Angel Beats!

FIRST IMRPESSIONS:
Obviously, this anime is one of the most popular of them all, overhyped to all hell and at the centre of most weeb culture at the time. When it was at its peak, there wasn’t a time when I wasn’t hearing about how good this anime was. Overhyping a series directly, for me at least, causes my personal viewing experience to decrease in quality as a result of the high expectations and the vivid descriptions of the anime itself. That’s why I put off watching this for a few years I guess, only now jumping the gun and deciding to watch the first episode. The art and sound design aren’t necessary spectacular, but the sense of mystery conveyed is at least done so in a competent enough way to provoke some intrigue. The MC himself isn’t at all unbearable, just your typical normal amnesia protagonist, which can be kind of a negative though it does add to the mystery of the afterlife and the dynamic of its inhabitants. The biggest problem that I thought I would have with this first episode was the huge cast of characters introduced, but I guess this anime actually cares enough to describe each one. Usually these characters fall out of the limelight and become irrelevant, at least with short anime - which this is - and as such I think introducing so many may cause a problem. Though, if done right and these characters end up getting erased or otherwise, it may be a good driving plot device both if they are developed correctly and if it is in service of a decent plot. Anyways, I guess I’ll watch this anime and see what all the hype has been about.

REVIEW:
I really thought that I would end up enjoying this anime all the way through, but the ending really ruins it for me. I feel as though the writer just got lazy and decided to end it all with a convenient antagonistic force combined with the various employed plot holes that defy the rules of the world that had been established over the course of the episodes preceding the ‘climax’ of the series. Sure, some of the characterisation is good, as well as the art and sound - but those aspects alone cannot carry this pothole ridden anime into greatness.
The plot gets very confused and more often than not, this anime loses track of what it wants to be and is hurt by that. I’ll say that this anime was an 8 for me when it was dealing with more student life plotlines, but when it started getting into complex stuff about programming the ‘players’ of the Afterlife and the random villain that shows up in the end it really turns to shit for me. If it weren’t for those first few episodes, this anime would be at a much lower rating for me. Anyways, I’ll get back to the conclusion later.
This anime takes place in a high school afterlife kind of zone (a grey area before the people there pass on), in which people find themselves there because of their personally troublesome childhoods - thus the high school acts as their springboard to enjoy a youthful life since they could not do so in their actual lives. Initially however, there is an establishment that aims to defy this ideal youthful life for fear of being ‘erased’ - the Battlement - as they call it. Most of the supporting cast and main cast end up in this Battlement, although there are some other characters, dubbed NPCs, which are just fill the rest of the high school with actual students and because this is some A rule established by this kind of zone that is integral to the plot and is the reason why the Battlement is driven to rebel against the pseudo antagonist of the series (Angel, the poster character for this series) is that once a person obeys the rules of the world and becomes a loyal student, they vanish from the world. An extension of this that is revealed a bit later in the series is that once the character is cleansed of all regrets, they vanish - serving no purpose in the world no longer. Within these bounds, the characters participating in the Battlement want to live and fight for as long as they can, making due in this afterlife zone thingy.
The first ‘antagonist’ of the series is known to us as Angel, but just so that you can remember I’ll just call her by her actual name - Tachibana. The reason that she is established as such is because she wants the Battlement to follow the school regulations and essentially disappear. Angel as a character seems really out of place for the regulations of the world since she doesn’t act as an NPC, but she as a character is revealed to be also human. But this in itself doesn’t make that much sense -even the following ‘antagonist’ has more of a reason to be as such because of his elaborated backstory. That brings me to probably the largest problem that this anime has, bringing it down from an 8 to a 6 for me. The characters and the world-building.
[Also, as a minor gripe, why the hell did the anime keep showing where the characters were with that shitty caption. It makes no sense as to why we as an audience need to know specifically where the characters are, like it serves no purpose at all].
Most of the characters in Angel Beats are mainly one note, most likely being as a result of there being too many introduced in the first couple of episodes as well as subsequent ones to conveniently drive the plot in some kind of direction. Though some of the one note characters are pretty funny, like TK and ‘CHRIST’ some of them are just too generic for the audience to even care about what happens to them such as Noda (the angry dude) and Matsushita (the dude that eats a lot) with most of them just becoming plot drivers and convenient ways to overcome the stupid conflicts that they find themselves in. The one-dimensional nature of most of the supporting cast not only weakens the impact that this show has on me, but because of their insignificance to the plot as a whole their impact just seems very small compared to the actual characters that get some screen time and dedicated development. Good examples of characters that get enough attention for me to care about them are Hinata and Iwasawa, with their motivations and reasons for being in that dimension being clear. They also initially would follow the rules of the world that they live in, though Hinata gets weirdly used as the best friend character for the main character Otonashi to bounce off of. Initially, I thought that this series was just going to be the entire cast disappearing one by one developing the backstory of each along the way (and although its formulaic, it probably would have worked better), instead it was a clusterfuck of plot holes and just laziness on behalf of the writer. The world itself was not fully utilised, with the rules employed by the anime itself being broken with its conclusion and further emphasising this issue is the introduction of unnecessary characters as well as characters not fully delved into (which is most of them admittedly the Guild master and most of the aggressive dudes with weapons). The introduction of new characters throughout the series just seems like such a huge excuse and it leaves too many unanswered questions, especially considering the series’ length being 13 episodes. Anyways, concerning the main character of the series: I think that he’s fine though at the end his character juts falls off and becomes sort of generic. The grounded nature of the developed characters was charming in a way, Otonashi’s search for a purpose in life, Iwasawa’s escapism through music, hell even Yui’s paralysis being her motivation for being so active. I feel like, in order for this series to become great, it would have had to focus on the characters rather than the convoluted world and plot that had been so half-assedly established in a rush to put all of these characters in. If the world was simpler to understand and the plot was just as simply stated before, the show probably would have worked a lot better. Instead, the plot becomes driven by a sequence of conveniences and stupid deus ex machina type situations like Tachibana’s OP programming that would basically break the world on its own. The conclusion in particular is full of those.
