Forum - View topicAngel Beats! (TV).
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mjack_15980
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oh thats what i meant prob should said that
would be gewd to eexplain more of how SSS began and more about Yuri and Hinata and the other charas that first joined
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Gatherum
 Posts: 773 Location: Aurora CO |
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I just wanted to drop in here and say that I literally just finished watching this for the first time like five minutes ago, and it is definitely one of the best things I have ever seen.
Reading a little of this thread, it pains me that a show of such quality characters was apparently cut short. Once again, I am in love with Japanese creativity, but detest their business practices. Still, I would never have known that, given the quality. It amazes me that they were able to pack in so many moods and themes into just thirteen episodes without everything falling apart. I'm not going to go into much detail about what I liked or disliked. I loved basically everything about it, right down to the soundtrack, particularly the OP, which is extremely addictive and a cut above most. Though I will say that TK is [expletive] awesome.
Carry on. |
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The Suburban Snob
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Angel Beats is an incredibly popular anime series. And why wouldn’t it be? The animation is beyond top notch, the music is phenomenal, the fictitious band is almost as fun to listen to as the one from Beck: Mongolian Chop Squad, and it’s pretty much mastered the art of producing both laughter and tears from it’s audience. But beyond all the style, flair and ridiculous gags everyone loves, how well does the story itself hold up?
The answer, unfortunately, is not very well. I’ve seen hundreds of anime series over the last fifteen years, and this is the only one I can think of that just got dumber and dumber every time I watched it. There were a few things I noticed the first time I saw it, and some things I noticed over three years of occasional repeated viewings. In fact, my opinion of Angel Beats dropped by so much over time that I wound up selling my copy on Ebay for 19 dollars last month. I wrote a review of this series a while back, but it got universally TLDR’d due to it’s massive length. So I’ve decided to explain my distaste for this show in a much more reader friendly format, by presenting you with the top ten dumbest moments in the series, as ranked according to my opinion of them, as well as the reasons WHY I find them so excruciatingly stupid. So grab a drink, sit back, and prepare to have your fanhood challenged. Honorable mention: The English Dub I am not a fan of Stephen Foster. His work as a dub writer is facetious at best, and the perfect example of his over-the-top dialogue translations can be found with the 2010 anime Highschool of the Dead. He was able to control himself with this project, at least for the most part, but if you know what you’re looking for, you can pretty much recognize his work within the first ten minutes of the show. He took one of the most bad-ass lines of the series out of the series, and among other things, I blame the embarrassing mispronunciation of the word ‘suplex’ entirely on him. I’m only putting this in as an honorable mention because it’s not the anime’s fault that this guy got hired... Sentai’s been giving him a LOT of work lately. And now for the actual list. There be massive spoilers in these here waters. #10: The Post-credits sequence spoiler[ Remember the final non-ova moment of this series, where Otonashi and Kanade cross paths in a new life, and it’s implied that they recognize each other and get back together? That was a real tear-jerker when I first saw it. Unfortunately, the first time I saw it was in 2003, when it was called The Butterfly Effect. Now, I don’t actually know if the scene is a rip-off of the Ashton Kutcher movie’s ending, or if it’s a complete coincidence, or what, but the similarity is striking enough to warrant a low placement on this list.] #9: The Initial Premise spoiler[ The first thing we were told about the universe this story takes place in was that if you take school too seriously, you disappear. And you know what? I am convinced that premise was a complete and utter lie. It was a half-assed red herring, thrown in to help convince us that Kanade was an actual Angel. See, as hard as the story tried to drill the idea into our heads, we never actually saw anybody disappear for that reason, which would suggest the possibility of an outright lie. The lie is confirmed, however, by the fact that Kanade Tachibana, a human, is holding the position of Student Council President.] spoiler[ Now, I’ve never been on any student council, but I was friends with the president in my school. She took school very seriously; She got good grades, attended events, listened to students’ problems... She tried to make our school a better place, despite the fact that our school was a pretty damn decent one already. My point is, even if we can wrap our heads around the idea that a girl with Kanade’s personality