Hey folks, I've stuck around the anime threads a bit but never offered any big posts about shows, figured I'd throw something in just having gotten through Angel Beats.
Angel Beats [Full Series]
Got recommended this series by a friend after watching Clannad (which is a whole other deal entirely). Thought the premise was really interesting and it wasn't super long, so I decided to go and check it out.
The premise is definitely really cool, and lets the show be about what is more or less high school life while A) Having badass fight scenes and B) Actually deal with serious topics of death, loss, and moving on. On top of that, they actually make pretty good use of the premise too. The characters are pretty likable, most of them are fairly deep, and the show injects just enough darkness into their stories to have some real power behind their decision to "Fight god".
The other thing besides the premise is how the show is legitimately sad sometimes, and not in a way that feels manipulative. the back stories are all relatable and nothing is too ridiculous to not be able to empathize with. Otanashi's flashback of the train tunnel is impeccably well done, and there isn't a bit of the supernatural or forced emotion to try and drive home the gravity or power of that whole sequence.
The character relationships weren't half bad either. Otanashi's friendships with Yuri, Hinata, and Tachibana felt fairly organic, as did Yuri's sense of care for her class, and the general sense of camaraderie between the SSS members too. It made the final graduation all the more somber but helped to drive home that it was a happy goodbye.
The only main issue I had with the character relationships was that I felt Otanashi and Tachibana weren't as portrayed to be as close as their last few scenes made it out to be.
To round out the issues I had, I also felt that while the second to last episode's big bad gave a proper method to finalize an end to the hostilities, the whole reasoning behind shadows was explained in a disjointed way and felt a tiny bit tacked on, though in the grand scheme of things it helped the story get to the events of the last episode, so I can more or less forgive it for that.
All in all, the show was a short, well done story about having unfair circumstances and being able to make peace with them, on top of understanding that sometimes change needs to happen, even at the expense of having to say goodbye to people you care about. I thought it was a pretty great show.
