Angel Beats! – 01

Let’s play the afterlife.

NOT Kyon and sniping Haruhi

Otonashi woke up in the world of “afterlife”, taking in a form of a high-school. In that world, they can still be hurt physically but they won’t get dead. Instead, they are just reset from normal status. He pretty much learned it after meeting a girl named Haruhi Yuri, and going near her target called “Angel”, killing him. Now he’s persuaded into joining Yuri’s brigade, the SOS SSS, which is a group of students (dead like him) to go against the “Angel”, and the “God” of this afterlife world.

After the much-hyped trailer, it didn’t really disappoint at all. The premise just hooked me up immediately. I love the video game vibe of everything, I gotta say that’s what I find the most interesting. They can die and get revived multiple times when killed physically, but still there’s a God in that world that could erase you there if you didn’t do anything in that world. Everything’s really like a game, completed with NPC’s installed in it.

There’s action, as expected. I laughed at some parts especially the repeated violence and death stuff, because it just seemed Dokuro-chan-ish to me. Not actually loving that, and the whole humor of the show itself but I think it might grown on me, I’m more feelin’ the serious vibes in it.

Pretty concert is pretty

The animation is top-notch. As expected from PA Works, which is definitely one of the studios I’m keeping an eye on for making such shows containing beautiful eye-candy animation. The foreground/character movements might not be that perfect, but the rest is simply great. The concert scene at the end is simply breath-taking.

The pacing is just crazy, we start off in a situation already, then Kyon not Kyon gets killed multiple times, then almost a huge part of the episode was spent on fighting about the name of their Battlefront, which is currently named ‘Like-Hell-I’m-Dead’ Battlefront. And then we’re back to more explaining stuff and the “Angel” girl. It feeds to those which are impatient because it shifts fast from here to there.

…aaaand, he’s still alive.

It’s definitely a thumbs up for me. It’s very interesting that Key’s behind it, because it felt really new from the ones we got used from them (Air, Kanon, Clannad, etc). Looking forward to the next few episodes and let’s see what Key planned in this 13-episode anime.

And on another Spring anime 2010 note, B Gata H Kei is also amusing. But then again that might be because the previous season sucked so much I get pretty overwhelmed, lol. Not quite sure if it’s blogging-worthy though.

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