Angel Beats! Episode 1 - Where's the Loli's?

Impressions:

I didn't really set my expectations too high going into this show. I watched one trailer for it and thought it looked pretty good. I also heard it's by famed Key writer Jun Maeda, that's about it. I sat down with the raw because I wanted to check out it out early to get a preview of whether it might live up to the hype the internet has given it or not. The sub luckily came out pretty fast though, so I didn't have to strain my brain to decipher what little I knew in Japanese.

"I feel like I just woke up in an anime"

"You did wake up in an anime, accept it"

First thing that struck me immediately were the visuals, in particular the background visuals. They were absolutely gorgeous. I don't remember any anime having as detailed background visuals as that Angel Beats has. When our main character faced off against Angel girl, I thought, "Holy shit, stairs," "Holy shit clouds." The animators were definitely trying to show it off too, by having the characters scaled small on a huge backdrop in a lot of scenes; it worked well to show it off.

Holy shit, stairs

Holy shit, clouds

The second thing I noticed was the background music. I really do pay attention to music that plays in the background when watching anime and even download soundtracks to listen to when I'm sitting on my computer. The soundtrack of Angel Beats in the first half struck me as disjointed. It really did feel like it was a visual novel by Key where the soundtrack was just blunt and forced itself on you, instead of having the soundtrack blend in subtly in the background. When watching Air TV by Kyoto Animation, all the background music was taken from the game, but Kyoto did a really good job selecting and using right music at the right time. In Angel Beats, you just straight up feel the overbearingness of it, like when the axe guy barges in on our main character in the nurse's office or during the first group meeting after our main character wakes up. The second half, the background music was better. Maybe Jun Maeda was just eager to show off the soundtrack because if I'm not mistaken, he composed the music too. I can't tell if I like the ED song yet, but it doesn't seem like anything special. Having rotating OP's like Bakemonogatari sounds like a cool idea though.

"I'm going to barge in with crazy background music"

The soundtrack also shows how seriously this show takes itself. A lot of attempts at comedy were tossed in, and they almost really felt out of place. I take my attempts at comedy seriously because it's one of the main reasons why I watch anime. Angel Beats definitely needs to work on it. I'm all for slapstick comedy, but it feels like the characters are way too serious about it or it doesn't really blend in in the situation. Given the context of the show, you feel the should be more serious, but you have your main character getting cut up a bunch of times and guys flying out windows, it just didn't really blend in. I think the only type of comedy that would work well in this series is just character reaction comedy.

Comedy scenes are half a facepalm

As far as the plot goes, I thought it was fine for now. I really can't make a judgement on it until I see more. I mean, I can be all like 'why the hell would you go through all that trouble to get meal tickets,' or, 'where the hell did they get guns,' but I won't. As for our main character having amnesia, I'm ok with that. Though we just recently had a case of a character with amnesia in Dance in the Vampire Bund. What triggers our main character to remember stuff will be interesting.

Character personality-wise, our main charcter seems like the straight of the arrow generic anime male lead: he doesn't believe the situation he's in, he has overexaggerated reactions to situations, he's a pussy when in danger, all these are nothing that we really haven't seen in a main character before. Yurippe, while some semblance to Haruhi wasn't as overbearing as her, which I like. She's got the whole, "You're dead, accept it" angle going for her. Angel is generic robot character so far, maybe a little too generic. I was hoping she would unleash a fury of sonic booms instead of just the sonic-hand-sword-thing and just standing there under gunfire at the end. As far as the seiyuu go, I didn't notice anything out of the ordinary or anyone that stood out that much, so I guess they work well for now.

"Being trapped in an anime is alright, you'll get used to it"

I guess the biggest criticism I have is just the boring as hell character designs. Most of the characters just don't stand out. Generic looking main character I guess is passable. Yurippe, they could've made her a lot cuter by giving her better hair or something or making that yellow ribbon on her head not her only distinctive charm point. I'm glad she ended up shortening her name to Yuri, because Yurripe just seems way out there. The other characters in the group- boring as hell. They carry nothing really distinctive. Glasses guy - meh, shadowy girl - meh, random english speaking dude with headband over his eyes - mehish? I don't doubt that most of the crew gets killed off because of their character designs, like generic big guy - he's just asking to die. Even the girls at the end were pretty boring looking, despite their bright hair color. The only seriously good looking character was Angel girl - yellow eyes, white hair, and an actual hair style makes her distinctive off the bat. It seems like she was the only character that it seemed they put effort into. She also ended up being the loli-est looking character.

I expect half the characters in this picture to disappear by the end

"Why do you have the best character design"

"Because I traded away my personality"

So all in all, I'm still going to watch it because I'm just curious where the plot is going to go. I really can't tell. It's obviously going to be a tragic story since this is Key. I'll take three stabs and predict that the main character is actually stuck in a hospital in a coma, or they both end up being the only characters 'alive' at the end, or that main character and Yurripe knew each other before they died and she was the one who killed him. Hopefully maybe a loli character shows up somewhere that I can root for.

I know there's a loli character in the crowd somewhere