[sorato]

Angel Beats! was amongst the biggest opin­ion split­ters of the year. It was an incon­sis­tent train­wreck to some, a clas­sic Key-formula tear­jerker to oth­ers; but for me it’ll always be about how Maeda Jun man­aged to bring us Life in just thir­teen episodes of time. It was sim­pli­fied and abstract, yet touched every one of the emo­tions we held dear, from the suf­fer­ing and sad­ness to the joy, the laugh­ter, and most of all, the love that we are all blessed with~ Read the rest of this entry »

It doesn’t take long for most vis­i­tors to my blog to notice the tarot theme; although it should be noted that while ‘tarot’ is com­monly mis­con­strued as syn­ony­mous to Major Arcana, the 22 card Major Arcana is merely part of the tarot, fol­lowed by the 56 card Minor Arcana that is roughly the equiv­a­lent of today’s nor­mal play­ing cards (just swap the Page & Knight for Jack). But there’s no doubt that the Major Arcana is the far more pow­er­ful suit within the tarot, and while most peo­ple rec­og­nize the Major Arcana as only a medium of for­tune telling, its use as a div­ina­tion tool is merely a lim­ited pre­sen­ta­tion of the arcana’s true potential:

The Major Arcana is the card suit of life. Read the rest of this entry »

[ azumi ichiju＠tsuitta ]

Angel Beats! was a lot of things. It had an ambi­tious goal, striv­ing to present the many aspects of life within the short span of thir­teen episodes. It tried to be deep and philo­soph­i­cal, yet couldn’t put forth the time and focus. It attempted to be log­i­cally con­sis­tent, even though the set­ting had lit­tle of it to begin with. I could lit­er­ally pick it apart from its sto­ry­writ­ing flaws. But… Maeda Jun had set out to bring us life in under five hours of screen­time, and his work gave us joy, laugh­ter, and tears from so many per­spec­tives. It brought such an enjoy­able time while pre­sent­ing one beau­ti­fully touch­ing scene after another, all of them cumu­lat­ing towards a breath­tak­ing cli­matic con­clu­sion… what­ever its flaws are; I loved this show. Read the rest of this entry »

[ 7D ]

Last time I posted how Angel Beats is about life: its spon­tane­ity, its incon­sis­tency, yet also its radi­ance and its pre­cious­ness. But as Myst­lord notes, the cast is stuck into a world that does not progress, where they can nei­ther die nor grow; where every­thing is kept inside an ideal school par­adise, shel­tered from the respon­si­bil­i­ties and pres­sure of real soci­ety. Isn’t it naive to por­tray life through a com­pletely sur­real imi­ta­tion of the real thing?

But the premises are con­trast­ing, and this per­fect exis­tence within Angel Beats is bal­anced against the dark­ness of its char­ac­ter back­grounds. Already bur­dened by the worst of life, the cast rests within this sanc­tu­ary to redis­cover the joy­ous beats of their souls. Yet just as the ward must even­tu­ally send its patients (back) into real­ity, the world of Angel Beats is also com­ing to per­suade its lin­ger­ing inhab­i­tants back out — rather force­fully so. Read the rest of this entry »

[ REI@8/15 西あ-39a ]

Angel Beats! is a lot of things, and many of them con­tra­dic­tory: it’s a shal­low attempt to explore the deep themes sur­round­ing life; it’s melo­drama with min­i­mal­is­tic buildup; it’s laugh­ter replaced by tears and back to laugh­ter again. There are dozens of rea­sons on why it’s a ‘cheap’ piece of work, rang­ing from the reused Key story con­cepts to the incon­sis­tent mood pac­ing to the dra­matic moments being dropped from seem­ingly nowhere. But at the same time, the quick and sim­ple sto­ry­telling, the humor, the action, the tear­jerk­ing moments, they all mix together into some­thing highly enjoy­able. There are parts that each of us might like, and there are parts that each of us might dis­like. But that can’t be helped — because the theme of Angel Beats! is life, and it is amongst the most incon­sis­tent and con­tra­dic­tory things in this uni­verse. Read the rest of this entry »

I didn’t quite expect Angel Beats! to hit us with the full force of Key melo­drama this early. But this ep… it was a full visual novel char­ac­ter path packed into a sin­gle episode, com­pletely with a short emo­tional roller­coaster ride. Yet despite the focus on Iwasawa’s char­ac­ter development,episode 3 skimped out on none of the other stuff: we’re treated to more Key humor (espe­cially the Miyazaki touch), another top-quality con­cert scene, and the advance­ment of a sig­nif­i­cant main plot hook: just what exactly is Angel? On top of the already ‘just what exactly is this world’?

Mag­nif­i­cent. This kind of Key work should be done more often, where Maeda Jun isn’t con­strained by the dragged-out pac­ing of your typ­i­cal Key Nakige…

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“You’re dead!”

That’s the first thing you hear as you wake up in the mid­dle of nowhere and finds your­self next to a bishoujo busy snip­ing another girl. She presents you a red pill and asks you to join the “Like-Hell-We’re-Dead Bat­tle­front”. You think this is all a joke and goes down to warn the other girl, but she’s also part of this whole con­spir­acy. You ask her for proof, and the girl kills you… min­utes later, you re-spawn in some high school health room.

Wel­come to After Life, the newest craze in MMORPGs. Your sub­scrip­tion cost — death.

It’s a bit unusual for a KEY series to open the plot within the first episode. After all the entire KEY story-boarding for­mula revolves around build­ing up the char­ac­ters with slice-of-life com­edy and moe while slowly unrav­el­ing the main premise and plot. Angel Beats! how­ever wastes no time in get­ting straight to the point by giv­ing you a quick and con­cise tuto­r­ial that wastes not a sec­ond of your atten­tion. Mean­while your guild mem­bers, some cliche and some intrigu­ing, intro­duce them­selves with some shenani­gans and jokes like sol­diers reliev­ing them­selves of anx­i­ety on the eve of battle.

One thing is for sure — this is no usual KEY work.

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My excite­ment has exceeded boil­ing point!

New trail­ers from the Angel Beats! web­site as the infor­ma­tion finally breaks out to KEY lovers every­where. Orig­i­nally con­ceived as a joint project between KEY sce­nario writer Maeda Jun and char­ac­ter designer Na-Ga, the 13 episode anime, com­ing April 2009, will be a joint pro­duc­tion between Visual Art’s KEY and the ani­ma­tion stu­dios P.A. Works (True Tears) and Ani­plex (Honey & Clover, Kamichu). Just by those three past titles plus the sheer awe­some qual­ity of KEY goods I have absolute con­fi­dence in this series to be a masterpiece.

Read the rest of this entry »