One of the biggest complaints I hear about Angel Beats is that it was cut way too short and needed at least a two-cour season to tell its story. I get where people are coming from, especially if they liked one of the many characters in this ensemble, but I couldn’t disagree more. I think the pacing of Angel Beats, at least in terms of its main story, was done perfectly.

Even though I tend to like series developed by Key, whether through anime or visual novels, (Kanon, Air, Clannad, Little Busters, Rewrite, Summer Pockets, etc) one of their biggest flaws is that their stories are just incredibly bloated. There’s way too much time spent on repetitive slice-of-life gags before getting to the dramatic stuff. Similarly, since they feel obligated to develop full routes and stories for at least four to five heroines, they have to dedicate time to building up all of them—even when many have similar themes—just to justify a full-length product worth the money or time investment.

Angel Beats, to me, is the perfect example of capturing Key’s essence without wasting too much time—or going to the other extreme like Planetarian, Harmonia, or Lunaria, where there's not enough time to fully invest in the characters and story. Angel Beats finds a great balance, giving us a memorable ensemble cast with a ton of over-the-top and varied humor. Instead of relying on repetitive gags from the same few characters, as most Key stories do, it keeps things fresh with its large cast.

However, if there’s one thing Angel Beats truly shines at, and what makes it a contender for my favorite Key work, it’s how well it uses its unique supernatural setting.

One of my biggest issues with Key’s storytelling is that, despite having memorable characters, humor, and drama, they tend to introduce the supernatural after the heroines' stories are already underway. Instead of establishing the supernatural early on, they give the impression that the story is grounded in reality—when, in fact, it’s not nearly as down-to-earth as it seems.

Angel Beats avoids this by establishing right away that it takes place in some kind of purgatory equivalent—which, of course, just so happens to include a high school. Because of this, the story can fully embrace its supernatural elements from the start, allowing characters to do outright ridiculous things that only work in a pseudo-afterlife. This makes the supernatural drama and twists that happen later on much easier to buy into.

This is especially important when it comes to the ending. Key stories—especially those written by Jun Maeda, or ones like Summer Pockets that clearly copy his style—tend to start off lighthearted before diving into serious life-and-death drama, or at least incredibly depressing character-driven drama. Then, they suddenly pull a happy ending out of nowhere, often with some supernatural deus ex machina. I’ve always hated those moments in Key stories.

Angel Beats fixes this problem by establishing its themes from the very beginning. It leads into a really good twist about three-quarters through and executes it consistently all the way to the end. There is a final twist tied to the anime’s title that feels a little too convenient, but I’d still take that over the usual deus ex machina nonsense that Key tends to rely on in their other stories.

As for the characters, like I said, there are a lot of likable ones—as you’d expect from Key. I’ll admit that, on average, the character writing might not be as strong as in some of their other works since Angel Beats focuses more on the ensemble cast rather than explicitly developing each main heroine. But that’s not to say they don’t develop the characters—far from it. The unique purgatory-like setting lets us see flashbacks of the main characters’ past lives, and the ones they chose to focus on fit perfectly with the anime’s main themes and emotions.

And that’s something I feel is underrated when critiquing stories: focus and pacing.

In the anime and visual novel scene, there’s this weird perception that a story has to be as long as possible, fleshing out every little detail and world-building element. Personally, while I love a good long story, I find that a lot of fan-favorite long stories have way too much unnecessary padding—whether through repetitive slice-of-life jokes, drawn-out drama, or world-building or infodumping that ultimately doesn’t matter.

Angel Beats avoids this by keeping its story focused. It uses its ensemble cast well while fleshing out only a handful of characters that directly tie into its themes, which is the perfect way to pace a story within 13 episodes. Sure, it would’ve been nice to see more backstories, but that’s what supplementary material should have been for (if Maeda had actually continued the Angel Beats visual novels past 1st Beat).

Now, as much as I love Angel Beats and even consider it possibly my favorite Key work, I’ll admit it has flaws.

While I generally like the humor, there are a few times when it falls into the typical Japanese comedy trap of repeating certain gimmicks a little too much.

While I said I liked the backstories they did cover, there are one or two where I think they could have gone even further—showing more of what led those characters to become the people they were in this pseudo-afterlife.

And while I think the ending is way better than most other Key stories, there are still small issues with it. Like I mentioned before, the twist tied to the anime’s title feels too convenient, and the epilogue is just a little too short and vague—potentially even contradicting an OVA.

As for the protagonist, Yuzuru Otonashi, I generally like him—especially for some of his actions later in the series—but he starts off a little too bland for my liking.

That being said, I really love Angel Beats, and I think it’s actually one of the more beginner-friendly Key stories. It’s not too short, not too long—it gives you enough time to get to know the main characters while showing you how Key typically handles humor, drama, supernatural elements, and endings, but without falling prey to the flaws of their earlier works.

In my opinion, if you could only experience one Key story and didn’t want to commit to something super long, I’d 100% recommend Angel Beats.