OK, let me try that again: Angel Beats is fucking glorious. But it isn't groundbreaking. It's strength isn't from doing things groundbreaking and new, although there's a bit of that in there, but more-so from doing what many anime do, only better.
Going into this anime expecting something completely new is not gonna be good. Expecting what you've seen before pulled off very, very well is more like it. Think about what most people seem to think makes Cowboy Bebop so brilliant (I'm not a huge fan myself, but ignore that) is the fact it isn't filled with anime tropes and cliches. It tries to completely remake the medium. I'll cite Bennett the Sage's nostalgia-drenched review as an example of this. Angel Beats is an anime-anime. It couldn't be confused with anything else. And it's fucking brilliant. There. That's the best I can do. If you're the wrong level of hyped, for those who haven't seen it, I can't help you.
Maybe I should just get on with the usual sub-headings:
Plot:
Yep. It certainly has one of these.
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Fiiiiine. Otonashi wakes up on the grounds of a school in the middle of the night. He can't remember anything about how he got here, or who he is, but he is wearing a school uniform. A girl, also in uniform runs past him, wielding a helluva rifle. She, Yuri, tells Otonashi he is dead, and they are fighting against God. That's all the plot you're getting. If you've seen Angel Beats, you already know exactly how this story goes. If you haven't a) I'm not going to give more away and b) Leave this page. Now. Through here. I'll see you in a seasons time. Cheers for reading.
And this is where the spoiler cap comes off. Despite the setting of the show being inherently never-changing, the characters constantly returning to a set default and the general implication that this world has been operating in a constant state until Otonashi arrives, this is perhaps the most dynamic anime I've ever seen. Nothing is constant. If you miss an episode, there is a chance things have changed forever. There is no default. And I fucking love it.
The issue is, of course, that I will spoil in the nature of just talking about character development. So, even if you've seen SOME of the show, take the chance I'm giving you to leave. Please. Don't let me rob you of this experience. For both of our sakes. OK, warnings done.
Otonashi:
I love Otonashi on so many levels. There are many characters to adore in this show. Yuri is, of course, a favourite, and I think Tenshi also has a decent following, but Otonashi is my favourite. If I couldn't remember his name, my nickname for him would be "Anti-Suzuki". He inverts the self-insert amnesiac boy trope so very beautifully.
So - for those of us who have seen this show, or those who can't take a fucking hint to watch it, let's just have a reeeaaal quick overview of Otonashi (the name of whom I keep trying to shove an extra "o" into for some reason, but hopefully I'll fix that in editing). Otonashi, the protagonist through which we explore this universe, was crushed by the death of his sister at a young age, and turned his life around to become a doctor, only to die in a train-crash/tunnel cave-in.
Now, let's talk about that episode, in which he returns to the caved-in tunnel to die. This, for the record, is my favourite episode, and the one in which I finally cried. Not even the finale has that feather in its cap. Now, some of my friends interpreted this as Otonashi coming back to life, as time clearly does not run at the same pace in this limbo as in the real world. I, however always look at it as him simply regaining his memory due to his closeness to Tenshi. I'm interested in what anyone thinks about this, just as an aside. Is there another interpretation?
Anyway, actually analysing the character. Now as I mentioned, Otonashi is an inversion of the self-insert character. He starts out so very cliched - he is an amnesiac, so as to provide an avenue in which the viewer can explore the world afresh. This is inverted from the very start: there is no reason to wipe his memory so as to explore this world - he has never been here before. The amnesia is to provide no information dump about the world, but to allow a slower trickle of information from Otonashi's past. Ask yourself: If Otonashi, like every other character, maintained his memories, how would you convey his story to the viewer? An awkward backstory exchange with another character? It would slow the pace remarkably, but is conceivable. Give us the story before meeting Yuri? Also plausible, but also a bit of a momentum train, and it would be difficult to grasp the significance of the story that early in the show. As well, it would be difficult to provide a decent narrative hook from that story alone. That story, until the tunnel, is over. There is nowhere to go from there.
