My first exposure to Key's work is generally considered their most unorthodox. An anime cut short of its intended runtime, with guns and action and mystery... this can hardly be considered Key at this point, can it? Well regardless, it may not stand the test of time in many ways, but it still has plenty to say.
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Angel Beats reeks of missed potential, but what's left has a heartbeat.
> Whose side would God take?
Plot: 7/10
In an otherworldly purgatory consisting of a school and little else, teenagers who died too soon rebel against the Angel who mocks their short lives. Amnesiac Otonashi wonders if their sights are set in the wrong direction...
Right from the get go, it is obvious that Angel Beats' premise is metaphorical. This is not a show intended to be taken at face value, and as such, the vague rules of purgatory world do not stick out. What does stick out, however, is Naoi's hypnosis powers. Just go with it, I guess.
As the show progresses and Otonashi guides his peers' motivations there are many emotional beats along the way. A lot of them hit, but they are a little devalued by the hit or miss comedy on occasion. In particular the Hinata gay joke is... unfortunate, as are the plenty of other instances of heteronormativity and gender roles. For the most part though, Angel Beats does a great job of making its audience laugh and cry. There are a few plot twists along the way as well that paint a tragic picture. The emotional core of the anime is absolutely formidable, and that carries its darker half. The biggest problem with this story is that it is very heavily dependent on your attachment to the characters, and because the anime had to be shortened, a decent chunk of said characters obviously had arcs cut that led to them not getting the time in the sun necessary for the story's emotional climaxes to hit as hard as they should. However, the fact that they still hit me hard all the same should speak volumes about the level of storytelling we are dealing with here.
> Humans won't even wait ten minutes!
Characters: 6.5/10
The main trio of Otonashi, Yuri, and Angel are pretty good. They thematically compliment each other, as perspective, agency, and intent respectively. Angel is an excellent static character both amusing and lovable, and I found her interactions with the rest of the cast very entertaining as well as the mystery surrounding her identity and intentions to also be fun to figure out. Yuri really only got good toward the end, but when she did, it was excellent. She has the most well defined arc of the main cast, and as the leader of the Afterlife Battlefront, that's only natural. Finally Otonashi. His role in the story makes his status as "generic amnesiac protagonist" feel deceptively justified, but he is a little unremarkable outside of that scope.
Unfortunately, the rest of the cast... kinda sucks. Certain characters with emotional climaxes in the story feel as if they missed the characterization that would have led to that climax in the first place. Characters like Ooyama and TK are walking punchlines and there are even a few characters who appear in the ED every episode and yet I do not even think their names are ever spoken. The fact that content was cut is painfully obvious and ever present throughout the show.
> This is my life. I can’t entrust it to someone else, I can’t steal a new one, I can’t force it on others, I can’t forget it or erase it. I can’t stomp over it, laugh at it, or beautify it!
Themes: 8/10
Easily the best and most important part of Angel Beats is what it has to say about the meaning of life. Obviously what someone's life means is for them to decide alone, but the cast of Angel Beats is already dead. In essence, then, Angel Beats is about the past. I won't spoil too much but I definitely think it is an interesting approach to take to an otherwise pretty simple moral question, and its evolution throughout the show alongside its relevance to the main cast is well thought out. The message is a little simple and delivered a little haphazardly, but it gets through and not without plenty of tears, so I'd say it's a success by most accounts.
> Our weakness is that we're all utterly stupid.
Visuals/Sound: 7.5/10
Overall pretty well animated, although not a lot about it stands out. My biggest issue with the show visually is the character designs, which are very samey, especially for the dudes. The first time I watched the show I couldn't tell Hinata, Noda, Takamatsu, and Fujimaki apart. The guns look great. A directing choice I vibe with a lot is how characters get obliterated by simply being there one moment and not being there in the next shot; no fanfare, no effect, no sound.
Gunshots are nice and meaty, voice acting gets the job done. The best aspect on the sound front is the ost, which is excellent. Both the OP and ED (My Soul, your Beats and Brave Song respectively) are iconic and enrapturing, with the latter in particular literally making me cry every time.
> There's nothing false about the lives we endured.
Conclusion:
Despite the missed potential I found myself enjoying Angel Beats a decent amount. I wish it had more time to flesh out its world and its cast, but if they had to trim it down, they did a good job of leaving what was most important in. I still find myself feeling as if it doesn't do any one particular thing outstandingly, however. It's a jack of all trades that I think is a safe bet for anyone to enjoy, provided they can look past its more dated aspects, but if you're a fan of any particular thing Angel Beats does, it's a pretty safe bet that I could recommend something that I think does that thing better. 
