First, let me say that Angel Beats does have an interesting premise. A high school representing the afterlife (or not really after life. Or purgatory. Or wherever they are) where a select group of students fight for their survival is definitely something I’d watch. The problem I have with the show is that “fighting” part. It doesn’t really feel like the Afterlife Battlefront is trying to win. At all.
Although the show’s full of comedy, I still get the feeling that overall we’re supposed to take what happens as a serious matter. After all, since it seems like every character here is going to have some sort of tragic and heartbreaking past, it doesn’t seem like it’s as much of a parody as one might think. I know that these are all young highschoolers, not expert military tacticians, but of the three operations they’ve carried out only one seems to have had any real worth: the one where they broke into Angel’s bedroom to research her abilities. The other two were the “kind of try and shoot Angel… unless we meet some random guy and give up” plan and the “distract Angel… so we can get more meal tickets” plan. These don’t seem to be the most ideal plans for survival. WIth their first operation (that we’ve seen), they were along the right track with the whole idea that defeating the enemy might mean they’ll win the war, but otherwise they are way too easily distracted.The fact that they can’t die is a huge plus, but it shouldn’t mean they’re any less focused on their goals.
The revelation in episode 3 that prompted this little rant is the most ludicrous of them all: Yuri claims that Tenshi made all of her own weapons, the same way as the guild make theirs. In which case, I ask the question, why haven’t they thought of any better weapons to counter Tenshi’s ridiculous abilities? If it’s really that easy to create a sonic sword and a near-impenetrable barrier, why not use those tools to their own advantage? It’s becoming clearer and clearer that traditional weapons, and even bazookas don’t do much else than slow Tenshi down, so perhaps they should approach things from a different direction.
To be honest, that’s my only real problem with the show. The premise is engaging enough to keep me watching, the characters… aren’t totally uninteresting (TK is AWESOME), and the production values are pretty stellar (although I wonder why so much money is sunk into those GirlsDeMo scenes). I just wish that all of these military operations were either relegated to the background or done a bit more competently by the cast. Yuri mentioned in episode 2 that if they had been an actual military unit, they would’ve been completely annihilated. That seems to be a truth that the whole of the Front needs to come to terms with.
I don’t think winning the war is the objective. Yurippe and her crew are simply rebelling because they refuse to accept normal, they don’t want to go anywhere else and they are rebelling against “God” or authority who they think is tangible represented by Tenshi.
They all freely acknowledge that they are a bunch of idiots and that the probability of any of their plans working is low. They seem way more interested in annoying Tenshi and sticking it to the system than actually working out a way to conquer their area.
I know these guys. I went to school with some of them. They think life is unfair and they refuse to accept authority and they are there to make trouble until they destroy themselves or they sort out their issues. They make trouble just to annoy the teachers.
Hmm, it’s more about the act of rebellion than the rebellion succeeding in itself. Great comment, I see your point of view.
“If it’s really that easy to create a sonic sword and a near-impenetrable barrier, why not use those tools to their own advantage?”
I don’t think it’s that easy. Remember, Tenshi had to code everything and simulate her powers in her computer first before using them. For example, we never saw her use Harmonics, so it could be that she’s still developing it. This also means that Tenshi’s knowledge of the world is far, far beyond what the SSS currently knows (she’s applying coding logic to the world by presumably making use of its self-repair mechanisms — see the part near the end of Ep01 for the self-repairing lamp post and walls), making the SS believe that her skills are “magical”, in the sense that “sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”.
Furthermore, in the SSS there is only one person who has any experience with coding language and computers, and most of the members are idiots. Remember what happened to that cannon they made in Ep02?
TK deserves his own spin-off.
But don’t even get me started on winning baseball games being one of the missions.
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Like Ice Block said, you can’t just think of a weapon and build it unless you’ve seen it before you died. If you’ve been paying attention, you would have known that the so called “loophole” problem you mentioned didn’t exist.
Also, the baseball winning thing was the act of rebellion since they entered it illegally.
Now, it makes me wonder if anyone even bothers about all the dialogs in the show with these kinds of comments.
No need to get so stirred up about it, I can understand where you’re coming from.
I didn’t even mention the word loophole, so I don’t get why that’s in quotation marks.
Hadn’t even seen the baseball episode when I wrote this, so that’s got no relevance to what I’ve written whatsoever.