had envisioned. Therefore, the various additional media, such as the illustrated short stories and manga, contain some of the story that was unable to make it into the anime because of time constraints.”
The reason why I found it cheap was because of the lack of build-up. It feels tacked on in the sense of unnecessary melodrama. A character with such a past needs to have some inner turmoil, and throwing it out in a frivolous manner is bad storytelling.
Im loving the series both as a Haruhi clone and for its own wackyness (exploding cannon, cheap but funny). The scene transitions also make me think of videogame levels which I think may be deliberate. (this might make a good rpg)
I was left with so many questions however.
1. How much time has passed, must be hundreds of years to dig down to guild? Is this world changing or completley static, if static how do other contemporaries enter it later unless theirs some pretty huge time dilation.
2. I didnt quite get the whole guild thing but essentially its like golems? They shape the soil into a shape they remember and ‘breathe’ life into it and it works, but this doesnt work if its not a shape they remember from life so they effectivley cant create new technology.
Angel Beats! is going to have additional media like a manga and such to include the content that they weren’t able to fit into the anime. It would have been great if the series was 24 episodes or longer though.
I just don’t get this anime. It has potential, but Yuuri looking like Haruhi is a major distraction. This anime isn’t anywhere as good as I expected it to be and so I think I’ll drop this. I however am sticking to Kaichou wa maid sama for the time being. Yes, it sounds cliched and old school romantic shoujo, but it definitely better than characters who can’t die and deploy guns and cannons to try and take out a Nagato clone who is supposedly immortal.
Jeeze what’s with all the complaining about Haruhi and Yuri looking alike? So they have a similar hair style, so what? Just watch them as separate shows. I have no idea why it matter so much. All the OMFG IT’S HARUHI is getting kind of annoying.
Lol, yeah. Yuri looks like Haruhi in the same way that the cast of Haruhi has some similarities with the cast of Evangelion. And I thought that the comparisons between the cast of K-On and Sora no Oto were baseless.
i think the point of giving her such a bad background was in order to give her a motivation to fight. she is driven to resist God b/c she perceives His dealings in her previous life as almost ridiculously unfair….i guess the flashback can also be seen as characterization and sympathy mongering, but i saw it more of as a driving force behind her actions
To be honest, I couldn’t give a rat’s ass about Yuri’s sob story due to how it was just randomly thrown in front of me.
Now, that alone wouldn’t matter much, but since said sob story also seems to be the prime mover of her rebellion, they made it that much harder to take that seriously as well (especially since I already had my doubts whether it’s a sensible course of action).
As far as all the look-alike talk goes: for some reason to me personally Haruhi (the character) looked extremely off-putting (tbh I started to write “like shit” just now, but I don’t want to offend people), but I don’t have this reaction to Yuri, so she’s carrying that kind of design better for my purposes.
A very enjoyable review. My only lingering doubts with this series so far are with some of the rushed backstory development and you share that concern as well. From one side it is useful as providing the reasoning not for Yuri being a leader but for her decision to fight against God, from the other it could be considered a cheap emotional appeal.
I agree with the one commenter that my opinion Otonashi was improved after this episode. He made himself useful at times and though some of it was luck he didnt look entirety useless in the first segment either.
The Haruhi comparison shouldn’t even be an issue IMO, because in 30-seconds of this episode Yuri showed more self-awarness of her failings than Haruhi ever did, thus its irrelevant to me, if character designs are similar who cares? I judge on whether they are pretty or not. Just my opinion and no offense.
I doubt killing Tenshi is going to be the goal here either, the way “out” of this world is likely going to be something else entirely.
Agreed the epsiode would have been better without that rushed backstory. You dont have to throw in the backstory…heck she might be more likeable if she was just mysterious. What was Jun smoking?