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“Going round-and-round and flowing, time is ever-changing.
I can't remember what happened anymore, but…”

Time for a new review and what better series to review than the one where everyone wants to rebel against God? Let’s get this thing started!

Story: 10/10
The story is pretty nice and simple, just a group of teenagers known as the Shinda Sekai Sensen (or Afterlife Front, whatever you prefer. I’ll be referring to them as the SSS from this point on) trying to kill a girl they named Angel, a person who is connected to God. Alright, kill isn’t the best word to put here since the setting of ... Angel Beats! is a school that represents the afterlife, where it’s impossible to die. The only way to actually leave the school is to accept your life as a student and act like a model, which causes you to be “obliterated”. Deciding she wanted to raise the middle finger at God since she could never forgive Him for the terrible life she had, Yuri Nakamura forms the SSS and orders them to go out of their way to be terrible students so they won’t be obliterated. Things continue like this for a long time, until a boy named Otonashi awakes in front of the school to see Yuri aiming a rifle at Angel, doing the sensible thing by questioning what the hell she’s doing. From there, Otonashi decides to talk to Angel to figure out what was actually happening, being told he’s dead now. Of course, the boy highly doubts this, and demands proof that he died, getting stabbed in the heart for his efforts. From then on, Otonashi decides to join up with Yuri and others and officially becomes a member of the SSS, leading to their many adventures.

That’s how things go for the first five episodes. Once we reach that point, things begin to become more interesting, and it’s at point where I think the story really becomes the masterpiece that I think it is. Everything begins to come together as Otonashi starts to find out more about the world, his own forgotten past, and more about Angel. This series really knows how to mix comedy with serious situations, how to express emotions through the scenes, and how to handle introducing new elements to the plots without overwhelming the viewer. The only reason I don’t give the story a ten is because I feel like if this was a twenty-four to twenty-six episode anime, certain things could have had more time to develop(like characters) or make the experience even more heartwarming.

Art: 9/10
This anime is beautiful, simply put. The backgrounds are really nice, the way the environment looks when it actually interacts with people, the explosions of smoke and the look bullets make when fired, all of them are pretty good. Character designs really mesh together, with the normal looking Ooyama compared to the out there TK. People like Yui or Iwasawa look like they are part of a band, which really works considering their role in the SSS. You can clearly see that Shiina is a calm and collected personality based on her look alone, while Naoi clearly looks like someone you would be wary of when you first meet him. My only real complaint is the looks of the normal students. Angel as well as the nameless background characters look stale. That really isn’t really a problem for the background people, but when Angel looks boring for a vast majority of the show…eh, can’t really say that’s good.

Sound: 10/10
Without a doubt, my favorite part of the series. I really enjoyed listening to the instrumental pieces that played during the mission briefing of most episodes as well as the piece that plays during the scene with the five major characters near the end of episode 13. The way they used depressing sounding pieces in order to brighten up the mood of a serious scene (like episode 5’s infamous moment) was really brilliant, and another reason why I ended up remembering how some songs went.

Without a doubt though, the best pieces of music are the vocal songs performed by Girls Dead Monster and other songs they played during the most memorable and famous moments of Angel Beats! (the ones that make people think this series is heart breaking). The song that I think does the best job in that department is Ichiban no Takaramono/Most Precious Treasure, the song that plays for Yui during her scene in episode 10. It goes so beautifully with the moment, as well as the fact that the lyrics are legitimately heart breaking that it probably would make you cry if you heard it out of context (good luck trying to not get teary eyed while watching Yui in that scene). Other songs like Thousand Enemies and Alchemy pup you up while listening to them and work really well for Girls Dead Monster when you figure out their role in the story.

Characters: 9/10
These characters are pieces of art. I really couldn’t tell you a character I disliked throughout the thirteen episodes, let alone hate. All of these characters stand out one way or another, with other characters showcasing their individuality better than others. Of the cast, Otonashi, Yuri, Hinata, Yui, and Angel do the best job in showing their strengths as well as their weaknesses. These five (as well as TK, but I’ll explain why he’s not part of this list later) stick out the most out of the characters since they were the ones that developed the most as time passed. I feel that these five’s adventures were the best tracked out of the cast; we could follow their quest from point A in their characterization to point B clearer than the others. Of course, they were the most featured out of the cast, which ultimately brings me to my biggest problem with the characters and probably the series in general: there wasn’t enough time.

This is a thirteen episode anime so there’s only so much they could cover, which unfortunately left people like TK and Noda, who are very entertaining characters in their own right, on the short end of the stick. Each character should really have had their backstory revealed, or have their reason they ended up in the Afterlife revealed and expanded on. TK in particular falls under this category. A lot of people really enjoy him, myself included, but all he is throughout the entire series is the dancer guy that speaks random English which only gets someone so far. No one knows what his real name is, where he came from, or why he speaks random English. I think that would make him a prime candidate to be easily the most developed and entertaining character behind Otonashi since not only would it answer a lot of questions about one of the side characters, but it would answer questions about a character people really like.

In the end, while these characters are amazing, they could have been even more awesome then they were if there was just more time.

Final Words:
I enjoyed this anime from start to finish. I’ve had some great laughs with it, I’ve had moments that I screamed at the screen because of how bad the situation was, I’ve shed tears during the sad moments. Angel Beats! was one of the few anime out there to get me to respond emotionally the way they wanted me too. It’s definitely a series I encourage anyone to check out, and one that I can say that you can go back to and always absolutely enjoy the experience.

