I'm not gay, I just love men!
Summary:
Just like Choose Your Own Adventure
SSS needs more gunpowder and weapons, so Yuri calls for an expedition down to Guild. Unfortunately, Tenshi is already on her way over there to destroy the SSS’s ability to fight, and so the many deadly traps are left activated in order to slow down Tenshi’s progress. Yuri has her group give chase, and one by one the SSS members are temporarily killed by various traps. In the end, only Yuri and Otonashi remain, and Yuri feels she is a terrible leader for getting her whole group killed. Yuri actually remembers her past life, and in a flashback we see how burglars broke in and forced Yuri to search for valuables in the house. Unfortunately, Yuri didn’t know where anything valuable was kept, and so every 10 minutes the burglars executed one of Yuri’s younger siblings. Sadly, the police took 30 minutes to arrive, and only Yuri survived. This left Yuri bitter, and she swore to rebel against God if God exists.
Otonashi is inspired by the story and cheers Yuri up a bit. When they arrive at Guild, Yuri explains that in this world all you need to do is remember something and you can create it out of dirt. The workers in Guild are very important because they remember various weapons, and so Yuri tells the Guild leader, Chaa, to blow up Guild to delay Tenshi while they retreat to Old Guild. As her Guild mates escape, Yuri valiantly stalls Tenshi in a knife fight, and at the critical moment Otonashi tackles Tenshi to prevent Yuri from temporarily dying. With preparations complete, Yuri and Otonashi escape to Old Guild and phone the revived SSS members to rendezvous, and Tenshi is engulfed in a sea of fire.
Reaction:
I'm surprised it wasn't a bomb
Even though the superficial plot was stupid and it’s clear the art is only going to be good during important battles, I liked this episode. The trap section was ironic and amusing, but then the episode broke into Yuri’s past and the mystery deepened. I’m not sure if I completely believe everything the characters have said so far, and it was interesting that Yuri did not want to reveal how she died. Her past was really sad, but it was also a complete parental failure. How can you leave all your little kids home alone in a house with no security features? At best, you’d come home and find crayon drawings all over your walls, and in this case the parents came home to 3/4 kids executed and the nice vase busted up. Just pay a damn babysitter, preferably one who is also a combat butler. And how cheap were her parents that the burglars destroyed the crappy TV instead of stealing it?
Now we know why none of the weapons work on Tenshi… they’re all made out of dirt. During the episode I was really disappointed they didn’t have a Gundam fan in Guild to bust out a dirt cheap Exia, but when the cannon blew up I realized some things are a little harder to make out of dirt than others. We got to see Tenshi use Delay to lag up Yuri’s moves, and Tenshi must be impossibly difficult to withstand grenades and all those bombs. I’m really intrigued by the world they’re stuck in now. The OP, while boring, made a big deal of the EKG waves. How does this tie into Tenshi’s binary powers and the true nature of the world? Yuri mentions that nobody in this world committed suicide to get in, so there goes another Haibane Renmei comparison.
This post was written by...
Kabitzin – who has written 1971 posts on Sea Slugs! Anime Blog.
One of the founders of Sea Slugs, I handle most of the blog admin tasks while wearing my I AM BOSS shirt. I like my action series well choreographed, and my romance series extra trashy. I also have a soft spot for puns.
{ 44 comments… read them below or add one }
Yeah, it was interesting that they ruled out suicide, but nothing else. What does it all mean? I don’t know. I’m glad we got to hear Yuri’s back story, because it explains her motivation, which started the whole revolt, but I would prefer to get Tenshi’s take on things. So far we really haven’t heard what she has to say, which makes it tough to take the SSS at face value.
They probably all did, and now someone is giving them a chance to enjoy a normal school life before they are reincarnated into a bug.
Actually I’m more for the idea that everyone is hooked up to a machine, and are all in a coma. That EKG waves you see in the op, title, and anywhere else has to be a hint that they are all still alive somewhere.
Yeah, I’m not sure I trust the SSS yet. It should be interesting to find out how Yuri died if she didn’t commit suicie, though. Like, 10 minutes after the flashback ended, the burglars came back and offed her, perhaps?
I also think they’re all hooked up to machines, personally. Now they must find Neo and save Zion.
Maybe she got knocked down by that truck with Osaka’s shoe on the top.
Yuri’s parents probably had an old CRT projection TV. Nobody wants those these days.
Yeah the mystery is starting to unfold just a little bit. I wonder how Yuri even knows that nobody came to this world via suicide. Maybe nobody in SSS died from suicide, but what about the other students who obey the rules?
Noooo, CRT?! It always feels weird when you see those old entertainment centers that were built to house fat thick TVs now that most people have thin flat TVs.
I’m feeling a lot less grumpy about this series – learnt to enjoy the good and give a pass to the less good. Especially since I’ve watched a new version to replace the jokesub I initially downloaded for the first episode and now that Yuri looks decently drawn in the second.
