Ever hear the phrase <better the devil you know>? Naoi, the vice-president of the student council is now acting president, and he's even tougher than Tachibana. Plus he's an NPC, so they really shouldn't go after him.
Otonashi reaches out to Tachibana, but Naoi imprisons them.
Naoi is not an NPC. He's been balancing his goody-two-shoes student council behavior with vicious bullying, which is why he hasn't vanished.
He's decided that he's God. He's trained himself in hypnotism and tries to eliminate his opponents by giving them false closure.
Otonashi and Tachibana escape their prison to save the others at the last possible second.
Otonashi reaches out to Naoi, and we learn about his life.
Will this defang him?
Naoi has joined the team. Yuri provides him with his first assignment: use his hypnosis to help Otonashi regain his memories.
Otonashi is worried that regaining his memories will affect his relationship with the Battlefront, who he realizes he's come to like quite a bit.
Yuzuru Otonashi is a bit of a loser. He's dropped out of school and is working a part-time job which earns him just enough money to eat.
The only thing that really gives him reason to get out of bed in the morning is visiting his sister, who is hospitalized with an illness.
For Christmas, he sneaks her out of the hospital to take her downtown to see all the trees lit up and buy her a present.
It's not clear if she dies because of this, or merely shortly after.
Otonashi decides to dedicate his life to helping others. He returns to school.
He turns his grades around and... is that a college student ID he has in his hands?
He'll never get to use it, as the train he's on has an accident and he dies.
Low on supplies, the Team decides to go fishing.
Otonashi invites Tachibana to join them. She's no longer an authority, so it's fine, right?
With her enhanced strength, she reels in a monster fish: the master of the river.
It's too large for any one person to eat.
The team run a fish fry and invite the whole school. It's more like a service organization that a Battlefront, since they have no enemies.
Then Yuri stumbles in, badly injured. She blames Angel, but Tachibana's been there the whole time.
Who is the doppelganger then?
Tachibana had developed a skill to clone herself, but had failed to put any limit on the clones. She activated it in battle, and the clone of her was made with the will to fight. Then the clone made more clones.
Yuri hacks Tachibana's computer to change the skill to reabsorb.
Unfortunately, the clones have kidnapped the real Tachibana.
The team must fight through the clones to get to her.
But when she activates the skill to reabsorb the clones, well...
All the clones have their own will. Will the original still be in charge afterwards?
Tachibana is in a coma, but when she wakes, who will she be?
Otonashi stays by her all night. When he falls asleep, he dreams of his own death.
He didn't die in the crash, or at least, not immediately.
It was a cave-in, and the passengers were trapped underground for 7 days.
He was my injured internally in the crash, and though he organized all the survivors and bandaged their wounds, he did not survive until the rescuers arrived.
The last thing he did was fill out his organ donor card. He couldn't become a Doctor, but he at least saved one life.
This is the emotional resolution that he needs. But will he disappear now?
No. Because he wants to share it with everyone.
(They don't say the words Bodhisattva Vow. But it sure quacks like a duck.)
Tachibana awakens, and it is our Tachibana. Otonashi explains his revelation.
Tachibana agrees: this is what she's been pushing for.
This school is full of people who were unable to enjoy their youth, and are carrying that weight. She wants to release them.
Like everyone else, she's an idiot. Giving them a proper high school experience won't solve their issues.
But with Otonashi's help, they might be able to do it together.
The first step is to reestablish the status quo. Without an enemy to fight, Battlefront is directionless.
Tachibana turns them in for manipulating her exams. They chalk this up to her losing against her angry selves.
But she's really acting under Otonashi's direction, to arrange a resolution for people.
But can he even do anything for Yuri?
(I elided Yuri's horror story, which was told earlier.
Invading robber/murderers killed her younger siblings in front of her to incentivise her to reveal her parents' valuables. She didn't know where they were. The authorities arrived only after her siblings were all dead.)
Otonashi chooses Yui, the band's replacement singer, as his first target. She's already the band leader, so she must be close, right?
Haha no.
Yuri was paralysed in life so she's for a bunch of physical activities on her bucket list: Soccer! Baseball! Pro Wrestling!
But really, what Yui wants is to feel like she's not a burden. Like someone wants to be with her, instead of being stuck with her. Someone to love her and marry her.
Hinata steps in, weaving a tale of how they could have met and fallen in love while alive.
Yui vanishes.