was able to successfully campaign in the first place, there’s no way she could be SCP without taking school seriously. What’s really dumb about this is that they never address this lie in the story. The premise is just forgotten by the wayside.] #8: The Steel Door spoiler[ I guess this one’s really more of a nit-pick, but it still bothers me. Not long after the Battlefront gets Kanade fired from Student Council, Naoi... The acting president... Starts causing them all problems on a much larger scale. He locks Otonashi and Kanade up in a room together, leaving a door in place that Kanade’s completely unable to cut through. They have to use their heads to figure out a way out of the situation. Unfortunately for them, I was using my head, too. And I couldn’t stop asking... Why don’t you cut through the wall? It leads right to the hallway. Naoi reinforced the door, not the wall. The way the wall crumbles when the door gets forced open, it’s clearly made of a more normal material, so why not use your hand sonics to carve out a new door?] Like I said, it’s a nitpick. #7: Disappointing Clones spoiler[ After Kanade starts to connect with the Battlefront, she accidentally releases an aggressive clone of herself in a fight with a giant fish. To be clear, the fight with the giant fish is not the issue here. Now, Kanade is a very capable fighter, not only in one-on-one situations, but she’s able to slice up a giant fish who is way thicker than the length of her blade in 3 seconds flat. And the first clone is actually a match for her in combat. So, the clones abduct her, and in order to get past all of them to save her, the Battlefront hatches a plan to attack them one at a time, sacrificing themselves while tackling and pinning them down.] spoiler[ What’s so dumb about this? The fact that it works. These angels are cloned from a capable fighter who’s inhumanly strong, and has special abilities that they’re clearly shown using. Does Distortion protect them from a bunch of teenagers running at them and pouncing on them? Telegraphing their attack from miles away each time? Are they strong enough to shove these kids’ dead bodies off of them? No. They just give up, presumably lying there helplessly, under the weight of one lone teenager each. Eh, maybe they’re following the 1/8th rule? Mini-Me was 1/8th the size of Dr. Evil, so maybe Angel’s clones are all 1/8th the strength and capability of her.] #6: The Graduation Scene spoiler[ Out of the three main endings, one of which I covered earlier, and one of which I’m covering further down, this is the one that had me fooled for the longest. The five most noteworthy characters are the only people left out of the entire battlefront, because everyone else has disappeared... Because not one person in this entire awesome matrix-ey world wants to stay in it, despite the fact that they all just fought for it... And they all decide to hold a graduation ceremony, because none of them have ever graduated. One by one, the three more interesting characters... And yes, I’m including Naoi in that statement, as he’s at least interesting in comparison to our two leads... All decide to say a few last words before they disappear.] spoiler[ And wouldn’t you know it, they spend their last few words talking about what the main characters meant to them. Because that’s the most interesting aspect of their characters. God forbid they spend this time on their personal revelations, oh no, we need some extra gushing about two characters that you’re all better than. Yeah, seeing yuri cry over how mean she was to the Rei Ayanami clone was a damn crying shame. But half of Hinata’s last moment was OTONASHI TALKING FOR HIM. That was just... I... Ugh.] #5: Kanade Tachibana’s Backstory spoiler[ No, it’s not what you think. That’s coming later. What we’re going to focus on now isn’t what we did learn about Kanade’s former life, but what we didn’t learn. Namely, everything else. How did she know how to build a working computer that can alter her body? How did she die? What kind of life did she lead? Going beyond that, how did she learn how to help people cross over? How did she even learn that people were crossing over in the first place? Why did she take it upon herself to do so? Why did she never just explain herself to Yurippe?] spoiler[ Speaking of Yurippe, we get a LOT more backstory on her. It’s fairly obvious that she should have been the central character of this anime right from the beginning. She’s likeable, she has a compelling character arc, she takes an active role in moving the plot forward, and although let’s be honest here, she’s pretty damn hot. She takes up more than half of the space on the DVD cover art, for crying out loud! But even with this in mind, it doesn’t change the fact that Kanade is the titular character. It’s called Angel Beats, not Yuri Beats... Which is a show I would totally watch. In an anime called Angel Beats, I’d like to get a little more information about the angel in question.] #4: Otonashi’s backstory. spoiler[ Several characters in this show have backstories, and most of them are really good. For some examples, Yuri’s explains her maternal nature and hatred for god, Yui’s explains why she’s so energetic and hyper, and after an