Short Series: Angel Beats, Ep. 13 - "Graduation"

And just like that, Angel Beats has come to an end at last. To think I only began this project a little less than a week ago – it feels like it’s been an eternity. Let’s see if Episode 13 (“Graduation”) ends on a high note.

Our courage will pull us through.

Three days have passed since the events of Episode 12, and it opens with a shot of Yuri lying on a bed in the school’s infirmary. It’s worth nothing that Kanade said, in Episode 1, that there aren’t any in hospitals in Purgatory High School, but there have been multiple hospital and infirmary scenes throughout Angel Beats. Oops. Anyway, three days have passed, and Yuri, Otonashi, Kanade, Naoi, and Hinata are the only people left in the school. When asked about what happened to the others, Otonashi casually mentions that they’d already passed on, as if it was the easiest thing in the world. An entire cast of characters just disappear offscreen. They managed to find inner peace and fulfill their dreams completely offscreen. It was the Great Offscreen Vanishing. So long, characters with zero development, zero screen-time, and zero personality.

What fucking terrible writing. Even the voice actors sound mysteriously off in this episode, as if they're aware of how trivial and meaningless the goings-on are.

The Battlefront remnants have set up the gymnasium to make it look like a graduation ceremony, and there’s a lot of pointless nonsense and stupid comedy that goes on, and that actually takes up a large majority of the episode. Also, for some reason, Kanade is upbeat and showing emotion all of a sudden, because apparently three days is enough time to completely change your personality – GOD THIS WRITING SUCKS. If this sounds like an anticlimactic, out-of-the-blue nowhere ending, then you’re on the money, because not a damn thing has happened so far.

"The whole Ice Queen thing was an act" Would have been nice if you had IMPLIED THAT FROM THE VERY BEGINNING, OR IF YOU HAD KANADE SHOW ANY SORT OF EMOTION BEYOND FEAR BEFORE THIS EPISODE

Everybody passes on like it’s the easiest thing in the world. Naoi gives a tearful goodbye to Otonashi, aww so sweet, saying that what Otonashi did brought peace to Naoi’s heart. Okay. Whatever. Yuri apologizes to Kanade and gives a warm goodbye to Otonashi and Hinata, and then bam, she’s gone. Hinata also passes on after giving high-fiving Otonashi. Wait. I thought Hinata’s innermost desire was to atone for his baseball incident many years ago, when he caused his team to fail by flubbing a catch? Guess not! I guess he managed to shrug off that painfully traumatic event - the one that caused him to begin taking DRUGS – and say, “Eh, it was no big deal! Easy as brain surgery!”

Then comes the part where “Graduation” becomes awful, truly awful. The only people left are Otonashi and Kanade. Otonashi says that he wants Kanade to stay with him so that they can work together to help people pass on in the same way they helped the Battlefront. He then confesses his love for her, and Kanade sort of does the same thing in an indirect way, and then comes this:

“Kanade: My life was extended because of the beautiful, kind heart you gave me.”

What. The. Fuck.

In Otonashi’s past, he signed an organ donor card before he died. His heart apparently went to Kanade, who had a heart condition when she was alive.

What. The. Fuck. HOW?! If she survived some kind of illness using Otonashi’s donated heart, then HOW DID SHE END UP IN THE AFTERLIFE BEFORE HIM? They never explain how this works, or why this happened! This entire heart transplant thing served only to make Otonashi look like even more of a Jesus figure. Fucking obviously the girl he wound up falling in love with was the one he gave his heart to so many years ago. They could have removed this entirely and there would have been no problem, but instead this opens up a million brand-new plotholes!

Hold me close, Jesus.

JUST END ALREADY!

Kanade passes on, and only Otonashi is left behind, and it is not touching or heartbreaking or even slightly moving in the least.

The. End. What a horrendous ending, filled to the brim with all kinds of plot contrivances, retcons, and gaping narrative holes and gaffes - it makes the bullshit in material like Episode 12 and Episode 6 seem like a distant, unimportant memory. It didn't end on a high note; I had expected that. What I had not expected was for it to end on such a wildly awful note. It's an insult to the audience's intelligence and clarity, expecting us to believe that an entire cast of characters have no qualms about dying, or that the whole "heart transplant" story involving Kanade is anything less than pure, unadulterated bullshit that shouldn't have made it past the drawing board. After a long march of mediocrity, for it to end on such an abysmal, world-defying note is disheartening, but unsurprising.