This ending.

My sidekick JTFish has already provided you with the essentials and I don’t have much to add. Angel Beats! is simply shit. It’s a comedy that’s not funny and a drama that’s not dramatic. It has its moments but that doesn’t warrant wasting 25 minutes of your weekly lifespan on it. Remember, we do this so you don’t have to!

Actually I think the ending was about as good as it possibly could have been given the circumstances. Too bad the show sucked massive balls up until that part.

Something I’ve said about this piece of turd before…

Angel Beats sucks. The show is plagued by Maeda Jun’s incompetence at writing anime episodes combined with Kishi Seiji’s incompetence as a director. People who were being skeptical about Kishi’s ability when the show started were pretty much right – he seems to have no sense at all when it comes to mixing drama with comedy. It’s not like it’s impossible to do, KyoAni’s Maeda-adaptations such as Kanon had little trouble mashing it all up together. However Angel Beats is a prime example of how to do it wrong. The are no smooth or smart transitions between drama, tragedy and comedy. Instead Kishi simply executes an instant 180-degree turn and expects the audience to follow.

He manages to do it right sometimes: Episode 6, as much as Naoi’s one-episode-bad-guy-arc sucked otherwise, did a relatively good job in the beginning with a humoristic atmosphere and then executed a short but quite smart transition into the serious stuff. Episode 7 on the other hand was like a reversed case: It begins with a relatively strong dramatic and tragic flashback, and it would’ve been good to have the whole episode flow with that mood. But no; once the flashback was over, the show made an instant change to a comedy arc, pretty much screaming “HEY GUIS, THAT SHIT WAS SERIOUS SO JUST FORGET IT HAPPENED LOL LETS GO FISHIN’!”. The timing of the jokes is just all over the place: Yui interrupting Hinata’s flashback sequence wasn’t funny, only seriously facepalm-inducing. Let’s-jump-on-the-evil-Tenshis-joke worked a couple times in the Kanade rescue arc but god damn they just had to keep rubbing it in.

Just like it was written on THAT, Maeda’s writing isn’t working too good. Seems to me like the man just doesn’t give a shit because it’s gonna sell anyway with his name in the ED credit roll. Most of the time the attempts at drama and epic level tragedy fall flat on their face due to poorly thought up flashbacks and characters with little development or substance. Seriously, the lack of decent characters is a severe problem with Angel Beats. It’s hard to give a shit about people you don’t know about and it’s not like the show is even trying to develop them. Yuri is still as much of a cardboard Haruhi ripoff she was in the beginning and the only thing I’ve learned about her is that she’s pretty much an unlikable cunt with shitty plans mostly the level of stealing candies from babies. The only characters left with even a bit of depth are Otonashi and Tenshi, latter of whom is the only really interesting one. We’ve learned a lot about Otonashi’s past but I never quite grasped his personality. Well, possibly because he doesn’t have one. The past Otonashi was grumpy and emo but not all that bad. The current Otonashi is just your typical 10-penny harem lead with the personality of a saint. Not to mention things that came completely out of the blue like Hinata’s manly love speech. It wasn’t that bad, it’s just that since there had been no development or decent hints towards it, I wasn’t touched at all. All in all Angel Beats tries to build up great drama and tragedy mixed with comedy, but comes out as a bipolar mess that tries too hard to be sad and touching. Either drop the comedy for good or make it a gag show. That’s all Maede-Kishi-combo can handle.

Angel Beats is a show that represents the current burger entertainment already demonstrated by To Aru Majutsu no Index and Railgun – it doesn’t matter if the show is badly written, badly executed and has characters with the personality of a planed piece of 2-by-4. Throw in some flashy shit and hot names, and you’re done! The endless fan hordes will defend your piece of turd to the bitter end and the worse it is, the more zealous they get. AB does prove one thing though: KyoAni’s reign as the only studio with decent animation has come to pass. In the terms of visual prowess PA Works does pretty much a flawless job with Angel Beats. That’s the deal with AB really: It looks and sounds good, but on the inside is as dull and stupid as your average Finnish celebrity.

And moar…

Because Angel Beats! is bad in a way that actually makes it quite worth watching. The director’s bumbling attempts at trying to maintain at least some kind of control over the show that’s constantly running berserk is comedy in itself. And let us not forget all the die-hard Maeda/KEY-fantards whose raging denial and insecurity causes hilarious raging with minimal effort.

Angel Beats! is okay as long as you ignore what the fanboys say and don’t even try to take it seriously. However it’s doomed to sit around in the gray low-mid-tier zone, especially since this season has a whole bunch of very potent shows around that eat this kind of mediocrity for breakfast. Sorry, PA Works, but this just ain’t cutting it anymore.

…and moar…

However, it feels too much like Maeda just got bored and threw in a ton of popular things, spiced it up with his trademark traumatic past-elements, and called it a day. Just take a look at Yurippe’s flashback; it’s obvious how little Maeda actually gave it any thought aside from making it nasty for the sake of itself. Try this: Imagine you just broke into some rich bastard’s house with a couple other guys. You think there’s gotta be money or some shit lying around for you to take right? You subdue the four kids and start searching, but find nothing. Time’s ticking, so you have to start thinking. Maybe the master of the house was smart and doesn’t keep anything of value in the house? Very good, very logical. People with wealth are usually careful about storing it. What if the kids knew something? Not likely but it’s worth a shot. So you tie up three of the kids and have one search the house. To give her a bit of “motivation”, you’ll tell her that you will kill her siblings one at a time if she can’t find anything valuable. Of course, you’re bluffing right? Because the chance that the kid knows or could find anything are next to nothing, and killing three young kids gets you about 2000 years in prison in any civilized country and very possibly death penalty in Japan.

…and MOAR!

All in all AB is like watching videos online of a retarded kid in a wheelchair drive off a pier. It’s incredibly stupid and sort of makes you feel bad about it, but deep down inside you can’t help being amused. Also, before you go praising its OP, let me just break it for ya: The OP song fucking sucks. The melody is nice but Lia is pretty much singing out of her ass.

Bottom line: This show sucks and if you liked it, I bet you liked bullshit like Index and Railgun. Now get the fuck out of my blog.