He also inverts the entire viewer-insert character trope by having, to be blunt, a personality. Let me put this simply: male leads in anime don't tend to have personalities, or at least personalities worth having. Kid Hanaukyo's defining characteristic is he's
Otonashi is loving, driven, affectionate, emotive, non-athletic, aversive to confrontation, gentle, average in intelligence, friendly and so, so, so much more. He's a great guy, but realistic enough to avoid the bishie sparkles. This absolutely fantastic review sums it up so much better than I ever could, in a way. I paraphrase when I say: In what other anime is the female lead the gun-toting military mastermind and the male lead saves the day by hugging a villain and letting him knows he is loved? Seriously, if someone can answer that, I'll be able to say definitively what I'm watching next.
OK, I'll wrap up Otonashi here. He's a genuinely great character. I love the fact that a male character can be portrayed as compassionate without being somehow emotionally weak, or a background character. Tenshi, Yuri and Masami all have their fans, and they certainly deserve them, but I firmly say Otonashi is my absolute favourite character, from my absolute favourite anime.
Yuri:
Well, I've established Otonashi as my favourite character, but in no way should I say it's all downhill from there. There is certainly a reason that Yuri and Tenshi are the faces of this series. When it comes to a nickname for Yuri, I'm kinda glad I didn't have to choose. I was tossing up between Big Sister, or Ensslin or Meinhof or Tanya. Something other than the typical female "war" names. Y'know the ones: Amazon, Valkyrie, Warrior-woman. Those are waaaaay too cliched for Yuri. Yuri isn't the cliched type in any way. She isn't the pointlessly angry caricature, some woman vaguely scorned. She is pissed off at God, and she has every goddamn reason to be so.
As a quick recap: Yuri, head of the military unit which is the focus of the show, is the gun-totting action character who supplies much of the adrenaline for the show. She was the eldest sister of a large family before all of her siblings were slaughtered in a way labelled as her fault. Her death is never explained, although I would bloody love to find out. As the manga explains, Yuri has been at the school longer than anyone else, bar Tenshi and the Gunsmith. She is filled with anger, and her endless campaign against the perceived forces of God is the product of her backstory.
The first thing worth noting about Yuri is that she's a damn good military commander. Considering she's leading a guerrilla faction against a much larger enemy, both of the school and the deities who apparently reside within, she organises them well, especially when you look at her means of weapon manufacture. Beyond mere strategy, as her elaborate Operation names demonstrate, she also is really good at keeping up morale. In a world where nothing changes, no victories can be permanently won (with the exception, I suppose, of the Principle's Office), enemies killed, or lessons learnt it would be so easy to become disheartened. But Yuri manages to keep people on their toes enough to not disappear but also fosters a sense of community and belonging that keeps anyone from storming off. Considering she's a teenager attempting to herd other teenagers with no granted authority, she does a damn good job.
She also uses her alliances well. She manages to get both the massive underground weapons manufacturers (that really needs a goddamn backstory) setup, and also get the school band onside. She knows what resources are available, and uses them to her advantage. I didn't pick the names Ensslin, Meinhof and Tanya merely because they were women associated with violence. Ensslin was a skilled military and tactical leader of the RAF, Meinhof was in charge of manifestos and group ideology and "Tanya", better known as Patty Hearst had a very similar style of appearance to Yuri. Sure, that last one is pretty cheap, but I'll stand by it. By the end of this series, when I will have called literally dozens, if not hundreds, of characters "Suzuki", "Fanservice" or "Glasses", this will seem justified.
I'm not sure what else to say about Yuri. Like Otonashi, she stands completely against gender roles, something I'd respect in any form of media, but a million times moreso in anime, which tends to have many characters cast simply to be attractive, traditional girls and women. As always, nothing wrong with being traditional, but there has been more than enough stories about the girl who doesn't want to fight because that's men's business. Change and variety is invariably good. Yuri, unlike Otonashi in many ways, stands against ageist stereotypes. While Otonashi is caring and empathetic, Yuri shows a military and organisational mind beyond her unspecified number of years.
I feel like my analysis of Yuri was really just talking about how much her military set-up kicks arse, but that's important. Every centimetre of ground held by the group was her doing. Every member of the group was hand-picked, or at least consulted, by Yuri. The entire setup, the elaborate size and scope of a guerrilla group, reflects her mind, her goals and the way in which she expects this war to be waged. The entire setup of this school can be considered a reflection of her mind and emotional state...like the third Pokemon movie. I'll take my prize from the terrible simile Olympics, and we can move on.
