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You know, sometimes animes just really don't live up to my expectations. One of those animes would definitely have to be Angel Beats.
First hearing about it, I thought it would be just amazing. I mean, everybody was making a huge deal about this thing, telling everyone everywhere how sad and amazing it was, how it was even better than Clannad: After Story. Now, of course, I had to try it.
I really shouldn't have gotten my hopes up. Now, not to say that Angel beats was a bad anime, because it wasn't. But it really wasn't anything special.

First off, we have the characters. Long story ... short, they were bad. Each and every one of them had no personality, was a complete, almost offending stereotype, was extremely, EXTREMELY similar to a character from another anime, or was a character that I've seen way too many times to the point that I know every single thing about them and they're not interesting at all. Plus, there were like 15 characters, and only around five or even less of them were actually important to the story. The others just sat around and did basically nothing. No, seriously, they didn't do ANYTHING.
One character (I won't make an effort to remember or even look up his name, I don't care that much) even has a one or two episode arc that has NOTHING to do with the plot and tries desperately to cover up the fact that it is a huge filler. And right after his arc, he just joins the SSS Brigade like nothing's happened and is completely pushed off to join the already overflowing number of background characters that we know the names and possibly, if we're lucky, one personality trait of.
Though, I have to say, a few of the characters I really liked. *cough*Iwasawa*cough*


The art was great, actually. The style was nice, and they never got noticably lazy with anything. The fight scenes, though, were obviously not very well choreographed. The color pallet also seemed really cold to me, though it was probably something that only I noticed.

The sound was pretty good, too. The opening song was great and the ending song was amazing. Both the English and Japanese voice actors did nice jobs, too.

The story was what really flopped this anime. The plot sounds good; I mean, stuck in the afterlife, trying to fight this angel thing, with angsty regrets about your past life? Sounds like it would make a good story. But it was sad how horribly it was executed.
The pacing was way off. They drag the unimportant parts on way too long, actually put some really unessecary filler into the story, and then end up completely rushing the important parts. And they did this to the extreme. Basically a whole 7 or more episodes is filler and extremely unimportant stuff. For a thirteen episode anime? That's a huge no-no.
Remember how I said I heard that this anime was sad and heartwarming? Well, it wasn't. At all. It didn't even come close to pulling any of the strings of my heart. And that brings me to my next point. Angel Beats never pulled ANY strings. It didn't do anything creative, anything different, ANYTHING that I've never seen before. They just fight and go on missions, eventually reaching an ending that everyone else said was sad but really wasn't at all.
I mean, seriously, they're in the AFTERLIFE, the writers can at least do something creative and put the idea to good use. But, no, what could have been a thought-provoking theme was ruined and wasted.

Despite how it sounds, I did find a bit of enjoyment in this anime. Putting my feelings aside, it seems like most people who watched this anime actually did love it for some reason, so go ahead, give it a go.

Fractale. Nothing special, but enjoyable, I guess. I know that the person who created this anime really wanted it to be a huge, amazing, masterpiece. It didn't turn out that way, though. Not to say I didn't like it.

So, here we are, in the far future where there's a bunch of holograms, huge technological breakthroughs, and a conspiracy or just some kind of evil behind it all. Sound familiar? It should, because that's basically the setting of every single futuristic anime out there. I really was disappointed that there wasn't much creativity in terms of this.
However, the setting had a different 'feel' than a ... traditional futuristic anime. Instead of feeling cold, socially isolated, and robotic, it felt warm and lively, while still being futuristic. The backgrounds and color palette really did a majority of this. Very, very nice animation.

But, to my dismay, the warm and lively feeling slowly but surely looses itself as the anime goes on. The level of enjoyment looses itself, too. If it had kept that warm feeling and a tightly knitted plot for the whole story, I would have enjoyed this anime much, much more. I'm not sure what happens, as I have yet to see the last two episodes, but I have a feeling that the ending really isn't going to be that bang the series needs to go out with.

The plot is alright, though there is a lot of filler time that could be used for plot time and the pacing isn't really very well done. I actually think this anime would have been much better and more fitting as a movie, so they could chop all the things they didn't need out, be able to pace it easily, and it just seems like a good movie. Anyways, it's great at the beginning, but towards the end it really fizzles out.
This series also has some comedy, like most animes do. And it's not those un-funny, annoying chibi anger issue attacks characters have- it was actually thought out and enjoyable.

The characters were pretty nice, especially for an eleven episode anime. I especially liked the character designs; they sort of fit into the setting, and were attention grabbing, but definitely not candy colored or anything.
And for once I actually like a male protagonist.

The opening was a bit disappointing, considering it's just colors swirling around, but the actual theme song, ending song and background music were all pretty nice.


Despite how this series really fizzles out over time, I still enjoyed it very much. It's only eleven episodes and I'd say it's worth watching in your free time.