Angel Beats – 03




Let’s play a little thought experiment: suppose that instead of what she is now, Yurippe instead had brown hair, was a former construction-worker, had a brother who was a fired salary man, this series took place on Mars instead of a high school, and an ultra-powerful talking robot with a ditzy personality was working around. Do you think that people would have made such a fuzz about this series as a Zone of the Enders rip-off, as much as people are whining about the Haruhi references now? Even considering the difference in popularity between the two, I really doubt that anyone would have cared.

The thing is: what is original nowadays. Why are people complaining about the Haruhi references in Angel Beats, and yet with other series that are full of high school cliches that are apparent in thousands of other anime become ravingly popular. I don’t get it. In fact: what is originality nowadays? Just about every idea has been done before. The only way to be truly original relating to actual real-life news, but the way in which anime and manga are produced is just too limited to really take advantage of everyday news.

For example: it seems like the next episode will have baseball. Oh my god, they’re also ripping off Major, Ookiku Furikabutte, Cross Game, One Outs, Clannad, Toki wo Kakeru Shoujo, Blood+, FLCL, Touch, Sexy Commando Gaiden and a ton more series that have baseball in them. The thing is, that creators don’t have to reinvent the wheel for every part of their creation. If certain techniques, whether in cinematography, writing, animation or character-development worked in one series, then why not reuse them?

The thing that really matters is not the ingredients, but what you do with them: Angel Beats takes all its ingredients and creates a series that is completely different from Haruhi. It’s a series that focuses on entertainment, but also criticizes both authority and those who go against it. It’s in a setting which feels alive, even though everyone is dead. It’s both fast-paced entertainment and a serious story about characters who don’t believe in this thing called “fate”. For me, it’s done more than enough to set itself apart from other series, and it has plenty of its own ideas. In Haruhi for example, the concert was pretty much a one-off adventure. Here however the concerts form a core part of the story. Can that really be called a rip-off?

An example of a series that really is a rip off would be Omamori Himari of the previous season: it stole so many ideas and cliches from other series, but inserted nothing of its own. Now that’s what I call cheap.

In a way it also reminds me a bit of Argento Soma: apparently it’s supposed to be a huge Evangelion rip-off. But really: who cares? After the ‘big twist’ it goes completely into its own direction and becomes an amazing series with amazing themes. Or take Fantastic Children, which borrows a lot of ideas from Please Save my Earth. Does it suck because of that? Of course not!

Right now my biggest concern with Angel Beats is that the drama doesn’t really seem to work like it should. I’m not exactly what it is, but I’m still having a bit of difficulty connecting to the characters after they show their incredibly sad back-stories. I actually can’t put my finger on exactly what’s not working, but between the drama, mystery, comedy, adventure and slice of life that all come together in this series, I’m enjoying the drama the least. It’s not due to the fact that it rips off something, though.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

20 thoughts on “Angel Beats – 03

  1. Well, the flashbacks are tell-not-show by being narrated. It eliminates any contrast we could get in the character’s personality before they died and after. There’s a lack of psychological scars or characteristics specific to either character we’ve seen in flashbacks, despite having different backgrounds.

    Or it could simply be that the backstories we’ve been given are treading a fine line between believability and contrived for maximum tragedy. The whole “ten minutes a kid” from last week was kind of pushing it, as was dying from a fluke brain injury this week. At this rate, we might even get a 10 year-old cancer patient.

  2. First time, long time. Keep up the excellent work Psgels. I was thinking the Tenshi revelation changes everything. If she created all of her “powers” she could be the antisocial opposite of Yuri. Unfortunately I’ve only read the first (and only) translated chapter of Track Zero. I’m starting to feel the prequel is necessary to fully understand this series. Tenshi might not have any affiliation to “God” and may be acting as shepherd on her own. Although she is referred to as “robot like”, it could be here personality. I dunno, but the SSS should have no need for guns now that they have Tenshi’s arsenal. Yuri vs Tenshi dual hand sonic FTW!

