Anime 6547 Angel Beats Reviews Filter Check 3

Angel Beats! The anime that is praised by many and criticized by few. Sadly I was forced to go stand in the cold critic corner. In all honesty, I was excited to watch this anime after all the suggestions from people and raving reviews. The art looked amazing and I heard the music was incredible. What is a good anime in my book? An anime that effects my grades negatively, because just...one...more...episode! Angel Beats however never gripped me. It made me say: "Ok that's enough for today, I have a ton of homework anyway..." My experience can be best summed up in a quote from ... another review: "I badly wanted to love this anime, but just couldn't..."

STORY: 2/10

I obsessively try to spot the cracks and flaws in a plot, but I overlook a lot of flaws in the beginning of an anime to give it a fair chance. From the start the plot's foundation was already showing cracks, but I ignored them due to my high hopes for this "MUST WATCH!" The story begins with our main protagonist waking up in some kind of "afterlife" and he is greeted by a teenage girl with a sniper rifle. The apparent "antagonist" called Angel is, like everyone in this "afterlife", immortal, but she has extra powers (cause why settle for immortality, am I right?) The leader of the "resistance" is perfectly aware of their opponent’s immortality but she and her group of rebels shoot at her anyway (with guns made from dirt by the way...), even though one of her powers allows bullets to pass straight through her. I was just waiting for one rebel to shout: "Our bullets have been passing harmlessly through her for the past 5 minutes, sir!" Then the leader would answer: "Just shoot harder!!" I would be crying on the floor! (Not tears of laughter but tears of pain cause I would have fell off my chair laughing!)

This "Pre-afterlife" world is a highschool (cause every anime needs a bunch of not-so-normal teens that go to high school.) At this school you are given a chance to make peace with your tragic life and move on to your reincarnation. One of the ways to pass on? Get good grades... So this group of rebels against God decide to go to class but not pay any attention...brilliant! Why even go to class in the first place? Another thing that irritated me is they added filler scenes and 3 or 4 filler episodes to a 13 episode anime! The characters and plot never had a chance to develop in that short time because it was given 2nd or sometimes 3rd priority! If you take off your thinking cap, lend it to a friend, sit down and just immerse yourself in the art, music, action and comedy then you might enjoy this anime quite a bit. The plot is also very slow paced and when it finally picks up the pace the anime is almost over, everything is rushed and you end up with a horde of mini-arcs.

CHARACTERS: 2/10

School scenario, group of misfits, each an embodiment of some stereotype, it's been done too many times... Let’s start with a positive. This anime had some of the most interesting characters I've seen in a while. I needed to know more and when I realized that they will be telling each character's backstory and revealing the reason for them "qualifying" for this school I was ecstatic! There was hope for this anime! Sadly the 3 most interesting/mysterious characters were not even developed the slightest! Their backstories were not even told! You had the chilled guy who never stopped dancing and only spoke small snippets of vague English. You had the introvert girl who was always on her own and who had a love for puppies and the weapon obsessed, hot tempered guy who had a crush on one of the main female protagonists. These 3 supporting characters in my opinion had the most potential. All 3 pushed aside and only used for comic relief... The waste of potential was shocking and really got to me.

ART: 9/10

Now I need to agree with almost every review here and admit, the art was amazing. The use of rays of light reflecting off objects and the creamy colours were very soothing to the eye. Beautiful backgrounds and scenes complemented the scenarios and were not too busy. The characters had simple, but original designs. (At least most of them...) Even though they were pointless, the action scenes were smooth and flowed. The art was one of the aspects that slightly redeemed this anime and that acted as a safety net to slow it's steady decent down my anime list.

SOUND: 7/10

The music matched the scenes and really added atmosphere and added emotion to the scenes that were "meant" to touch you. (It was incredibly easy to see the formula that the writer followed to try and tug at my heart strings.) One track in particular that played during the last episode in the saddest moment made a smile briefly creep onto my disappointed face.

I loved the art and sound, but those are just enhancers of the story. Sadly great art and sound could never save a wrecked plot, no matter how good. It did cushion the blow however.

ENDING 3/10

This anime's last chance to grab a point or two from me. Sadly even this chance was squandered... I started watching this anime with the hope of sharing the same feels as all the fans of this anime begging me to give it a chance. The ending lacked any emotional impact though... I could almost see the writer add every typical element to the ending to make it resemble a genuinely sad yet still realistic ending. I unfortunately found the ending devoid of even a scrap of logic and even the timeline of past events shown to the viewer via flashbacks made no sense...(I don't want to spoil anything) But without spoiling I just need to say that the ending makes all the efforts and motives of the "resistance" redundant and laughable... Even their reincarnation theory or should I say fear of not wanting to risk coming back as a barnacle is totally blown out of the water...(No pun intended)

Now there is one thing about the end that I need to address, so please skip the next well designated paragraph but NOT the rest of the review if you want to avoid a slight spoiler. You gone? Good :) Don't say I didn't warn you...

***BEGINNING OF SPOILER***

At the very end the main character and Kanade (Angel) move on and are reincarnated as humans that look almost exactly like their former selves, that are also conveniently the same age and live in the same town/city and Angel is conveniently humming a song from the afterlife so that reincarnated Otanashi (Main character) can recognise the tune and they end up meeting again... Out of all the BILLIONS of lifeforms they could have been reincarnated as...or lets just say for arguments sake that humans can only be reincarnated as humans the odds are still impossible! That is complete and utter bullshit and terrible writing! Haha

***END OF SPOILER***

ENJOYMENT: 3 + OVERALL: 4

I know saying that you did not like Angel Beats! is like saying you prefer Dub over Sub in the anime community, but I'll carry that burden ;) The art and music were fantastic and the comedy made me laugh, but I struggled to take the anime seriously. I never knew if they wanted to make things seem realistic or not. If you are going to make an anime take place in the afterlife, might as well throw realism out of the window rather than to try and fix the many problems that come with anime of this genre. Summed up: A group of teens that go to highschool in the afterlife while rebelling against an unknown/unseen/faceless God and shooting an immortal enemy with bullets and guns made from dirt... Immortal teens afraid to die in a world where death means a trip to the school nurse... Some characters did not even have particularly sad stories. One failed to catch a baseball for f* sake... The school is "designed" to help souls who had tragic lives accept their fate and move on, right? But why are there no new arrivals throughout the anime? If you take the population of the earth into perspective, then there would be a massive influx of new arrivals at the school daily due to our world being the chaotic mess that it is. There has to be people/teens who live tragic lives 100 times worse than the characters of this anime, but why don't we see them arrive at the "school"?

I know this review was horribly critical of Angel Beats!, but I had no choice. Angel Beats! is a rotten egg that has been beautifully painted (Art) and coated in perfume (Sound)

Angel Beats has convinced me that Jun Maeda doesn’t know how to write an original story. His previous hits Air, Kanon, and Clannad have been about a bunch of mentally and/or physically broken high school girls who all fall in love with a guy whose only significant character trait is that he exists, and along the way one of these girls will die of a mysterious illness. For Angel Beats, Maeda twists his tried and true formula by having all the characters dead to begin with, and stuck in some sort of high school purgatory, where a group of high school students shoot a little ... girl in the kneecaps for no good reason.

As mentioned earlier, Maeda’s stories are very formulaic. First, he establishes a cast of one dimensional, but likeable characters, and a zero dimensional main character who is designed to be a self insert for the viewer. He then lulls the viewers into a false sense of security with a couple of comedic episodes before dropping a tragedy bomb. In time the main character recovers from the tragedy and an asspull miracle occurs, to ensure a happy ending and negating any kind of character development. Angel Beats follows this same formula to an extent, however due to last minute budget cuts; this had to be crammed into 13 episodes making the production feel rushed and uneven.

A lot of fans will defend the show by saying that it would have been more coherent had it been given 26 episodes. I don’t buy this. Maeda had a lot of options. He could have told half the story and left it open to a probable second season. He could have cut some of the characters or spend less time recycling the same gags (suicide rushes, rocket chairs, etc.) to make more room for character growth. It’s possible to tell a great story in 13 episodes or less. Haibane Renmei told a similar purgatory story in 13 episodes, and the world was much deeper, and the characters more sympathetic. Baccano had a huge cast, yet all the characters got their time to shine, without taking away from the story.

In addition, there is never a really good explanation for why they’re fighting Tenshi. They make her out to be evil incarnate at first, but quickly find out that she’s actually a normal girl. Yet rather than do their research, Yuri somehow convinced everyone to build an underground factory, stockpile weapons, and hold rock concerts just to fuck with everyone’s dinner time. If you stop to think about it, the war on Tenshi was nothing more than pointless bickering started by a petulant bitch. Using the budget cuts to defend the trainwreck of a story is like when high school student complain that they would have done better on a test had they gotten more time. Sometimes, you just have to admit that you didn’t know what you were doing.

