Short Series: Angel Beats, Ep. 5 - "Favorite Flavor"

I thought that Episode 4 would be the end of the filler in Angel Beats, and that the story’s momentum would finally pick up after such a dreadful, inactive episode like “Day Game”. I seriously overestimated Angel Beats, because the writers decided to shit out Episode 5 (“Favorite Flavor”). In terms of its bearing on the story, featured character development, and featured circumstances, it is a little more important than “Day Game”, solely because it delves a little more into the character and psychology of Angel and it has an interesting ending.

 If you discard all of that, though, “Favorite Flavor” is just shitty writing, and further proof that Angel Beats didn’t need thirteen episodes. Even with a meager thirteen - which is small fry by American syndicated television standards and pretty pathetic by Japanese syndicated television standards - it drags its feet and pads out its running time with random slapstick humor and bland character drama that adds virtually nothing to its world. It simultaneously left me very bored and very exhausted, and there came a point during the test-taking session in “Favorite Flavor” that left me in such a detached, hollowed-out state of mind that I legitimately had to turn off the television and go do something else, something less mind-numbingly stupid.

Wait, test-taking session? Right, I should get to the excuse of a plot, in case any of you are (fortunately) unaware and uninitiated. Yuri announces her latest plan: exams are coming soon, and she orders the Battlefront to sabotage Angel’s studying and test-taking sessions, which would naturally cause Angel’s grades to flunk. Yuri wants to traumatize Angel as an experiment to see if Angel is truly human. So not only is she narrow-minded and mean-spirited, she’s also an emotional sadist. What a great fucking combination for a protagonist. Instead of maybe, I don’t know, finding a more positive and healthy way for Angel to show her natural, human emotions, Yuri immediately decides the best strategy is to… potentially send her into the throes of depression and self-deprecation. Yeah, these are the people we’re supposed to be rooting for. I am extremely grateful this series is almost halfway over.

Just because you're aware of your problems doesn't make them any less problematic.

Then begins the actual test-taking session, and all parties converge to the classroom. Yuri makes plans to fuck up Angel’s test, but the Hacker kid (the guy who insisted his name was “Christ”; this matters, apparently) points out something important – none of them even know Angel’s real name. Otonashi, being a sensible guy, has a brilliant idea: to just ask. He and Angel have a chat: her name turns out to be Kanade Tachibana. Admittedly, the interactions Kanade and Otonashi have over the course of the episode are pretty cute, and they’re by far and away the best moments. Unfortunately, when the actual test-taking session begins, things degrade from here.

Please, just stop trying.

The Battlefront members try their best to cause a scene so that their agent (the Hacker kid) can sabotage Angel’s test, and it’s truly fatiguing. This takes up a majority of the episode, and it’s full of all kinds of unfunny comedy – they have to stretch hard to find jokes, and most of the jokes fail upon impact. There’s an awkward amount of shouting and screaming that occurs in this episode (a fucking lot of screaming and shouting), an ungodly amount of slapstick that would make American cartoonist wince, and a shirtless scene that dies as thoroughly as any joke in the history of animation. There came a point where I just got tired of sighing and rolling my eyes, and instead I sat there in pure silence, watching the goings-on with disinterest.

PLEASE STOP TRYING

Eventually their plan works for some audacious reason, and Kanade resigns as Student Body President, because this is a soap opera and getting a bad grade is equivalent to murder. You’d think that Kanade would eventually figure out her exams were secretly sabotaged, and that she’d instigate some kind of plan to punish the Battlefront for their actions, but no, that’d be far too interesting. Instead, a new student called Naoi replaces Kanade as Student Body President. The characters dick around for about seven or so minutes and then the Battlefront is placed under arrest by Naoi, which is where the episode ends. Pretty sure Student Council members don’t have the equivalent authority of a police officer, but whatever, it was at least more interesting than “random slapstick gags”.

The only thing this episode does is further Kanade’s character, proving that she is indeed very human and very lonely. And while that is sort of touching, it also invalidates Kanade as an effective villain of any kind. Before “Favorite Flavor”, there was an air of mystery surrounding Kanade; she had proven herself to be an icy, by-the-book agent with command over the material and immaterial, and all of this made her interesting, far more interesting than the mono-dimensional cast, anyway. However, the nature of her threat is compromised with Episode 5, which takes extreme liberties to remove Kanade’s role as the antagonist of the series, instead replacing her with some stupid pretty boy kid. So much for payoff.

“Day Game” was frustrating; “Favorite Flavor” is fatiguing. It’s an episode that’s full of tonal imbalance, going from a ton of shouting and quipping and farcical humor to forlorn, solemn-looking scenes of Kanade sitting alone and Otonashi looking guilty in the blink of an eye. It’s an episode that’s saddled with some of the worst animation in the series; occasionally, the visual direction is interesting, but it doesn’t happen often enough to make a big deal out of it.

On the other hand, however, criticizing “Favorite Flavor” seems awfully daft, in light of the storm of bullshit that’s to follow. So there’s that.