Otonashi Yuzuru, Nakamura Yuri, Tachibana Kanade, Girls Dead Monster
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「Stairway to Heaven」
When Angel Beats finished airing six months ago, the December release of the last DVD/BD volume containing this bonus episode felt like an eternity. Well now the wait is finally over, we can have a final taste of the series that is undoubtedly one of best this year. As a completely comedic extra akin to the rocket chairs seen in episode five, the more relevant bonus actually came in the form of a short alternate epilogue.
It’s been well over three weeks since the end of Angel Beats, but Key and Maeda Jun don’t seem to want to let us forget that easily. They’ve recently released another Girls Dead Monster song and a PV to go along with it. With a male band this time around, it’s less so Gldemo and more just LiSA with this “Day Game” song though. I’m a bit indifferent about the song after listening to it for the past while and still prefer Little Braver if I had to choose between the two, but it’s always nice to see more Angel Beats related stuff. The baseball bat scene at the end is undoubtedly a reference to Yui’s one in episode ten, whereas the gymnasium is reminiscent of the one in the series as well. LiSA’s school uniform gets my vote of approval, but the circular track that’s used for the camera in the gymnasium portions of the PV just makes me dizzy. In any case, the bonus fourteenth episode on the last DVD/BD volume won’t be coming out until December 22nd of this year, so we’ll just have to take whatever we can get for now.
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「Graduation」
The graduation ceremony was down to the five shown in the preview last time, but that didn’t take away from the bittersweetness of it all. Surprisingly, I managed to hold the waterworks back this entire finale, though I felt a little of it coming on during Otonashi’s valedictorian speech.
What do you get when you combine one of the hottest shows of the season with one of the coolest themes and most distinct opening sequences? The best of both worlds in this exceptionally well-done MAD movie for Angel Beats inspired by Durarara‘s stylistic touches and featuring ROOKiEZ is PUNK’D’s “Complication”. With both of these awesome series coming to an end in the next couple of days, now seemed like the perfect time to post about this. If you haven’t seen this yet, you might be surprised how talented (i.e. hardcore) some Japanese fans are. As a bonus, this video even helps you get Angel Beats’ character names straight if you had any difficulty doing to. Of course, it’s even COOLER if you do a side by side comparison with the original and sync them up, for which I’ve provided the option to do so below. Now how badass is that?
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「Knockin’ on heaven’s door」
Not the new slimmed-down Matsushita, not Guild leader Char, but a mysterious teenager played by Ishida Akira proved to be at the bottom of it all. Even so, he’s nothing more than a creation of the Angel Player software developed by someone who converted himself to a mindless NPC.
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「Change the World」
If anyone was anticipating a Shinda Sekai Sensen wide passing, you weren’t too far off the mark, though it’s unlikely anything like you were expecting.
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「Goodbye Days」
Upon seeing how this episode left out the opening sequence in favor of more time, I just knew things weren’t looking good for the SSS members now that Otonashi has decided to help them move on. As hinted by the preview last time, Yui turned out to be his first target.
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「In Your Memory」
After watching eight weeks of mostly comedy, I admittedly got a bit teary-eyed when I saw more of Otonashi’s past leading up to his death after he survived the train crash.
Oh how nice it is to finally have a face to go with the singing voice we’ve been hearing in Angel Beats. Posted on the official site yesterday was a PV of the real life Girls Dead Monster performing “Little Braver” from their third single, slated to be released on June 9th. The song features Yui‘s singing counterpart LiSA on vocals, whom we’ve already heard in the show with her version of “My Soul, Your Beats!” back in episode four and “Thousand Enemies” in episode five. I haven’t talked about the music releases in my weekly coverage of the series, but the first one was titled “Crow Song” and featured marina, Iwasawa’s singing counterpart, whereas the second one was the aforementioned “Thousand Enemies”. Each single features three completely different songs by Garudemo, which is pretty impressive considering how they’re unlikely to all be used in the actual show.
Instead, it’s just P.A. Works and Maeda Jun‘s way of showing up another Yui in some other production by a bunch of guys hailing from Kyoto, who haven’t been putting out much in the music department. An obvious exaggeration, considering how Houkago Tea Time’s OP/ED themes topped out at #1 and #2 on the weekly Oricon charts respectively, but Angel Beats has animated many more performances so far — and really good ones to boot. In any case, “Little Braver” is a surprisingly good song from the very first listen, so I’m hoping we’ll see a performance of it at some point in an episode. If you haven’t already, I recommend checking out the other two singles as well. The OP/ED single featuring Lia and Tada Aoi on the other hand is scheduled to be released in only four more days (May 26th), so it’s definitely worth keeping an eye out for that too.
Note: All Girls Dead Monster songs and both the OP/ED themes are written, composed, and produced by Maeda Jun specifically for Angel Beats.
* Thanks to Silverwolf X for the heads-up on the PV.
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「Dancer in the Dark」
Guard skill: harmonics. If you were thinking that was the case last week, then kudos to taking notice of the foreshadowing from way back in episode three.