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19 May 2010: Angel Beats! episode seven is one part crap, one part awesome

Yuzuru and Kanade
Tenshi, your slip is showing.

Angel Beats! is fun to watch because when it's bad it's fun to mock. Somewhat unexpectedly, it can also be legitimately good at times. I'm referring to gags like the broom bit during the baseball episode and the entire second half of episode seven. But yeah, when Angel Beats! is bad, it's dog shit. [I feel obliged to offer a spoiler warning at this point, even though everything revealed about the first half of episode seven will be transparently obvious to anyone with the slightest familiarity with Jun Maeda, Key, or anime clichés in general.]

Yuzuru and his sister
Potato-kun kills his kid sister. Good job, guy.
Did you not watch Clannad? Kanon?

The first part of Angel Beats! 07 finally reveals Otonashi's back-story. Like the other previously revealed back-stories, it is a tale of woe and sorrow. It also happens to be a tale of idiotic melodrama. I don't know why Jun Maeda has a vendetta against snow. The sad-girls-in-snow motif has transcended its status as a mere trope and can now be considered a straight-up base anime stereotype. With that in mind, there couldn't possibly have been a single person watching Angel Beats! episode seven who thought it was a good idea for Otonashi to carry his sickly good-natured little sister (hospitalized for years due to some vague, undefined illness) out into the snow on his back on Christmas. Why not build an asbestos snowman while you're at it?

Otonashi
Otonashi trades his acceptance notice for a mapo tofu food coupon.

So, yeah, snow does to Otonashi's little sister what snow does to all of Jun Maeda's sickly girls. However, Otonashi finds new purpose in his life and strives to make something of himself so he can Protect Other People. Unfortunately for Otonashi, SNOW has different ideas. This brings us back to this present misery where the story makes a drastic change in tone and turns into a comedic fishing farce out of nowhere. Cue Operation Monster Stream, a "zetsubou no carnival."

Saitou, Kanade, and Yuzuru
There sure are a lot of Kanade petticoat shots in this episode.
[Spoilers: Petticoat shots are the new panty shots.]

Angel Beats! is getting a lot of mileage out of Tenshi Tachibana Kanade and her quiet deadpans. I haven't seen a fishing episode like this since Sky Girls. Like the Sky Girls fishing omakes, the second half of Angel Beats! 07 does not have any bearing on the plot as far as I can tell, but is instead merely an excuse for the characters to do goofy things for silly reasons. It works, as a matter of fact. Angel Beats! really needs a lot more of this sort of thing. Episode seven ends on a cliffhanger, so presumably the next episode will return to the main story and plot development. I'm not entirely sure that's a good thing.


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