In that case, I guess talking about the conclusion is necessary at this point. Firstly, the introduction of that ‘shadow’ villain, with the program glitching out is unnecessarily complex is such a stupid plot point that it shouldn’t have even been introduced in the first place. I think in general, the stuff about altering the programming of the world that they live in is such an unnecessary aspect to the show, just padding the otherwise slice of life kind of show with redundant action (and action that isn’t even that good mind you). This kind of plot dynamic was first introduced with Angel being able to program herself to perform certain functions and change the materials of the world to suit her purposes. It’s not even explored as to why only she can do that, and the show completely ignores that fact. An extension of this problem is with ‘the Guild’ creating the guns seen in the anime out of dirt and imagination - like what the hell is that supposed to mean. They just explain it with some throwaway exposition that it might as well have just not been in there and instead being explained through imagination on its own and so this afterlife would become kind of like a dreamscape instead of a program. Additionally, the Tachibana clone arc was such a stupid plotline that it might as well have just not existed as it was only there to act as conflict for the characters to grow closer. And although yeah, there is a case to be made that it was necessary so that Otonashi gets closer to Tachibana, but the fact that the aggressive nature of the clones never resurfaced in Tachibana makes it serve no purpose. I think it would have been a better climax if the Tachibana clones manifested themselves and made it so that everyone had to help to save her. But then it probably would have taken too long and as such the other characters wouldn’t have gotten any screen time, so idk. Just throwing ideas out there, but just saying that this series had a lot of ways to approach its conflicts and the development of its characters. Speaking of the development of characters, during the last episode the series just decides to ignore everything. Most of the characters’ resolutions are explained as “oh they just decided to leave!” after a time skip. Which is the stupidest resolution ever. Adding salt to the wound was another explanation of a character just resolving his situation with ‘strong will’ when the ‘shadow’ was first introduced, it is revealed that Takamatsu (the genius-lookin’ guy with abs basically) had been consumed by said shadow and as a result has been transformed into an NPC. This being explained off by ‘strong will’ is so incredibly lazy its infuriating.
Anyways, the actual conclusion, the graduation ceremony for the four main characters Tachibana, Hinata, Yurippe and Otonashi (as well as Naoi - hell actually let me talk about that guy for a bit. He was basically the secondary antagonist of the series, and one of the characters I liked quite a bit, though his hypnosis powers were kind of stupid. His backstory was actually pretty well done I would say; crushed by the major expectations of his famous potter father, Naoi aspires to be like his brother whom is responsible for following very closely with his father and being the one that his father was the proudest of. After his brother’s death however, Naoi must fill those shoes and as such feels as though he lost his purpose, only now following his brother’s footsteps. Therefore, when he arrives in the afterlife high school, he wants to gain as much attention and power as possible because of how he felt in his youth, by exacting his plans against the Battlement by abusing his power as stupid council president after the Battlement sabotaged Tachibana’s reputation. In a flourish of battle, everyone is dying with Naoi’s plan being to erase everyone with his hypnosis powers. Otonashi to the rescue, having a mega speech and giving a new perspective on purpose for Naoi to then be followed by Naoi for the rest of the series. This adds Naoi to the main cast of people and he joins the one-dimensional club. I liked him before his joining the Battlement ☹ - from this actually I should probably talk about a huge gripe I had with some speech of Otonashi’s. It was probably the biggest speech of the series and in the anime, they just decided to cut to the end of it; it was basically Otonashi having to explain that disappearing is the better decision in moving forward, at least in a reasonable and satisfying manner. This was a minor arc where Otonashi tried to help everyone move forward with their regrets after finding out about his own past where he vows to help people, though it only resulted in him helping Yui being erased from the world anyways I’ll talk about his backstory later. I feel as though his speech being straight up cut, considering that it was such a major speech was so incredibly lazy and unforgivable. It really detracts from the impact that this should have had, and I think this is where it started to go downhill for me and my high expectations for what to come plummeted). Everyone leaves one by one, but this in itself opposes the rules established by the series itself where, in order for someone to disappear, they have to resolve all of their regrets and finally reach a satisfying youth. But them just leaving was such a stupid way to end the series just to pander and reach a ‘satisfying’ ending. But there are just so many unanswered questions, like who the hell is the ‘programmer’ and that dude that steals all of the computers? Just that plot point alone is enough to make me scream and grab at my hair. ANYWAYS, the actual conclusion - turns out that Tachibana is the one that receive Otonashi’s organs, saving her life and sure that does satisfy Otonashi’s plight to help people and allows him to leave later on. But Tachibana herself as a character has no developed motivations, so it kind of comes from left field when Otonashi confesses and Tachibana’s all like “I’ll disappear if I confess!”, like we don’t even know what she regrets in the first place. And then, on top of that, the ending ending shows Otonashi and Tachibana meeting IRL in some secondary life making the whole thing even more stupid. This is probably the worst ending I have ever seen in anime, because of the clumsiness and laziness that it presented to me.