Tenshi:
It's in writing about Tenshi that I really feel the weakness of my "on-character-at-a-time" review/analysis style. Tenshi is important because she makes up the triumvirate which drives the entire anime. Really, it's relationships between Otonashi and Yuri that start the show. The main driving force for the first half of the show is the war between Yuri and Tenshi. The relationship between Otonashi and Tenshi strains the clear-cut nature of the war, resulting in a relationship emerging between Tenshi and Yuri. The final scene is between Tenshi and Otonashi. This isn't to say the other characters are unimportant. They certainly are. I wouldn't be able to argue Angel Beats with just these three would be remarkably interesting, as unique as the approach would be.
Now to write about Tenshi, let me sell the plot of Angel Beats in a different way:
A girl arrives in a world beyond life. In it she finds others such as herself. All alone, she realises that when these others are happy, they move on, clearly to a better place. This girl dedicates herself to helping these move on, while settling into the strange world she is in. She assumes a position of authority, requiring effort, the respect of her peers and teachers, good grades and a general motivation to strive for the best situation for everyone.
And then Yuri arrives. Yuri, brandishing illegally manufactured weapons and a pseudo-guerrilla facade, decides that this girl is specifically to blame for all that is wrong with Yuri's life. This girl stops being "Class Rep. Tachibana" and instead becomes the darkly ominous "Tenshi" or "Angel" to Yuri. Yuri and her gang undertake a campaign of merciless bullying towards "Tenshi", destroying every moment of peace, of joy, of contemplation, of respect or of accomplishment. When "Tenshi" attempts to use her hard-earned knowledge of the logic of this universe to defend herself, Yuri sees it both of a sign of vindication, that indeed "Tenshi" is to blame for this world, and also that she is winning this fight, and redoubles her efforts to destroy the "Angel" who runs this world. Finally, in a climax of Yuri's campaign, "Tenshi"is robbed of the one sign of her authority and dedication - her role as class rep, along with the respect of her peers and teachers.
I'm sure that I'm forgetting parts of that story, as it's been about 8 or 9 months since I saw Angel Beats, but my summary still reflects the core premise of the show - the villain is Yuri. I'm not sure, however, that this renders Tenshi the hero. To play angel's advocate, she doesn't exactly try to mend bridges. Instead of attempting to address Yuri's claims, Tenshi escalates the conflict by arming herself. That said, Yuri's "claims" are so removed from the reality Tenshi resides in they would be remarkably difficult to refute. Not to mention, Yuri likely never actually took the time to explain to Tenshi why she hated her. To Tenshi, it would naturally look like Yuri was just an angry, vengeful bully. Which she is, exactly.
It's difficult to talk about Tenshi without mentioning other characters, because almost everything Tenshi does is remarkably reactionary. Her rise to power is a reaction to her environment, her fights with Yuri are a result of Yuri's war with her, and even her love-interest sub-plot with Otonashi has to wait until Otonashi comes to his senses and drops out of Yuri's war. She's certainly a very capable and intelligent character, but she still tends to operate in reaction.
One relationship that remains unexplored that I would be absolutely fascinated with is that between Tenshi and the Genocidal Potter, her deputy and later replacement. Did she realise he was human? That he was angry? That he was murderous? Was he in this position because of her? Despite her? I don't know, but I'd love to. Tenshi wasn't exactly the warm beating heart of the show, but I'd be interested to see what impact she had on the Potter.
Overall, Tenshi is one of the most important and interesting parts of this show, albeit more as a plot element then as a character. Villains becoming allies is nothing new to anime, I've seen Ranma 1/2, but the main and realistically ONLY villain giving up the "fight", only for the show to stop and realise it doesn't actually have a villain is a brilliant, brilliant move which I couldn't respect more. Tenshi stands as one of the most unreadable and interpretive characters in anime.
Masami:
From my group of friends, I understand that Masami has quite a following. This can also be seen in the previously cited review. The third image, specifically, features her prominently. Now, I'm going to be pretty honest here: I don't have much to say about her. Not to say I don't like her. She's neither the character I like the least nor the character I feel is the blandest. She just has a damn short arc, and I found her only kicking around in the very back of my mind when I sat down to write this review.
