Angel Beats! Episode 01 Departure

Spring season has started and here comes my first impression on the most anticipated anime of the season, “Angel Beats!”.

Avoid continue reading if you don’t want to spoil the fun of watching the anime yourself.

Basically the episode can be separated into 3 sections: First, Introduction; Second, Explanation; Third, Action.

Introduction

The episode starts off with our male protagonist waking up in another world without remembering anything. He is then greeted by our female protagonist (Yuri) who’s aiming her long barreled sniper rifle at another mysterious female student. She explains to him that he’s now at the world after death. She also marks out the girl she aiming is “Tenshi” (Angel), their enemy.

Our male lead couldn’t accept what Yuri explained to him, he just go down and talk to girl and eventually she stabbed him through his heart to prove that he’s dead.

Everything seems to be quite confusing here, with the background of world after death being set as a school campus. Our main lead is still alive even after being stabbed through his heart by the mysterious girl.  Ah, not to forget just after he regained his conscious, he’s beaten up by another spear wielding guy for ignoring Yuri’s words.

Bloody awesome.

Explanation

Unable accept the fact that he’s now at the world after death, he seek for help from others and then fell into a trap. After he awakens, he found himself in a room with Yuri and her comrades.

He learned that there’s a group of people who fights the Angels so that they won’t be reincarnated to something that they don’t want to be, for example, barnacles.

This girl caught my attention.

There’s only 3 female roles including Yuri. Meanwhile theres 7 male roles including our main lead and the spear-wielding guy.

SSS – rebels against the god

Key Coffee.

The meeting ended with our male lead agreeing to enroll into the group. It is also revealed his last name as “Otonashi”, but he still couldn’t remember his first name. Perhaps his memory is another important turnaround of the plot.

Yuri gives him a tour and further explains about the campus, or the world after death. The campus is inhabited with students and faculty officers. But some are referred as NPC (non-player-character), they evaluates and controls the student body… just like programmed robots..

Action

After all those talks, finally it’s the action part. Yuri holds a battle briefing for lifting up the NPC’s meal tickets.

The operation starts with Iwasawa’s (Cool girl) diversion plan to distract the students. More cute girls spotted!! (especially the blonde cutie)

The distraction plan is a concert held by the band “Girls Dead Monster”. Girls with guitars are COOL.

She’s cute.

Apparently, the concert scene has the best quality throughout the episode. More screenshots below.

COOL!!

While the concert is going on in the dining hall, a fierce battle against the cutie Angel occurs outside of the hall.

The battle scene could be the second best animated scene of the episode, after the concert scene.

The plan continues with Yuri’s strategy of opening the hall windows and switching a number of industrial fans.. the result – countless of meal tickets in the air…

This also signals as the retreat signal for the battlefront members.

The episode ends with SSS members having dinner with the meal tickets.

First Impression

Story – This episode’s first impression for me is just like a teenager’s revolt, with undead bodies and weapons. It gives me a feeling that just like how we study so hard, then graduates, work.. and continue the boring life… That’s all, but the story is written by Maeda Jun, it won’t be so easy after all.

An interview with Maeda Jun, suggested that to watch the second episode to fully understand the main plot of the show. So, there’s still more need to be explained…

Animation – I always wonder why Maeda don’t choose Kyoto Animation for this project. Their previous projects – AIR, Kanon, CLANNAD, CLANNAD after story, are masterpiece projects. This time Maeda choose P.A.Works instead, the production studio of CANAAN.

Their work is not bad actually, we have that superbly animated concert scene and that intense battle scene… but the quality is not consistent as I spotted several minor but obvious flaws in the episode. I hope there will be more improvements in the following episodes. or perhaps they have an evil plan (improved DVD & BD release…)

Sound – Nothing beats the sound effect. I mean the timing and the BGM used is extremely suitable with the scene. There are some soundtracks that really caught my attention. Can’t wait for the OST. By the way, the first episode doesn’t has the opening theme, I’ll keep this to next episode. The insert theme and ending theme is great, and I particularly looking forward to listen to the full version of it. Of course the theme songs are composed by Maeda. Meanwhile I still can’t confirm whether the BGM are composed by Maeda alone or with others.

Ehem… If you like Key’s works such as AIR, Kanon and CLANNAD.. I think you should try this out too..