While the music for the show was decent, part of me felt it was a ploy to milk more money out of the show. Some of the early episodes focused on a band called Girls Dead Monster who played music as some sort of distraction. However, because they weren’t central to the plot, and because singles were being released so frequently while the show was airing, it all felt like a cheap cash-in to ride the wave of success of K-ON.

So if I hated the story so much, why did I stick with it? Simply, it’s because I’m a big fan of the director, Seiji Kishi. He previously did Seto no Hanayome and Tentai Senshi Sunred, which are two of my favorite comedy series. I could see that a lot of effort went into the animation. The lighting and movement was dynamic and smooth. The backgrounds were nicely detailed and had a pleasing color palette. Unfortunately, none of this could save the production from its terrible story. Part of me feels the director was overcompensating for the terrible story by blinding the audience with pretty pictures. This seems to have worked on a large portion of the fanbase since a lot of reviews I have read comment on how pretty it is while glossing over the failure of the story.

After watching Angel Beats and seeing the audience reaction to it online, I feel like it’s done its job of manipulating its audience with false emotions. It’s a formula that has worked for previous Key works, and their sales of figures and dakimakura prove it. Fans of the show that actually finished this review rather than marking it “unhelpful” and moving on, watch the show again. Is it actually unique, or is it the same trite, repetitive crap that’s been plaguing the anime industry for years? Does the story make sense, or is it full of more holes than a cheese grater? But most importantly, is it actually good or are you still lying to yourself?

OVERALL (4) I really don't understand how this show is so highly rated. This is absolutely no the show for you if you enjoy story, good characterization, comprehensible motivations, or a coherent setting. Other than the admittedly stunning visuals, the show has very little to offer compared to other media that are far superior in almost every other aspect. To nutshell: amazing animation that guilds an empty shell of a series with so little substance it may as well be filler from start to finish. Actually I take that back, filler from start to finish would actually be more entertaining.

STORY AND ENJOYMENT (2) I bundle ... since I am watching this to have a story played out for me by a set of good characters. This is where I derive my enjoyment. But, the show so heavily under-emphasizes everything about the story that if just a little bit more time were spent on it, clearly fleshing out the world and spending more time exploring it I may have been more forgiving of the other failures such as lack of clear purpose to any of the characters actions, why certain characters exist in the world and can do the things they do (especially with reference to the guild), and what the twitbugger is going on? Maybe I'm being too harsh on this show. There were a handful of moments that were indeed funny and some that plucked at my heart strings like a confused infant first that first learned how to move its hands but it was all so token and felt like one writers half baked idea formed at the end of a storyboard meeting thinking, "Oh, what if we blow up this character!? It'll be funny! And what if the snarky character does the snarky thing and the wildcard character does something completely random? Lets all get drunk to write that last one cuz it'll be great!" The most engaging part of the plot were when there was almost none at all and the writers knew this so the story ended up dangerously anemic.

However, my biggest grievance with the show was how badly it handled what little plot there was. Without spoiling anything, the ending was so bad you could have served it with some snails and called it french cuisine; it was stale, moldy, utterly perplexing, and smelled faintly of flatulence.

But lets look at the good parts of the show, because nothing can be all bad.
ANIMATION (9) as I've said, the animation is simply superb. It is some of the best animation for a series I've ever seen, and I would argue, almost on par with something like Kara no Kyoukai. Its like visual crack. If you can stand the moe aspects of the show, the character design is varied (for the most part) and each character is visually distinct reflecting the personality of the character fairly well.
This leads me into the CHARACTERS (3). All of them, with the exception of the MC and one other, are basically one dimensional and can be summed up in a single sentence. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. Like I said before, the show does a good job of using the characters and their unidimensionality as a means of entertainment, but its all very same-y. No risks are taken on the part of the writers to try and develop most of these characters and the one character that was incredibly well fleshed out is put on a bus before even halfway through the season (yes my favorite was the one in the band). The entertainment from this show through its characters is very popcorn-y and safe but at least its still entertaining. But like a good drunk piss, all I really care about is the arc, which few of the characters seem to satisfy, and to me that is disappointing.
SOUND (7) is another area where the show does pretty okay in. I wouldn't say that any of the tracks really blew my mind, but they were all very well suited for the situation and, as stand alone music, were tolerable to listen to. Most of the tracks are some combination of synth and non-synth strings, piano, and an electronica drum-kit. I will make a special mention of one track, Angel's Flight, which really is just a delight to listen to. Overall a lot of effort was put into the sound track and it shows.

SUMMARY
I think this is best closed by going back to my nutshell, especially since the show metaphorically resembles one. An outer solid shell of good sound and animation which crumbles easily to reveal a decaying seed of story and characters.

Angel Beats is a marvel, no, a monument of modern Japanese animation. It is a series that has no reason to exist other than to market off of otaku and has no merit to it at all. I guess you could say that this is the spiritual successor to Code Geass, except at least that shallow marketing machine of a series had a little substance to it.

The series is about Walking Cliche Male Protagonist, Haruhi with a Gun, and her sidekick Nagato with her Hair Grown Out. The names are long, but you'll remember them. Follow them on a pseudo-deep story about rebelling against the ... Gods of Television and becoming the most popular thing on TV while exerting the least effort. A quest which they are failing at so far, as Senko no Night Raid has been beating them in the ratings. To be fair though, that show has the unfair advantage of being original.

But really, being popular is basically all there is to Angel Beats. It's what everything in the series is about. Every aspect of Angel Beats is geared toward that singular purpose.

Its main characters are ripped straight from another popular show and its supporting cast is a band of archetypes. Its setting is an excuse to have well-animated action scenes to draw in those who like eye candy, but inexplicably shoehorns in a school for the sake of familiarity. It has concert scenes because they were well-received in other shows. It has comedic death and revival gags because another show was successful with it. Even the needless punctuation in its title is mooching off the success of something else.

It's not telling a story, nor is it doing much of anything except using a bunch of unrelated but trendy devices. It's a nightmarish monster of mismatched anime pop culture. It directly targets the lowest common denominator of anime fandom, and is barely succeeding. This is just sad.

Note: I ain't no english speaker

Welcome to MAL where a mediocre and predictable tear-jerking/slice of life/ comedy series is ranked 100 spots over NGE. The magical place where fanboys will defend their favorite crappy anime just so a bunch of pretentious teenagers that think that they are intellectual can complain about their shitty taste and make fun of them (oh wai--)

If after reading that paragraph you are not quite sure what is my opinion about Angel Beats! then let's get down to the proper review.

PRODUCTION VALUE
I cannot bash this anime on this particular aspect as it has top-notch animation combined with beautiful art. It was ... produced by P. A. Works, a studio with tons of money that prefers to invest it in these mediocre melodramatic stories instead of something good (although wether or not it works for them from a business point of view is a different story). The atmosphere is pretty much the same you see in any anime of this genre with the exception that in this case everything is perfectly made. Even if there are some pretty terrible frames and a certain sense of money-saving at some points, the overall animation is well done with outstanding effects.
As for the sound, the voice acting is pretty generic, although they certainly do know how to use effects. The soundtrack was surprisingly average. With the amount of music this anime uses (plus the fact that there's a rock band in it) it was absolutely marvelous that none of the songs were memorable. As for the opening it just flies over your head, and the ending is decent.

STORY
Alright! Who's ready for some shit-storm?! The anime has some good ideas, I'll give it that. The whole thing of seeing how people spend the after-life and making fun out of death constantly is not something you see everyday. But really...a high-school? From all of the possible settings to choose they decide to develop these ideas in...a high-school? I mean just imagine the possibilities of working with such a premise and they decide to go with the safest and cheapest route, by combining teenagers, angst, melodrama, bad comedy, a little bit of action and...a high-school.
But after all, being set in a high-school with angsty teenagers doesn't necessarily means it's bad, right? WRONG! I mean, sure it doesn't, but here the problem is that Angel Beats! is all over the place. The comedy is at times dark humour about how funny watching others die is, and then a light-hearted slice of life comedy. None of the themes brought to the table are properly developed nor answered. A massive amount of plot-holes that they keep adding just for the sake of...adding them. Cheap and bad melodrama that comes out of nowhere with absolutely no backdrop nor proper writing. Sometimes fast-paced action sometimes horrible slow-pacing. A group of teenagers that go to school, fight god, go to school, do shitty comedy, form a super-secret elite squad, AND THEY CHOOSE TO GO TO FUCKING SCHOOL.
The story is a big mess of multiple things with no proper execution on any of them nor interesting outcomes, neither feels or laughs. Is just a big ball of things with the word "MEH" written all over it.