So, as a quick reminder: Masami is the lead singer/guitarist of Girls Dead Monster, the all-girl school band. She comes from a really rough background and her only outlet was music. In a drunken rage, her father renders her paralysed, unable to sing or move. She finds joy in finally rebelling, acting out against the system, and disappears into the after-afterlife. I need a better name for it.
The most notable fact is that this all occurs in the space of an episode. Masami reveals her demons, her past, and finally achieves her desires all in one fell swoop, in episode 3. It, in my opinion, walks a veeeerrrry thin line between "rushed" and "self-encapsulating". In reality, it's both.
Sure Masami's episode is a rush to the finish. The entire fucking series is rushed. Masami, in many ways, is done an injustice by being introduced (more or less) and disposed of in less than a half-hour. No matter how good a character and her story are, having her gone before the first quarter of the show is passed renders her seemingly unimportant in the broader scheme of things.
That might be a bit harsh, on some level. Masami's arc is, absolutely, self-contained. And it does serve a purpose. It proves that at least some of what Yuri and her gang are telling Otonashi. A character interacts with the afterlife too much and moves on to the next level. This is vital. One problem I had with Yuri was her "NPC" theory. She never manages to actually prove this. Because, frankly, she can't. Not to say ALL the characters in this school were real - the re-locating of the principle in the manga is great proof that they do react like poorly programmed AI, but Otonashi hasn't read the manga (and neither have I. Because it is the slowest translation project ever.). He accepts it WAAAAY too easily. This is a way of informing the audience that at least some of what Yuri says is real. People DO disappear. Sure, the circumstances are not as tragic as Yuri implies, but that's more planting seeds of doubt about how reliable a narrator a rage-fuelled guerrilla-commanding teenager really is.
Ultimately, Masami is a means to an end - show how the world works. She's also a great tragic figure, left in a state of self-loathing, finally given a means of expression. Her sacrifice was for the good of the show, as Angel Beats isn't so cheap as to cook up a storyless mook to kill off. Masami - a kick arse anime plot device, who goes out in a blaze of glory. In her defence, she gets "killed" of in a better way than any other character in the entire show.
Baseball:
Yeah, I can't remember his name. And I don't really care enough to look it up. No offence to the character, but the name isn't really important. The name? He likes baseball. He REALLY likes baseball. He nearly dies during a baseball game. Yeah, that guy.
OK, a better summary. Baseball is really the closest Otonashi has to a friend in this universe, at least before meeting Tenshi. Yuri is a friend in the loosest possible manner. She has better things to do, and commands at a distance. Baseball also is the love interest of Yui. Oh Yui. We'll get to her in a moment. Anyway, Baseball gets the honour of being part of the last 5, so that's something.
OK, I have problems with Baseball. He's kinda bland. I mean, really bland. He is sorta the protagonist trope for this anime, filling the requisite quote. The fact he is the protagonist of the manga, set before Otonashi's arrival, is pretty obvious. He and Otonashi have quite a lot in common in how they behave and react to situations around them, providing a straight man for the beautiful anarchy around them.
I don't wish to say Baseball is a bad character. Angel Beats doesn't really have BAD characters, as much as they have varying amounts of good. I'm sure that sentence makes sense to someone out there. As levels of good go, Baseball isn't even at the bottom. His plot makes the near-inexplicable baseball (game not character) episode interesting, giving it a little pathos. Seriously, this show is running on road-runner time for the whole series. Who thought "baseball episode" was an intelligent investment of time? Baseball and Yui also make an interesting couple. The bland, reliable and cliched bloke and the wild, manic, marginally less cliched girl seem to get along well.
I like the way Baseball's backstory is handled. We see just enough to know why he had a shit time in school without the time being invested for a full-on flashback like Misami and Otonashi. I wish this had been done for more of the main cast. I mean, seriously, I fucking love TK, because he speaks English like I speak Spanish. Why couldn't there be a 10 second sequence of connotative imagery to convey his backstory? Still, it's a decent style to use.
Baseball is a decent character, providing the role of a straightman to Yui, Yuri and, to a degree, demonstrating what Otonashi can do that the average boy can't. He has a role and he fills it. Again, Angel Beats does what most anime do, only better. I can't say this isn't an anime character.
