Angel Beats: Complete Collection

Short Review:If you only watch anime in English Dubs, skip this one. You'll end up disappointed. However, if you're willing to try it in Japanese with the English Subtitles, you'll discover an anime that is funny, engaging, well-paced, and worth watching again and again as part of your collection..Long Review:General Plot (no spoliers): The main character, Otonoshi, wakes up with amnesia to a world he is not familar with...the world of the afterlife/purgatory. Tenshi (Angel) and the Underworld Battlefront (led by Yuri) are the main sides in the struggle in this world. After joining the Battlefront, and learning about this strange world from his allies that have been there longer than he, and eventually remembering about himself and his past, he helps change the path of everyone close to him..Generally I'm not a fan of anime with school settings. This anime, however, isn't a typical school anime (often because the Battlefront does everthing they can not to conform to the norm). It blends action and drama, happy and sad, very well. And you'll find that you can easily connect and relate to the characters. Good J-pop music for the opening, closing, and for the 'Diverson Unit' of Battlefront. While a lot of people don't watch the opening and closing credits, I liked all of the subtle changes that were made to each that reflected plot/character changes throughout the series..Languages: Subtitles and DubbingThe best way to watch this anime is with Japanese Voices and English Subtitles.If I had watched this in the English Dub originally, I wouldn't have gotten past the first few episodes..There are a lot of fan-subs for this one on the internet, so until I received it from Amazon, I wasn't sure which one I was getting. I have mixed feelings about the English Sub. Many scenes have the 'Diversion' band playing in the background behind the main action, which really fills up the bottom of the screen with sometimes 4 lines of text (2 just for the english & japanese 'romanji' text of the song). In Asian copies of this anime, they put the song lyrics in the top and left sides of the screen...which helped in making the subtitles of the spoken words easier to read at the bottom. The American version should have kept that format, but unfortunately didn't. There are also a couple of places, where the text is not left up long enough to read. There aren't many, but such poor pacing of the text should have been caught before production was finalized. Because TK's background ramblings are usually in English, it really wasn't necessary (and is a bit distracting) to have his words in the subtitles. Lastly, the translation is sometimes not very good. Thankfully it's generally subtle things that don't effect the main flow of the story, but annoying none-the-less. ie. "Kancho" a prank played by grade school children isn't close to the same as an "enema" (episode 1). There are others, and oddly, the English dub doesn't make many of the same mistakes. All-in-all, the English sub is acceptable...though I've seen better fan-subs online..The Japanese Dub is amazing. All of the characters have interesting unique voices, and are very expressive. Comic timing is perfect, and the flow is kept moving by seamless exchanges of fast-paced conversation in many places. I don't have one bad thing to say about the Japanese Dub..I don't like the English Dub. Otonoshi, Yuri, Hinata and Takeyama have good voices. Yui (especially) and Tenshi are kind of annoying. Most of the other characters blend together (boring/non-unique) so much that it's hard to tell them apart. TK's defining character trait (hopping back and forth between English pop type phrases and some Japanese) is essentially destroyed by the Dub...moving everything to English. Even some of the background sound effects are removed from the English Dub...which detracts from the overall experience. The English Dub wasn't so much translated, as adapted in many places. Some lines appear to have been ad-libbed, and the general demeanor of some characters change drastically from the original Japanese. (ie. Otonoshi is a pretty straight-laced student. The English Dub changes/relaxes his character to try to make him more palletable to an American youth audience.) Lastly, due to the above, the English dub doesn't flow well in many places, and the comic timing that works so well in the original suffers as well. There are many anime I will watch in English...Inuyasha, Full Metal Alchemist, Ranma 1/2, Cowboy Bebop (among others)...but this very good anime is reduced to middling quality when watched in the English dub..In response to some reviews:.Some say that 13 episodes was too short. I disagree. The general story at the end necessitated a quick ending. If it was too drawn out...and every charater was given the same attention as Iwasawa/Yuri/Otonoshi/Yui it wouldn't have fit the plot...and Otonoshi would have been discovered. Yes, I too am disappointed that a 2nd season of this great anime isn't possible, since it ended definitively. I'm also curious about what back-stories they could have written for TK, Shiina, etc...but I think 26 episodes would have been far too long, and the pacing would have suffered tremendously..Some say that they didn't like the ending. First, if you watch this anime, remember that there are often short scenes AFTER the credits/closing-song. Do not miss these, because they're important for the story development and (in episode 13) the ending (changing a tragically sad ending into a bittersweet happy ending). I like the ending. It fit the story well, and I don't think it could have ended any better given what the characters believed and valued..My grades:A for storyline/characters.B+ for plot execution. (some places were a bit forced)A+ for Japanese voices.A for J-pop musicC- for English voices and some translation.B for subtitles (not horrible, but could be better).Oh...and skip the OVA. The series was great. The OVA was annoying and not worth watching..Hope this helps. :)

