Angel Beats!
a review by Satonee
a review by Satonee
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The meaning to life is something that we constantly pursue, as humans. Trying to justify our reason for being here to find fulfilment in it by the end, ending our lives accomplishing our dreams and living a life we can happily say we are proud of.
What if we aren't. What if we die before we can reach our dreams and become fulfilled. What if we are unable to find our true purpose or if it is taken away from us. What if we die with regret in our souls and are unable to move on until we reach our lives goal, until we cross that finish line. What if we can't accept death and even life for what it is, unfair.
Angel Beats! is an original anime series created by the legendary Jun Maeda that tackles this very issue. It shows us how life is unfair, how life is cruel but how life is also beautiful, a gift from God that is more valuable than anything. It shows what life carries, all the hardship it has and how we can reach a stage where we feel our lives were meaningful after all, even if it doesn't have any at all. There is a lot to talk about so lets jump right in!
Per usual, I'll section off where we get to spoiler territory so you can read some part of this spoiler free.
One of the main ways Angel Beats! gets across it's message of life is through its insanely good world building. We see into the lives of others and get a insight into who they were and want to be through them. We see all the tragedy they went through while living, each individual life painting half of a bigger picture of life as a whole, unfair. While the world that we come to gradually understand, the afterlife, paints the second half of the picture, the beauty of life. Through incredible world building we are forcibly shown the bigger picture of not just ours but everyone's life, the unfairness of it and how precious it truly is. It goes to show its value and how we shouldn't waste it but treasure it, and that's what this anime ultimately does best, all through world-building.
The music that has come from this anime is legendary, iconic and will leave an everlasting impact on you. With tracks composed by Jun Maeda himself, with songs also performed by Marina and LiSA, the music is one of the key aspects that carry the message this anime has. Its either pushes forward emotion and life in scenes or even fully portrays life just through the median of it. Also its just really good music to listen to in general, I find myself having two songs from Angel Beats! on my playlist (My Song and Crow Song) because they're just good songs. I'll leave some links below to them because I love them and you should listen to them too honestly. The only negative thing about them is that they aren't on spotify which is a bummer but what can you ;(.
Characters in this anime all have a secret they are hiding from you. They all have personalities that make the anime endearing, like some laid back slice of life that makes you relax. Behind their outgoing selves lies a dark side, their past. Who they were and what the experienced, the tragedy that befell them and how fucked up their life is. It presents to us how people are different on the outside, how you never really know who they are inside and the emotions they battle with day by day. Even the anime doesn't allow you to fully understand their lives, only showing little parts of it which are described by the characters themselves, showing we can never understand what someone else is going through, but we can support them to get past it. I guess you could say it shows us first hand the feeling of sonder, the realisation that the people around you are living a life as vivid and complex as yours, one you'll ultimately never understand.
From this point onwards we have spoilers so if you want to skip to my conclusion that is fine!
I think one of the best ways to sum up this anime is the contrast of life and death. It emanates both of them in their full glory and how both a ultimately intertwine with each other. They are both what holds together the afterlife and what also ultimately 'obliterates' or fulfils the characters, coming together to create a beautiful emotional scene that pulls on the heart strings of the viewer. There's multiple examples throughout the anime like Yui and Iwasawa's oblitartion and the final scene that made everyone cry, however this is best shown in Otonashi's death in episode 9. It combines both death and life into one, as in his final moments he decides to give up his organs for donation to make sure part of him lives on even if the rest of him dies.
Angel Beats! has probably one of the harshest views on the meaning of life. While some anime present the meaning of life as to revolve around relationships like family or friends or around emotions such as love and anger or even a primal meaning as simple as survival, Angel Beats! is unique in the sense that it not remotely close to any of these. It shows us life truly has no meaning at all, we have either have a good life or a bad one. We can die whenever even before reaching any percieved meaning showing life doesn't really have one carved out for us. Instead, Angel Beats! tells us that we create meaning in our lives and even if it doesn't work out, then we should be happy that we at least tried our best to.
I think it also focuses on the human obessession on wanting to leave something behind, to have a meaning in our lives. Otonashi gaining his memories back in episode 7 perfectly, he believes he dies without meaning and clearly is shattered by it even telling Naoi and Yuri to leave the room before breaking down over his dead sister who he believes at the time he didn't do anything for, dying before he found true meaning in his life for her. It wants us to ultimately not obsess over the 'meaning of life' because they isn't one, instead we should seek to carve out our own and follow our own path that we craft ourselves, thats how we find true meaning.
Look, I'm a firm believer that everything has its posistives and negatives, from my favourite animes such as Clannad and Anohana to the likes on School Days and even To Love Ru (barely). With this being a review and not just my personal analysis on what I love about this series, I'm going to point out my admitly small problems with it.
The fact Otonashi comes before Kanade makes 0 sense when you think about it. Otonashi dies first because Kanade has his heart so why is the girl who died later there long before Otonashi is? Doesn't matter but it is lack on consistantcy that shows not al shows are perfect.
Animation is just fine. It doesn't really do anything but its not really awful anywhere (apart from faces at a distance they look quite goofy). It could be so much more but doesn't really make it stand out.
Finally, its just too short. I'd love like maybe 6-8 more episodes for us to explore the life of more characters like Matsushita, TK and Shiina like we did with Yui and Iwasawa. Not to the point of obliteration but I think it'll build the world up even more and push home the message of this anime even more, the unfairness and beauty of life.
While these are negatives, they're so minor that it doesn't really take away anything from how great this anime truly is. Maybe if you're a huge fan of animation in your anime, then maybe the just 'fine' animation would detract from the experience a bit, but for me not really.
Angel Beats! is beautiful story about life itself that teaches us and its cast harsh truths, but these truths gives the cast meaning, guides them towards fulfilment so they can rest in peace and shows us the interconnectivity of life an death. While not entirely perfect, Angel Beats! is one of the best anime I've watched and deserves all the praise its got.
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