CHARACTERS
I can describe Angel Beats!'s characters in three words: underdeveloped, uncharming and bland. All the characters have one or two aspects that reflect their personalities, thus all of them being one-dimensional boring and completely unrelatable. All of them with the exception of the MC Otonashi who totally LACKS any personality. He didn't have not a single aspect. He wasn't one-dimensional, he was zero-dimensional. I didn't like "Your lie in April" for many of the same reasons I didn't like this anime but at least that one knew how to build a f*cking great MC. In this case, our hero is totally overshadowed by the rest of the (plain and mediocre) cast.
The characters all lack a backstory (except Otonashi, props for that) and their development is all thrown into a single episode instead of being built overtime like a proper series would do. That has to do with the fact that the show has many more characters than it needs and many more than it can handle.
All in all, the cast is poorly designed, bad and surely doesn't provide anything to the already lackluster series.

CONCLUSION
This turned out worse than I expected. I didn't know I hated this anime so much. But now to the real deal, did I enjoy Angel Beats!? No, definetly not. The premise was somewhat interesting and the production was great. But the combination of melodrama, bad comedy, ideas all over the place, frustrating situations, predictable outcomes, enraging plotholes and dreadful cast, totally killed any chance this anime had of being entertaining.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'll rewatch Clannad.

It seems to me that there are currently three major anime that are upheld by the vast majority of the anime community as "the shows that bring tears". I have heard all three of them described as life-changing masterpieces, stories that transcend genre and qualify as immaculate art. I am of course referring to Clannad & its Afterstory, Ano Hana or The Flower We Saw That Day, and... Angel Beats. While I have my gripes with the other two (Clannad's first season is mostly unnecessary and Ano Hana relies on characters showing emotion counting as invoking the emotion of the audience) I can accept and ... understand how these shows could have a profound impact on people as they earn their emotional moments by carefully developing their characters and setting up impacting scenes way in advance. Hell, Clannad Afterstory even worked on me: I was sobbing for hours. It didn't change my life, but it was a thoroughly fulfilling experience nonetheless.

With Angel Beats though... It's time to bring down the hammer.

I did not find the show to be impressive. It was actually one of the first shows I watched, so I was in a state of being easily impressed, and my first and foremost reaction to it was to forget about it. Nothing it did left a lasting impression on me, and few parts even made me think "hey, I'd use that element if I was writing a story!" It has any number of superficial issues that are enunciated by its brevity, and it never really comes together in any profound way to justify this. In fact, if I had to sum up what appears to make people believe that this is an emotional experience, it would be "disjointed sad things happen while pretty music plays". That's not really a review though, so lets get down to just about every problem I have with Angel Beats. WARNING: PLENTY OF SPOILERS AHEAD

Lets start with the superficial bits: the art and the sound. Both are fairly solid. The ending theme "Brave" in particular is absolutely gorgeous. The art style is crisp and the action sequences are clean and flashy. However, I don't really place a great amount of value on the art and music of a show unless they're used in clever or intentional ways to complement the story, so I'm not willing to give many points overall for these.

Now on with the premise. We're in purgatory. "Ahhh, that sounds quite interesting!" you say. "What's it like there? Is it a macabre bar, like in Death Parade? Perhaps a rural village trapped in perpetual sunset? A surreal forest full of fantastical twilight creatures? The possibilities are endless!" Yes indeed they are endless, and so of course the setting of choice is a high school because f*ck it it's an anime. Granted, this is a purgatory for unfulfilled children, but that's really just a lame excuse to bring us back to everybody's favorite overdone milked-dry setting. So anyways, dead kids who died unhappy come here and are policed by a mysterious stone-faced girl with superhuman powers called Nagato... I mean Angel. When they find fulfillment and are at peace with themselves, they disappear and move on. Our protagonist, Yuzuru AKA red-hair, who earns his name for being a rare example of a cliche male protagonist who doesn't have bangs of luscious dark chocolate, arrives at the scene with no memory of anything (although there's an 11/10 chance its something ridiculously tragic that demonstrates how goddamn great of a guy he is... oh look, I was right) and meets Yuri, one of I-shit-you-not three girls with varying shades of purple hair. There's some convoluted and meaningless exposition, he joins a club she's president of because this is pretty much a high-school show anyways at this point, and then we are introduced to one of the show's largest problems:

Its side characters.

There's about 75 of them and none of them serve any purpose. Some of them don't even seem capable of saying more than one line. What are these, Pokemon? Each of them embodies one or another anime archetype because the show seems to have this belief that it isn't making full use of its potential unless it has as many different archetypal characters as possible. This is of course with the exception of T.K, who also doesn't serve any purpose or have any depth but at least his eccentricity is original. Actually, he seems like kind of a f*cked up dude. The show might have been a lot better if it had actually delved more into his character. As if to drive home the point that none of these characters have any relevance whatsoever they all quite literally disappear between the second to last and last episodes. Yes, that's right, each and every one of these characters is written off by Yuri saying "oh yeah they're gone now!" and that's the end of it. GUESS YOU DIDN'T REALLY NEED THEM AFTERALL, HUH? This meaningless mass of cardboard-cutouts would actually have been a lot less detrimental to the story if it weren't for another major issue with the story:

The Pacing.

This show knows how to do two things: throw dramatic bilge at you like its trying to bury you, and have filler. It's like it's not conscious of the fact that emotional moments only have dramatic weight if you develop the characters involved beforehand. The first third of the series is devoted almost entirely to d*cking around with Yuri and her team of soulless archetypes pulling one stupid gag after another. It gives us little to no insight into who these people actually are when they're not sobbing over each other or recounting their dark past. They're just shticks in a gag-reel, waiting for their turn to pop up and give their one-liner that fits their assigned personality type. Even in the later episodes, any moment that the show is not spending trying to be emotional plays out like an episode of goddamn Lucky Star! No one has any normal conversations! It's like they're dummies on autopilot, waiting to be activated when they're needed to gaze up at the sky in melancholy remembrance of the actual f*cking human beings they might once have been. Is this their punishment for being sent to purgatory? Have they been stripped of their ability to have uncliche interactions? Have they been trapped in the sick game of some depraved puppetmaster, pulling the strings and ridding them of their free will? I've kind of moved on already, but I guess I should announce it:

I'm talking about this show's characters.

I get the impression that the way this show was made was that some dude watched a bunch of crappy anime and formed an impression of how he believe anime characters OUGHT to behave. Then, he stuck a bunch of sad backstories on to those characters and had them cry all the time to simulate emotional depth. Seriously, here's a breakdown of the ENTIRETY of Yuri's character
- she's charismatic
- she's apparently a good leader because we are told so, though this is never shown
- she's got a villainous laugh
- she watched her younger siblings get their f*cking brains blown out at point-blank range by burglars and feels responsible for it

Oh sorry, what was that last one? Yeah, why bother with actually demonstrating who the supposed female lead is as a person through interactions and screen time when we can just give her a REALLY F*CKED UP BACKSTORY to contrast her happy and lively personality and call it development! We still know nothing about her as an individual, but... TRAUMA! Bam! Character done! Let's move on to the next one! Let's see... We'll make her a cripple who the world crapped on so that she never got to do anything she wanted. I'm of course talking about Yui, another of the purple-haired girls (yes, they named two unrelated girls with similar hair colors Yuri and Yui) who's character is 100% pure, refined tsundere of the finest essence with absolutely no real personality until 'the episode where she is given a tragic-as-all-hell backstory and then disappears'. Aw, she seemed so lively and excited but there was really misery underneath! Contrast! Sorrow! How did we not see this coming!? Maybe it's because she was an vacant doll up until the moment the story decided to steer its attention to her. You just can't do that: you can't suddenly bring your characters to life when you need them, you need to characterize them whenever their onscreen or else it just feels like a bunch of actors who stop trying as soon as the spotlight isn't on them.

This is a problem that the show suffers from right up until its very end: its characters only start acting whenever the spotlight is swiveled to them. In the end, we're left with a cast of main characters mourning their inevitable separation from each other in a series of scenes that are on their own quite well-directed but have no impact because I have no attachment to this group of people. I've never gotten to see their dynamic outside of idiotic anime humor, and several of them barely have relationships with most of the members of the group. The show's inability to mellow out, to have its characters interact in meaningful ways and grow closer without sobbing on each other in short, sharp bursts seriously bites it in the ass, as it means that when it is willing to put in the effort to have solid scenes they just don't mean anything. One of the reasons that Clannad Afterstory worked so well was that the first two-thirds were mainly devoted to showing the beautifully simple yet honest daily lives of the characters and the complexities of their relationships with each other. That way I care about the characters before anything bad happens to them. No show should have to rely on tragedy in order to make you become invested in its characters. Sure, Clannad also spent plenty of time messing around but inevitably it didn't hurt it nearly as much because it was still long enough to do everything it needed to. Angel Beats does not have that length. It is a 1-cour show, and it had no time to spare. The fact that it wasted most of it was absolutely lethal.

