Angel Beats: Additional Comments

I remember, once, liking Angel Beats. Mind you, this was back in middle school when I was innocent and impressionable, thinking that anything that looked deep and complex was, in fact, deep and complex. And to be fair, there was a lot about Angel Beats that, on the surface, looked cool. A dark and edgy story-line about passed-away teenagers fighting against the afterlife to retain their quasi-existence? Cool! Yes, I remember enjoying it quite a bit, but it had been so long since I had actually watched the show that I wanted to go back and figure out exactly why Angel Beats was so good, at least at the time.

And the first few minutes of Angel Beats were honestly really cool. I was hooked from the first opening shot. The air of mystery and disorientation was awesome - even if the dialogue between Otonashi and Yuri was completely lifeless, I was willing to overlook that. Even when Kanade said "there are no hospitals because nobody gets sick here" and the following scene showed Otonashi lying in what was clearly a hospital bed, I was willing to overlook that. Even when the dark, brooding atmosphere of the first two or three minutes quickly turned to unfunny slapstick, I was willing to--

At the exact moment Otonashi woke up in the hospital and got the shit beaten out of him by that guy (Noda or something?), I remembered something. I'd unearthed a memory of sorts, to tell you the truth; it was a memory I'd suppressed for a long time, only to be fully realized at the exact moment Otonashi got the shit beaten out of him.

This show sucks.

It's not even "Otonashi gets the shit beaten out of him" that bugged me. It was the execution that bugged me. After the precious few minutes of exposition that set this show up as a possibly mysterious, dark show full of opaque mythology and tense action, the show discards those few minutes and turned Angel Beats into a wacky comic opera, full of slapstick, shouting (an uncomfortable amount of shouting), and characters acting like idiots for the sake of comedy. This tonal imbalance became a problem the series never shook off; when Angel Beats gets dark, it gets dark fast, and then it just as quickly falls back on wacky gags and farcical action, as if it never happened at all. Couple that in with the mind-shattering plot holes and questionably bland characters, the whole thing felt like a rip-off of itself.

To sum everything up...

STORY

Fuck, what was the plot? Angel Beats' "story" was all over the place. Stuff happens, and the only connecting link between "stuff that happens here" and "stuff that happens there" is the episodic structure. The plot, on the surface, is easy to follow: "A group of teenagers don't want to pass on from purgatory; they wind up doing so." But it's the way they get from Point A to Point B that made the story confusing as all hell. "Otonashi knows first aid despite having never been to college, let alone med school." Okay? "Otonashi's heart saved Kanade from a heart transplant, but she wound up in the afterlife before him." Huh? "A computer software system that alters reality." What?!

You know that phrase? "Throw crap at the wall and see what sticks"? Yeah. That's the best way I can summarize the story of Angel Beats.

ANIMATION AND DESIGN

One thing that I will give Angel Beats - it looks good. Like, really good. Some of the visual direction is top-notch, and there are individual shots that are absolute killers.

The problem, however, is that the animation is not all that smooth. The series is well-drawn, yes, but it is not well-animated. A majority of the characters move stiffly on a constant basis, or sometimes they'll go horribly off-model; this wouldn't be so bad (because we are human, and prone to error), but these lapses in skill and judgment look especially terrible next to the lush backgrounds.

What is WITH the brown-haired guy's face?

There are exceptions. I have a feeling that the animators were smitten with Kanade and wanted to do the best possible job with her; it shows. In comparison to the stiff, out-of-sync Battlefront members, Kanade's movements are fluid and precise, especially in her fight scenes. The Shadows from Episode 11, despite being a complete narrative fuck-up and coming out of absolute nowhere, were also really effective bits of animation, threatening and creepy and vaguely mechanical. But, as a whole, Angel Beats is not well-animated, which makes the whole project look clumsy and cheap.

CHARACTERS

Lifeless. There's a grand total of twenty characters (Kanade, and the nineteen Battlefront members) and only three of them are ever truly important. This wouldn't be so bad if they had personality, but I'm afraid to say they don't. It's incredibly hard to care about the characters of Angel Beats for any considerable length of time: Otonashi is a stock "innocent young man with a heart of gold who learns about the world around him", Yuri is an annoying bitch with no discernible personality, and the rest of the Battlefront have no personality to speak of. They're agents of chaos, and you cannot use agents of chaos as characters. Only Kanade is even a little appealing, but that appeal fades away in the last four episodes when the story decides to focus on the far-inferior Yuri.

Just a handful of the "sympathetic, well-rounded" characters of Angel Beats lore.

The only truly appealing character, the soulful, soft-spoken Iwasawa, disappeared after Episode 3. And, weirdly, it was after her disappearance that the writing stumbled. What a coincidence.

MUSIC

I have nothing to say here. I remember kind of liking the J-pop song that opened up each episode; but by the end, I couldn't have hummed a single measure even if you put a gun to my head. The rest of the score is rote and disappointingly mediocre.

You'd think that in a show that featured a guitarist, it would have good music.

BEST LINE OF DIALOGUE

"Wanna die?" - Noda, Episode 1.

Best I could do. There's no other line in this entire series that stands out.

BEST INDIVIDUAL MOMENT OR SCENE

Iwasawa's backstory in Episode 3. Visually striking, effective, and didn't overstay its welcome, unlike the unimportant, out-of-place backstory of Naoi, the easily-discarded backstory of Hinata, or the stupidly melodramatic backstory of Yuri.

WORST INDIVIDUAL MOMENT OR SCENE

Too many to name, but I distinctly remember crying because of how panderingly stupid the classroom scenes in Episode 5 were. So, I'll pick one of those.

MOST PRETENTIOUS MOMENT

Yeah, "Reality-altering computer software" did it for me.

OVERALL EPISODIC SCORE

Episode 1 (5/10) - Strong opening quickly ruined by uninspired slapstick humor. World established effectively - this is the only time throughout the show that the sense of world-building is this strong.

Episode 2 (3/10) - Boring action scenes, uninteresting dialogue, poorly-written Yuri backstory, and the completely pointless inclusion of an elaborate manufacturing plant. Looks pretty, but it really isn't all that pretty.

Episode 3 (8/10) - Refreshing. Well-written, fluidly-paced, inspired. Resolves Iwasawa's character arc and opens up new threads for Kanade, Otonashi, and Yuri.

Episode 4 (4/10) - Nonsense. Pure, unadulterated nonsense.

Episode 5 (3/10) - Good exchanges between Otonashi and Kanade, saves this episode from being truly contemptible. The non-stop assault of unfunny, poorly-executed humor makes the majority of this episode more of an endurance test than anything.

Episode 6 (3/10) - Edgy.

Episode 7 (6/10) - Perfectly fine. Otonashi's backstory is good, if melodramatic. Confusing, out-of-nowhere humongous fish.

Episode 8 (4/10) - Good opening and ending ruined by a consistent twenty minutes of pure bullshit.

Episode 9 (3/10) - Awful, needless addition to Otonashi's backstory.

Episode 10 (5/10) - While sweet-natured and a relaxing break from the crushing darkness and plot holes of the last four episodes, Yui is annoying and didn't need an entire episode focused around her.

Episode 11 (2/10) - The Shadows are cool. Other than that? An all-time low for the series. Rushed as hell.

Episode 12 (4/10) - Profoundly deranged, like a sugar rush. Pleasurably surrealistic and campy, but it doesn't hide the absolutely horrendous narrative.

Episode 13 (1/10) - Holy cock.

And that'll about do it. Good evening, world.

(Never watching this again.)