To put it simply Angel Beats is a story about a bunch of dead teenagers who end up in a purgatory designed as school. However, rather than obediently accepting death they end up denying it and struggling against everything purgatory throws at them, so to exist there forever. Though nice on paper, and actually overflowing with potential, Angel Beats is just a bunch of unrealized or badly realized ideas, ending up as a hardly significant show. It’s still a nice watch if you have time to kill and can stand something which is simply screwing the potential right before your eyes.

Let me tell you something. Humans don’t even have the patience to wait ten minutes for something!

Written by Maeda Jun (Air, Clannad) and directed by Kishi Seiji (Seto no Hanayome, Sunred) Angel Beats is a… errr, semi comedy semi tragedy set in the Purgatory depicted as a High School? Certainly, Angel Beats’ genre is quite hard to grasp, even harder, however, is grasping what’s usually most fundamental - is it fun? This anime, written by otherwise a talented author, is so undefined, so beating around the bush that it’s even hard to tell what the hell did it even try to achieve. Anyway, the story starts by introducing you to its main character, amnesiac Otonashi, and his first experience in this so called Purgatory… which is pretty bloody to say the least. But since the only way to actually disappear from this world is to accept death, no matter how many sinister stuff will befall on you, you will stay perfectly alright… or regenerate later if for some reason you end up dismembered. Nonetheless, despite having such from one side gross from another theological potential this show choses the least exciting of possible pathways - comedy and ecchi-free (thankfully) moe. And while even those aspects can construct a fairly successful show, Angel Beats, despite raising everyone’s expectations, ends up only as something mildly entertaining.

One of the main problems why Angel Beats never managed to rise up as something significant is simply its short length and bad time management. You get introduced to over a dozen of characters some of who end up barely saying a word or two through the whole show, much less get a solid backdrop. The first half of the show is wasted on useless comedy and when the show starts getting serious everything ends before you even start feeling emotions. In the end it only raises the question of why a show spurting such huge production values ended up as a mess of unfulfilled ideas? I mean, animation is breathtaking, you can feel soul in the music and both good director and scenario writer are present. Seriously, was Maeda Jun even trying when he wrote the script for this show? I mean, the only time I felt “the Key” vibe was a scene five minutes from the end of the last episode… and even its emotional impact was blurred down due to reckless rush of the plot.

Animation: 5

Animation by P.A. Works (Seirei no Moribito. Canaan) will take your breath away. It’s likely the best I have ever seen in TV series so far. The overall feeling the backgrounds give off is magnificent, vivid color palette gives them lively feel and the detail put into them is as good as it ever gets in TV series. Not to mention the awesome use of CGI, particularly during the concert sequences. The whole world simply feels alive… Though I must say that due to the limitations of the story the variation of backgrounds isn’t particularly impressive. Anyway still, they sure weren’t half hearted when they were doing the artwork for this show, and from what I hear, it actually took them over three years to animate everything.

Character designs might be the only part of animation in this show that is not perfect given today’s standards. While everyone has original, attractive and detailed looks (particularly the girls who do the concerts… and Tenshi… and Yurippe leer), gah, anyway! As I was saying, while the original artwork by Na-Ga (Little Busters!) makes the overall feel of character designs close to perfect, you can still notice some scenes, particularly when the camera pans out, where characters lose their smooth outline thus looking, though very slightly, deformed. It’s not really a problem you can notice if you don’t pay close attention though, and the show still probably has the best character designs of the season.

Nothing bad to tell about the fluidity of animation in Angel Beats. Frame rate, inbetweens, consistency, hell, even the short sequences of fight choreography, are pretty much as good as they ever get in TV series… and I must say I am still amazed at how the director of this show uses music and animation to make, what normally would be just a “meh” scene, into something heart moving or blood boiling (the first fight against Tenshi is episode one was simply amazing… despite in essence not being any significant at all). It’s really too bad that the plot of Angel Beats ended up being so half-hearted, as both production values and the director were first-rate

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Sound: 3

OP song My Soul, Your Beats! by Lia is a magnificent vocal piece followed by piano music. It sets just the right, or rather even a better mood, than the Angel Beats’ plot deserves. Anyway, likely the best OP of the season. ED Brave Song by Tada Aoi is also a great slow piece which not only works great for atmosphere, but also gives some hints at the relationship of some characters. I must say I really liked the idea of making them slowly appear/disappear in the background during the ED animation.

While the overall music stage isn’t particularly outstanding, the show certainly spurts quite a few good songs which are used very well by the anime’s talented director. The most awesome pieces of BGM would probably be the vocal pieces used in live concerts, members of Afterlife Battlefront do from time to time. It’s too bad, however, that the show also has a lot of bland themes which disappear in the background, making some scenes stand out particularly well at the cost of making the others completely forgettable.

