To recover from the evil that was Final Fantasy: Unlimited, let’s take a look at a show with some flare, some potential and one that won’t make my head explode. And so the target of this review will be Angel Beats. This anime series started up in April 2010, and at the time of this post is currently running. It’s one with a lot of potential, having a nice mixture of bat-shit crazy action and a story that genuinely interests me. Let’ take a look.
Episode one begins with our protagonist, Yuzuru Otonashi, who has no memories whatsoever. This is pretty common in anime series, as a kid with amnesia needs every single thing explained, which in this show is damn necessary. Greeted by a girl named Yuri, who carries a sniper rifle (Awesome), he finds himself in the ‘Like-hell-I’m-dead Battlefront’, which looks like a school. She explains that Otonashi is dead, they are in the afterlife and that he is going to be erased from existence by God unless he joins her. Not accepting this straight away, Yuri tells him to be more flexible and ‘just accept things as they are’. Not very subtly, this show tells the viewer to just accept things two minutes in. I have free will, you can’t just tell me to accept any shit you send my way so screw you. Anyway, moving on, Yuri introduces us to the enemy of all that is good and decent. That enemy is…. another little girl…. and they call her Angel…. Angels are bad then? Otonashi, being the skeptic again, decides that fighting with this fragile figure sounds crazy and that a conversation with this other girl might make more sense. One hopes but I don’t see it coming.
The character of Angel is actually quite interesting. Acting cold and robotic, this fragile looking girl can kick some ass, but I’ll get to that later. Otonashi, annoyed by Angel affirming that he is dead, asks her to prove it, that if he is dead, then he can’t die again. MISTAKE! And so Angel, helpful and straightforward as she is, reveals her weapon, a sword that materializes from up her sleeve (Awesome again), and stabs our protagonist straight through the heart. Ouch. That’s one way to prove immortality, though just cutting him and letting him see the skin heal in two seconds would have also worked. And so our show ends, the main character is dead and we can all change the channel… or not….. WHAT, so he wakes up after being killed two seconds earlier…that’s not the end… ok. Moving on, Otonashi doesn’t take being killed too well, the baby, freaking out just a tad. Seeking to escape he meets another guy, Noda, who carries with him a Halberd (Damn I like these weapons). Pissed off with Otonashi for disgracing Yuri, he precedes to kill Otonashi one hundred times in about ten seconds in a comical fashion. Any chance he’ll stay down this time… no… o well. Showing that our protagonist has some sense, he seeks out an adult, leading him to the principal’s office… where he is shot out a window by a giant mallet that descends from above. Not ten minutes in and the hero has died three times. What the hell anime.
Waking up from being killed yet again, we finally meet the SSS (Shinda Sekai Sensen or Afterlife War Front), the group which rebels against God and which I guess are our heroes for the story. This group is made up of clichéd characters, the smart one, the violent one, the one that only thinks about food, the mysterious one and so on. We discover rather quickly that these kids have no idea what in bejebus is going on, however they do know some basics which they proceed to explain. Those who act normal and do not rebel get erased. Being erased means disappearing from the afterlife. What happens to people afterwards is a mystery and the group is in no hurry to find out. Some believe that people are reincarnated in the living world, from which the fear arises that they might become barnacles or other things that get eaten. In short, their happy where they are, they seek to conquer the afterlife world, removing Angel who they assume an agent for God, and live forever. How they do this however annoys the feck out of me. Their first mission, Operation Tornado, is more or less to put on a concert for non-player characters (I’ll yell about this in a second), and steal their meal tokens which can be exchanged for food. They do this by using giant fans which blow the tokens into the air, which the NPC’s don’t freakin notice (why, God, why). Non-player characters are people in the afterlife who don’t really exist. Suddenly I get the feeling someone played World of Warcraft while making this anime, or maybe it’s just my imagination (The introduction of the ‘Guild’ in future episodes really pushes this theory). NPC’s are empty shells that lead a normal life in the school and are presumed to be put there by God. They follow the rules of the school and are oblivious to most things. By all accounts they seem normal enough when we see them, but we’re asked to trust the group when they say these people don’t really exist. Other anime shows have the background people that never matter but this is just a tad weird.
The last five minutes is when this anime really steps up a few notches. The band, Girls Dead Monster, is damn good. I can’t understand a word I hear, and the lyrics are odd but damn that’s a catchy song. And during their song comes a battle of epic proportions, one that makes the top five in any list of first fights in a series. Angel, walking slowly towards the concert in a menacing fashion, is met by the SSS, who proceed to fire everything they have, hand guns, machine guns, sniper rifles, and even a damn rocket launcher at her. Where they get these weapons is blow your brains out stupid, showing in later episodes that they can make anything they can remember using dirt (What in bejebus is the fixation on dirt guns in anime?). Anyway, the mix of music and action is mind-blowing. The bullets just bounce off Angel, showing that she is truly indestructible, but their mission is merely to delay her with this barrage of fire, as the food tokens take to the air. Retreating, Angel does not follow them, which is confusing as hell at this point but I’ll roll with it. Whatever the case, Angel seems indifferent to them while their not causing a ruckus and does not seek to prevent or seek revenge for any of their actions. This adds to the enigma that is Angel, and this characters development is one of the greatest in anime I’ve seen.
So that’s the basic premise of the anime. Several kids in the afterlife rebel against a God that gave them unfortunate lives and ends, fighting to affirm their existence and keep back the unknown. This is a very interesting concept which forces the viewer to consider such events and keeps people interested from the starting whistle. While the time spent in the afterlife world is a bit goofy, stealing meal tokens, we get continuous flashbacks of the lives they led. There’s some tear inducing stuff in what follows, a musician with violent parents, kids with dead brothers and sisters, and generally all the characters have really good, or bad rather, sob stories. As well as conforming to the normal school life, it’s also introduced that if the characters find peace and reconciliation with their actions while they were alive, they might also be erased, or go to heaven or something along those lines. We also get to learn more about Angel, why she is so cold and what her mission actually is. There’s excellent use of clichés in episodes, the team ‘sacrificing’ themselves so that Yuri and Otonashi can continue to their destinations, then resurrecting at the end so that everything returns to the way things began. There are a lot of sub-characters, so many that they are two dimensional at first. However, each gets more back story as we continue and there stories are pretty damn interesting.
This anime looks amazing, the graphics are up and beyond the modern standard. The setting of the school is a bit boring looking but the concerts display a mastery of colour and light. The action looks amazing and is top notch. Angel is awe inspiring in some of the fights. Her and Yuri in close quarters combat shows some of the best action in any anime I’ve seen. The way the characters can die with no lasting effects lead to great jokes, as they throw themselves into danger for comic as well as dramatic effect. As can be seen from the name however, this is a show where the music (Angel BEATS) is central. The main distraction for most of their so called missions is for the band to perform so there’s a song in most episodes. Even without this, this opening and ending songs are just damn good, to the state where you’ll be humming them all the do da day. This is definitely an anime to keep an eye out for, ticking all the boxes in my books.
Next time: Naruto
