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This Week in Anime - Crying With Angel Beats 10 Years Later


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LiteMangime



Joined: 21 Jun 2014
Posts: 350
PostPosted: Tue Dec 17, 2019 2:12 pm Reply with quote
The only thing I'm crying about is that the episode count was cut in half.
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rizuchan
Collector Extraordinaire



Joined: 11 Mar 2007
Posts: 974
Location: Kansas
PostPosted: Tue Dec 17, 2019 2:56 pm Reply with quote
I'm not going to say Angel Beats isn't just a little bit heavy-handed, but at least there's a plot reason why all the characters are so deeply traumatized. The whole reason the afterlife high school exists is for people whose young lives were so deeply traumatic that they never got an authentic, teenage experience. At least there's an excuse for it, unlike Kanon or Clannad where all the teens in a small town high school just coincidentally have extremely traumatic childhoods.
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Megiddo



Joined: 24 Aug 2005
Posts: 8360
Location: IL
PostPosted: Tue Dec 17, 2019 3:07 pm Reply with quote
Wow, no real mention at all of my personal favorite part of Angel Beats, The Angel Player and Yurippe confronting 'God'. Also no real mention of my most hated part of Angel Beats, the damn shadows.

Please give me Second Beat. Or a Track Zero adaptation would be neat too.
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Animegomaniac



Joined: 16 Feb 2012
Posts: 4070
PostPosted: Tue Dec 17, 2019 3:14 pm Reply with quote
Quote:
And yet somehow it works entirely because Maeda has never heard of irony in his life
Then it's funny how much irony exists in Kanon then? It's one of the things that bothers me about Angel Beats, it's so damn literal that there's no nuance. In Kanon, Makoto does what she did just to thank Yuichi knowing what will happen to her... only to lose her memories to the point she only remembers she hates him.

And then there's Ayu and her winged backpack. Does that mean...

... yes, no, neither, spoiler[both]? In turn, yes to all.

Also, Kanon isn't about Yuichi fixing their lives, it's about him fixing his own life through them. Angel Beats is about accepting what happened... for some reason... and moving on... to something....
It's failure? Its plot only makes sense to an outside observer. Not the show's audience, it only makes sense for there to be an outside agency within the show itself that all this is for.
There is a God and he/she is a voyeur. Also, they did all the bad things too so they are also cruel and vicious.
Lovely.
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mgosdin



Joined: 17 Jul 2011
Posts: 1302
Location: Kissimmee, Florida, USA
PostPosted: Tue Dec 17, 2019 3:36 pm Reply with quote
This is where I came in at, in 2010 I was dipping my toe back into Anime & Manga after about 10 years. I flipped on the TV and cruised the On-Demand cable channel, what is this? Angel Beats? Sounds interesting. I hit play and the rest is history.

Nick, Steve, you're only 30 or so? You may not have lived long enough or been unlucky enough to have experienced true tragedy. I'm 61 and what happens in Angle Beats' back stories is mild compared to the real thing, trust me on this.

Mark Gosdin
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wolf10



Joined: 23 Jan 2016
Posts: 898
PostPosted: Tue Dec 17, 2019 4:13 pm Reply with quote
Not a single mention that Angel Beats was also the show that put Seiji Kishi on the map? Combining goofball slapstick with an unfairly convincing emotional core is practically his signature style. (See also: Assassination Classroom, Yuki Yuna is a Hero, etc.)
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Megiddo



Joined: 24 Aug 2005
Posts: 8360
Location: IL
PostPosted: Tue Dec 17, 2019 4:24 pm Reply with quote
wolf10 wrote:
Not a single mention that Angel Beats was also the show that put Seiji Kishi on the map? Combining goofball slapstick with an unfairly convincing emotional core is practically his signature style. (See also: Assassination Classroom, Yuki Yuna is a Hero, etc.)

