Angel Beats! (2010)

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Angel Beats! Review

Angel Beats! is a 2010 fantasy action anime series directed by Seiji Kishi. It is one of the most disappointing anime shows I’ve seen thus far.

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“Let me tell you something.

Humans don’t even have the patience to wait even ten minutes for something!“

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It focuses on a boy who dies and he doesn’t remember his previous life in the afterlife and enrolls in the afterlife school and joins the organization that fights against the student council president, a girl with supernatural powers. The genre diversity of the show is its two-edged sword. On the one hand, it is original and sometimes even quite inventive. On the other hand, it creates a jarring shift in tone and it doesn’t balance its different tones and plot points well at all. It is basically a mix between fantasy, action, comedy, drama and even musical. But the problem is that it only succeeds as an action show because the fights are really well executed and as a comedy because some episodes were really funny. But it fails in other areas unfortunately.

The characters are all really underutilized which is a shame as they are actually quite solid on surface. Of course Tenshi is one of the highlights, the protagonist is pretty good himself and the standout has to be Yurippe who is such a highly capable, tough and yet human and really well developed female character. The voice acting is pretty good as well.

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The animation in Angel Beats! isn’t the most memorable, but it is pretty polished and memorable in its surroundings. The world building is actually pretty commendable. But the use of the weapons is so inventive and the sound effects as well as the special effects are some of the highlights here.

But unfortunately, I just never was invested in this anime, rarely actually. The highlight was that action packed episode where they attacked Tenshi and had to go through her traps in order to get to her. That was not only extremely entertaining, but also funny and quite adventurous to be honest. But most of the other episodes are lacking and the ending itself never moved me. I got that it was supposed to be very emotional and even heartbreaking, but because I didn’t connect with the characters and because it felt jarring in tone and way too abrupt, it left me feeling cold. The entire show is very abrupt and packed with too many characters and different plot points. Something different is always happening here and unfortunately not a lot of it is effective or memorable.

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In the end, Angel Beats! disappointed me a lot. I respected its world building, some of the humor, the originality and the diversity of genres, somewhat strong characters and some impressive action scenes, but it is tonally a very uneven anime with jarring shifts in tone, overly emotional but not actually moving finale, rushed pacing and it was just rarely genuinely involving or exciting to watch. It succeeds as an action comedy, but not so much as a fantasy musical and it was overall immensely disappointing.

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Worst Episodes: Change the World and Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.

Best Episodes: Guild and My Song.