This anime series is the one i have seen the most times, right next to Kanon (i guess Jun Maeda is a good story teller :p ) it is really funny and has a very moving story.i don't really want to spoil anything about it because knowing too much about the story would make it less impactful, and i am sure there are many reviews about the story that are much better than anything i could write, so instead i will talk about this release.the video quality is what i would expect from a blue ray release. there is no artifacting, the image is nice with sharp lines and good color. the audio quality is good in both english and japanese.i do start to take issue with this release starting at audio tho. This disk was the first i heard the english voice actors... i usually don't like english over japanese, so you can disregard this if you love english more, but i felt that the english actors lacked the "hot bloodedness" to accurately portray their roles for the most part. i understand that some of that has to do with the fact that english really has very little vocal variance compared to japanese, so it makes it less expressive, but for instance the in OVA much of the feeling is just not there. i also don't like some of the changes to the dialogue to make it fit english grammar better. like if a character says "Cuuuuu~te!" in japanese it was translated as "It's so Cuuute!" while it is more grammatically correct, it isn't uncommon for us to speak incorrectly for emphasis... unless it really is and i just picked it up from anime :pnow that isn't to say i actually love the japanese in this case... the subtitles are really boring, they are the standard yellow bs subtitles. i find that they really take a lot away from the art style when they are so terribly done. so for this release i actually would watch in english probably. perhaps i am spoiled by the fansub community because i first saw this series from the Coalgirls 1080p release. They have very attractive fonts a different one for the op and the rest of the show, And each character has a different colored font shadow that is the same color as their hair. this makes it extremely easy to tell what dialog is whose.i really wish that these companies would put a little bit of effort into their releases. i am glad that i can get this amazing show for so little as opposed to importing, but i think for 40-50$ (and especially 70 which is the MSRP) they could afford to put in more effort than slap all the episodes on a disk.the menu interface is a still image, with no background music. the audio select screen is unintuitive at best and non-functional at worse, and the most special feature there is is a promo video, which is just an advertisement...i mean the japanese releases have behind the scenes information, director interviews, and other songs by GDM.All that being said i do think this show is worth it because it is so good. Even if i had seen the show 5 or 6 times before buying it, i would still say this is a good purchase because it helps ensure other great series get picked up.i just hope funimation gets the next super awesome series.

I'm glad to have this in collection.

Awakening with no memory and with a rifle armed girl kneeling over him, Otonashi finds himself in a school afterlife where attending classes makes you disappear. Otonashi joins with a group of rebellious teens determined to fight against god and the Student Council President, Angel.This two disc DVD set includes all thirteen episodes of the 'Angel Beats!' anime as well as the light comedy OVA. This series is an interesting mix of slapstick comedy and highly emotional scenes that work quite well together, although I am sure some people would find the flipping from one to the other a little jarring. When I first watched this series I considered it to be one of the single saddest series I had ever seen and, while I probably wouldn’t go that far any more, the emotional moments can still be quite tear-jerking and the final episode and a half still rank as some of the most emotional moments from any anime I have seen.The animation of the series is very good, even seven years on from its original release, and has some very entertaining (if limited) action in places. The character designs are nice with none of the various characters being too annoying. This series was one of the first that I ever watched all the way through in the original Japanese and while I do think that the original is better (and probably a little more emotional), the English dub is still relatively good, although it does still leave the songs the characters sing in Japanese. Both the Japanese and English are included on the DVDs. Of the English voice cast, all give very good performances but Brittney Karbowski as Yurippe, Emily Neves as Angel and Greg Ayres as Naoi are my favourites. On the downside, Blake Shepard’s performance as Otonashi is a little flat but this does seem to suit his character in places.The plot of the series is generally quite good but it can seem a little light and rushed in places. Much of this is possibly due to the fact that the series was, apparently, originally meant to be twenty six episodes long but was cut in half resulting in some truncated arcs and some rushing towards the end. While this is a little disappointing there are still some very nice moments throughout the series with my favourite parts being the emotional backstory flashbacks of the various characters, particularly that of the main character Otonashi.The only special features on the DVD, other than the OVA, are clean versions of the opening and closing credits but luckily these are both beautiful songs and animation.Overall, while I probably don’t rate this series as highly as I used to, it was still a very enjoyable anime and is well worth four to four and a half stars.

This is going to be a review of the case and extra content because I assume that, if you are thinking about buying this show, you've already seen it and have decided you liked it enough to purchase the physical copy.The series looks fantastic on Blu-ray but with only a dozen episodes and no extra/ bonus features £30 is charging quite a bit.

Although it is not a 'complete' collection anymore, since more OVAs have been released, but it's still a worthy edition into any anime fan's Blu-Ray collection.

Angel Beats is my favorite anime show of all time. It blow away my expectations within seconds of watching the show. The show is funny, full of action and is very sad. Angel Beats has scenes which feel very real and because of this it makes you cry. Don't get me wrong the show has its fair share of problems since the show was create with the intention of having more than 20 episodes but had to adapt to 13. But after all its faults i cant stop watching it I loved it when I first watched it and I still do. I highly recommend this show

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