  3. @AuroraFlame: I think the flashbacks are intended as the characters foundation and helps us understand their motives.
    Yuri: weak, unable to protect, victim > strong, leader, challenges God
    Iwasawa: unhappy, lonely, probably felt responsible/helpless with her parents turmoil, discovers her Raison d’être then dies > happy, thru music makes others happy, recognizes and fulfills her purpose.
    My choice for “10 year-old cancer patient” is Yui
    I just wanna know why and when did Yuri’s goal go from “Lure god out” in Track Zero to “erase tenshi” in the anime.

  4. I think that the reason the drama isnt working is because it’s doing it all too soon. When the singer disappeared I was thinking “Oh, already?”

  5. Wow, long rant about the Haruhi references hah. The voice and hair are slightly similar, but the story’s completely different so people should give it a rest.

    This episode was good, but yes something feels off. The pacing seems a bit off at times, or like Azule said, Iwasawa (sp?) was only focused on for a short period of time before disappearing so the connection wasn’t there.

    The “NPC”s were given more life in this episode, which I’m glad for. Since they can disappear too, there’s a possibility they’re like Yuri and the others but died more “normally” or just didn’t tell the reason for their death to others.

  6. Oh God.
    Barely a year ago, I would never have thought that I would read something like this here. Never. What the hell happened to you ? At least, back in the old days of this blog, you didn’t feel the need to justify your inconsistent (and shitty tastes) and just went along with your thing. Instead of throwing bullshit like “what is originality nowadays, oh let’s see what happens when we do this”.

    If you’re gonna like a series enough to blog about it, at least, ASSUME the fact that you like it and TALK about the actual episodes, point out what you liked, what you think the series did right, talk about the story, the characters, etc., instead of whining like a poor fanboy and shifting the focus in order to… not have to explain why you liked it ? Jesus Christ, did you say anything about this fucking episode here ?

  7. I’m not up to speed with Angel Beats, but I have to agree with you on the “originality vs. execution” argument. There are a whole lot of excellent series (take for example, one of my favorites, Escaflowne) that have less-than-original elements (girl in a fantasy world, magical pendant, catgirls, mecha, etc.). It really is all in the execution, how the ideas meld together.

    Also, your saying that Fantastic Children shares elements with Please Save My Earth certainly makes me more interested in FC rather than less ^^

  8. Um, Windspirit: first of all it’s nice to see you again. And two years ago I also had this habit of sometimes hijacking an entire post, just writing about a point I was trying to make(in this case, I was reacting to something that was posted on the shoutbox).

    But granted, I probably didn’t explain what I liked about this series because it already was turning into such a long post. Next week’s post will be more about what I like about Angel Beats, but blogging 12 episodes every week, I do want to include a little variety now and then.

  9. I have the feeling I may be partially responsible for this rant post, so I apologize, haha.

    I have no issues with some idea or plot point sharing at all. It’s probably a necessary evil, and is certainly commonplace in all media. However, when a lot of/many/most of the plot points and devices are stale/the same as those in other series, it starts to denote, in my eyes, laziness (the concert was even animated to look like the one in Haruhi, btw, which is why I tend to use that one as the comparison).

    This borrowing is even more egregious when it INTERFERES with the development of more original ideas or even with the progression of the plot itself. I’m pretty sure this same setting and idea could be explored without spending 10 minutes on girls playing a concert, or without having them play a baseball game. 24 minutes and the only things of consequence/merit that happened were Iwasawa’s disappearance/background, and finding out that Angel creates her own powers.

    I didn’t mind the concert the first time either, that was when they explained its purpose, but then two episodes later they have another one that’s even longer :\

    Like… forgive me for saying that I get the feeling that they could have a concert every other episode and people here would try to justify it.