Seto no Hanayome exemplifies that way more than Angel Beats and also predates it by 2 years.
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Ruddor



Joined: 20 Apr 2016
Posts: 50
PostPosted: Tue Dec 17, 2019 4:43 pm Reply with quote
To me the biggest problem with Angel Beats has always been that Maeda clearly had a ton of ideas and only one cour to work with, and he was determined to use all of them. Unfortunately this led to a lot of tonal whiplash and half-baked ideas. That said, I still like parts of this series and am glad I watched it.

I mean, it could have been worse.
It could have been Charlotte.
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Key
Moderator


Joined: 03 Nov 2003
Posts: 18135
Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley)
PostPosted: Tue Dec 17, 2019 6:16 pm Reply with quote
Angel Beats! was my top title for 2011. (In the pre-everything-streaming era, I did my yearly rankings by English release dates rather than Japanese premiere dayes.) It's a title that I haven't rewatched in many years and so have been meaning to revisit.

I fully agree with Steve about it being the capstone of the Haruhi era, though that is, I think, only clear in retrospect. As someone who first watched the series as it aired, I can also confirm how utterly mind-blowing the revelation of the series' name's true meaning was; those (like me) who were making assumptions based on established patterns from VN adaptations got caught completely off-guard by that twist, which only made the emotional punch harder. (And I'm sure that was the intent.)

Let's also not forget that this was, I believe, the second full production effort for P.A. Works and thus one of the titles (along with Hanasaku Iroha) which established them as a major-name production studio for the 2010s. Also, it has an incredibly funny OVA episode.

If I were to make a list of the top 10 anime titles of the 2010s, Angel Beats! would at least be in the Honorable Mention range.
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dm
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Joined: 24 Sep 2010
Posts: 1346
PostPosted: Tue Dec 17, 2019 6:24 pm Reply with quote
I think the soundtrack, or at least the Girls Dead Monster band's songs, are worth mentioning, too.

I've never thought I was very susceptible to Maeda's heavy-handed melodrama, but I have liked the music from several Key titles.
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FiendHunter



Joined: 02 Dec 2019
Posts: 151
PostPosted: Tue Dec 17, 2019 6:28 pm Reply with quote
The real probelm with Agel Beats! is we're never gonna know the full stories of all the characters, because the rest of the Visual Novels are just never gonna happen. The Last Operation manga is rushing too much imo, so I don't think we'll get to see everone's arc there either.

I still love it.
But I'm so sad about never getting AB Second Beat (and 3rd, 4th, etc....).
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Megiddo



Joined: 24 Aug 2005
Posts: 8360
Location: IL
PostPosted: Tue Dec 17, 2019 7:21 pm Reply with quote
Key wrote:
Let's also not forget that this was, I believe, the second full production effort for P.A. Works and thus one of the titles (along with Hanasaku Iroha) which established them as a major-name production studio for the 2010s.

True Tears was early 2008 and Canaan was summer 2009, so I believe that's the third production.
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Probablytomorrow



Joined: 04 Aug 2019
Posts: 164
PostPosted: Tue Dec 17, 2019 7:46 pm Reply with quote
But how was she waiting for him if he died first?
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dm
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Joined: 24 Sep 2010
Posts: 1346
PostPosted: Tue Dec 17, 2019 7:49 pm Reply with quote
I just refreshed my memory. Yui's hijack of the opening credits in episode four was cute, but it doesn't hold a candle to Chika's ED shimmy in Kaguya-sama.
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Key
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Joined: 03 Nov 2003
Posts: 18135
Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley)
PostPosted: Tue Dec 17, 2019 7:57 pm Reply with quote
Probablytomorrow wrote:
But how was she waiting for him if he died first?

spoiler[The writing implies that his soul may have been adrift for quite some time before making it to the school. Nothing in the series explicitly indicates when the backstories of the characters happened relative to each other.] And that's the aspect of the series which most caught people off guard: that they never considered this as a possibility.
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