No review of Angel Beats would be complete, however, without addressing the most obvious aspect of the show: Angel herself. Angel was definitely one of the more subtly done characters, and suffered the least from the spotlight effect. She developed at a fluid rate and was always given enough attention to maintain her relevance in the story. If the show had earned the right to be about anything, it would be her for sure, not red-hair and his quest to be the single most upstanding dude around and save everyone. His character is standard visual novel trash not even really worth talking about as he falls into all the same pitfalls as the other characters, hers at least possesses an element of uniqueness (at least within the show) and some goddamn flaws instead of just being the most sensitive kind person ever who happened to have unrealistically horrible things happen to her. She's meat-headed, misguided and not especially bright. She's terrible at conveying her emotions and connecting with people. Steadily, she learns about who she wants to be and how to form the relationships she wants to.

But obviously, this is not what happens. Angel's character instead inevitably becomes defined by red-hair and proves to exist simply to disappear in his arms for emotional impact. She is given some contrived plot-twist to connect him to her ("My heart is yours by transplant!") and this of course causes him to...

...confess his love for her?

Excuse me? These two have about as much chemistry as Argon and Neon: they don't react. Even more importantly, the amount of development they've had together is enough to establish them as acquaintances at best, with confessions of love being almost as ludacris as That Time Hinata Told Yui He'd Marry Her. I can only imagine that the creators either made it up in the moment or totally forgot about it until it was time for them to air it and just threw it in there like unfinished cookie-dough into an underheated oven. There's only one reason for this: so that red-hair can end the show by wailing his despair at being separated from his love-of-two-seconds.

That's her purpose? Poorly-simulated drama for the MC? The random shadow monsters were nonsensical, the massive purgatory fish was to be expected, but this was just... why? The best character is wasted, there's no weight to the situation because it's completely impulsive, and the after-credit scene undoes it anyways so what's even the point?

Okay, I've done quite a bit of bashing. I haven't even touched on all the specifics, but I've hit all the problems that I feel are consistent and what's left is a show that really doesn't have too much to offer. That said though, I didn't hate it. It was bad storytelling: awfully executed, little understanding of characters; but it wasn't offensive, and it did have some good ideas, it just had no idea what to do with them. I certainly wouldn't recommend it, but I've seen worse. Regardless, Angel Beats is not a masterpiece and its unending attempts to make cheap emotional grabs did not impress me.

I started watching angel beats after i finished anohana because my friend told me that it was very good and sadder than anohana or clannad so i gave it a shot.

I was dissapointed.

First couple of episodes were ok we get introduced to the characters but as it progressed i just got bored.

The story was really bad, i mean, when you die you go to school? I get that almost every anime revolves around high schools but this was just bad. Also, why are there so many teenagers (there are only a couple of adults) ? And as it continued there were so many ... plot holes that it became really unwatchable. I will admit, the comedy was pretty great but not great enough to make up for the series' other flaws, like the sad parts.
I came in with high expectations but it didn't please me. It tried so hard to make the characters' backstories sad that it became really annoying and cliche.

I sticked to the end of the anime and the conclusion was really unsatisfying especially the last scene (i'm not gonna spoil it)

The art and the sound are the ups of this anime (as expected of p.a works).

I really don't know why people praise this anime so much, it was pretty average in my opinion. I will recommend angel beats to people who have just started watching anime or the people who are fans of key or p.a works, just don't watch it with high expectations.

If you really want a sad anime you should try anohana, clannad, mahou shoujo madoka magica or shigatsu wa kimi no uso.


This is my first review and sorry if my grammar sucks english isn't my first language.

Welcome to the most overrated anime in existence!

Angel Beats is a show that amazes me in regards to its insane popularity which I feel is completely unwarranted. This show is a culmination of everything I dislike in lazy story telling and writing. While the premise for the show does sound cool being that it's set in the afterlife with characters getting to live out their lives as if they were still alive, the main issues is the inconsistent tone and ideas. This anime has no idea what the hell it wants to be and constantly jumps between different tones and ideas while not fleshing ... out any of these ideas in the slightest. They start off wanting to fight God, then they want to play in a band and then we get a large amount of tragic backstories all without any downtime between any of these events to allow the audience a moment to breath or to allow for any kind of character development in the slightest. The anime doesn't know if it wants to be a comedy, a drama or an emotionally heavy melodrama. There is no consistency between each of these events making the anime feel jarring to watch. Now, it's not like it's uncommon for these genres and ideas to go together in anime but here, the anime doesn't allow for any development due to the rushed pacing and bad writing.

This problem is mainly due to the terrible rushed plot that the show has. Jun Maeda is the biggest hack writer who is working in anime right now and instead of learning the mistakes he made here, he just went on to repeat them all in Charlotte in 2015. The show moves at such an insane pace that there is no room whatsoever for any character to develop nor to explain the world and mechanics of said world at all. Speaking of the world, why on Earth did it have to be set in a high school of all things? You have such an interesting concept in which you could do anything with and yet they set it in a high school? Of course this makes the anime more marketable to its target audience and one my argue that it's set in this way since all the cast are indeed teenagers. But that's where another one of my gripes stems from. All of the cast are teenagers just to allow the otakus to self-insert themselves into this narrative easier making most of the characters no more than bland wish fulfilment. This wouldn't have been a necessarily bad thing if the characters themselves were interesting at all. Which none of them are.

The characters are all so bland and are so forgettable, so-much-so that I want to grind my head into a wall on account of how dull all of them are. None of them receive all too much in the way of character development and a lot of that is because of the relatively large size of the cast. There simply wasn't enough time to flesh out everybody especially since most of the time, the show was more concerned with telling jokes than actually telling a story. Each character is less defined by a personality and characteristic and more so on a stupid gimmick or design making them feel no more than lifeless puppets. The main character especially lacks anything to make him endearing in the slightest. He is as dull as dishwater. He has hardly any emotional attachment to the plot and he is hard to sympathise with since he has as much personality and charisma as a plant. His backstory too was hardly developed and felt like a cheap way to make his character seem deeper at the very last moment. And that's where another problem arises. People feel sad for the character's backstories rather than the actual character themselves. There is no investment in the characters themselves; why they act the way in which they do and their own motivations as people. Developing a character should be more than just throwing in a random backstory to win the sympathy of an audience. The character still needs to grow throughout the duration of the series, be interesting or have some kind of engagement with the audience. None of the characters have this at all.

One Piece is an example of a show in which does the whole tragic backstory pretty well. Each character in One Piece has a sad backstory in order to win over the sympathy of the audience but each of the characters have clearly defined goals, personalities, growth and each one of their ideologies is explored enough to make them feel like real people and more so like characters. This does not happen in Angel Beats. The character's problems in the show are essentially solved by lengthy exposition scenes and just by having one character talk to another. Boring as hell as well as lazy.

Each character is essentially an archetype of another existing visual novel or anime adaptation with each one lacking in originality as well as in character design too. The designs, for the most part, were so generic that I can't remember hardly any of them despite the ones with terribly implemented gimmicks. The characters as a whole are extremely weak and while there is some comedy thrown around its not enough to salvage the horrible script and lack of anything happening. To be fair, some character interactions and even some of the jokes can be pretty funny but this clashes in tonal shifts with the rest of the show and, again, is given no time for development.

Yurippe is the only character in this entire show that I felt had some attention giving to her and she does develop decently as she begins to understand the world around her. However, she could of been replaced by anyone else in this show and wouldn't have made a difference at all. She is still pretty bland development-wise but amongst the rest of the cast she is like a God. Otonashi was simply a plot device, a simple and easy way to push the story forward whenever it was convenient. His amnesia, something I already dislike was something to be used so that the battle with the angel-chick was not over in a matter of minutes.

The animation was very well done with no shortage of great animation and the soundtrack is one of the greatest I have ever seen for any anime. The opening song was very well done too and the music does a good job at engaging the audience in what is happening, even if I didn't care what was happening at all. Angel Beats is a show that tries to appeal to everyone and of course, this worked making it one of the most popular shows of all time. The narrative is boring and jumps awkwardly between tones and even whole genres, the characters are VERY weak and everything about this show makes me want to drink bleach so that I never have to witness this show ever again. P.A Works is a studio that I never really liked anyway, with the exception of one show and this is by far their worst anime, and that's saying a lot.