  10. i dont even know how i noticed this small detail, but in last weeks ending theme the band leader of GirlDeMo was in the lineup of characters. now this week, after the events of the episode, the band leader is gone and “christ”, the new recruit, is included in the ending theme character lineup. i really liked this episode but now one of my favorate characters is gone.

  11. It’s easier to ask for forgiveness than permission, so I’ll do that. If brevity is the soul of wit, perhaps I might beg for forgiveness for being witless. Editing this would take too much time for a rambling blog post.

    As it pertains to the presence of concerts, I don’t really see what there is to ‘justify.’ If Angel Beats were a show where, every episode, there is a concert, then so be it. You don’t like watching shows where, every episode, there’s a concert? Watch something else. No one owes anyone an explanation for what kind of entertainment they like, eh?

    If, hypothetically, on top of writing the script Maeda Jun also wrote a dozen pieces of original music for a whole anime full of concerts, I would say he would have done a lot to earn his wage. It’s pretty rare for one person to be good enough at one task to be notable.

    The concerts are technically interesting. They’ve obviously recorded live performers and then used the footage to animate the performances. That’s a lot of work and it’s pretty ambitious, when anime is usually a lower-budget limited-animation medium. Even here you can tell they put more emphasis on the motions of the performers than the facial animation.

    K-ON isn’t such a snooze-fest because it’s more demanding for KyoAni to stretch-out a yonkoma and beat the humor out of it than to animate a lot of detailed body and finger movements. Even though P.A. Works is cutting corners elsewhere in the animation, I’ve still been impressed by their efforts here.

    The broader insistence that Angel Beats is overly-derivative of Haruhi is exaggerated. Beyond the presence of genre tropes that didn’t originate with Haruhi and some tongue-in-cheek things like Yuri’s appearance, that’s just not what it is. Spaceballs isn’t Star Wars.

    The adaptations of Key works in general and this part-of-Key work in particular are pretty formulaic for sure. If you watch Kanon (the KyoAni version, since the other makes my eyes hurt) and Clannad back-to-back you won’t think, “This is a fountain of originality!” for sure. In form and substance there are formulas all around, and if you sit down to watch an anime with Key anywhere near it you should go in with the expectation that 1. it will be formulaic 2. it will be melodramatic 3. it will use some slapstick humor to keep you from hanging yourself between arcs. Angel Beats is just overcompressed in this regard, so that material that would have filled an entire episode of Clannad takes a third of an episode of Angel Beats. This, along with the much lower stakes, mutes the usual surprisingly-effective emotional overdraft you can expect from the over-the-top stories. The risk-aversion of the investors of anime is strangling a lot of series lately, not just this one, but when you see a consistent suddenly robbed of its effectiveness it’s hard not to take notice.

    The thing it might help to keep in mind about Angel Beats is that its setting is reflective of the expectations of its inhabitants. That is mighty convenient for the writer, I agree, but it’s self-consistent. These people died with regrets and they have certain attachments to their past lives that they need to come to accept to, presumably, reincarnate. The attachments of the SSS have led to them inventing an antagonist, to wage a futile war fruitlessly against it, all in which they do more to themselves than Tenshi ever does. They’re constantly on the run, conspiring against it, when there are no ramifications to losing. The pointlessness of their actions is a theme, and it’s spurred by those ridiculously brief tragedy dumps.

    As to our host’s actual content, I largely agree with some reservations. The space of ideas that are coherent enough for a story and relevant enough to the lives of the audience so that it would invest both the fruits of its labors and considerable amounts of its time is, at any given time, not so large that you should expect never to see (1) secondary school (2) baseball (3) musical concerts in a work targeted at the people that pay the pinceless sums the discs that fund the production of these shows go for. With any kind of commercially-driven art the creator has the task of creating a new work that teases the expectations of the audience–ever so gently–with an eye toward avoiding dissonance. Kaiba, the Gundam Unicorn OVA, and now Sarai-ya Goyou catch flak for simply challenging the expectations for visual design from the largely-parasitic foreign market. When gambling not insubtantial sums of money on the whims of a niche market like regular anime purchasers, an amount of conservatism is expected.

