That’s A Bob Dylan Song! [12]

Dear Otonashi’s Diary,

This is Yuri speak­ing here. I felt the need to write about what happened to me recently, so I’ll be using Otonashi’s diary for now.

While Otonashi and every­one else were fight­ing the shad­ows above ground, I was in the guild fight­ing off the shad­ows there. Ser­i­ously, they are every­where. Just as I start to run low on bul­lets, Chaa hands me another gun before dis­ap­pear­ing. Awe­some. As I thought about how I want to be able to save every­one like how I wished I could have saved my sib­lings, I get eaten by a shadow. Really? Why’d I sud­denly stop and leave my guard down? Did I sud­denly think it was safe after see­ing all those shad­ows around?

Dream time! I’m sud­denly an NPC, liv­ing a nor­mal high school life. Some­thing just feels off though, like I’m sup­posed to be a leader of a bat­tle­front against God and defeat­ing shad­ows. Once I deem life as an NPC unac­cept­able, I’m saved by Otonashi and Kanade.

Otonashi and every­one held back the shad­ows while I find an unnamed dude who has a voice sim­ilar to Akira Ishida. He’s behind turn­ing the NPCs into shadows. Apparently, he found love in the world, and he had to get rid of it or this place would turn into a eternal para­dise. The dude who cre­ated him turned into an NPC as well. Er, this was kind of out of the blue. Were there any hints on this at all? Akira Ishida then told me I could become God, caus­ing me to do a light ver­sion of a Higur­ashi laugh. In the end, I shoot all the com­puters and save every­one. Plus, my sib­lings told me I’ve done enough. I guess it’s time for me to move on and disappear.

…I’m still here? Seems like I have to graduate.

–Yuri Nakamura

Thoughts

Well, I really liked this epis­ode. Things com­ing down to love? Cheesy, but it’s done right. It’s talk­ing about the sis­terly love Yuri feels toward the SSS as well. It makes sense too. Though, when he said love appeared, I imme­di­ately thought of Yuzuru/Kanade and Hinata/Yui.

I’m also a fan of epis­odes that show an altern­ate real­ity. It’s just inter­est­ing to watch, espe­cially when the char­ac­ter knows some­thing is up. It would have been cool to extend that, like show­ing her going to her dorm or eat­ing lunch.

This epis­ode also really makes me like Yuri even more. Her laugh was kind of scary though, but she still made the right choice. After all the Kanade they gave us, it’s really nice to focus on Yuri. After all, it was ‘Hey Yuri! Here’s her sad past…Okay, bye Yuri! Time to focus on Kanade!’ since the begin­ning. I really like how Maeda had her sib­lings tell her she’s done enough. Although I felt noth­ing for her past, I felt touched at that scene. It makes sense they want her to pass on in the final epis­ode, but after that scene, I couldn’t help but feel it would have been bet­ter if she moved on in this episode.

Unnamed dude as the last Big Bad? Dude, give him a name at least. The whole story about the guy wait­ing for his loved one felt…meh? Turn­ing him­self into an NPC? Hey, it’s the new sui­cide. There were no real hints on this either. Jeez, you know, I don’t really care any­more. Angel Beats seems to be going for a happy-ish end, and that’s all that mat­ters. Maybe we get to see their rein­carn­ated selves meet again?

Like I said in my last post, I don’t really want Kanade’s past to be revealed in the last epis­ode. It’ll feel out of place. Her story should have been revealed dur­ing her own arc. Ah, well, we might not even get to see her past, which would also be disappointing.