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Review of Angel Beats! -1st beat-

SubjectAngel Beats! -1st beat-
Angel Beats! -1st beat-
ByHelpfulness: 16
Vote: 8
-Ryu on 2021-11-07
ReviewWARNING: This review contains some spoilers and was written assuming the reader already watched the Angel Beats anime and knows what it's all about.

Angel Beats is a series I love, it means a lot to me, but at the same time it also makes me incredibly frustrated, because it absolutely could have been peak fiction if the project was handled well. The anime suffered from pacing issues due to having too much shit to cram in just 13 episodes, but since it was commercially successful, Key decided to capitalize on it by releasing a visual novel. It was announced that it would be an episodic game, with 1st Beat being the basis for subsequent volumes adding more content until it becomes a complete game by the time volume 6 drops. Fuck yeah, I'm finally gonna see the thematically rich concept of Angel Beats having its full potential explored, I can't wait for this to be fully released!

But then, God said "No" and things went south after the release of 1st Beat.

Turns out the Angel Beats VN is one of the main examples I use to elaborate on why I hate the idea of episodic releases, and much prefer games being complete from the get-go. There's no guarantee that an episodic game will reach its end, it may never get past episode 1, or even a later episode if something wrong ends up happening, be it sales not being as strong as expected, or in Angel Beats' case, the creator having to be hospitalized because of health issues. By the time Jun Maeda's heart condition got better, a handful of years have already passed and we had no news of Angel Beats since then, but at this point we all accepted that it was silently canceled and Key just moved on to other projects.

Despite that, a full translation for 1st Beat ended up seeing the light of the day last year, and as the biggest Angel Beats fan on the internet, it was my duty to play the shit out of 1st Beat and see how it improves on the anime's obviously flawed narrative. Basically, the game covers episodes 1 to 10 of the anime, which means it will go only as far as that episode focused on Yui, who happens to be one of the three possible character routes you can take in this game, the other two being Iwasawa and, surprisingly, Matsushita Godan. I chose Yui as my first route because it seemed like a closer experience to the anime, and she was a character I didn't care much for in the anime, she was annoying, louder than necessary and her "romance" with Hinata felt half-baked. As good as the last scene with Yui was in the anime, it didn't feel earned because she was little more than a background character who provided some comic relief.

So, how does 1st Beat improve Yui as a character? Well, she's still annoying and yells a lot, but that's to be expected. Her story is greatly expanded upon, however, even from the beginning where she is shown to be a Girl DeMo fangirl and was inspired by them to play guitar, only for Iwasawa to disappear during a story event, much like in the anime. Following Yui's route, we see more of how she felt about this, the sadness of losing her idol and how Iwasawa herself also admired Yui for how much effort she puts on her little street performances around the school, reminding her of her previous life. It's when Otonashi talks about what Iwasawa said that Yui ends up finding the motivation to step in and become the new singer for Girl DeMo. Otonashi's relationship with Yui is more linked with how his relationship with his sister was back when he was alive, and depending on your choices, this might even be the reason why Otonashi recovers memories of that part of his life, as opposed to being hypnotized by Naoi like it was in the anime.

Yui and Hinata also get more screen time and their relationship is more fleshed out, though I wasn't a big fan of how they mostly left this to the end where the POV shifts and now you see past events from Hinata's point of view, but it's still interesting, the fact that Yui was interested in baseball is what drew them close in the first place, he started teaching her to play baseball way before Otonashi did near the end of her route, and despite Yui being bad at baseball, they ended up getting closer, but never admitting they had romantic feelings for one-another. That is, until we get to see a bit of Hinata's past life outside of what the baseball episode showed, and after reflecting on that, he decides to confess his feelings to Yui, leading to a much more satisfying version of that same scene from the anime.

This is basically how 1st Beat rolls, it follows the story of the anime closely, but expands on a lot of elements from it, even the tiniest detail about the afterlife school is explained and there are a lot more character interactions and moments in between the main events of the anime, and there are so many choices and ways to explore the game that it can get a bit overwhelming for a first time player. Right in the first chapter of the game, which covers episode 1 of the anime, you can straight up refuse to join the SSS and get one of the bad endings, but if you choose to join, Otonashi will mention that he forgot his name, and each of the members suggest a nickname for him, and you can pick any you like or just focus more on remembering your name, and depending on which one you picked, the game will actually remember that choice and parts of it will change because of that. Not only that, but the choice system allows you to determine how Otonashi's relationship with a lot of other characters throughout the story will be like, just by how frequently you chose to interact with a specific character who's at a specific location on the map, as well as the dialogue options you chose. Hinata can be either an absolute bro in Otonashi's eyes, a weird guy who's a bit too interested in getting close and might just be gay, or you can make Otonashi literally have a gay crush on Hinata instead!

Granted, not every character has their relationship with Otonashi as well-developed, especially since this isn't a complete game, but you can definitely see how it would develop with certain choices. For example, you can choose to try and save Fujimaki during the water trap in the Guild, and if you did so, he remembers that and treats Otonashi to lunch to thank him. But of course, certain choices lead to certain paths and alternate endings, so you may keep that in mind if you want to follow a specific route, 1st Beat is definitely a game you'll want to look up a guide if you don't want to experiment with the choices and would rather just get to the routes already. Still, it is really impressive how even the choices that seem inconsequential still have some impact, like when you pick Lolicon as Otonashi's provisory nickname and this leads to Yui initially being afraid of him since she's technically a loli, and you can play around further with this by making certain choices that can make Otonashi seem like a lolicon, they wouldn't be there if you haven't made the previous lolicon-related choices.

The routes for Iwasawa and Matsushita are the ones with more content original to 1st Beat, as Iwasawa disappears early in the anime and Matsushita doesn't have that much screen time. I'm not going to spoil much of them here, but Iwasawa's route was my favorite in the game because it expands on what's an already good character in the anime and it's nice to see how things go if she's saved from disappearing when she was supposed to, had some really cool deviations form the anime's story. However, Matsushita's route had a rather confusing end, despite his backstory being interesting, I'm not sure I understood how he ended up moving on and disappearing in the end. There are some choices that tease future content as well, like when you make choices that have Otonashi getting closer to Angel/Kanade as opposed to other characters, a bit of her background in the afterlife is revealed, or a potential gay romance between Otonashi and Hinata in his future route. Seriously, I wonder how huge the finished Angel Beats VN would be like, because despite being incomplete, 1st Beat is so packed with content that it has enough time to rival the lengths of some longer VNs out there, it took me roughly 40 hours to see everything this game has to offer and get every achievement. Also, if you get specific achievements, you unlock Next Beat, which is basically the start of the anime's episode 11 with the Shadows and all, but after Otonashi gets everyone to trust Kanade, it ends with a cliffhanger where they start to fight the Shadows, with a "TO BE CONTINUED" screen.

To be continued? Heh, yeah sure... Fuck you, Key!

Anyway, if you like Angel Beats and want more content out of it, then you definitely should play 1st Beat. Despite it only being the first part of a bigger VN that never was, it still functions as a complement to the anime and has what's possibly the best choice system I've ever seen in a VN, it's so great that I beat 100% of it just because of how fun it was to experiment with the choices and how Otonashi develops as a character through them, or how even the main routes can change depending of some alternate choices you made. Jesus, writing this just made me sadder that we'll never see a fully realized Angel Beats visual novel.

Fuck you again, Key!
16 points
#1 by funnerific
2021-11-07 at 11:20
< report >Thanks for the detailed review. As an AB anime fan, I was curious about this, but not enough to torture myself by playing an incomplete game.