About every two weeks, I have in-depth anime discussions over the phone with my best friend Sean. We first became friends through our obsessive passion for Dragon Ball Z; over the years, our anime preferences veered in different directions. While I lean towards the critically acclaimed classics and hidden gems, Sean sticks to extremely lengthy shonen series (and, I suspect, ecchi titles as well). While there are some things we agree on when it comes to anime, there are many things in which we don’t. In one of the few Sean statements that I support, he said one day that he usually doesn’t like current ... anime with amazing graphics, explaining titles like this are for a viewer “with the brain of a goldfish”. Sean also said that he doesn’t normally approve of the aforementioned anime category because their amazing animation is used to distract people from a multitude of jarring flaws.

When thinking of Sean’s statement, the first thing that comes to mind (for me) is Angel Beats. While I often hail certain anime as “underrated”, I make a point to avoid calling a title “overrated”. In a medium filled with holier-than-thou elitists, pathetic weaboos, “I-like-what-everyone-else-likes” bandwagoners, overzealous bloggers, and critics who despise anime altogether, it’s impossible for anything to be rated properly anymore (if it ever was). However, as your average anime fan, I say that Angel Beats is overrated. Scratch that; I say that Angel Beats is wildly overrated. Two OVAs (“Hell’s Kitchen” and “Stairway to Heaven”), one manga, one visual novel game, and a four-episode internet radio show are all byproducts of the beautifully-designed abomination known as Angel Beats (Even YouTube has jumped on this cash cow, charging people money to watch this garbage). What tempted me to check this out in the first place was its title (Thought it was about a hip-hop-oriented heaven) and its vaguely interesting premise: a young man wakes up in the afterlife, joining a randomly assembled group of teenagers to fight an evil entity named Angel and discover why they’re there in the first place. This synopsis sounds pretty good, right? This anime, however, is anything but.

How do you know when a series is going downhill? Most of the time, you can tell when a particularly painful joke/line is repeated to death, when a beloved character crucial to the plot is killed off, of when panty shots are bombarded at you in a desperate attempt to attract viewers. Sometimes, it’s only obvious near the end, when you can tell the most jarring of plot holes will never be resolved. With Angel Beats, however, I could tell from the first episode – no, the very first scene – that I was witnessing a natural disaster. A little after Otonashi, our protagonist, wakes up in the afterlife, one of the main characters (a girl named Yuri) gives him vague information of where he is and how he arrived there before she asks “I know this is sudden but could you join up with us?” The question comes across as an out-of-the-blue line designed to quickly shuffle the story along. In the first episode, the purpose of Yuri’s group (and the series in general) is presented (the purpose being to fight Angel) but the motive behind their purpose is never fully established (the closest conclusion I could piece together is that the characters blame God for what happened to them in a previous life and, since Angel is apparently the next-best-thing to “The Man Upstairs”, they attack Angel in an attempt to take down God). The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, like Angel Beats, is a school/slice-of-life series with drama and supernatural elements, and it’s obvious that Angel Beats seeks to aspire to Haruhi Suzumiya. The imitation can be seen in the baseball game and its importance to the plot during episode 4, which is stolen (or inspired, depending on your opinion of Angel Beats) from Haruhi Suzumiya. It can also be seen in the show’s three central characters; Angel is a more emotional version of Yuki Nagato while Yuri is a watered-down revision of Haruhi and Otonashi is the poor man’s Kyon, deprived of the sharp wit and consistent nonchalance that made Kyon an enjoyable character. What separates Angel Beats from The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, however, is the show’s attempts to be light-hearted through practical pranks but unfortunately the pranks so dramatically over-the-top that realism is ruined and the innocent fun is sucked out of it. For example, in episode 1, Yuri’s gang exerts too much manpower and force into an extremely trivial act (stealing people’s lunch money) with the vague purpose of it somehow affecting Angel. If you’re staring at this review with a raised eyebrow, trust me; I’m just as confused as you are.

Besides Otonashi, Yuri, and Angel are an army of supporting characters, some who are a little more than vaguely interesting but none of them are really important in the grand scheme of things. Takayama is the token smart guy, an insufferable hacker/nerd with a catchphrase that he repeats to death (“Call me Christ”). Naoi is a green-haired hypnotist with a God complex and a borderline-homosexual obsession with Otonashi (In episode 12, he blurts out his feelings for our protagonist by screaming “I wanna be with you!”). Ooyama is a blank slate, an average student with no personality or distinct traits whatsoever. My least favorite character of the bunch has to be Yui, an annoying, hyperactive wannabe-singer with pink hair and a miniscule amount of depth. The only tolerable character is the blue-haired Hinata, who’s easily my favorite in the series, the second-in-command of Yuri’s gang who is also near-homosexually obsessed with Otonashi but is a thoroughly developed character overall. Excluding Hinata, the writing in Angel Beats doesn’t help out the characters too much (a disappointment for a people-driven title like this) the cast often speaking in vague terms and repeating lines. The acting in Angel Beats isn’t simply bad; it’s as if the voice actors are on a collective cruise control setting, not bothering to inject any real emotion or passion into the script. None of these actors, however, are more atrocious at their trade than Blake Shepard (the voice of Otonashi), whose lack of vigor in his role is beyond belief (There are only two scenes where Shepard shines as a somewhat legitimate actor: in episode 6, where Otonashi punches Naoi in the rain, and in episode 9, where he has a pivotal conversation with Angel at the hospital). In order to counteract Otonashi’s untalented voice actor, the show gives him a random, out-of-the-blue backstory that’s admittedly a bit touching but it’s a horribly rushed method to give a character depth. Besides the protagonist, Angel Beats also administers this treatment to several members of the supporting cast, proving that this show has no clue of how to fluidly develop a character.

The “Beats” in Angel Beats has – I have come to realize – less to do with hip-hop (still a major disappointment) and more to do with an emphasis on music, easily the one highlight of the series. This emphasis can be seen in the episode titles, which are mostly named after songs (like “Favorite Flavor”, “Change the World”, and “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door’’). As for the soundtrack itself, it’s pretty decent but not particularly special; the fact that I consider Angel Beat’s good-but-not-great soundtrack the best thing about this series is pretty depressing. There’s a lot of hype around Angel Beat’s opening and, while I admit the visually appealing theme song grew on me, I wouldn’t call it one of the greatest. Among the many things I don’t like about this show is its lack of style, its unwillingness to use its amazing animation in creative ways. One of the few instances of animation creativity is in episode 10, where the characters are paper cutouts pasted on an artistically detailed sketch as Otonashi describes his plan. The other exhibit of creativity is in episode 3 (literally the only great episode in the series), where band leader Iwasawa transforms into a white silhouette with vivid colors exploding inside of here as she listens to the band Sad Machine. The aforementioned episode 3 contained subtlety, mystery, depth, motivation, and emotion, none of which can be used to describe Angel Beat’s plot.

One of the biggest rules for the characters in Angel Beat’s afterlife setting is not interact and/or follow the routines of NPCs (a term used for the show’s background characters), which includes attending classes and eating lunch with them. Over time, the show slowly but steadily forgets this instruction, allowing the characters to go to class several times (At one point, Yuri (the one who ordered this rule in the first place) talks with an NPC and even considers it a “friend”). This is one of many, many plot holes in this flawed failure, one of many instances where this supposedly great anime loses its consistency in the story. Not only are there plot holes in Angel Beats, the show also has moments aplenty that are intended to be funny or dramatic but are ruined once again due to the awkwardly stilted story. In episode 4, Hinata beating up Yui is deployed as an exhaustive “comedic” tool (A potentially great scene from Hinata is ruined near the end of the episode when the show switches up their running gag with Yui attacking Hinata. SO ORIGINAL!!). In episode 5, it’s an uninspiring running gag of a flying classroom seat that spoils the experience. Episode 8 is where Angel Beats attempts to be dramatic, where members of Yuri’s gang kill themselves to stop an onslaught of Angel doppelgangers; this scene doesn’t work because, after a while, screaming the names of dying characters becomes repetitive. It doesn’t work because the characters are already dead so the impact of their sacrifices is obsolete. For Angel Beats, it arrives at a new low in episode 12 (the second-to-last of the series), where random shadow monsters materialize literally out-of-the-blue and the climax of the episode makes this experience worse. A conversation between Yuri and the mastermind of the shadow monsters introduces the programmer of the afterlife with a backstory involving a lover, this programmer being the “God” whom the series revolves around. This conversation is the show’s umpteenth attempt at being deep and complex (for once, it kinda works); what pisses me off about this is that here the show finally has a potentially intriguing plot element and it never capitalizes on this (It’s barely even mentioned again). The philosophical conversation and how it’s handled would’ve been the nadir of Angel Beat’s tenure… if it weren’t for the finale.