entire series of saying he’s not gay, Hinata’s backstory proves this claim by showing us how bad of a catcher he is.] spoiler[ But the most important backstory, arguably, is Otonashi’s. His little sister was dying of an unknown disease... Which means she may have had the same disease that Danny Tanner’s wife had... and the doctors won’t let her leave her cold and lonely hospital room. so what does Otonashi do? He breaks into the hospital, takes her out, and takes her out to see the cherry blossoms so they can have one last night together.] spoiler[ Let me say that less romantically: He breaks into a hospital, abducts a terminally ill patient, exposes her to the cold air, and when she dies on his back, he continues to walk around talking to a fresh corpse in public. Yeah, remember that line, ‘the conversation soon became one-sided?’ since we never see how she died, and this scene is supposed to be an important one, that line carries some pretty dark implications.] spoiler[ You could argue that it was better for her to die now in her brother’s arms than later all alone in a hospital bed, and yeah, there’s some merit to that, but good luck convincing the cops of it when they get their hands on the hospital’s security footage. Med school? More like prison.] #3: Meet the maker spoiler[ There are a lot of really dumb moments ion this series, but this is the only one I can think of that was actually insulting. That’s the main reason the character it revolves around... I call him The Maker... wound up on my top ten least favorite characters list. Let’s talk about why.] spoiler[ In the latter half of the series, a bunch of shadowy creatures begin to show up from out of nowhere, and turn someone into an NPC(He gets better). So the Battlefront battles them, and Yurippe follows a trail of clues down into the old guild. She eventually finds a new character down there. His name is never revealed, but he could best be described as a random exposition dump with a partially obscured face who’s surrounded by stolen computers. which makes sense, because it’s not like he can just build computers out of dirt. She asks him several questions about the environment... Questions that we all wanted answered... And he gives us a giant middle finger in the form of noncommittal bull shit answers.] spoiler[ “Why was this world created?” “It was like this when I got here.” “Where did the shadows come from?” “The power of love.” “How does everybody know Charles Foster Kane’s last words if he died alone?” “He tweeted it.” “If the park’s dinosaurs were made from fossilized mosquitoes, then where did the plants come from?” “Your mother’s bush.” “Did any thought go into this story at all?” “Go fudge yourself. Become god... And by that I mean write your own damn story.” It really feels like the creators of the show wrote this scene with the intention of pissing off any viewers who had the brains to ask questions. It’s aggressively stupid, and maybe even intentionally so.] #2: Big plot twist. spoiler[ You all knew this was coming. When people start to notice the flaws in Angel Beats, this is the first one they recognize. That’s not to say everybody notices it, and it’s pretty sad when someone doesn’t, because it’s even more obvious than the famous plot holes I referenced in #3.] spoiler[ Okay, so, after mercy-killing his sister and getting away with it, Otonashi decides to go to med school to become a doctor... Presumably of the Kavorkian variety. His bus crashes, and he winds up brain-dead with an organ donor card. Cut to purgatory. After he and Angel are the only people left in the world, he confesses his love to her, and she reveals that her life was saved by the donor heart he gave her. She then thanks him, disappears, and everyone cries. Now, basing a story on the presumption that a person’s memories are literally stored in their heart is already pretty damn stupid. But if you’re a really careful viewer... Or were at least born with eyes in your head... you’ll notice that Angel was already in this world when Otonashi arrived. In fact, it’s implied that she established herself and her goals well before he arrived. His death saved her life, and yet she died before he did. Let that sink in for a moment. I can wait.] #1: The Hallway Scene spoiler[ Okay, if that colossal screw-up was #2, then #1 must be even worse. It would have to cross the borders of dumb and waltz right into the territory of explosively stupid. Stupid enough to actually hurt some of the better moments of the series. And I don’t intend to disappoint.] spoiler[ It’s a small scene, and for most people, it passes by without earning any special attention. After Otonashi’s plan to help people cross over is aired to the public, and he walks out of the Battlefront office, he’s confronted in the hallway by about fifty people. You can only see the faces of three of them, the remaining members of GirlsDeMo. They have a small chat, and since they know that Otonashi and the other leads have the situation under control, they all cross over at the same time.] spoiler[ Now, there are several points I’d like to bring up about this. First of all, the surviving premise of the show is that people have to overcome their unfinished business to cross over. So how