Angel Beats - 12-End
Sorry kiribread, but I've got to say I sadly didn't find this show enjoyable. Compared to other shows, Angel Beats managed to neither flesh out a large cast (like Baccano) nor a reduced group of characters (like say, Maiden of Dusk). Most of the cast barely mattered and got no development, and it felt awful to have most of them pass on while the audience wasn't even looking and not even getting to know their stories. Of all people, Yui was the worst character to focus on for a whole episode because it felt like it was only done to try and make me cry, but it failed miserably because her character was so annoying and obnoxious before that suddenly trying to make me sympathize with her by showing just how much of an unfair life she had just wasn't going to work.
Even if we focus on Otonashi, Kanade and Yuri, they had little to no development outside of sorting their issues out in the most ham-fisted and emotive way possible, which again didn't click at all for me. Kanade was the worst, since she almost stopped talking entirely during the final episodes and we never even got to listen to her story besides that line at the end, which was weird as hell since it seemed like she had been around for far longer than Otonashi, and yet he had died before her. Then the post-credits scene shows they reincarnated and got to meet again, but the show didn't even have to make them look exactly the same as they did on their past lives to make us realize that it was them.
If Maeda's intent was for me to care about Otonashi and Kanade's blooming relationship, then I'd say he most certainly failed. Neither of them progressed enough as characters during the series, and all the show did to make me sympathize with them was repeatedly put them in ham-fisted dramatic situations that'd just get happily solved in the end, much like Symphogear. By the end only a handful of characters managed to get any development, and most of the time it was limited to little more than seeing how miserable their lives used to be. The bitterness of Otonashi and company having to say goodbye to their friends and comrades was even robbed from us as several of them just vanished while Yuri was recovering after shooting at lots and lots of computer monitors because that's the way you make them stop working (I guess it might've worked if they were iMacs... but they weren't). Like, the guy who kept a picture of Yuri (I think it was the axe guy) vanished before he ever did anything except being angry and violent all the time.
The whole thing about them being in some sort of purgatory was really obvious since the start, but it was still weird since it always seemed like it was just part of a computer system rather than something physical. The final scenes also made me think that the show would end as a closed time loop, with Otonashi staying behind to help others, creating the Angel System and ultimately turning himself into an NPC to cope with Kanade's disappearance, but then again that'd probably have been a bit too bitter an ending.
Sorry kiribread, but I've got to say I sadly didn't find this show enjoyable. Compared to other shows, Angel Beats managed to neither flesh out a large cast (like Baccano) nor a reduced group of characters (like say, Maiden of Dusk). Most of the cast barely mattered and got no development, and it felt awful to have most of them pass on while the audience wasn't even looking and not even getting to know their stories. Of all people, Yui was the worst character to focus on for a whole episode because it felt like it was only done to try and make me cry, but it failed miserably because her character was so annoying and obnoxious before that suddenly trying to make me sympathize with her by showing just how much of an unfair life she had just wasn't going to work.
Even if we focus on Otonashi, Kanade and Yuri, they had little to no development outside of sorting their issues out in the most ham-fisted and emotive way possible, which again didn't click at all for me. Kanade was the worst, since she almost stopped talking entirely during the final episodes and we never even got to listen to her story besides that line at the end, which was weird as hell since it seemed like she had been around for far longer than Otonashi, and yet he had died before her. Then the post-credits scene shows they reincarnated and got to meet again, but the show didn't even have to make them look exactly the same as they did on their past lives to make us realize that it was them.
If Maeda's intent was for me to care about Otonashi and Kanade's blooming relationship, then I'd say he most certainly failed. Neither of them progressed enough as characters during the series, and all the show did to make me sympathize with them was repeatedly put them in ham-fisted dramatic situations that'd just get happily solved in the end, much like Symphogear. By the end only a handful of characters managed to get any development, and most of the time it was limited to little more than seeing how miserable their lives used to be. The bitterness of Otonashi and company having to say goodbye to their friends and comrades was even robbed from us as several of them just vanished while Yuri was recovering after shooting at lots and lots of computer monitors because that's the way you make them stop working (I guess it might've worked if they were iMacs... but they weren't). Like, the guy who kept a picture of Yuri (I think it was the axe guy) vanished before he ever did anything except being angry and violent all the time.
The whole thing about them being in some sort of purgatory was really obvious since the start, but it was still weird since it always seemed like it was just part of a computer system rather than something physical. The final scenes also made me think that the show would end as a closed time loop, with Otonashi staying behind to help others, creating the Angel System and ultimately turning himself into an NPC to cope with Kanade's disappearance, but then again that'd probably have been a bit too bitter an ending.
