Short Series: Angel Beats, Ep. 8 - "Dancer In The Dark"

It’s high time I start talking about something that wasn’t all that important earlier but is at the forefront of Episode 8 (“Dancer in the Dark”) and its dramatic conflict: exactly what kind of powers Kanade, or Angel, possesses. She has numerous powers, being the Student Body President, and the most prominent abilities we’ve seen in the previous episodes are Hand Sonic (where she summons magical blades atop her wrist, a la Assassin’s Creed), Distortion (a crystal, energy-filled sphere that deflects bullets and incoming objects), and Overdrive (a passive ability that gives her superhuman strength, which made me wonder about one of the many plot contrivances in Episode 6: if Overdrive is permanently passive, then why didn’t she just punch her way out of the prison?), but that’s about it. This episode will begin talking about a few more of her powers, titled Harmonics, Absorb, and Howling, powers that have not been of any apparent importance (or barely even mentioned) until now, but that’s genius writing for you, I guess. God forbid there be creativity.

Episode 8, to its credit, has a fantastic opening, and I had not expected even that. The Red-Eyed Kanade from the last episode has a duel with Yuri, who quickly loses until the Battlefront joins in with suppressing fire. Red Kanade wrecks their shit and goes in to intercept the actual Kanade; they proceed to stab each other, and one fade-to-black later, Kanade is hospitalized. The whole sequence doesn’t last much longer than a minute, but the animation, direction, and pacing are stately and elegant, and it’s the only fight sequence in the series thus far I found myself enjoying, because of the tension and mysterious circumstances.

The Battlefront, taking refuge in the hospital, wonder what the hell is going on, and Yuri references Episode 3, when they hacked into Kanade’s computer and realized that she’d been modeling her powers on a software program called AngelPlayer - some of the abilities installed there were never even utilized by her. One of the program, “Harmonics”, was activated sometime during Episode 7; to be more specific, Harmonics was apparently activated when she made mincemeat out of the humongous fish in Episode 7. Okay, that would have been nice to know at the time it happened (if she’d just muttered something like “Harmonics activate” or whatever, then there would be payoff), but whatever, this isn’t the last time the series pulls something like this out of its ass. Harmonics causes Kanade clones to generate; even worse, that clone can clone itself, and so on and so forth.

This was, admittedly, pretty funny.

So Yuri orders all of the Battlefront members to go to class and pretend like they’re taking class seriously (how is that different from what they usually do?) while she goes off to storm Kanade’s room alone, to analyze the vital AngelPlayer data found on her personal computer. There’s a thick, lengthy AngelPlayer manual, but it’s written in English. Irritable, Yuri instead decides to fuck with the system without any foreknowledge of how it works, and manages to make things worse by activating a new command: Howling. Yuri acted impulsively here purely for the sake of progressing the plot and dramatic stakes. What the hell? Yuri took careful consideration not to mess with any of the data in Episode 3, so why did she suddenly decide to throw caution to the wind and dick with the AngelPlayer system? Oh, that’s right! Because the narrative needed her to. Even though she was never a sophisticated or complex character, Yuri has degraded into a plot-driving device with no perceivable personality. Who the hell is Yuri? I don’t know her, and the writers surely don’t.

I know people act impulsively in real life, but they at least have good / justifiable / in-character reasons for doing so.

For that matter, who the hell is the rest of the Battlefront? It’s high time I mentioned something very important: we have six episodes left, including this one, and almost none of the Battlefront personnel have received any substantial character development or screentime. I don’t know who most of these people are – I know next to nothing about them! Who are they? What were they like in their past lives? Why do they go along with Yuri’s outrageous plans, and for what reasons? What are their motivations, their innermost desires, dreams, or beliefs? If the writers knew they didn’t have the time to develop each character, why did they have so many? And, for the record, why have so many characters if you only choose to focus on, like, three of them? By this point, the only way they could be interesting or developed is if the writers focused the last five episodes entirely around them; but, on the other hand, that would cheapen the character arcs of Otonashi, Kanade, and Yuri. It’s a problem no matter how you look at it.

Angel Beats, if you included the only important characters.

But, hey, I’m just a schoolboy, and the writers over at Key are professionals. Maybe I missed something. Maybe the burly Brock ripoff is secretly a robot ninja; maybe the purple-haired guy with a grudge against Otonashi is a time traveler who hopped back in time to stop Otonashi from reforming the Nazis; maybe the lanky guy with glasses is an ex-cop with a tragic backstory and a strained relationship with his well-meaning wife and child; maybe the ninja girl is that well-meaning wife! Fuck, maybe this entire story takes place entire in Otonashi’s mind, and everybody around him is the personification of his innermost fears and Freudian anxiety. Hell, maybe this entire story is Otonashi’s wish-fulfillment fanfiction, co-starring his friends. In fact, yes, that’s my theory now.

Anyway, Kanade disappears from the hospital because Yuri was an idiot, and the Battlefront learns that Kanade has apparently locked herself inside the Guild, which means they have to descend into the Guild’s depths and retread the events of Episode 2. And, as luck would have it, they do just that, with each member dying off one by one until it’s just Otonashi and Yuri. It’s a clever nod to that one great episode! Oh no, wait, it’s bad writing. My mistake.

"We have no idea what we're doing, either."

Otonashi tries to find the original Kanade while Yuri fights a clone, and then Angel uses Howling, which is basically a loud, annoying screeching noise, and Yuri wore earplugs that rendered her immune to Howling (whatever, let’s just be done with this) and Kanade uses a powerful version of Harmonics that re-absorbs all of the clones into the original Kanade, which effectively erases them and causes the original Kanade tremendous pain. It’s strange and effective enough to be the most memorable part of the episode.

I dislike this episode… less than it deserves. It has a strong, urgent opening and strong ending, but almost all of the material in between is either pure nonsense, illogical, or just plain uninteresting. “Dancer in the Dark” does a great many things that never tie together as a whole, in particular the absolutely atrocious middle section that’s just a ripoff of “Guild”, all problems included. “Dancer in the Dark” put me in a foul mood for some reason, but at least it isn’t as shrill and joy-starved as “Guild” or “Family Affair”. But the bullshit isn’t quite over yet.