Yui:
Don't ask me why I remember Yui's name and not Baseball's. That's just how my mind works. Her nickname would have been "Pink" for very obvious reasons. To put the character simply, I don't like Yui. She's just way to cute and bubbly and energetic to fit the tone of the show. Also, she has a tail, I swear. And this is never addressed. She just has a tail. If it weren't for her backstory, I would be wondering if she got lost on her way to a more cutesy anime.
Yui recap: the youngest looking of the group (other than Tenshi, I guess), with pink hair, Yui is constantly perky and bright. She attempts to act cute at every turn, and is sickeningly aware of it. She and Baseball seem to have a cat and dog relationship, before they fall for each other. Both Yui's personality and the relationship between her and Baseball are cliche, but again, Angel Beats is the most anime thing ever. I kinda have to respect that. Yui was, in live, paralysed from a young age from the neck down, prevented from doing any physical activity.
With that backstory, I kinda get Yui. She wants to do all the things she didn't do in life. That's fine. She also loves being able to move and hates standing still for any significant period of time. Again, I get it. It doesn't stop the fact I find her infinitely annoying. I groaned the first time I realised she wasn't going to be a one-episode wonder. Her back story is really good. It's interesting, and explains a lot about her. I get it. Still, I find her personality a little grating.
The romance between Baseball and Yui is, as I've already said twice, well handled. The two compliment each other well, but more importantly, their relationship is well explained. The montage in which Baseball proposes how the two could have met in real life is genuinely brilliant. I had no idea what it was meant to be when I saw it (please remember I had finished "They Are My Noble Masters" before going into this. "Imagination" and "creativity" were alien concepts in anime for me at this point), but when I twigged, I thought it was really well done. Even just having Yui display that hint of self-awareness, a scepticism that Baseball would have cared about her during life, did an enormous amount to humanise her in my eyes.
Yui isn't poorly written. She isn't horrible in any way really. She even goes a little way towards inverting some tropes. But, all that said, she was perhaps my largest problem with the series, or at least amongst the largest. I see her role, her place, her angle and her use, but I'm still not a fan. The fact she replaces Masami seems to be something some hold against her, but I couldn't care less about that, honestly. Apparently being paralysed in life makes you a really good singer and guitar player (yes, I realise Masami was already good at both, but Yui has no excuse). Yui: She exists, perhaps a little too much.
Potter:
Potter is probably gonna be the last character I look at. I'd love to do more, but a) my reviews only take 1-3 hours to write, but this is the third day of me occasionally pecking away at it and b) usually run for about 3000 words, but this is 4300 and counting and c) the other characters get less screen time than most of the ones I've covered, so I've got less to say, unfortunately. Please also recall it's been 3/4 of a year since I watched this show. Some subtle elements may have escaped me since then.
Anyway, Potter. Potter is a fascinating character. As reminder, he is Tenshi's deputy and once Yuri fucks up her exams, Potter takes her place. At which point he kills everyone. Honestly, considering how fucked up every single one of these kids are, I'm surprised a mass killing didn't happen earlier. In life, he was one of two sons of a famous potter, known worldwide for his work. His brother inherited his father's skill, while Potter did not. After Potter's brother dies in an accident, he becomes his brother in the eyes of the world. There are many things you could do to fuck a kid up, and essentially telling him that you would rather he had died is pretty high on that list.
Anyway, after he goes on the killing spree, the scene of Otonashi hugging him and letting Potter know that someone cares about him occurs. This is perhaps my favourite scene of Angel Beats. It encompasses so very, very much. All the violence, all the guns, all the guerrilla warfare leads to nought. An act of affection, of empathy is the only way in which the only individual who actually has any ill-will towards Yuri's gang is dealt with. That's the moral of this story. I bloody swear it is. It has to be. This is a story of emotions being much more powerful than anything else, and as an anime targeted at teenagers, what better moral could a story have? What more important lesson could you walk away from an anime with?
There are anime that seem to say nothing, or even less than nothing. Reinforcing stale, horrid narratives and ideas that need to die. Just contrast the morals and ideals of Angel Beats to a genuinely vile anime like Code Geass or Vampire Knight. Or even a good anime with confused messages, like Strawberry Eggs. It feels odd to compliment an anime on being "on message", but that's exactly what Angel Beats is, and the hug between Potter (God I wish I could remember his name) and Otonashi reinforces, proves and endorses this message of being open, expressing what you want to say and listening to others. It's beautiful.
