User blog:LaviBookman/An Honest Review of Angel Beats!

A friend recommended this show to me, so I thought "why not?" I had a Crunchy Roll guest pass to take advantage of and the series is short enough to sit through everything (12-13 episodes). I haven't seen many varieties of anime series, but this has to be the most depressing anime I've ever seen. I will be enough of a man to admit it: I cried. Multiple times. On consecutive episodes. Especially at the end. No anime series before Angel Beats! had me in tears this much. I actually had to avoid eye contact with my family at dinnertime because I felt embarrassed that my eyes were going bloodshot by the tears.

The story takes place in the afterlife and all of the characters you meet have some story to tell of their lives before death. They are not just any sort of stories: they are all stories that result in the feeling of an unsatisfying life, resulting from events that were out of the characters' control. These stories do a great job of staying away from the SOB story mentality (though one felt more like one than others). My childhood was not perfect or as dramatically saddening as the characters in the story, but the portrayal of the stories those characters had felt real enough for me to grow attached to them. I'll talk about my own attachments to the show later on in this blog.

Angel Beats! does mix in a lot of different stuff: there's action, a little romance, lots of comedy, and the drama that brought me to tears. I've looked at some other reviews before writing this, and I can't deny that the show sometimes feels like it is trying to please too large a crowd and not entirely focused on pleasing a specific one. But I appreciated what the show had to offer: it had enough of each to keep me in my seat and eager for more. The comedy can be extravagant at times, though this anime is one of the few that actual explains why the characters magically come out okay after a gruesome but comedic injury. It is impossible to die in the afterlife, so wounds are eventually healed.

Personally, I felt the most for the guitarist Iwasawa, who had the least amount of screentime out of all characters who tell the story of their lives. Her story felt like an alternate reality of mine, but with an end that I couldn't help but feel really bad for. I argued with my parents frequently, despite knowing that I will end up losing in the end (Asian family - got to love the way they handle kids). Before I was in high school and started wising up enough to balance my own rebellious attitude and compliance with my parents, I felt that life was not fair to me. I thought that my older sister, who had better grades than I did, was getting special treatment and that my parents were expecting me to perform as well in school as she is. Iwasawa was a single child in her family, but her parents argued with each other all the time, leaving her to sit in her room and be forced to listen to it.

We both found our escape from the pain in music. I can recall several instances where I felt broken after an argument I had with my dad and let that emotion pour out through my piano. Iwasawa taught herself guitar and planned on entering the music industry, but she suffered from a cerebral contusion after trying to stop one of her parents' fights and was rendered completely paralyzed for the rest of her life: she was not even capable of talking, let alone sing. I felt hurt that Iwasawa's dreams of becoming a musician were crushed by an act of good will, being into music myself.

Overall, Angel Beats! is a well crafted story that has something to offer for everyone. I personally feel that this kind of story deserves to be be more timeless than the anime giants - Naruto, Bleach, etc. It's certainly one that I will feel comfortable recommending to anyone. In fact, you should watch Angel Beats! I can't imagine anyone being sorely disappointed by this show.