the hell did they all cross over at the same time? For each individual person, what was their unfinished business? The only way this makes any sense is if they all died while trying to come to terms with the fact that they were pointless stock characters. “Yeah, the audience doesn’t know any of our names, so we’re just going to leave now and save the writers any more trouble. We all feel at peace with that.”] spoiler[ You know what? The very fact that a character can cross over just by choosing to do so isn’t just stupid, it’s destructive to the anime. Remember episodes three and ten? Those were the strongest episodes of the entire series. They were well written, well paced, very well acted in both dubs, and touching to boot. But now that we know how easy it is to cross over, these episodes are rendered entirely pointless. We wasted all of that time on Yui when she could have just waited two episodes and disappeared without having to resolve a damn thing.] spoiler[ And speaking of entirely pointless, if it’s that easy to just cross over, why doesn’t everyone do it? Because the world’s under attack? You’re not even going to stay in this world, so why save it? Dr. Manhattan brought up a damn good point... Why save a world you have no stake in? Screw the shadows, screw the Maker, just leave already! You lose absolutely nothing by doing so! Well, you lose the chance to spend the rest of your life in the world’s only fully-immersive sandbox game, but that really doesn’t seem to dissuade anyone anyway, so whatever.] spoiler[ And we’re not even done here. Let me ask you this. If it’s so easy to overcome your tragedies and your traumas and your unfinished business that you can just choose to do so, why the hell were any of the characters even brought here in the first place? Yes, this scene is so dumb that it completely dismantles not only both premises of the show, but the entire gorram plot of the show!] And that’s my list. The top ten reasons, and yet surprisingly not the only reasons, that I wound up wising up and abandoning this show. If I’ve opened your eyes, great. If you think I’m an asshole for overanalyzing a series and raining on everyone else’s parade, great. Defend the show, assail the show, either way, thank you for reading my work, and I look forward to reading your responses! [EDIT: Did you the *tremendous* courtesy of spoiler-tagging all of your comments so as to not ruin the show for many other people who might have yet to finish the show. -TK] |
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Key
Moderator
 Posts: 18185 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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First off, Suburbab Snob, there was no reason for this to exist as a separate thread when we have an established series thread for this series. That's why it got merged into that one, so please keep that in mind should you wish to make this kind of commentary on any future series.
Second, if your review of the series got TLDR'd then you can expect a lot of such reactions for this post, too, as you're rambling at various points. Concerning your actual points (and I'm doing this briefly because I don't have a lot of free time today): #10 is a personal beef. Never seen anyone else have this particular problem with the series. So what if it does something similar there to what's been done somewhere else? #9 is easily explainable and has been talked about. Her circumstances are different because, unlike everyone else, she's not there for being unfulfilled in/disappointed with life. She's basically there by choice. #8 is an extreme personal nitpick. Logical bits like this fly under the radar all the time in anime and live-action content. #7 can be attributable to dramatic (and in some cases comedic) effect. Gotta go with the flow on some of this stuff! On #6, you're making some false assumptions and missing or ignoring symbolic value (and there's a lot of it in that scene). Otherwise sounds like a personal beef because the latter part of it is a unique complaint. On #5, the explanation is very simple: revealing anything about her backstory would have given too strong a hint about the big final plot twist. I definitely prefer it the way that they did it. #4 can be chalked up to ignoring practicalities for dramatic effect. Done all the time in anime and live action content, so AB is far from the only offender here. #3 is a commonly complained-about problem with no satisfactory explanation. #2 has been extensively discussed and satisfactorily explained: Nothing in the series ever indicates that spoiler[ the inhabitants of this afterlife go there immediately after death. In fact, none of the backstory flashes ever gave a clear sense of when they happened, and there are only one or two characters that we even specifically know died as teenagers; many of them could well have died as adults and are appearing here in teenage form because the peculiar nature of the setting requires it. Thus it is entirely feasible that Otonashi's soul was wandering for quite a long time (decades, even, since Kanade is implied to have lived for quite a while with her replacement heart) before winding up in this setting, presumably because he was subconsciously drawn here by Kanade's presence.] #1 is something that people have discussed and complained about extensively and thus is a legitimate flaw, though not a huge one. It was likely handled that way because the time constraints placed on the series by it being boxed into only 13 regular episodes required some kind of big shortcut like this. |
