I Love You, You Plot Hole [13] [END]

Our Gradu­at­ing Class

Gradu­ations are filled with cry­ing, hug­ging, and confessing.

Dear Diary,

You know what? This entry is going to be short. Yuri wakes up. We all gradu­ate to a mapo tofu song. I con­fess my undy­ing love to Kanade. She turns out to be the per­son who got my heart after dying, thus extend­ing her life. Pause! If she got my heart, then how the hell did she get here long before I did? I know I’m a bug and got lost, thus wan­der­ing here, but how long was I lost? Ser­i­ously. Any­ways, I hug her (hop­ing my hug­ging powers make her stay or at least bring us together in the next life). She dis­ap­pears, and I cry and have a break­down. Credits.

…that was depress­ing. Wait, I hap­pen to meet rein­carn­ated Kanade! All is right with the world.

–Yuzuru Otonashi

Thoughts

OOC?

Really, you have to turn off your brain to enjoy this epis­ode. That way, you can look at gig­gling, hum­ming Kanade and think “Aww, so cute” instead of “OOC any­one?” I thought it was a very sweet epis­ode with my brain off. They still added in some laughs and then give a really depress­ing end­ing, very Maeda style. Although, my ini­tial thought when Kanade dis­ap­peared while Yuzuru was hug­ging her was that it reminded me of Syaoran and Sakura/Kobato and Fujimoto.

Okay, in my last two posts, I said that I didn’t really want Kanade’s past to be revealed because I assumed it would be a whole flash­back which would feel out of place. How they men­tioned it here was good though. I already addressed the plot hole with Kanade hav­ing Yuzuru’s heart. It was unex­pec­ted, way unex­pec­ted. Still, I liked it very much, and the last scene was well done in my opin­ion. Brain on, I’d like to poke at that Yuzuru doesn’t have a heart any­more before he lost it after dying. So…what if you lost your arm, bled to death, and ended up going there? Would you have no arm?

The fact Yuzuru and Kanade meet again in their next lives made me very happy, and I wished they showed every­one else who was rein­carn­ated. Err, any­one else hop­ing to see Yui/Hinata or maybe even Yuri and her new fam­ily? I liked Yuzuru/Kanade very much, but I kind of care about the other char­ac­ters too. They could have cut the gradu­ation cere­mony a bit to include at least snip­pets of every­one else’s life.

Yuri/Kanade Hug­ging Time

There seemed to be some out of character-ness as well. Sure, since every­one is gone, Yuri doesn’t need to act like a leader any­more and can be like a nor­mal girl, but that’s just not the Yuri I know. I kind of expec­ted her to try to lead part of the gradu­ation. Tsun­dere Yuri is cute to watch, but she’s com­pletely dif­fer­ent than the Yuri in other epis­odes. Kanade skip­ping, laugh­ing, and hum­ming a song? When did she start act­ing like this again? I liked how they used her singing Iwasawa’s song to help Yuzuru recog­nize her again, but wouldn’t it have been bet­ter to show Kanade hum­ming the song a little more fre­quently? Think the end­ing of Kobato. Even though I kind of found it annoy­ing after a while that Kobato kept singing the same freak­ing song every few epis­odes, rein­carn­ated Kobato singing it again was a moment that let Fujimoto and view­ers instantly recog­nize her. For Kanade, it’s “oh, she hummed that song like once or so. It might be her.” Kobato: “OH MY GOD, IT’S KOBATO AND THAT FREAKING SONG.” See the dif­fer­ence? It’s less effect­ive in  Angel Beats.

Final Thoughts

It was a fun series to watch, and I can’t say I was really bored. Des­pite the vari­ous things that Angel Beats did wrong in my eyes and how messy/rushed it was, I enjoyed it very much. A big plus was that the couple I thought was unlikely to hap­pen did to the point where Yuzuru con­fesses. Would I recom­mend this to someone? I would. I wouldn’t recom­mend it because it’s amaz­ing but because it was enjoy­able. It doesn’t have the same effect on me like Kanon or Clan­nad, but I’m glad I spent my time watch­ing this anime.

I’d give it 4/5 stars.

It seems there’s a DVD spe­cial com­ing out, so hope­fully that’s not going to be a waste of time. I’ll give my thoughts on that too.