Yuri’s backstory also helped me to UNSEE her as Haruhi since, whether it is true or not, those are some pretty terrible memories and gives her a positive reason to rebel unlike Haruhi who has never really suffered aside from her vague sense of ennui. Otonashi’s heartfelt acceptance of Yuri as a great leader also distinguishes him from Kyon’s grudging acceptance of all things Haruhi (though each is appropriate for their respective context, it’s nice to see a clear distinction).
The descent operation to Guild reminded me of the Matrix and the return to Zion but only funnier, I especially liked how it gave the rest of the SSS members more personality: Hinata taking Otonashi under his wing was nice and funny, Matsushita’s solid dependency being the cause of his downfall was ironic, TK was *shokku* actually useful and Shiina’s love of cute things was… cute, and it seems Yuri is attracted to Otonashi which explains her persistent attempts to
woorecruit him in the first episode and the unwelcoming reaction of the rest of the SSS except Hinata.Looking forward to getting to know the band members better in the next episode!
I’m still having trouble separating her from Haruhi, but I must admit. Yuri’s knife work was pretty awesome, and hardcore. The fact that the tenshi had to use lag was just mean. She already had twin blades, wasn’t that more than enough.
Well she won some points with him with the whole human rope trick they did in the episode. I wonder what Hinata was doing to get himself sacrificed like that. Still, it was pretty funny.
I think they slathered on the Haruhi-ness in the first episode, because after that she really wasn’t that Haruhi-ish. I thought for sure that Yuri would have let Tenshi stab her to trap Tenshi in place and give Otonashi a chance to chop Tenshi’s head off or something.
I’m sure whatever Hinata did he felt it was worth 10 minutes of death.
But Hinata’s marginal utility of groping Yuri would be very low at best given that he is (closet)
gayyaoi.Could be a switch hitter.
With lowered expectations come greater enjoyment
I think the trap sequence was a well-sequenced quickie intro to the various side characters, rather than have mini-arc after mini-arc about characters who will never be seen again. TK’s engrish made me hate him less, too.
I think they’re still trying way too hard
Yuri’s past would have been fine if just left at “and burglars killed my parents and I thus I hate life because it’s not fair”
instead they had to append it with Yuri doing silly traumatizing errands. It’s as if the show held out a cue card that said “you may cry now”
I also suspect that Yuri did in fact, commit suicide or at the very least did something very stupid and got herself killed (like trying to be Batman, who by the way, also had his parents murdered by crooks)
She seems too riled up about suicide and as we all know, she’s proven to be a liar
Because just leaving it at ‘burglers killed my parents’ doesn’t make a good story. If they left it at that then people would’ve been complaining that its such a cop-out lame backstory to give the main character. It’s just that, because it’s the Key guy, people automatically assume any sad scene = tear-jerker. People cry too easilly. Bunch of pansies anime fans are
Also, the Japanese like TK
Whoa, I guess his english really is appealing to a lot of people.
When you have four companies working on a project, I would have to say that not trying too hard would be a task in itself.
Lol, I was wondering what that feeling was about. I did feel bad for Yuri though, just thinking about the pressure of having someone’s life in your hand is just difficult. I think Yuri’s experience is at least a bit different from the normal, my parents/family were killed, and now I want revenge theme. A lot of emotions get riled up whenever kids are involved, especially little brothers and sisters.
I did not cry. You pansies.. except for Scamp!
I didn’t cry either, it was just real dusty in my house. Anyway, I liked the desperate searching that Yuri had to do. It made sense that the burglars wouldn’t just kill everyone without at least trying to get the riches, and it really gave a sense of unfairness and powerlessness as opposed to burglars busting in and instantly murdering everyone in 1 minute.
That’s exactly my point
It’s as if someone at Key went.. ooh.. but it’s NOT SAD ENOUGH and we can’t have that in a Key heroine
You just stole the words from my mouth right there. Does everything honestly need to be that dramatic?
You think that’s sad, wait till we find out how that wind-up puppy in the cardboard box used to be a student at the NPC school.
That or one of the Kampfer animal dolls…
Almost forgot to mention, Yuri is pretty strong emotionally, and physically. Its not everyday, you see a girl hold up two guys like that. And to be the first to rebel, takes a lot of guts.
I really thought it was a bomb, and then I see a waterfall, and its like where the heck that thing come from. Still, if they have to resort to using cute animals in distress tactics then the tenshi must have a really kind heart.
It really did take a lot of guts to be the first, and I think there have been psych experiments about how much easier it is to question authority once one other person has done it first.
I bet Shiina didn’t even die, since nobody in anime ever dies from a fall off a waterfall. She was probably just spending time cuddling that puppy.
I sort of ruined the series for myself by watching that “making of” special video by P.A Works and Jun Maeda going into great detail on how this was going to be best shit ever, when there is hardly anything worth being impressed about. The only thing I can take his word for at this point in time I guess is that second half of the series is going to more “KEY-like” as opposed to the “anime-like” of the first half.
Actually the interview made me want to give the series another shot. I really do want to know where he’s going with this.
