Angel Beats!

Death is one of many mysteries that has left humanity in the dark since the dawn of time. However, the burning question of what happens to the soul after one dies is soon answered to 17-year-old Yuzuru Otonashi. Waking up with no previous memories in a dimension between life and death, he discovers the unsettling truth of the afterlife.

Taking the form of a high school, this bizarre dimension is designated to shelter those who died unwanted deaths. Feeling wronged by God during their earthly lives, the school's residents have decided to form the Afterlife Battlefront—a rebellious faction determined to oppose their god-like student council president, Kanade "Angel" Tachibana. The group's leader, Yuri Nakamura, recruits Otonashi in their fight against Angel in order to take control of their own lives. However, questioning the morality behind their actions, Otonashi takes a step behind the enemy lines to understand the opposing side of their common fate.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Tachibana, Kanade Main

Hanazawa, Kana Japanese

Nakamura, Yuri Main

Sakurai, Harumi Japanese

Otonashi, Yuzuru Main

Kamiya, Hiroshi Japanese

Yui Supporting

Kitamura, Eri Japanese

T.K. Supporting

Rivas, Michael Japanese

Iwasawa, Masami Supporting

Sawashiro, Miyuki Japanese

Hinata, Hideki Supporting

Kimura, Ryouhei Japanese

Naoi, Ayato Supporting

Ogata, Megumi Japanese

Shiina Supporting

Saito, Fuko Japanese

Noda Supporting

Takagi, Shun Japanese

Horikawa, Kenji Producer

Toba, Yousuke Producer

Maruyama, Hiroo Producer

Tsuji, Mitsuhito Producer

Reviews

May 12, 2025

Dogidas

Recommended

An overall average anime that really picks up steam after the three quarters mark and somehow becomes one of the most heart-wrenching yet happy anime I've seen. It is certainly impressive when you take the whole anime ending included, but watching it from the beginning is rather difficult. While the ending is predictable from the beginning of the series, it is still incredibly good. The mid parts should be suffered through to get to the gem of an ending at the end. The serious story beats are sometimes interrupted by mid slapstick, but when the comedic parts are segregated, they also are rather effective.

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

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May 11, 2025

lvrsr0ck

Mixed Feelings

This anime has a couple of plot holes and unexplained stuff, but it still manages to be a good show even if it only has 13 episodes. It really shows how you should enjoy life and it gets you thinking if a purgatory state even exists. It also gets you questioning if a greater being even exists, and if they do then why do bad things happened to innocent people for no reason? I would definitely recommend you watch this show if you like shows like for example "The Good Place" type of beat.

To be honest I clicked on this show on accident while ... scrolling through Netflix while I was playing a game but I gave it a chance and it wasn't disappointing, at the start I expected the show to be this action anime about kids fighting in the afterlife for 13 episodes, but then the lore episodes hit and It drew me in without fail.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Jul 31, 2023

ffrx4

Not Recommended

I finally decided to watch this show, after years of seeing it get highly praised by the community, and i am pretty disappointed.

-Plot: Angel Beats is a show that in 13 episodes tried to do what not even a longer anime would be able to. Watching the series felt like getting bombarded with new plot points and plot twists almost every episode, just to then resolve them quickly and never talk about them again; this anime had so many chances of getting more interesting, but it seemed to just have an adversion against going deeper into world-building and actually explaining things that otherwise just make ... no sense.
-Characters: the characters were hit or miss, I don't think they were all unlikeable, but most of them just had absolutely no personality, including part of the main cast. The problem with characters like Hinata or Naoi is that even if they were given a backstory, they didn't really stand out much more than the side characters did; some of the better written characters were probably Yuri and Otonashi, because other than having a backstory, they also seemed to have their own resolve and goals contrary to the other characters which seemed to just change their way of thinking based on the way the story was progressing, instead of acting based on their peronalities.
-Comedy: I'm aware of the fact that comedy is subjective, but I really didn't find this show funny, the supposedly comedic moments felt out of place and forced, seeming more like a weird attempt to make the series be percieved as more lighthearted, which just makes no sense in the context of the anime's premise. Also the presence of useless comedic relief characters was incredibly annoying.
-Art: there's really nothing bad to say about the ar, the style is consistent and the color palette is pleasing to the eyes; the animation is also discrete.
-Music: Angel Beats puts quite a bit of emphasis on its muisc, sometimes seeming even out of place in a non-music-focused anime; there's pretty long concert scenes in a couple of episodes that honestly could have been avoided.

In conclusion, Angel Beats can be considered the definition of wasted potential, with a premise that could have been something much better, and some really interesting plot points that were just tossed aside for the sake of adding more and more, until it became a big mess that somehow managed to end in the most boring and predictable way.

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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