Though most characters are one dimensional, I think that Iwasawa and Otonashi being developed both in their deaths and their motivations were actually well done, though Otonashi’s character kind of turned to be a little bit too focussed on his goal and became a bit one-dimensional itself though that in itself is arguable. Anyways, I’ll start off with Iwasawa’s backstory. She’s a part of the ‘decoy team’ which is basically an excuse to put an idol band inside of the Battlement’s cast and she’s the centrepiece of said idol group. Her motivations behind it are pretty good as I said grounded, though this doesn’t necessarily mean that it held substance. Just a bit of actual character development, which felt fresh for this anime since there were so many characters that kind of served no purpose other than a gag or two here and there. To be honest it was pretty edgy, but after talking to the MC, Otonashi, after a nice transition from her drinking water to her father drinking alcohol (though it’s kind of lame I thought it was an okay shot), she tells the story of music being her form of escapism from the terrible family life which she was involved in. Then, after performing one emotional song (which was out of the ordinary for her rock band, Girls Dead Monster: GirlDeMo) her dream of providing some solace for someone with her music as the music she listened to did for her she vanishes.
Contrastingly, Otonashi’s big reveal after being amnesic for the whole series before this point came about as a result of Naoi’s mind control powers being able to explore Otonashi’s mind and finally reveal to him the sorrows of his past. Turns out Otonashi was a shut in for most of his life, only working to keep his sister in check and to provide her gifts and entertainment. Throughout this backstory, it’s Otonashi who is narrating which doesn’t really make sense, but I’ll ignore it for simplicity, and he keeps contemplating his purpose in life. To be honest, now that I’m reflecting on this, it was a bit overexaggerated and edgy. But anyways, after he loses his sister he finally figures out that his purpose has been to serve his sister and achieve a satisfying “thank you” after giving her some gifts. He takes this and realises that he could achieve the same satisfaction and reach another purpose by helping others - so he decides to become a doctor. He studies hard and finally has the chance to get into university (to be honest, I don’t think many people would have this kind of resolve, especially after seeing his sister die as well as his NEET / dropout past, but yeah). But then, the train crashes. After this happens, the flashback stops only to resume later when Otonashi is waiting for Tachibana to recover from all of those clones that got merged into her. The next flashback / memory gain is probably what I enjoyed the most about Otonashi’s backstory. It was just a scenario taking place after the train crashes in which a select few people from the train, survivors, are in a situation where they cannot get out of a tunnel due to the debris blocking either end so Otonashi decides to take the initiative as leader. They manage to last a week since some dipshit drops all the water as a result of panic. During the final scene, Otonashi decides to circle the “donate organs” criteria on his health insurance as some kind of closure so that he can help someone even if he is dead. Sadly, after he dies everyone else gets rescued. I guess this backstory was pretty run of the mill, but I liked how it turned out. What I didn’t like was Otonashi’s transformation of character that comes after finding out about what happened, since he gets really attached to Tachibana and stuff and just yeah. It contrasted too much from his previous character and as a result muddled his motivations and as such we as the audience lose some form of relatability to his situation. Turns out also that since he dies with no regrets, knowing that he may have saved someone else, he will live in the world infinitely and yeah idk. To be honest, I thought that Otonashi’s organs being what saves Tachibana being such a stupid coincidence as well as their love for each other being the thing to make her disappear. It was just all trying to be such a wonderful conclusion only to be confusing, breaking the ‘realism’ and just being too dreamy of an ending for an anime that wanted to take itself quite seriously (with the ‘dark’ parts at least).
If this anime was 25 episodes, I think that the ending and disappearance of all of the characters would have been a lot more impactful. Instead, this anime will forever be known for me as having the worst conclusion of them all. Though it will also be known in my mind that this anime has one of the best first few episodes embezzled with amazing art and sound. Just the slice of life vibe that I got, with some comedic elements thrown in was really charming. But it was all in service of such a stupid ending and one full of plot holes and questions left unanswered. Anyways yeah, that’s why this isn’t an 8 / 10, not sure why people claim that this is a masterpiece sure it did have a lot of potential, but it certainly did not deliver.