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Sohma_Curse
 Posts: 512 Location: New York |
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It is referenced several times throughout the series that spoiler[ Danny Tanner's wife was killed by a drunk driver.] For someone with such an apparent attention to detail, one would think you'd know that (then again, the majority of your 'points' about Angel Beats are just opinions which are largely based on incorrect assumptions and/or personal gripes that aren't the glaring plot holes and detrimental flaws in logic that you think they are). It's okay if the show didn't strike a chord with you, but it's almost as if you're struggling to create reasons to justify why you didn't like it (and why others shouldn't either). If you didn't like it and so many other people did, then so what? You don't need a list of insanely nit-picky reasons why. |
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Animegomaniac
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Not well at all, seeing how it's supposed to take to the viewer on an emotional level rather than a logical one? The biggest problem is one you somehow failed to mention; what's the point of experiencing a purgatory after a short and meaningless life {who judges these things anyway? And good thing they're almost all Japanese or it could have gotten ... interesting} if you don't remember any of it after reincarnated? It's like having a bonus stage in a video game after the very final "Game Over". Or "We apologize for any inconvenience. Please wait here while we reinstate your existence." No, they didn't get a real message, just the gist of it. Or "If you'd like to make a call, please {get over your} hang up and try again." Again, merely a whiff of an outside explanation. I mean sure, in a meaningless life, it's quality personal service in any possible afterlife that means the most. This makes no sense as to what happens in Angel Beats but I think it's the point of the series somehow. Why someone would try to frame it as an ontological mystery is still a further question. It was entertaining which I can't say for the similarly themed Ano Hana. At least Angel Beats had enough sense to have some fun stuff before all the oddly placed angst set in, best done in Yui's episode which covered the whole theme of the series in twenty minutes. In fact, skip the series and just watch that 13 times. You'd get the intended "warm fuzzies" with a lot less plot induced stupidity/inanity. |
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Sohma_Curse
Posts: 512 Location: New York |
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Again, though, this is just an assumption you're making. Nowhere in the show do they explicitly state what someone does and doesn't recall upon reincarnation, so it's entirely possible that you are instilled with a sort of subconscious memory of your previous life and your time in purgatory. It doesn't specifically allow you to recall every little detail, but instead maybe it realigns your moral compass and gives you faint, 'deja vu-like' moments where you can almost remember experiencing things in a previous life/plane of existence (which the very end of the show even sort of hints towards when Kanade and Otonashi pass by each other and stop in their tracks). |
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Animegomaniac
Posts: 4080 |
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Because we all know how much experience a fetus has?
Perhaps I should say you're making the assumption they didn't make any connections worth remembering in their actual life but everyone's just so "special" but didn't get a chance to "shine" because of a cruel and uncaring universe... Yuck, tasteless tripe worthy of Capra. And I've said it before {not here, maybe} but that scene is strictly for the audience's satisfaction as it doesn't make any sense on any other level beyond an emotional one. And it doesn't even work that well there because those two had such little chemistry in the series proper. |
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GDFan
 Posts: 254 Location: North of Boston |
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The Suburban Snob's post is full of specific plot details, including ending spoilers, but has zero spoiler tags.
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Tony K.
 SubscriberModerator  Posts: 11295 Location: Frisco, TX |
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Fixed.
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GDFan
Posts: 254 Location: North of Boston |
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Wow, that was way too much work for one post by a really careless user. I would have just deleted it. I know it's only one rule, but to break it SO MANY TIMES, they shouldn't be posting anything here. Not like that, anyway. Nice job! Thanks a bunch.
