Time for my second and probably last first impressions post for this season, and this time it's for one of most anticipated shows of the season: Angel Beats!. Welcome to Sniping 101. Now that's impressive, especially he managed to get 100 hits using an unwieldy pole axe. Everyone falls for the giant hammer trick once in a while, including the guy who put the hammer there. Premise and short summary of 1st episode: Otonashi is a guy who arrives in an "afterlife" high school after dying in the real world. In this world, people cannot truly die, but they do feel pain if hit. Having no memories of his past, Otonashi is "persuaded" into joining a group called the SSS led by a girl name Yuri. The high school is run by Tenshi (an angel in the form of the student council president) and those who follows the rules will pass on, but Yuri and the SSS refuse to pass on to heaven and they plan to take control of the world by defeating Tenshi and God. In exchange for dying, you get to go to a high school the size of an university with kickass concerts. For some reason I don't feel so sorry for the students anymore. It's a concert plus fireworks. Otonashi gets his first taste of the SSS' operations by joining on a mission to blow away the lunch coupons of the students at the high school. Otonashi is assigned the outermost and least important lookout point, but he is one who first spots Tenshi approaching. Otonashi and other SSS members try to hold off Tenshi with their weapons while other SSS members including the four-girl band Girls Dead Monsters work inside the cafeteria to blow away the students' coupons with a concert and giant turbine fans. SSS successfully pulls off the operation and goes into into the cafeteria to eat dinner and Tenshi does not go after them. Otonashi is still puzzled by the whole situation but he is intent on waiting it out in hopes of regaining his memories. Audience supplied confetti works too. It's not really raining food, but it's close. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ There was no doubt that this was best premiere episode I've watched so far for the season. It was a fun episode even though we haven't delved into the real plot yet. The production quality was excellent and was on par with the first episode of CANAAN (also made by P.A. Works). The whole sequence with the firefight outside and the concert inside the cafeteria was very pretty and had good pacing and music to boot. I can always use more eye candy. I was also impressed by the facilities at the afterlife school as well. That cafeteria alone was about the size of my high school and my school also had about 2000 students. Back on topic, the comedic parts of the episode were decent as well. They were simple visual gags, but they were effective for the most part. Plot-wise, where the story is going is still a mystery at this point, but that's to be expected. The setting is pretty interesting though. Dead people who refuse to go away is never boring lol. I'm looking forward to see how the story unfolds, particularly as to why SSS members don't want to pass on, how the SSS is going to defeat Tenshi and also Otonashi and everyone's memories from their time in the real world. Moving to the characters, a lot of people are mentioning how Yuri looks like Haruhi Suzumiya. I haven't seen Haruhi (probably one of the very few anime bloggers who haven't. It's in my "to watch" list), but even I can see the resemblance. I'm guessing personality-wise Yuri and Haruhi are not all that different either. To our main male lead, Otonashi hasn't shown much personality at this point other than being slightly freaked out by his current situation, but his reactions are understandable. As for the rest of the SSS crew, there are quite a few of them, so hopefully at least some of them will turn out to be likable. Overall, this was an enjoyable episode. I'm definitely going to follow this series. I might blog about it weekly too. On an unrelated note, I watched the first episode of B Gata H Kei which was mildly amusing, but not really laugh out loud funny. I don't feel like writing a post for it and I'm not sure if I'm going to keep watching the show either.
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