Category: Angel Beats

Interestingly enough, all episodes of Angel Beats have their parts that just don’t work. In this episode, it’s the comedy. It’s unfortunately to be expected from the director: his style of comedy is over the top, and either works, or fails to hit the mark completely, and this was the latter. The parts where Yurippe activated the flying chairs lacked timing, and were too repetitive. Her screaming was just too over the top.

On the other hand however, I really felt sorry for Angel (or Tachibana, as her name turns out to be). The way that this episode stripped off all her authority and made her all alone. It screamed Key, but it was really well done.

If my memory doesn’t fool me, it was Yurippe who was the first one to awaken in this world, right? It was her idea to label Angel as the enemy, right? So what if Tachibana was the first one to awaken, and somehow she and Yurippe ended up fighting: I can very much imagine Yurippe as a very confused and angry spirit. Whatever it caused, it caused Yurippe to form that resistance group of hers, and Angel to seek the support of the student council. This would explain why Angel is nice to Otonashi (and probably all of the other members of the resistance apart from Yurippe). I have a lot of reasons to believe that Angel never really causes anyone to disappear: that’s just something Yurippe assumed.

Also, thinking further: while the mysterious new student council president still remains a mystery, then what if he is a regular student? What if Angel was simply trying to use her role as the student council to get the students under control, and prevent them from fighting back like they did at the end of this episode.

Just one thing: please give the new student council president a bit of depth in the next episodes. A dull villain isn’t exactly what this series needs right now.
Rating: * (Good)

This was a really weird episode. Why? Because the drama was better than ever, while the rest was worse than ever.

Let’s talk about the bad stuff first: overall I’ve been pretty happy with the voice acting in this series. It’s not the best, but there are a ton of series that have far worse problems with their voice actors. But then that damned pink-haired girl showed up. Seriously, listening to her feels like listening to someone trying to put a cat into a blender.

It’s probably because of that that the comedy also disappointed. I mean, the creators just kept repeating the same joke over and over. How many times did that blue-haired guy try to molest her anyway? The baseball itself also felt lacking, so much that even the creators just gave up half-way and decided to just show a montage.

And then the drama came, and it actually was very good! For once it didn’t feel out of place, or was way too extreme for its own good. It was an interesting story about a guy who regretted something that he failed to do when he was still alive. We’re not exactly told how he died, but there’s are enough hints that pointed that he died of drug addiction. That anti-climax of course completely ruined it, but on the other hand: I don’t think I’ve ever seen such an annoying anti-climax, so I guess it deserves points for creativity.

In any case, the past few episodes have been complete and undirected chaos, but that’s actually what I like about this series: the characters here are very much flawed in which they don’t really know what they’re doing, or why. I think we’re actually seeing a bunch of very confused spirits wandering around, all having some regrets that won’t allow them to pass on to the afterlife. When ghosts are portrayed in media, you often see them as very confused, not really having a full grasp of what’s going on. That’s exactly what I’m seeing with the Angel Beats cast as well.
Rating: * (Good)

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)

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)