エンジェルビーツ！(Angel Beats!) is a multimedia franchise that started with an Anime created by P.A. Works together with Key. The anime was quickly followed by a prequel Light Novel (later adapted into a manga) and a few Manga spin-offs. One of which is currently continuing!

Key then released a Visual Novel of Angel Beats! It was the first part of six…and then development was stalled due to the bad health of the writer. Despite recovering, the remaining parts were effectively cancelled…and the remains of the concepts were organized into a manga…which then also stalled.^A)1)

Very broadly, Angel Beats! is about a guy, Otonashi,^B) who finds himself in an afterlife with amnesia. Otonasi meets a super pretty girl, Yurippe, with a sniper rifle pointed at another girl. Yurippe calls this other girl Tenshi – Angel. Otonashi concludes that Yuri is crazy, so he approaches Tenshi. After a brief discussion, she stabs him. Following that, Otonashi joins Yuri’s rebellious organization: The Shinda Sekai Sensen (Afterlife Battlefront).

Their goal is to beat up God, who they blame for the suffering they experienced in life.

The anime is where it started and…it’s pretty good.

That said, it becomes fairly obvious that the story is compressed. This seems to be a trend with the stuff Key is involved in. I’m not saying this just because I ‘sensed’ it though, but because I read somewhere that the original plan was to have twice as many episodes, but this was reduced down to 13.

On re-watches it becomes more obvious that there just wasn’t a lot of time to develop stuff as much as they wanted to. At least the extended material helps alleviate that somewhat.

Though I think that the ending hits, I feel it was rushed. The most reasonable way to alleviate this may have been to just exclude the Tenshi clone arc, as that takes up some pretty valuable time that could have been spent more on the following arc plus the ending.

Now…let’s compare it to Little Busters!. Why? Because I noticed the structure is a little similar, but I think Angel Beats! comes out on top.

Basically, Little Busters! starts out fairly light-hearted and comedic. More focused on slice-of-life. Unlike the VN though (at least that I’ve heard), it does jump into the more tragic and serious stuff fairly fast.

Angel Beats! does something a little different…at least I think so. In Angel Beats! the comedy and drama is interspersed together. I’m guessing it’s like this due to the limited number of episodes they had, which forced them to adjust.

However…I think this actually works to Angel Beats!’ benefit. In Little Busters!, the structure becomes fairly predictable. In Angel Beats!, the structure isn’t as rigid. That means that it’s not always easy to see where it’s going.

The one issue I’ll highlight is that, in the case of Yurippe, there may not be enough prior development with her to make her backstory hit. In Little Busters! you usually receive that character arc after having seen the characters interacting with each-other, familiarizing yourself with them and becoming friendly. Well, except for Mio, where all of her fun character stuff happens after her route. Another problem might be Yui and Hinata, where the two of them don’t have enough positive interactions for the relationship to make a lot of sense.^D)

There is something else I’d like to highlight about Angel Beats!, which makes it extremely good: the fact it’s the afterlife and nobody ages.

Angel Beats!’ setting is probably the best part of the entire franchise, as it allows the story to be infinitely expandable. What helps it is the fact the anime doesn’t keep track of days.

Not only that, but the characters can make literally whatever they want at any time. So the setting also allows them to build new things instead of stagnating. I’ll be explaining that stuff in greater detail later.

I also think that this might mess with the intended theme of Angel Beats!, because there are so many interesting characters and infinite room for expansion…it conflicts a little with the theme of moving on.

In terms of art, music and animation…I thought Angel Beats! was pretty alright. I quite like the art…though I think the animation was iffy sometimes.

Music? Very good. Full stop.

Chapters 1-70 focus on the formation of the Shinda Sekai Sensen, taking place over the course of the first year or so. But after that, time is compressed a bit, since the focus shifts from “how the Battlefront started” to “this is where the last few GlDeMo members came from”. I should note I originally made a mistake in my original review, because I said that decades pass between chapters. This actually isn’t known for sure. It’s only really clear that 5 or 6 years passed between Irie’s appearance and Sekine’s appearance. Then Hinata thinks to himself that many decades have passed since they started.

I should also note that I think the story’s quality declines after Chapter 70. Not sharply, but noticeably. The ending is also very abrupt…probably because that is meant to lead into the anime.

There are some oddities here: early on, Hinata is the protagonist of the manga. But focus eventually shifts away from him, until he’s mostly a side-character. I found this a bit odd, though it’s not super noticeable. Hinata as a protagonist is pretty interesting and I’d like to see him as the protagonist of other stuff.

Another oddity is that the early part of the manga hints at a possible romantic relationship between Hinata and Yurippe. This hinting continues for quite a while, actually, though it’s forgotten about at some point after focus shifts away from Hinata. They try to recontextualize this as being platonic…or like a sibling thing, but that comes off as kinda forced.

Directly related to that is the relationship between Hisako and Iwasawa, where it feels like the writer was hinting (subtly and not-so-subtly) at a one-way romantic interest on Hisako’s part towards Iwasawa. Iwasawa is incredibly dense, of course, so she doesn’t notice. This is also denied by Hisako, but it’s not super clear.^E) I think you could read it as either romantic or platonic, and I personally lean towards it just being a strong platonic relationship. There are those who will passionately disagree with me of course, but I feel that if you read the whole thing, you’ll see plenty of interactions which suggest it doesn’t go that much deeper.^F)

But…yeah, the time compression that happens near the end is still pretty bad, though I understand the logic behind it now. It’s kinda difficult to extend the length of the manga further to cover the stuff the Battlefront does.

Some suggestions on my part would have been to end it on a final story arc (not just Operation: Tornado) where they deal with some minor issue. Or seeing how exactly they recruit other members…or what other organizations exist within the Battlefront. In the anime (and the VN too, to be honest) we only really see three: the Operations Team, the Diversionary Team (GlDeMo) and the Guild. But there are way more members in the anime than what we see, right? What are they up to? How were they recruited? How do they communicate with the Operations Team?

It manages to achieve exactly what I had always wanted from visual novels and games, while surpassing my expectations a little. Actually, I feel sad that I didn’t try to play it before I did.

Basically, almost every choice you make affects the story-line in the game in some way. Seemingly unimportant choices at the start can lead to completely different outcomes near the end. And the best part? There are hundreds of choices, not just a handful. So you can play it over and over and still find yourself seeing new stuff.

If you’re playing it for the first time, I recommend making decisions that you would make IRL. As in, instinctive “that’s what I’d do!” type decisions. Afterwards, play the complete opposite of yourself (usually a huge pervert for some reason). You’ll understand immediately what I meant by “completely different outcomes”.

It’s because of that that 1st Beat felt incredibly immersive, at least for me. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever experienced anything quite as immersive as it. I already felt like a part of the world very early in my first play-through…I wasn’t just following Otonashi’s point of view…I was Otonashi, and I was experiencing everything.^I;J)