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MaxSouth
Posts: 1363 |
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Analysis of the project:
Concept/story: 1) The concept is sloppy and makes no sense even under very moderate critical thinking; 2) Is "girls with guns" subgenre an excuse to make things so horrible? Do authors think that having a female lead with a gun in such "quality" of setting and story will be empowering to female audience? If anything, it is an insult to women; 3) incredibly stupid fights -- group just gathers in open space, wastes time on stupid talks, and spoiler[waits for enemy girl to activate her distortion shield so their attacks would be useless and anime would not end right away. And the attackers know that the girl has this shield, hence the attempt is useless anyway]. So their whole war club is idiotic nonsense -- authors are lazy/stupid, and quality of their "work" is insulting to viewers; 4) spoiler[Everyone there is immortal, let alone Angel herself. So whole idea of hunting her down is idiotic. Besides, there is no point: even when Angel freely approaches to someone and hits it with her sword -- like she did with main hero lad in the beginning -- nothing bad happens. No different from any other death that they can routinely experience and recover from in this world. There is no need for this stupid war;] 5) it is stupid that spoiler[Angel switches off her shield -- only to get action more dramatical with her being shot in the leg;] 6) No, you do not throw away your gun just because you decide to switch to near-range knife attack; 7) main war girl's story was so ridiculously overboard that it was laughable. No, she was not hit by car, she did not fell from the stairs or something. spoiler[There were robbers that tried to rob house without knowing what is in there beforehand (almost never happens), and they went there without making sure that no one is there (almost never happens, unless it robber is sole desperate druggie, and this is not the case here). They did not find anything pricey in this home, but instead of moving to rob another home, they just forced little girl to find something "valuable" without explaining what they mean by it (never happens as robbers are capable to explain that they need "money and jewellery"), and they blackmailed little girl to find it soon enough because they will be killing of her siblings -- not one, not even two -- three of them. While searching for "valuable" things, she has broke a vase, it tiny cut caused blood to flow profusely over her hand;] 8) spoiler[Underground plant: of course, it is immediately obvious that such thing could not exist without Angel knowing about, it is God's world, and, after all, Angel is God's Angel. Besides, for it to operate, massive supply from outside is needed, and noises such plant produces are easily trackable on the outside via even simplest geological instruments -- so even if Angel initially did not know about this plant, she would not know very soon. Finally, the traps are, of course, blatantly incapable to prevent Angel from coming down and destroy the plant -- long before main hero lad has appeared. And moving/rebuilding this plant would also make no sense since Angel would easily detect such activity and come before anything would be done.] So this part of concept/setting/story is just another nonsense; 9) spoiler[The idea that you can recreate things even from a mud just by knowing what they are, but somehow this only applied to plant, and not weapons themselves, is ridiculous. There is no need for a plant in the first place. You just make any kind of guns from the mud right away;] 10) spoiler[with all of the magic of Angel, she would have caught/murdered all of the "rebels" long ago, if she would want that;] 11) main lad's story an example how this anime goes overboard with cheap, tear-gas melodrama that always goes to ridiculous degrees spoiler[(like with train in tunnel that was blocked from both (!) ways for 7 (!) days without help coming], which is not really believable; 12) spoiler[the story how main lad decided to donate his organs for transplantation is just en empty emotional pron because after damage in the crash and seven days of hunger and dehydration there is no use for them, those organs are damaged and full of toxins already. Organs only used from fresh crashes and they have to be in perfect condition]; 13) as it turned out, spoiler[the human that got main lad's heart has died anyway], so everything was useless; 14) whole gang was stupid to fight spoiler[Angel] without finding out her motives; 15) the fact that main lad fell for spoiler[Angel] who is prepubescent girl is super creepy. Visuals: 1) bland visual character design; 2) solid, but not advanced quality of animation; Music/sound: 1) some good songs in this. Resume: This project is one of the types that is poorly-though-out overhyped emotional pron. That said, this anime overall deserves between "Decent" and "Good" rating, closing to the latter. Also, the project was moderately interesting to watch, and it was not totally stupid. [Edit]: added spoilers and removed snark. Trash the show as much as you like but please don't trash people who like the show. Errinundra. |
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BodaciousSpacePirate
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With regards to the "it doesn't make any sense" argument:
