Angel Beats! 07 – Memories, Doppelgangers… and Fishing?

Before I begin my round-up of episode seven of Angel Beats!, I want to say a couple of things. (Don’t worry, you can tl;dr this if you like!) Firstly, I must apologise for the lateness of this post: unfortunately, I was down with a throat infection when the episode came out. Secondly (and finally), I’m going to be testing out a slightly different writing style here, with more emphasis on my impressions than on the episode summary. It’d be very much appreciated if you let me know what you think about it, whether you like it or not. Now, onwards!

One big, happy, dysfunctional family.

The first thing I noticed about this episode was the really abrupt tonal shift in comparison to last week’s conclusion. We ended episode 6 with Naoi and Otonashi tearfully embracing after the former had shared the story of his past with the SSS. This week, however, we open with a distinct lack of drama: everything is comedic. Yui-nyan is annoying Hinata, TK is teaching Matsushita how to dance and Naoi, that oh-so-scary Big Bad, has actually joined the group. There are some hilarious jokes but the contrast is fairly grating, and would be even more so for someone marathoning the series. This constant changing is once again demonstrated when later in the episode, there are two other massive shifts: we go from the emotion of Otonashi’s backstory, to fishing hijinks, and then to shock(!!) when Kanade’s doppelganger appears (more on those things later). Anyway, I’ve actually come to expect this kind of thing from Angel Beats!. Every week you get something dramatically different with this show, and if you don’t like it, it’s tough luck for you. For me, it just adds to the rollercoaster-like feel of the series, but I haven’t yet decided whether that’s a good thing or not.

Consider my heartstrings tugged.

Three characters really got to shine in this episode: Otonashi, and to a lesser extent, Naoi and Kanade. The first of the trio, Otonashi, does so for a fairly obvious reason: with help from Naoi, he recovers his memories. His past mainly revolved around his younger sister, who was struggling with a mystery illness. Past-Otonashi had a boatload of faux-apathy, but he really adored her and, using her as motivation, he managed to turn his life around. The creators did a good job of creating a juxtaposition between Otonashi and his sister. He was healthy but felt no real reason to live, while she was verging-on-dying but continued to have hope. I must admit that it was surprising to find that he died in, or was at least hinted to die in, a completely unrelated train accident, though. I had been firmly carried away by the suicide theory and was expecting his sister to die, and then for him to commit suicide as a result. But perhaps this was just too obvious of a way to go?

On the subject of Otonashi’s backstory, 2DT wrote an excellent post a while back about Key’s inflicting of horrible events upon girls so as to “tug at mens’ heartstrings”. He made the point that the tragic backstories in Angel Beats! seemed to differ based on gender: Hinata missed a fly ball, while Yuri’s siblings were killed off one-by-one by sadistic burglars. In the space between that post and now, however, we’ve been told about two of the male characters’ pasts, and I feel that there’s more gender equality. While I’m certainly not saying that the level of cruelty in the guys’ backstories is comparable to that in the girls’ – I definitely agree with 2DT’s view that the girls have it much worse – but I do feel as though the male characters’ past lives have been designed to make them lovable. The goal of Naoi’s story seemed to be the audience feeling sympathy or empathy towards him (due to him being pushed to live a life which wasn’t his), and the goal of Otonashi’s story seemed to be the audience feeling a) compassion towards him and b) the desire to cheer him on (due to him changing his life, using his sister as inspiration). This is very interesting to me, because Key sets out to create series in which the player feels close to the female characters by becoming emotionally invested in them. To me, in this respect at least, Angel Beats! is different because it tries to cater to both men and women. Sure, there are all the usual girls for males to fawn over, but there are also yaoi hints and surprisingly three-dimensional male characters to be adored as well.

I think this is self-explanatory?

The second character I mentioned was Naoi. Here, we really got to see a different side to his personality in the form of his relationship with Otonashi. When Naoi is around him, his voice becomes higher and gentler, and he seems like a totally different person. Gone is his harshness and arrogance; he’s as soft and sweet as a marshmallow. In addition to this, he seems jealous of Otonashi’s relationship with Yuri, and is upset by Otonashi’s relative coldness towards him when he offers his help. Later, when Otonashi emerged from his hypnotised state feeling awful, Naoi is evidently upset as well. The question has to be asked: could Naoi be in love with Otonashi?

A new challenger emerges from the mist!

Finally, we have Kanade. While it was lovely to see the developing relationship between her and Otonashi and also to see her pretty much joining the SSS, what I really found intriguing was the red-eyed doppelganger of her (I’ll call her Tenshi2) that appeared at the end of the episode. There was a major atmosphere shift when Tenshi2 appeared, with the mood going from humorous and fun to serious and dark. I’m wondering whether she was created as the aftermath of Kanade using her ability during Operation Monster Stream, or if she’s an entirely different entity who’s been put in this world to do Kanade’s original job. No matter who she is though, the creators have once again left us with a massive cliffhanger to ponder over until the next episode, and given so much shifting around of pace, I can safely say that I have no idea what’s coming next. I don’t mind though, and I can’t wait for more twists and turns from Angel Beats!.