“It’s, not, how you start; it’s how you finish,” – The Hours, “Ali in the Jungle”

During the beginning of episode 13, Otonashi informs Yuri that almost all of the supporting cast had disappeared form the afterlife, to which Yuri replies, “That’s good,” (After making her dramatic “This is my life” speech in episode 12 about how much she cares for her crew, Yuri’s reply comes across as yet another example of lazy, terrible, inconsistent writing). It gets worse; the characters who are left (Otonashi, Angel, Yuri, Hinata, and Naoi) create a makeshift graduation ceremony (After all, this is a school anime) and I have to endure listening to them sing a dull, uninspiring song TWICE. There has been a lot of controversy over Angel Beat’s ending and I have to say it’s easily THE lowlight in a series with an ample supply of them; the contrived, out-of-the-blue, overdramatic conclusion epitomizes what I’ve spent six paragraphs trying to tell you. Angel Beats is an anime that attempts to be so many things but fails over and over and over. It tries to be the next Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya yet to compare the two is laughable. It tries to be funny yet fails miserably. It tries to be dramatic but, to borrow a Hinata quote from episode 4, “you didn’t touch my heart”. It tries to be unique above all else. I’ll miss you, Angel Beats. I’ll never witness another anime like you, except every single day when I browse on Amazon.com and see all the other spectacularly subpar school series. While finishing up Angel Beats and struggling to comprehend what I was exposing myself to, I thought of Shiina, specifically her catchphrase. Long after the show and the characters ceased feigning concern for the supporting cast, I thought of one of its least important members, a quiet, long-haired adolescent girl with an affinity for knives and a bizarre obsession for kittens. “What was Shiina’s catchphrase?”, you might ask. “This is so stupid”, and that is Angel Beats in a nutshell.

*This review is spoiler-free*
I first heard of Angel Beats from one of my friends. She spent hours raving about how amazing this anime was an how it inspired her. After seeing dozens of positive reviews online, I decided to check it out, for it seemed to fit all of my interests . I went into the series with high hopes and expectations, thinking that it would become one of my favorite animes, and I couldn't have been more disappointed.

The anime had so much potential. It really did. But it was played so safely. If Key Visual Arts had actually put in some effort to push ... things out of the norm and not rely completely on all the common otaku-pleasing tropes and archetypes, it could have been great.

Story: 1/10
Angel Beats doesn't really rely on plot. Instead, it focuses on humor and characterization. Which is probably a good thing, considering how dull and generic the story line is. Essentially, a teen boy winds up at a school and is pulled into a questionable organization/group/club by a tsundere girl named Yuri. This group, known as the SSS, fights a mysterious girl known as Angel. Nothing slightly new or original. Except that apparently the school is in purgatory. This all happens in the first couple minutes, and no real exposition is given.

Each episode focuses either on the back story of a single character, explaining how they died, or on the various plans which Yuri puts the members of the SSS into. This isn't exactly a bad idea, but it isn't something that can be effective in only 13 episodes.

Art: 8/10
The art and animation is impressive. Nothing mind blowing, but still very well done. The action scenes were well choreographed and attention grabbing.

Sound: 7/10
The opening theme, "My Soul, Your Beats" was incredible. However, I personally did not enjoy any of the insert songs very much. There is a band known as Girl's Dead Monster which often plays concerts throughout the series. I didn't really care for them. They weren't bad, but it was nothing memorable.

Character: 2/10
The cast in Angel Beats is without a doubt my least favorite cast of characters from any anime which I have seen.
They were all incredibly generic. Most of them either fit into one common archetype or were essentially a walking piece of cardboard. (T.K. and Masami Iwasawa are really the only two exceptions I noticed. They also were the only characters I really liked.) There was also a complete lack of character development.
As I mentioned earlier in the review, many of the episodes were dedicated to the back story a single character. (I'm under the impression that this was supposed to serve as a replacement for the character development.) The back stories were pretty original for the most part, but they just didn't do anything for me. I felt no sympathy for the characters after hearing about their tragic death because their deaths weren't really that tragic. Every back story was either not believable or was simply just the character's own fault. (Iwasawa was an exception to this. She had a solid backstory which was actually emotional.)

Enjoyment: 2/10
Angel Beats relied on being either humorous or tear jerking. The problem was, it wasn't funny and I simply felt annoyed while watching it, not the slightest bit sad. I really wanted to feel the roller coaster of emotions which so many others supposedly felt. I even tried to force myself to laugh or cry a few times. And it didn't work. At all.

Overall: 3/10
I feel really generous with this score.


tl;dr: Angel beats had lots of potential but was poorly executed and little effort was put into creating something unique and fresh. In general, the anime was just frustrating to watch. Also: I cringe whenever someone describes it as "original."

AngelBeats! was a very mediocre anime to my opinion. To start off, the characters are very generic, meaning that most of the characters attitudes & behaviors and are so predictable. There was uniqueness to little of the characters as in their back round story. The setting was very 50/50 on how I felt about it. It was a very new approach setting it in a purgatorial 'world' but setting it in a high school threw off the meaning of the setting. It's very confusing why they would go back to high school. I think it overthrew the whole setting and ruined it by suddenly being ... set in a high school. Also, the plot was rushed very quickly. Otonashi fell in love with Kanade in 3 episodes. You know nothing of most of the character's stories so the you couldn't be sentimentally attached to the characters in a deeper aspect. The comedy is so over barring. The comedy takes away from the whole story and it's meaningless. The visuals are beautifully done though, a very praised part of this anime. Overall, not a favorite and not a recommendation.

Regarding all the hype this anime has, it doesn't even live up to the expectation not one bit. It's the perfect anime to piss off your peers if they ever want to get into anime or a well-written fiction in general. I have to say that this is the worst anime I've ever watched, yes even worse than Tite Kubo's trolling in Bleach. I was ready to drop the series after episode 4 but forced myself to finish the series to give a fair review of it. Even after watching the ending, which determines the true quality if the series is really good or bad. ... An ending can either make or break the series. Well in this case, the anime was already terrible to begin with but the ending made it even worse, filling your head with more loose ends, questions and headache.

The characters are bland, story is nonexistent, lacks good humor and most of all, I dislike the childish art despite what others think. Now let's move onto the aspects that saves this terrible anime. However, the only saving grace is the interesting music and the concept of a purgatory where goals were to be fulfilled during the time when he/she/it was alive. In spite of the good aspects of this anime has, it is so miniscule that it's completely irrelevant and doesn't change the series from being absolutely, utterly crap.

Story:
worst piece of shit I have ever seen.

Art:
6 fingers that's all I can say

Sound:
It was pretty good, I actually kind of liked the music. But the show didn't do any justice for it.

Characters:
... They were the worst characters I have ever seen (except for TK, he was great). They kept changing character and they were overall just annoying. Especially Yui and Otonashi.

Enjoyment:
...

Overall:
It was REALLY bad. Everything didn't deserve a rating, except for the sound... and TK. They gave the show a point. Ending was crap.

Alright, so I was in the mood to review something, so why not review something I dropped a while back. Angel Beats.

Lets go.

Story: Angel Beats basically takes place in some high school for people that have "died", they need to learn to give up what they left off in their previous life to pass. In this afterlife, they can feel pain or injury, and they can die again and again but they awaken with no injuries, so basically something akin to limbo from Inception. The story follows some guy named Otonashi who loses his memories after death, he meets Lesbian (ha), a girl who invites ... him to join some guild called the Organization Battlefront, to fight against God itself for the fates that these guys suffered in there previous lives because apparently they suffered some horrible shit.

How in the hell is this a slice of life?

To go on, there is some four girl band in the guild that play music, and their enemy is some thing named Angel. The Battlefront fight against Angel.

Again, what?

So apparently this thing is supposed to be a feels fest which is probably why everyone is giving this a 8 or a 9 out of 10. All these characters suffer some sad backstory or something that makes them against God, but you are supposed to be spoonfed feels, basically every single person from the Strawhat Crew suffering some sort of tragic event as well. I absolutely despise this, at least Guts from Berserk actually goes through these in a sense that he doesn't give an absolute fuck and goes on. All these guys just cry and cry about how their lives were or was miserable (not like they do in One Piece, however, since they don't), by the way this anime is barely able to keep my attention so I have no idea if half the shit i'm saying is right or not.

I didn't give a shit about the "sad ending" because I dropped this anime before I even reached that point and I read the rest online. All in all giving ratings because of feels is absolutely trash and despicable.