Angel Beats! is nowhere near my favorite show, but my favorite shows are all about pre-op transgender skywriters getting into arguments with their mechanics about whether their airplanes were made by God, or tiny Japanese villages where everyone is an alcoholic diplomat from outer space, or talking bears who will never back down on love (growl). No one wants to watch those shows; they want to watch "normal" shows about girls with guns, voice activated force shields, and trap-filled dungeons. They want to watch shows where its okay to laugh when people get shot, because they get shot in funny ways. Angel Beats! has all that stuff, so people expect it to be "normal." Angel Beats! is also the kind of show where girls use music to escape the cruel hardships of life. Where children with horrible injuries feel guilty for burdening their caregivers. Where the ability to walk is not taken for granted, and the difference between the path of good and the path of evil is literally a simple act of human kindness. It's a show where you don't know why that one guy can only speak English (but not very well) or why that one girl is a ninja (but not a very good one). Where one guy goes off to train in the mountains for a while, and they never explain why that's allowed... I mean, why don't they all leave? spoiler[In order to move on, he needed to accept his own appearance, without worrying about how others viewed him.] It's a show where nothing really makes sense when you think about it, and you don't know why you're crying so much. Angel Beats! is not a show that needs to "make sense" to be good. It is not a show that particularly values telling a coherent story over conveying emotional and symbolic meaning from its author to its viewers. Ultimately, its biggest problem is that a lot of viewers going into the show expecting a logical story, and the show never corrects that preconception. What I like about Angel Beats! is that it shares a lot of elements with my favorite shows: the magical realism, the focus on emotional storytelling over logical storytelling, the lack of one "right" way to interpret the show. I'm less thrilled by how all of those uncommon elements seem like they've been hidden within a much more common, marketable show: a combination of the "we're a bunch of regular kids who get trapped somewhere and now we have to fight" stories, visual novel-style character interactions, wacky gunplay, and after-school club drama. All popular types of stories, no doubt, but not ones I'm interested in. However, I can completely understand why people who are interested in those types of stories would greatly enjoy this series, and I completely understand why it would be one of their favorites. Also, while I'm here,
I get what you mean in theory, because I feel the same about a lot of shows, but the main character of Angel Beats is a dude. I mean, it's a Jun Maeda story... was what I was going to type, but then I remembered that he wrote Hibiki's Magic. 
Out of curiosity, who do you think is the protagonist?
I googled this, because it sounded wrong. She's 16 when spoiler[she dies]. That's at most 2 years younger than the main character. Edit: sigh, somehow I left out my closing paragraph. |
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Key
Moderator
Posts: 18185 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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Quite frankly, MaxSouth, a lot of your complaints are as ridiculous as you accuse the show of being. Since I have limited time today, I am only going to address a couple:
This is the one complaint that you made that I find legitimate. That sequence does go way over-the-top.
spoiler[Angel isn't "God's Angel;" in fact, she's 's only called that because that's what the Battlefront has deemed her to be. The series eventually makes this pretty clear. Also, the plant was necessary because you can't just wishfully create something from mud in the setting; you have to know how it all goes together. Having the plant streamlines the process immensely. (This is also explained in the series.) And the traps were never meant to completely stop Angel; just slow her down long enough for people to react. (Pretty sure this was also explicitly explained.]
Not at all; spoiler[she survived for some length of time (the series is vague on this) because of his heart, time that she wouldn't have had otherwise.]
Nope, because they assumed all along that she was just an NPC and thus didn't have any motives beyond the role that she was playing. Otonashi only started to suspect to the contrary by carefully watching and then conversing with her.
She's a high school student, and high school students with builds like hers are hardly unusual in anime (hell, you can see girls like that IRL), so I don't know where you're getting this from. |
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MaxSouth
Posts: 1363 |
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I was writing my points along the with watching anime, so they dissect what is happening from the time line of the moment in regards what heroes knew/thought about things to that point of the story.
As to falling in love with Angel, I had no idea that she was supposed to be 16 years old. However, it does not make me feel easer in terms of how creepy the love interest is as she was, apparently, intentionally depicted to be prepubescent for the sake of certain audience, which are not young girls at all. (Or she had serious medical condition that have prevented her from growing and/or sexually maturing, but this is not the case here.) Overall, there are some good ideas in this show, especially for young (mostly female) audience -- for example, they can better understand psychology behind some decisions and behaviour patterns of their friends, this show is good at that. Unfortunately, the rendition quality is too sloppy for my taste. Authors should take good effort to make settings and events consistent and making sense though out. |
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