Angel Beats Complete Series Collection [Blu-ray]

This is easily among the best of its genre, packed with a welcomingly fresh and original story, great characters with whom many can relate, and an amazingly beautiful soundtrack. I have watched a lot of anime in my time and few have managed to move me as much as this one did. As the anime's entire premise revolves around tragic stories of students who suffered from the terrible misfortunes of an unjust world, it is perfectly designed to pull on your heartstrings relentlessly and executes this in an equally perfect manner. The mix of humor and action with the drama is done flawlessly, never once seeming out of place or as if it was trying too hard.For those who are overly concerned about art style, this anime does not disappoint. It is clean and void of unnecessary fan service. Large iconic anime female eyes abound, as if that were anything to worry about.As I prefer to watch anime with Japanese voices and English subtitles, I cannot comment on the English dubbed version. That said, the voice acting is superb. You might get a few cliché lines here and there, but otherwise the dialogue is compelling and helps to drive the story forward. Hardly do the characters ever say anything wasted, especially considering that the series is only 13 episodes long and would not have any room for it anyways.If you are a guy watching this, be prepared to set aside your man card for a while. Your eyes will be sweating whether you want them to or not. If the character stories do not do it for you, then the music will. It is okay though - you can find a wall to punch later to regain your manliness.Overall, I highly recommend this series. Just be sure to have a box of tissues on hand. I ended up rolling right into Clannad afterwards - eyes felt a little dehydrated after all that sweating, but it was worth it.

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 hesitated for a long time before actually purchasing this anime. Based on the description I figured it was more of a silly show that I didn't really want to spend the money on. BUT I WAS SO WRONG!!!!Do not let the description or the fact there is only 13 episodes make you not get this. The anime starts with the premise that these kids have died and now must fight the Angel to prevent her from obliterating them, but that is not the only story arc and in fact there is so much more to this anime than meets the eye.It has a lot of humor and I found myself laughing out loud throughout each episode, but it is so perfectly mixed with the serious aspects of these characters facing their death and coming to terms with their lives before dying. Towards the end I found my self tearing up at the more tender and touching moments and by the final episode I was a complete mess. It was beautiful and captivating from start to finish.The only downside to this anime is the fact that it isn't longer, I would have loved to have gotten the chance to learn the backstory of all the characters because even though there is a pretty big cast I felt interested in all of them and wanting to know more!Overall this anime has something for everyone, comedy, action, drama, great music, great characters, and a perfectly heartbreaking ending that will almost certainly have you in tears.