Potter calms down and joins Yuri, being a little bit of an outcast because of the whole "killing everyone" thing, and I feel that's probably realistic. There isn't much more of a punishment you can give the guy in this world other than a little bit of social ostracism.
Potter is one of the final 5, so that's something, I guess. He's a genuinely good character, and he represents a lot that really isn't addressed in the other kids. The darkness he demonstrates against Yuri is fascinating. Especially when you realise that Yuri replicates that in a lot of ways. Her resorting to violence for everything, her hatred for Tenshi as a symbol of what she didn't understand, her lust for revenge. Potter represents this in a way that is much easier to address, because he is an outsider, rather than a friend of Otonashi who snaps. Overall, Potter doesn't manage to match his role as a villain in importance while a hero, but that doesn't really matter. He came into this world angry and depressed, and wasn't as lucky as Otonashi to find friends. He certainly demonstrates something about how this world should be read.
Conclusion:
Well, I think I've argued pretty comprehensively why this show is fantastic. It uses the media of anime to the best of its ability, it reworks old tropes and cliches to make them suit the setting, it has a fantastic cast of characters and it should and certainly will go down in history as one of the greatest shows, anime or otherwise, of all time. At least as far as I'm concerned.
So for the conclusion, let me mix it up a little and talk about where Angel Beats fails.
As much as I whined about Yui, she wasn't a "failure" really. I see what the show was trying to do with her, and it succeeded. I just didn't like it. Some episodes felt a little meandering, but it was attempting to introduce us to a decently sized cast in a very short period of time, and needed us to relax with them for a while.
That "short period of time" bullshit was a goddamn problem. This entire show runs for 13 episodes. That's bullshit. There was sooooo much more that needed to be done. I wanted to see so much more of this show and every element it presented. It has so much potential. For context, my second favourite anime has run for over 200 episodes, has a movie, and there is no reason that a 5th season or a second movie won't come to be. Angel Beats has a constantly delayed Visual Novel, and a gradually fan-translated manga. I may be missing something here.
The other problem with the speed in which Angel Beats runs is that it doesn't work thematically. In a show like Mahoromatic, for example, where the issue of mortality is front and centre, a short run would make a lot of sense. We only get a short time, make the most of it. Angel Beats, in the setting and themes, isn't about mortality. It's about the lack of mortality. It's about a world that lingers and repeats. It's about an infinity confined. Sure, we didn't need to be getting into Hayate no Gotoku figures with episode count, but 13 seems to be selling this world and concept so very short.
Leaving out some petty complaints, I really only have one other MAJOR complaint. That would be the ending. The ending of Angel Beats can go fuck itself. I don't mean Tenshi and Otonashi. I don't mean graduation. I mean "Where did everyone go?" " They moved on". Everyone. Fucking everyone. So we'll never know what the stories of TK or 5th Dan were. We just have to presume that they had a desire which was met in the few days Yuri was out. The fuck. Why could they not have remained? I mean, I GUESS it's a happy ending for them, but I feel it really isn't for us. I loved every moment of this show, and I'm not so unaware as to call myself "ripped off", but that's pretty close to the sentiment I'm harbouring. The three days where Yuri was unconscious needs to be its own 20 episode series, in which we find out how every member of Yuri's gang managed to move on. With at least 3 of these episodes on TK. I fucking loved TK.
Also, I'm not even gonna try and interpret the last scene of the series. I don't know.
Anyway, Angel Beats is an utterly fantastic show, and is my favourite of all time with an amazing distance between it and the closest runner up. If you haven't seen it, you have done yourself a terrible disservice by reading this far. Make it up to yourself by reading what has been translated of the manga, starring Baseball. And seriously, just fucking watch this show. It's not going to kill you, except emotionally.
Also, feel free to play the drinking game of going back and taking a shot every time I refer to the "Angle Beast", because I am a terrible self editor. I'll be back sometime in the near future with my second on my "real" anime list - Vandread.
Thanks for reading,
H. Rourke.
(P.S. I'm now on Twitter. Feel free to follow me for vague, whining 140-character rants about how the next review is going, or how bad my current anime fix is.)
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