Angel Beats! 12 – Love Love Love (and Dislike) [Minor Spoilers]

I hate to start on a sour note, but honestly, I thought that this episode of Angel Beats! was even worse than the last. What little sense the show made almost seemed to vanish, the plot took a further turn for the silly, there was a ridiculous and rushed infodump, and Yuri’s character drifted into moe archetype territory. There was forward momentum in terms of the series, but things just seemed to move as quickly as usual while a barely-connected series of events played out on screen. What’s worse is that this looks to be the conclusion of anything truly happening in the show: the next and final episode is simply titled ‘Graduation’ and the preview featured only Otonashi making a tearful speech. In any case, by now, I don’t really have much hope left for the series to tie things together cohesively. But maybe we’ll be lucky?

I don't really think that love is the emotion emanating from me...

First off, I want to talk about Yuri – last week, I lauded the series for turning her into a more multifaceted character than she seemed to be at first glance. In this episode, though, things felt off for me with her: she seemed to be more of a typical tsundere than anything else. She blushed and stammered when some of the gang saw her with ripped clothing, and was treated as much more of a fanservice object than usual (speaking of which, what the hell was with that shot of her on the toilet?). I also found her behaviour during the scene with the guy created by the programmer (I’ll call him ‘the program’ from here on) strange. Granted, her power-crazed moment was all an act but I’d question the creators’ attempt of it because it just felt silly. To pull off something like that requires build-up, and if there had have been build-up, I might’ve suspected that Yuri was actually losing her marbles. But at first, it seemed like nothing more than yet another thing in the episode that didn’t make sense. To be fair, though, I will give Angel Beats! this: I’m glad that the creators didn’t make Yuri choose to become the God of the world (with her choosing instead to stay true to her friends). At least, in this respect, they stayed true to the character they’ve created for her.

It's stabby time.

Speaking of the scene with the program, I found that to be somewhat frustrating. We got some answers in terms of the origin of the afterlife world but we still don’t have much to go on regarding how the characters got to said world, and why they’rethere in the first place. I’m not entirely sure that these will be answered, either. In addition to this, I have to admit that I was irritated that it was the feeling of love that caused the shadow monsters to be born. Equally as, or more, annoying was “This is the first time I’ve detected so much [love]“; with Yuri destroying the room afterward, it felt almost akin to a Power Of Love type scenario. Despite all this, I don’t think the scene was so bad itself. Coupled with the rest of the episode (or even the rest of the series), though, it was disappointing. With all the possibilities for how things could have gone here, it felt like a bit of a cop-out. Similarly, I’m not sure how I feel about the use of a completely new ‘villain’, especially since, as Janette noted, there was great potential for Chaa or Christ or even Matsushita to have been behind it all. With so much ambiguity surrounding the mystery computer thief, it might have been nicer for him/her to have been someone we knew.

You can feel and look like Matsushita too! Join Weight Watchers today!

Finally, pacing must be mentioned here; I believe this episode would’ve been better if things had moved slightly slower and were spread over two instalments. GirlDeMo’s disbandment and the members’ leaving the world (which got about two minutes), the fight against the shadow monsters, Yuri’s daydream, the scene with the program – all these elements felt so rushed and so disparate. Indeed, the entire series has felt similarly rushed, but this took it to a whole new level. I’d usually forgive such pacing, but this is an anime original project – without being restrained by light novel/manga progression, I’d expect better series composition. On this point, I do think that Angel Beats! would’ve benefited largely from being extended to 24 or 26 episodes. The transitions from Mood A to Mood B (to Mood C) would’ve been less grating, because perhaps we’d have been able to actually get used to Mood A before moving on; more character backstories could’ve been explored; and things wouldn’t have had to be so generally manic. Granted, the romp-like nature of the series would’ve diminished, but maybe this would’ve been a good thing.

Angel Beats! has certainly been a wild ride so far, and things will be over very soon. True to form, with only one episode to go, Key has really kept me guessing as to how they’ll wrap things up. Anyway, I haven’t made up my mind about this (very polarising) series yet: I’d been really enjoying the show, but over the past couple of weeks, it’s lost favour with me. I’m withholding judgement at the moment, though, and my opinion of it will rest in the hands of episode 13. As I said, I’m not expecting all that much but I have hope. It will be very interesting to see how things go.