Angel Beats ep. 6
In the previous episode of Angel Beats, it was revealed that Tenshi is in fact a human and her real name is Kanade Tachibana. The SSS also managed to dethrone Kanade from her position as student council president and she is no longer a threat to the group. From what I’ve read though, it seems a lot of people had already predicted that this would happen.
In this episode, Otonashi befriends Kanade and treats her to Mapo Tofu during class, for which they both get locked up in a sort of prison cell by the new student council president. While the two of them are locked up, Yuri discovers that Ayato Naoi is a human and he has launched an all-out assault on the SSS using the NPCs as his pawns. I bet no one saw that one coming.
After Kanade’s fall, I thought we’d finally get to see God’s true representative in this world, but instead we get Ayato, who is a Nazi-like character that actually reminds me a lot of Lelouch from Code Geass. Ayato even has a special power in which he can hypnotize people (including NPCs) and order them around. That’s how he was able to build a small army against the SSS.
With the SSS defeated, Ayato was ready to claim victory and send the SSS members out of that world by hypnotizing them to feel no more regret about what happened during their lives, but then Otonashi and Kanade show up, having just broken out of their prison cell. Here I was hoping for some big show-down between Ayato and Kanade, but I was very disappointed with what ensued. I don’t know what it is about anime, but the bad guys seem to like to talk a lot and Ayato is no exception. He starts blabbing on about being God and so on up until it looks like he’s going to rape Yuri or something and decides to hypnotize her instead. (Note: Yuri’s voice actress, Harumi Sakurai, voiced some characters in 18+ anime before, so I wouldn’t be surprised if they put her skills to good use -.^)
Preoccupied with hypnotizing Yuri, Ayato lets his guard down, allowing Otonashi to approach him and land a good punch. I guess all those NPCs standing around with pistols forgot that they were supposed to stop anyone from approaching Ayato. After that, we go into this long flashback about Ayato’s life and how he couldn’t live up to his father’s expectations and so on. Then the episode ends.
At this point I was just angry at this episode. Not only do we not get to see Kanade face off with anyone, the new enemy has already been defeated and subdued. It wasn’t even in a grand manner; Otonashi just walked up and punched him in the face, we don’t even get to see the punch, just a hat flying off. I know Key isn’t known for having much action in their stories, but to build up the viewers’ hopes that there’ll be a big fight scene and just end it with a punch and a long flashback is just cruel.
It also seems that the SSS are back to where they were near the end of episode 5, with no more enemies to fight and no way to get their revenge on God. I’m hoping that Ayato’s past is supposed to be some clue as to how this world came to be and why everyone is in it, otherwise it feels like I’ve been wasting my time watching the SSS fight with someone that doesn’t have anything to do with the story. One thing I am happy about with Angel Beats is how Key has put some weird food in it like all of its other anime titles. Kanon had Akiko’s jam, AIR had Misuzu’s really thick juice, Clannad had Sanae’s bread, and Angel Beats has Kanade’s tofu dish.
This episode was really good, i liked it, but i wanted otonashi do something more heroic, i really like kanade sheee is soo cute!,i think it was very dum to make kanade quit as student president since she didnt want too harm anyone as she say when she put her hand sonic “i didnt create this with offensive means”, i really think the world in angel beats is controlled by someone.
1@Lightosan:
2I wanted Otonashi to do something more heroic too. Either that or have Kanade fight one-on-one with Ayato.
Haha T.K ”ill be back”
This episode was alright, quite confusing at first but ye, Naosi is a dumbass but after his past, mhmm i dont know… whats going to happen now.
Yuri and all injured/dead, =/ but anyway they will revive.
3I felt the episode was good though, I didn’t really hate it.
Although I did want Otonashi to really be more heroic, or Ayato not to make Angel Beats look like the illicit lovechild between Clannad and Code Geass.
4@Fabrice:
T.K. is hilarious, but sometimes it’s hard to hear what he’s saying since he’s usually in the background.
@Valence:
5I liked it up until Otonashi punched Naoi, then I thought it just went downhill.
I too am wondering where the next episode is going to take us. They’ve sort of “beat” all the bad guys now, so what’s left?
The episode was quite inconsistent too. Everyone is dead, so what, they’ll just revive. It’s not like he can hypnotise dead people. And the NPC “guards” suck.
6I don’t know about you, but I can’t look at Yuri comparing her to Haruhi Suzumiya. I don’t know what about her it is, but they are very similar in my mind. Is anyone else seeing this, or am I just going insane?
7@BioToxic:
Maybe we’ll get to see them fight god now :)
@Metroid3802:
8A lot of people have pointed out similarities between the two even before the anime aired, so you’re not alone.
You are tempting me with this review/synopsis of yours. I’m like hanging halfway in the air now. I asked my colleague (an anime fanatic) about this. Seem like I should put this into my list too? Since his answers were so brief.
9@softz:
10Yes you should, I think overall its been pretty good.
When you string up Otonashi’s exploits all in one line like that, you highlight how he failed while holed-up with Kanade and what more he could’ve done. She was asleep, too – hell, I would’ve tried it. You can’t die there, anyways.
Subdued by manhug – Ayato is a character of suck. The Chinese community was also really onto Ayato=Lelouch, but I didn’t catch those obvious allusions at first myself, because Lelouch is thrice as manly as Ayato. And that’s saying a lot.
And your J-list ad just taught me that there’s a long overdue Kanade dakimakura in existence. Blarg.
11@Ningyo:
True, Ayato is nowhere near as manly as Lelouch. The only real thing they share is being able to control people.
That Kanade Dakimakura has been out for a month now I think. I actually managed to get one myself, but I just haven’t written about it yet.
12This episode was really interesting. Ayato actually felt a lot like a real villain whereas before, Tenshi never exuded that evilness. I liked that.
13@Yi:
14I liked it too, with Tenshi it always felt like it was some sort of misunderstanding.