“…If I try and close my eyes, I can hear someone's laughing voice
For some reason, now, that is My Most Precious Treasure.”

Alright, first review I’ve done on this site, so apologies if it isn’t exactly the best thing. The reason why I decided on Death Note was for the simple reason of…it was because of this site that I got into it, and Death Note opened me up to series where fighting isn’t really relevant, so I felt it would be fitting for my first review on here to be about one of my “Life Changing” manga/anime. Let’s just get into this though. Oh yeah, I’m putting spoilers in this review, nothing major (I think anyway), but you have been warned.

Story: 9/10
What is the whole premise ... of Death Note? Essentially, it’s about a high school student who found a book that can kill people and decides to play God since he has the power to “judge” people now. This student, Light Yagami, starts off only killing criminals that he deemed were too evil for this world, but eventually decides to kill anyone that is a threat to his ideal world. One of these threats is a detective that goes under the alias of L. The first half of the series mainly dealt with Light’s rise to godhood while having a mind duel with L, the one person Light thought could figure out he was the culprit for killing all these criminals. If I can make an analogy, this battle between L and Light could be compared (albeit on a much serious scale since whoever loses between those two loses everything) to Yugi Muto and Seto Kaiba from the original series. Much like Kaiba, Light is hell-bent on defeating his rival and then rising to the greatest in their series (Dueling world for Kaiba and the world in general for Light). On the reverse side, L and Yugi are more focused on just doing what they do best, and take all challenges, including the challenges of their rivals. I can also say that the battle between L and Light was the greatest part of Death Note, and I can maybe even say one of the greatest in manga period. The plot twists are also so amazing. The most controversial one of them all is still in my Top 5 moments in all of manga, even after all the other series I have read. I’m not saying what it is, but you can probably figure it out if I told you it involves L’s and Light's final confrontation. All in all, I say an amazing plot. The only reason why it’s not a perfect score is because near the end, they were making a lot of characters almost nonexistent (Misa being the prime example).

Art: 8/10
If I can say anything, it’s that the characters are drawn pretty well. With one exception, I don’t think there is one character that looks bad and even then, the one character I think looks bad is probably just me. The scenery looked nice, and when something evil from an “evil” character was about to happen, I could definitely tell that most of these characters were enjoying themselves with their facial expressions (hello Light!). I’m not good at describing art, so I’m keeping this part short.

Characters: 15/10 (10/10)

Oh. My. God. These characters are some of the greatest characters I have ever had the privilege to read about. With one exception, I really love every single character in Death Note. I think every single one of them are written in a beautiful way that makes them extremely interesting and diverse that you can’t possibly mix up any character. I’m going to put it his way for all you video game enthusiasts and especially Portal fans; I would say most of these characters have the same charm and likeability as the ones in Portal and the sequel. I’ll go a little in depth about the two main characters so you can see where I’m coming from.

Light Yagami, the main character of the story and probably the most well written character, isn’t your typical hero where he’s good and he can never do evil. No no no, he’s far from good. If I can give him one title to describe it would be Satan, and that’s why I love him. He is so distant from what I was accustomed to for a main character of a manga, that I was actually upset whenever he was losing against L. I think the biggest reason why I love the guy though is probably because of the way he had fallen from grace. Based on what I said previously, you would assume Light was evil from day one right? He actually started out with good intentions, only killing criminals that he saw doing crimes himself. Eventually though, he started becoming more and more power hungry, and killed anyone he felt didn’t fit in his ideal world. That is actually a believable reason to descend into become the very evil you set out to destroy, not because you felt like being a dick (like most hero-turned villains in media sadly). Other than having the power to kill all, Light is actually a realistic character. Anyone would become corrupt if they had that much power. I could go on with this, but I got one other character to do plus a whole other section, so moving on.

L, the second main character and my second favorite character (you probably wouldn’t ever guess my favorite), is probably one of the strangest characters if he isn’t the strangest character in the series. My first impression of the guy was that he was going o be a guy that looked interesting but would only have one good moment in the entire series, not counting when he beat Light. Boy was I wrong and I was so glad about that too. While Light got the most development as a character, L was the more entertaining of the two in my opinion. He’s a real pleasant surprise since, like Light, is almost nothing like the standard hero of a manga. He isn’t afraid to do cruel and demented things like torture Light and Misa to get answers, and even considers writing people’s name in the Death Note to see if it really does kill people. He’s also not afraid to be out there, with his strange sitting position or how he admits that sleeping would make him stupider. He’s still a genius though, despite his weird habits. Only someone like L could pull off having not one, but three different aliases and not get discovered, all of it with no one but his butler knowing his real name. That is pretty impressive, no matter how high your standards are.

Again, most of these characters are written so well, that I think there is only one character that I think could have been improved on. The characters are definitely the reason why you read the series.

Enjoyment/Overall Rating: 10/10

Overall, Death Note was a blast to read/watch. If you are just getting into manga/anime, go and give this series a read, you’ll probably love manga in general after doing so. If you are already a long time fan of manga, why haven’t you checked this out? You are missing out on an amazing series and should check it out. From the characters to the amazing plot twists, there wasn’t a single dull moment where I just wanted to give up on this series. I’m not afraid to give Death Note a 10/10, as it really deserves it. Thank you for getting me into non manga Light and L, hope you can do the same with other new people to the world of manga.