Also, I can't call any of this slice of life.

Art:
Definitely one of the top parts about this but sadly didn't do enough to captivate me or save me from this trash.

Sound:
Also as good as art.

Character:
I don't give a fuck about anybody in this story. Screw Otonashi.

Enjoyment:
Barely kept my attention.

Overall: 3,5/10

not an average.

Yesterday I've written a negative, but not bashing review of this series. I wanted to provide a different outlook on this series for people who have similar taste to mine.
It got lost due to hacking. I don't feel like typing all of this again, but
I still think that the plot is a pathetic mess, characters are shallow, unoriginal and pandering, the art and music is average.
Humor isn't funny, drama doesn't move at all, because there's nothing real about the series. It's like the creators expect you to cry over Barbie and Ken.
I've said it once, and I will say it twice: this series is nothing ... more then one big cashcow.
AB is completely overrated. It doesn't have such high rating because it's good, but because the creators are amazing at pandering to the target group.
If you're young and inexperienced anime fan or just huge moe fanatic go ahead and watch this. If you want something similar, but more mature, go ahead and watch Haibane Renmei.

Oh Angel Beets, the reason why I do not take any anime recommendations from anyone. Angel Beets houses one of my deepest hatreds for any anime, along with Heroman, mostly because of how disappointed I was throughout the whole show.

Story
Um, story. "People die when they are killed."-Shirou Emiya. Truer words have never been spoken, and Angel Beets likes to portray that a lot.We follow a group of kids who have, thats right you guessed have died, and are now in purgatory, though I like to think its hell, trying to fight a loli. Why? Well because the kids don't want to move on, ... because that would be silly.Throughout the shows run we explore the back story of all the characters learning about how they died while most people find them to be super sad, I did not as for why, I do not know the characters well enough, because they weren't developed and I didn't have enough screen time for me to care about them , the writing was full of plot holes and to the end I felt that they weren't even trying anymore. In the end stuff happens I laughed. Didn't tell a well put together story, "super sad times" were forced as the PETA "In the Arms of an Angel" campaign. Too many plot holes, copy and paste characters, and a bad director. Some people tell that Angel Beets was supposed to 25-26 episodes long well if it was then maybe they could have had a better story, characters with more screen time and were explored more to make me actually feel for and like the characters during their "super sad times", and that is why Seiji Kishi is a bad director

Characters
Hope you guys enjoy seeing Kyon and Haruhi go on another crazy adventure with the SOS brigade, the main characters are in Angel Beets are very obvious copy and paste characters from Haruhi Suzumiya. After seeing everyone's background and hearing them speak more than two sentences of dialogue I began to despise everyone with one exception, the best character obviously was J.T. the shining ray of hope for me as I watched this anime because he had barely any dialogue and no back story so I had no reason to hate him.

Music.
Actually pretty good music.

Art/Animation-
Um really not a expert so I don't think I should say anything, I guess its pretty OK or good not really sure. They do copy and paste a lot of background characters especially during the concert scenes, either Angel Beets animators got really lazy or a lot twins died at the same time and then refused to move on, I like to believe the latter is the correct answer.

Enjoyment.
This a great comedy anime recommend to all your friends, its the bees knees. Angel Beets everyone.

Overall
Overall its pretty funny, in a sad way. There is more holes in Angel Beets especially that ending, than Edward Scissor Hand's condoms. Musics pretty good, characters are copy and paste.

If you think I am a piece of feces or just want to have a nice discussion please message me.

For shows that I think actually had more feeling than Angels Beets that were not forced and devolped throughout the show,see the classic "Gay N*ggers from Outer Space" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ncwCETyQlk, or Pet Girl of Sakurasou, and Anohana, or just watch Haruhi Suzumiya for the characters since Angel Beets likes them too.

This is my first review so please tell me how to improve and how your opinion is better than mine.

Angel Beats! has a terrible identity crisis. It wants to be nine genres at once, but it doesn't really succeed at any of them. Trying to be funny and dramatic at the same time, the show flails around trying to make you care about what's happening while never succeeding. The concept of people unraveling a world between heaven and real life is full of potential, but we never learn anything about this purgatorial space. Even the title tries to be dramatic but light with an exclamation point, but once again the balance just doesn’t work.

I think the ultimate problem with Angel Beats! is that ... everything happens too quickly. The space these characters inhabit deserves much more time than it gets. I felt like I didn't understand the world they were in at all, outside of the most basic functions, explained in a rushed sequence at the beginning of the show. The show is more interested in silly high school antics than anything else. This would be fine if we weren't also subjected to forced, uninspired "emotional" scenes that don't pack any punch. When the show switches to "serious mode", it's usually after some dumb joke, and I couldn't take it seriously. The ending also felt extremely rushed, as if the writers needed to wrap shit up, and leaves a whole lot to be desired.

The show gives us a slew of characters to root for, yet only decides to detail four of them. There are almost 20 or so members of the Afterlife Brigade, but they barely any get characterization outside of their one-dimensional trait (e.g. he's short and wears glasses and therefore smart, he's stupid and therefore funny, he randomly speaks English.) What’s the point of having so many characters when you don't give the viewer a reason to like them? Comic relief is fine to a point, but the show crosses that point pretty early on. It would’ve been more understandable if most of the Afterlife Brigade were background characters, but the show treats them all as equally important, and I couldn’t bring myself to find them interesting.

Even with the characters that we do come to understand the most, their development feels a empty. Yurippe has by far the best characterization, yet her climax comes too quick and is extremely unsatisfying. With Yuzuru, as soon as he learns his backstory, he becomes a completely different character who becomes comedically heroic for absolutely no reason. Yui, despite being the most annoying character, gets the most satisfying episode, with her story being unexpectedly sweet. The title character, Angel gets very little development, and her characterization is full of holes. She's cold, we get that, but sometimes she seems inhumanly smart and other times really dumb.

Trust me, I didn't go into this show expecting to rag on it the entire time. There were even a few things I liked. The music is alright, and the art style is mostly ok. I was really excited about Angel Beats!, but now it leaves me scratching my head why so many people hail it as an emotional roller coaster that had them crying at the end. Maybe crying about how horrendously the plot and characters are put together would be understandable, but I don't think that's the case. Months after watching it, Angel Beats! still leaves a bad taste in my mouth. To see such an entertaining idea with potential butchered like this is a damn shame.

This is my first review, so I hope I do this right.

Let me start out by saying that this is not an unbiased review. This is a review based on my own feelings on the anime and what it did for me. Objectively I think this anime would get maybe a 5, with the art and sound making up for the bad writing. Also expect spoilers, since I cannot say everything I want to say without spoiling a good amount of the plot.

Okay, so now for the actual review. This anime is not a masterpiece. This anime is not great. It's not even good. ... People who love this show will tell you it's "amazing", or that it has "lots of feels". "I cried so hard" is something people say a lot when they talk about this anime. Admittedly, it had some very emotional moments in it, which is what saved the show from getting a 1. The characters are terrible, the plot is a mess, and the parts that are supposed to be sad, with the exception of one or two, were laughable. As soon as you turn on your brain and start thinking about what you're watching, you realize what a bad show this is.

Plot: 2/10
The first episode seemed really interesting. We have our main character thrust into this world without any memories (which was a bit cliche, but wasn't a huge deal) or understanding of what's going on. Enter Yuri with a big-ass gun saying that they needed to fight against Tenshi, a girl with white hair who seemed to be the Yuki Nagato of this show. The first episode sets of mysteries that keep you interested. Who is Tenshi? What is this world? Why is everybody fighting her? What does it mean to get obliterated? However, as the series went on, it seemed like the writer didn't have a clue what he was doing, with some scenes, and at times, whole episodes, that could have easily been cut out. Things happen for no reason and have no real consequence. If you want to not be spoiled stop here, because I'm about to talk about some major events that happen later on.

