Short Series: Angel Beats, Ep.2 - "Guild"

So after Episode 1 ("Departure")’s wild attempts to grab your attention, Episode 2 (“Guild”) has to try and fill in Episode 1’s shoes. The bar for “Guild” wasn’t very high; it just had to be better than Episode 1, but it also be the perfect complement to the “perfect” opening. It had to be an improvement in any and every way that counted – story, music, performance, animation, character development, and world-building. It’s Jun Maeda’s time to shine.

"We have no idea what we're doing"

The Battlefront gang receive an intel report that their stockpiles of ammunition are running low and that they should head down to “the Guild” to get some more. The Guild is, apparently, an underground base where the Battlefront members manufacture their weapons. It does answer the question of where Yuri got that sniper rifle, or how the Battlefront is supplied, but it will bring up another question later on. For now, the details: Yuri and the Battlefront decide to take a trip down into the elaborate tunnels of the Guild in order to stock up for the next battle, and all of the “anti-Angel traps” contained within the tunnels are disarmed in preparation for the Battlefront’s coming. After a pointless confrontation between Otonashi and the guy who beat the shit out of him in Episode 1, the traps are suddenly reactivated, which can only mean Angel’s in the tunnels, and probably close on the Battlefront’s heels. So now they have to make their way through the booby-trapped tunnels and try their best to survive.

Which means Angel, in case you didn't put two and two together.

They mention that the traps will only stop Angel temporarily, which brings up another weird narrative gaffe. If the traps can only temporarily stop her, then why hasn’t she managed to reach the core of the Guild yet? It’s been shown that she’s tenacious, to an obnoxious degree, and pretty damn durable as well. If all these traps do is just slow her down, then how has she not made it to the end? She actually manages to waltz into the hideout in this episode (big spoiler alert)! So what’s different now?

Anyway, because the cliché meter is finely tuned in this universe, the Battlefront tries to make their way through the booby-trapped tunnels, perishing one by one in some of the stupidest ways possible (again, with the weird, unfunny humor pervading what should be a more serious issue), leaving behind only Otonashi and Yuri, because waffles.

Yuri begins to explain her backstory, and it’s around this point the episode becomes truly, reprehensibly stupid and not just slow-paced and awkward. Try and count the clichés here. Yuri explains that she was the eldest of four siblings, and one afternoon a couple of murderous robbers broke into her house while her parents were away. They order her to find the most valuable item in the house and hand it over to them, or else her siblings will be killed one by one. The young Yuri finds a vase and passes out, and when she wakes up the police are at her house and she’s the only one left alive. It’s a stupid, melodramatic, manipulative backstory that uses shock value to force the viewer into sympathizing with her, which is the greatest sin of storytelling; it treats her backstory as more of a plot device than anything else, and it’s apparently Yuri’s prime motivation. Characters are more than just devices; they need to exist within their own world, and this desensitizing, ridiculously tragic backstory treats Yuri as more of a vessel than anything else.

Yuri and Otonashi make their way into the Guild and they meet all the guild workers; the only one of note is the manufacturing manager Char, who is memorable for being the only character in this show with an interesting visual design; he really looks like a weathered, rough engineer who knows his way around a wrench and a gun. However, this happens:

“Yuri: Something with life cannot be reborn into this world. But we can manufacture objects. As long as you know the mechanics and how to replicate them, you don't need any real materials. You can make it from dirt.”

Ignoring the fact that this series has very definite trees and flowers (which have very definite lifespans), the last line in particular makes the Battlefront and Guild look like complete idiots. If you can make anything out of dirt in purgatory, then what was the point of having a risky, elaborate, dangerous underground manufacturing plant? They try to hand-wave this by saying “we prioritized efficiency and grew accustomed to making replicas in this factory,” but efficiency is nowhere near as important as safety and common fucking sense. The very presence of the Guild is a lot of unnecessary effort, space, and time, especially considering how they’ve practically made it a base of operations. Sure, if Angel wipes out the Guild, it’s bad, but the Guild has absolutely no reason to be in the story other than for pointless drama. In addition, so long as Char and the other manufacturers remember how to make guns and they have enough dirt (because they mention memory is the key to producing these weapons), then that’s all they need for weapon-making! So even if Angel did destroy the Guild, the members would just come back to life (because nobody physically dies in this world unless they “disappear”) and they would be able to keep on making weapons, out of sight, out of mind! And also, if you can make anything out of dirt, why did they need to steal a bunch of lunch tickets to buy food at the end of the first episode? Augh, my head hurts! There is nothing at stake here beyond an empty, presumably “symbolic” victory over Angel, all because the plot managed trip itself into a few thousand holes.

Visually pretty, but it has no place in the story.

 They wind up blowing up the Guild, anyway. So much for payoff. This episode does absolutely nothing for me. “Departure” was a pretty boring pilot, full of emotional whiplashes that came out of nowhere, and stiff characters, but it at least got you interested. “Guild” is intensely dumb and ludicrous, failing in almost every category, be it the absurdly bad character drama going on with Yuri, the illogical presence of the Guild, or the pointless sequence that showcases all of the Battlefront members dying one by one. Since everybody is already (mostly) dead and will just come back to life, there is no sense of danger, and whenever the Battlefront members sacrifice themselves, there’s no emotional impact because you know they’ll just respawn. The whole thing is just pointless nonsense that goes on for way too long, and it lacks any sort of value whatsoever. Episode 3, however, has something new.