    Personally I crave novelty, so I always like to see something new that work brings, in any area of production, and if we’re fortunate enough that storytelling, visual craftsmanship, and novelty to align we can get something really great, but the rest of the time we can just hope to find something we like enough to invest ourselves in. It helps to keep in mind that the creative work they do, even in the most mediocre anime, is grueling. There are a lot of things commonly found in anime that I don’t like, because I’ve never really been the target market. I’m not sexually attracted to the characters, I find the maids and other otaku bait terrible, and if I see one more jellyfish protagonist fall face-first into a girl’s panties I might just find a sturdy tree to hang from, but that’s just me. I just don’t watch those shows. If someone looks at any Maeda Jun work and sees nothing but Haruhi, I can’t share their particular predicament, but I’d say they’re better off looking for something that does resonate with them.

  12. BTW Phantom the show is called Angel Beats…so yeah, music is gonna be a HUGE element here. Should have guessed that from the title. The concerts are what bring the stories together for me, and have been among my favorite elements. Also, it seemed like Tenshi was actually moved by the music this time, so its probably going to play an important role in the plot. Her playing piano in the OP is kind of a hint in that direction as well…If you don’t enjoy the concerts, that’s cool, I dig them, and I understand the purpose they are serving in the story.

  13. I really liked this episode and I also loved the concert. I always find it a bit bad when they only play a few notes in other animes when it comes to a band…. so I really loved it that they included the two important songs that were mentioned throughout the episode.
    It also gave a much more realistic feeling to the time span Yuri and the others had.
    And the main character this time WAS the band leader and her feelings for the songs. So it was only natural to actually show these songs.
    Without having them being played in (almost) full length) her final happiness wouldn’t have been as touching and fulfilling.

    So yes, I really liked the pacing as well as the focus of this episode very much.

  14. What I was trying to say, psgels, is that there is a HUGE difference between doing something original and fresh and going to the extreme like the gratuitous description you gave.

    And there’s also a huge difference between using codes of the animation and very blatantly and obviously ripping off shows that have proved themselves successful in order to make even more $$$.

  15. I wouldn’t mind if you actually reviewed the episode instead of ranting about the admittedly exaggerated and annoying criticism of the show by saying it’s Haruhi-like. Can’t say I see that much similarity myself, but if it was as ridiculously copy-pasted on it as the critics make it to be, certainly it’d be worthy to criticise the lack of originality.

  16. Wow, I’m seriously liking Angel Beats but I’m worried it it can tell much from its thirteen episode format. I cannot see any resemblance of the story or whatsoever from the Haruhi franchise except the female lead looking like our notorious diety. Having high hopes for this series!

  17. Mmm, Im starting to cheer for Angel over the SSS, what I want to see is them attempt to talk to her and find out her motives. To me shes just trying to get people to move on and accept their life while the leader of the SSS is manipulating her group into staying in this world (was her refusing the use of the ballard deliberate knowing it would allow her to pass on?).

    And yes I miss this charachter already.

  18. I’m really like this series because of the way that they play with character and the character development.It’s make them have some value and make you concern about this series much more a little and little.
    For me. I will be more sad for sure if the other character will be disappeared in the future too. At least Iwasawa’s story is sad and make impact to this show a lot more.

    I think Around ep8+ when you already concern about this show a lot more.It will begin to reach its peak for sure.

    But Somehow they can make it related with plot to make us more curious(like tenshi reveal in this ep that make some good theories and make tenshi more like good side than Yuri) and with this.This show begin to rocks now !

  19. Himari is merely follows a formula, half the shit you whined about in your first impressions post on Himari came from stuff which Himari (manga) proceeded anyway.

    Angel Beats otoh is definitely pitching things at a certain crows..

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