Okay, so you watch episode two and you're like "wow that backstory was pretty great. This anime looks promising." Yuri's backstory does have some holes in it. For example, who the hell leaves their 4 kids at home. I'd understand if they were older and more mature, but they look like they're around 6-8. It says the police showed up thirty minutes later after all her siblings were dead. But when did Yuri call them? It doesn't show her doing it. I suppose she could have done it offscreen, but then why did it take them so long to show up? Why did the robbers send Yuri off on her own to find things? Would it not make sense for them to go with her? She could have run away and gotten help, or called the police if she hadn't already. And if there was someone else there with her, they would have found out that she had no idea where anything valuable was and might have given up and left. Then again, they were crazy and brutal enough to consider killing these kids, so that's not guaranteed. Regardless, it's a fine backstory.
You then watch episode 3. This is one of those episodes that is actually really great. Iwasawa talks to the MC about her backstory. Now, you might ask why she was telling him, but it's not something I'm going to make a huge deal about. Her backstory is one of the ones I actually cried a little over. It's beautiful and it makes sense. However, it's sadly the only episode I can say that about. Except maybe episode 9
After this we finally arrive at the beginning of the end. Episode 4 is where we get the backstory of Hinata. Right from the get go I had a feeling that this was going to be an okay episode at best. Not because I dislike sports, but because it came out of nowhere. I'd heard from other people that the plot was a little bit all over the place, and this marked the beginning of that. It's literally an episode about them playing baseball. And it didn't even have any point either. It didn't have to be there. Hinata's backstory could have been delivered in a way just like Iwasawa's and Yuri's. Have him open up to the main character. You don't need an entore episode of filler in order to do that. Another thing that happens is we get a small hint of what obliterating is. But that also happened in the last episode. And then Otonashi later figures it out anyways. There were other opportunities that DIDN'T INVOLVE A COMPLETELY POINTLESS BASEBALL GAME. Okay end of caps lock.
Episode 6 is what truly ruined the anime. It's full of plot holes and asspulls. Yuri gives Otonashi a radio for literally no reason and all I can think is "oh I wonder when this is going to be used". Tenshi and Otonashi then get locked in a cell underneath the school that the student council president has supposedly been building for a long time, despite the fact that he only became president like a day ago. We get some talking and then out of nowhere Yuri's like "a battle has broken out. Everyone is dying. We need you." This battle is one of the most useless things that has ever happened in this anime. Not only is all tension completely gone because none of these characters can die (it seems like the plot forgot about this for the duration of the battle, or simply ignored it for dramatic effect), but it seemed to happen for no reason. Like the author was like "oh shit we need a reason for these characters to try to get out and an excuse for more backstory. I know, let's have a battle and make it really sad. That way people won't realize how stupid it is". Lazy writing at it's finest. We also are treated to the student council president's backstory in this episode and oh my god is it funny. The best way I can describe it is like it's a Harry Potter backstory, except done really poorly. Literally nothing good ever happens to him. He's always criticized by his dad, his brother is constantly better. Even when he wins a contest his dad is like
not good enough". It's just ridiculous and immersion breaking.

There's two more things about the plot I want to talk about. I'd be amazed if anyone read this far but w/e. I just feel like talking about this anime.
1) the multiple Tenshis
2) The shadow creatures introduced in episode 11
Both of these things didn't need to be in here. They could have been stories all on their own, which is what they felt like. This is, along with episode 6, is the main downfall of Angel Beats. The plot lacks focus. Both of those stories (Multiple Tenshis and Shadow Creatures) could have each been a series on their own. There was no reason for them to be in this story. It felt like the writer was just throwing in every idea he had without considering how it would destroy the pacing and focus of the plot. It was just stupid and unnecessary.

Character: 3/10
One of the stronger points of Angel Beats was the characters. Or rather, the few characters we get to know. Yui, Iwasawa, Yuri, and Otonashi are really the only characters that are developed enough for you to care about anything that happens to them. One of the other downfalls of Angel Beats is that it doesn't develop it's characters well enough. It spends time on the backstories of boring side characters like Hinata and the student council president rather than the interesting characters. For example T.K. The basic idea is that you get to this world if something horrible happened to you, which is why everybody has a tragic backstory. And yet T.K. always seems happy. He's always dancing, always willing to help people. He talks in English a lot. He's an interesting character, and had a lot of potential for development and backstory. Why is he so happy? Why does he talk in English all the time? These are a few examples of things that could and should have been answered, rather than wasting time on that stupid baseball episode. And what about Tenshi? We learn that she has Otonoshi's heart (although we still don't get a good reason for it). That's it. We don't learn why she was dying. We don't learn the events leading up to it. It was a huge waste of potential.

Art: 8/10
Nothing much to say here. I liked the character designs, art style, and general look of the world very much.

Sound: 7/10
The voice acting wasn't amazing, but it was decent. Soundtrack was good, fir with the scenes nicely and the way it was used was good. Still, none of the songs really stuck with me, which is why this only gets a 7.


There are ways in which this series could have been great. In particular, it should have been structured kind of like Bokurano. That's kind of what it was going for anyways. We were learning about the backstories of all the characters, and learning a bit about the world while we were at it, as well as developing relationships between them. Rather than having everybody disappear at the end of the series, we could have learned about them and their backstory/life before they "died", like what they did with Yui. I would have had much more attachment to them and the story would have had a clear focus and goal. The first three episodes were great, and if the rest of it had been like that, I might also be aboard the "this is an amazing anime" train. But sadly, it got off track, deviating from what could have been a great plot in order to focus on pointless side stories. The writing was dreadful, leaving the story full of holes. It was as if the writer didn't care about the story and only cared about getting out the tears, which it failed at doing anyways. The ending for this anime was pretty great. The graduation scene was kind of cliche, as it's been done before with a similar effect and goal in mind. That last scene between Otonashi and Tenshi however, was far and away the best scene in the anime. Him asking her to stay and her dying speech was one of the most emotional moments in the anime, and it was one of the only scenes that truly made me feel something for these characters. If only they'd made Tenshi a better character...

I don't doubt that this review is going to upset some people, since I get the impression that my opinion of the show is the minority, but I hope that I was able to change some people's perspective's on the show. This is a series you need to turn off your brain to enjoy. At least it's better than Charlotte...

This review may contain spoilers.

So Angel Beats. Oh I beg your pardon, Angel Beats! Having just finished another review I now realize I don't have enough space to complain as much as I would like. So what I will say is that I was very much dissapointed with this show. A story with more holes than plot progression. Characters that are one-dimensional and dull. This show is a disaster. It became a chore to watch every episode. Let me put down the main issues. The characters are whiny and have no substance ... to them. The story falls about half way through so that they just throw out antagonists. More characters than they know what to do with, and they can't exactly kill them off now can they. I was honestly confused as to why this show is lauded as a masterpiece and as a tear factory. An all around dreadful show.
However Angel beats!!! does have one worthwhile quality. They music in the show is phenomenal. The opening song which is a wonderful piece of music on its own, or the few songs the sprinkle throughout, the soundtrack is without exception much better than the show itself.
As such I wouldn't suggest to anyone this series, unless of course you enjoy mind numbing trash.

This is my first review and I want to try to be as honest as possible while still maintaining a balanced argument for both pros and cons for each anime. Although I'm afraid this is going to be a very one-sided review as I literally can find nothing I like about this anime aside from its visuals and as for all the anime that I have seen, Angel Beats! manages to be the worst by quite a long distance, which worries me a lot for how seriously it took itself.

The premise for the anime is intriguing enough; a boy with amnesia suddenly wakes up in ... purgatory with no recollection of when or how he got there. Interesting, right? Well, i'm afraid this is as good as this anime will get for storytelling. The rest of the anime is absolutely shambolic, it really is. While the anime does satisfy us with answers they're so poorly tacked on with half-hearted, lazy writing that anyone with any sort of literary knowledge will grimace in pain at such a horrific attempt to create sympathy. The anime is also one of the most pretentious I've ever seen as well - it claims to be a perfect blend of comedy and drama and it fails miserably at both of these things. If this anime actually tried to focus on one genre or the other I might've given it some points but the cohesion in the storytelling is so bad it's actually laughable, and it means some of the better scenes go to waste. I don't know many anime with 12 episodes actually have filler but I can honestly say Angel Beats! is one of them.

One of the ways this story has garnered so much acclaim and popularity is due to its heart-rendering capabilities. I didn't even come close to tears with this anime and if I did it would be from boredom because there is absolutely no story advancement whatsoever! The characters are so one-dimensional, unoriginal and cliché, with 'violent girl with bad past' (not really sure what guns are doing in an alternate universe of a school by the way) and 'small mysterious girl who never speaks' that it is hard to form any sort of emotional bond because they're so badly developed and anyone who has watched anime in this genre could correctly predict any sort of twists or turns they throw at you in this bare-bones plot. Don't even get me started on the ending by the way, an absolute disgrace.

One thing I will say about this anime is that it's visuals are stunning but I'm afraid this anime is all style and no substance and it doesn't deserve even a tenth of the acclaim it gets. The writers and producers have clearly gone for the popularity formula, which has worked on some but I'm afraid it doesn't work on me - this anime is so badly paced, stupid, pretentious and lazily written that it has destroyed any potential it once had. So I plead with those who are wanting to watch this - don't. Lazy writing, a badly paced, badly executed story and dull, one-dimensional characters are the only seeds that this anime sow. This anime is a waste of human productivity and of your time, spend your time on something else.