I see what you did there.
I thought the puppy would be a bomb, too, haha. Had a very Marvin the Martian reaction when she disappeared — “Where’s the kaboom?”
It’s kind of funny how Yuri is rebelling because life is so cruel and death is so cheap, and yet she walks away pretty easily from her friends falling prey to the traps. Guess you get desensitized to it after a while. Funniest death, even though it is a predictable joke, is that douche floating dead in the water right after the eyecatch — that’s what you get for mouthing off to the wimpy male lead!
To be fair, death is little more than an inconvenience in this world, like just a flesh wound. The humor was darker and more clever, which was an improvement over the more simplistic slapstick of just hitting a guy with a giant hammer.
I can kinda see why Yuri would wanna fight god. I mean, I understand her will and motivation to do so.
alas, Otonashi better get smart pretty quick. He’s proving dumbness.
I dunno, he survived all those traps and got on Yuri’s dere side so he’s gotta be doing something right.
I really liked this episode because it was as if these guys were in a video game. Yeah, perhaps the story of Yuri and her siblings was a little “cry now”, but I think you can’t expect anything much different in the context.
I think that she knows it is not suicide because she has information of what type of death brings you to that world.
That is interesting, and would mesh with how she was the first to rebel. Good insight!
Yes the dog-trap was awesome, and the realization that it was actually meant for Tenshi, well I like her other side then lol.
The sad story development was a little early imo but its significant for showing Yuri reason for fighting, Oto doesn’t pity her for it, he just respects her more.
All in all this is a great episode, and yes I too have come to accept that Angel Beats is a tad “selectively awesome” but compared to most of what I have seen this season I have enjoyed it the way it is. There is hopefully alot more to Tenshi and her reasons than we have been show and I hope that will be part of the future developments as well.
Great review I am going to enjoy following you takes on this as we move forward.
Yeah, now I want to know if Tenshi really would have tried to save the dog, or if the puppy would have gotten a Hand Sonic in the face.
The trap tunnel was pretty entertaining. Watching fools succumb to their own idiocy is always fun ;P
Every single trap imaginable… I must say, this show is trying to parody EVERYTHING.
Yuri’s story was unique and touching, and like Zyl said above, it really set her apart from “the Haruhi in her.” *gags* Lol, for some reason I’m one of those people who almost fell asleep watching Haruhi- just could not get into it for some reason. But I did like the webisode shorts thought, those were hilarious.
I like how “killing” everyone else off with the traps was used as a transitioning tool to give Otonashi and Yuri some alone time to get to know each other better; it was rather ingenious- yet poorly handled. The atmosphere shifts directly from lighthearted comedy with the trap tunnel to intense emotion with Yuri’s tearjerker backstory immediately after the last obstacle character is culled- it felt forced and unnatural, but the strength of her backstory soon negates this effect.
Overall, much stronger than the first episode in my opinion- mainly because something concrete actually happened this time. A little dumb fun is always welcome, but with only 13 episodes. Angel Beats needs to ante up the pace.
I agree that the traps section was a very elegant technique in this case because it told us a bit about the side characters, it got Yuri and Otonashi alone, and it touched again on how desensitized everyone is to death.
Maybe the MAI HIME twist to this show will be the NoDeath parameter gets changed to False.
That would be so EVIL! Or they find out they only get 30 lives…
What would be REALLY EVIL is if the whole SSS then gets conveniently resurrected and fly off on associated cute mascot creatures (Shiina’s got dibs on Dah Bomb Dog) to defeat the Final Boss (not Tenshi of course).
This episode was so much better than the first, though I’m not sure what it says that we’re so happy to see all the characters get killed…. I thought the traps were pretty generic or lifted from somewhere else with the exception of the dog/waterfall combo (also totally surprised when the dog did not explode) but when they said they were making everything based on memories it all fit (plus they can get away with just about anything under that blanket). I’m not sure that I buy Yuri’s story though, something about it feels off. It may just be the fact that her parents in the story are super neglectful even by anime standards, but there’s definitely something else going on there.
Well, parents in anime tend to be either awesome or super-crappy, so it was odd to see loving parents suck that bad. Maybe they are only good in spurts, kinda like the Angel Beats animation *burn*
I have a tough time trusting the characters. Watching too much anime has made me cynical and jaded.
I thought the dog was going to explode too! Probably the ticking sound it was making.
The whole episode made me think of Tower of Druaga for it’s random traps. Too bad they didn’t have a REAL trap… y’know the guy in girl clothing kind (while climbing up her, Otonashi looks up Yuri’s skirt and realizes something’s fishy… actually fish would be the wrong smell
).
Also why aren’t they using that laser on Angel more!
I’m surprised they even had that since they only have dirt to work with.
+1 for mentioning the awesome Tower of Druaga traps, -infinity for all that other stuff
I assume the Japanese loves TK since he’s most likely to become the random pop culture reference guy.
A friend just noticed his last line before he dies is from the lyrics of B’z ‘s “Hurry up”.
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