Angel Beats certainly takes the price of the best seiyuu team of the season as pretty much every single character is voiced by an awesome Seiyuu. Their voices fit, their voices sound awesome and their voices alone are enough to make you fall for them. Anyway, I particularly liked Kamiya Hirohi’s deep voice of Otonashi and Hanazawa Kana’s reserved voice of Tenshi. Oh yeah, and Yurippe’s usually cold, but also somewhere emotional, voice is expressed extremely well by Sakurai Harumi as well. Well, actually pretty much every single character sounds awesome in one way or another, so it’s likely you’ll find a lot of favourites in here.

Story: 2

I must say that the setting of Angel Beats is worth commending, as it was the main reason why I even got interested in the show from the first place. I mean, a school in the otherworld which serves as a purgatory and a story about (likely mentally deranged) students who can’t obediently accept their demise? Wow, that certainly can bring a lot of philosophical and theological materials in the show, and I’m always up for those. Unfortunately, the only thing I ended up seeing in Angel Beats was wasted potential. I mean, the bigger half of the show just concentrates on the students doing completely random and irrelevant things. Okay, it gives you the idea of friendship and the importance of youth, but, I mean, you sure would expect something more from a purgatory than a damn baseball game. The show also seems to be unable to decide if it wants to give you backdrops of characters, show you irrelevant things or concentrate on explaining the mysteries behind its setting… ending up doing a little bit of each, but never really going anywhere with anything. I mean, short of the main character and Yurippe, you are left on your own figuring out what the hell happened to all the other guys in the cast when they were still alive, the setting is full of unexplained “whys” and “ifs” (what in the name of hell do computer programs have to do with this purgatory?)… and that damn stuff which also happens in any regular school should have been shortened or discarded as a whole.

Angel Beats could have become one of a hell of the show if it started from its dark side from the beginning, concentrated more on giving detailed backdrops to its characters and, hell, throwing some more theological stuff about life and death here and there. The way it stands now is really… heh, really, what the hell is it now. A show about how a bunch of characters, half of whom you don’t really know, fight against death by breaking the silliest rules of a High School which is actually a purgatory? Heh, even at a such state, if Angel Beats have had 26 episodes, it could have at least had more time to give more background to things that happen in it, thus ending up as a show with a real dramatical value, rather than something which ends up in a “huh, wait… what about…?” manner. Nonetheless, the five last minutes of the show were great, finally demonstrating Key’s real talent. It’s too bad my brain was already raped too hard by the zillions of irrelevant stuff shown in previous episodes to shed a tear, but I must say it still did come with “ah, this is… beautiful” vibe.

Characters: 3

As mentioned before the character side of the show is hit hard by the fact that the majority of them don’t even get as much as hints to their pasts. Nonetheless, the pure charm and charisma each of them has is tremendous. I suppose you have already seen people shouting “Tenshi!” or “Yurippe!” on the boards, and I must say there are moments when I find it hard to refrain from doing such actions myself as well. I mean, they are just so awesome… and cute. Anyway, be it male or female cast, everyone has original, well expressed character traits and individual quirks. I mean, there is a dude who never stops dancing and only speaks in English one-liners… and despite doing nothing else appears as an attractive persona. Unfortunately charm is not enough to build up a complex character, so if you look for something deeper, pretty much everyone, apart from Otonashi, Tenshi, Yurippe, Naoi and the two girls who worked as vocals in the Girls Dead Monster’s band, fall out of the spectrum. And while the five characters I’ve mentioned before are indeed well designed, I can’t say any of them does anything grand enough to not be forgotten in many years to come. So while the cast is indeed nice, it’s not really significant enough to leave its marks on the history of anime society, which is a shame since they indeed had potential. Tenshi was just a hair’s length away. T_T

Conclusion: Angel Beats is a show full of unrealized… or badly realized ideas. Frankly, if asked if it’s a show worth watching I’d find it hard to answer… is it? Pretty much everything Angel Beats sets out to do is realized better in other shows already and unless you are a big moe fan you’ll end up bored by its comedy as, really, it’s not that funny. Nonetheless, this show still retains, if extremely weak, light of freshness so if you REALLY don’t have anything to do, you might as well kill some time with it. By the way, if you thought that the plot of Angel Beats was to your liking (or rather the potential of it), by all means, read the Little Busters visual novel. It’s zillions times better. Also, if you are want to see a similar idea done properly and in an intelligent way you should definitely see Haibane Renmei, which is an awesome show. Otherwise, if you got entwined by this anime’s moe for some reason you might be interested in Haruhi or K-On!…