Naoi as figured out what's going on, and joins Otonashi and Hinata in their quest.
But something goes wrong.
NPCs are being converted into shadow monsters. If they catch and devour you, you become an NPC with no soul.
This new threat forces a reckoning.
Yuri has basically never been fooled. She calls out Otonashi to explain his theory to the rest of Battlefront, then lets everyone make their own decision.
Meanwhile, she investigates. Whoever is controlling the shadow monsters has reprogrammed the NPCs.
It stands to reason that they used a similar method to how Tachibana built her powers. Yuri investigates the computer lab.
It turns out someone has been stealing computers. And there's a suspicious underground passageway leading from the lab to the ruins of the Guild.
Many people choose to move on, leaving only a handful to fight the shadows.
Yuri is engulfed, and finds herself in a classroom, in a classic anime scene. But she doesn't play along and rejects the fantasy.
If she loses her memories and is reborn with a new personality, how is it still her?
She only gets one life, and it was awful. This is why she fights against God.
As shadows flow around her even in the fantasy world, Otonashi reaches out for her. The last fighters have followed her underground, and they're pulling her back.
Yuri goes on to confront the architect... and it's nobody. Just an NPC, programmed to do this if things went wrong.
And what went wrong? Love.
The initial author of the Angel Player system had fallen in love with someone who passed on.
Falling in love should be an auto-exit, but he was trapped here. He created the shadows so he could become and NPC.
It is Yuri's love for her friends that has triggered the failsafe. But she is here in the core now, and can take control and become God if she wants to.
She doesn't want to.
She destroys all the computers, hopefully resetting the NPCs.
As she breaks down, weeping, she sees a vision of her younger siblings telling her she doesn't have to carry the weight all by herself.
Yuri awakens three days later. Almost everyone has passed on. The only ones remaining are her, Otonashi, Tachibana, Naoi, and Hinata.
For the sake of form, and for closure, they hold a graduation ceremony, and a few last words before they pass on.
The last ones out are Otonashi and Tachibana. Otonashi suggests maybe they should stay to help the next class, and even confesses his love.
Tachibana explains that what was keeping here here was him. She had a heart transplant, and he was the donor.
They both pass on, but a post-credits scene gives a strong implication that they will meet in the next life.
But are there OVAs, you ask?
Yes. Three of them.
Two bonus episodes that sit between episode 2 and 3 and between episode 4 and 5, and a tiny thing (2 minutes) called _Another Epilogue_.
For Golden Week, Yuri sets the team to a battle royalle.
The goal is for the most final survivor, the most vicious, to be so dangerous that Angel falls back to call God for help.
Instead, shenanigans ensue.
Yuri declares an operation: everyone should pretend to be in high spirits all day. When they don't vanish, this should confuse Angel so much that she calls God over the irregularity.
This fails to work.
A new student has figured out that this afterlife is bullshit. If he gets good grades, will he go to heaven? It's a farce!
His rant is cut short when he's confronted by the Student Council President...
Otonashi.
If you see it, then quit whining and seize the day, he says.
That's the show.
So, what's my takeaway?
First, despite what some people have said, this is not a comedy.
There are moments of humor, but it's basically earnest the whole way through. (The OVAs are more comedic though.)
It does a solid job of setting up the tension, bringing it to a head, then resolving it. At the climax, you feel pretty solid.
The original ending is a little ambiguous, but not in a bad way.
I'm not a fan of the implication in Another Epilogue that Otonashi stayed on, like the Programmer before him.
Given that, and the goofier tone of the OVAs, I recommend just the core series.
Now, this isn't a comedy, but in a way it's a comedy of errors, in that most of the conflict is driven by the misunderstanding that people are on different sides when they're really not.
The Yuri/Angel conflict is mostly confusion as to what their goals actually are.
And that fight is, ultimately, unresolvable. Yuri can forgive herself for not doing the impossible, but she can't forgive God for making the world cruel. And she doesn't have to. The metaphysics here are such that it's her own heavy heart that keeps her here.
Is that okay?
It's probably better than having an actual showdown with God. _The Devil Lady_ could pull that off, but it's super risky. It's very easy to have a broken moral or metaphysical story, and I think _Angel Beats_ is better for choosing not to go there.
What's my recommendation?
It's worth a watch. _Angel Beats!_ uses heavyweight parts without becoming overbearing. It's not particularly challenging despite looking risky.
I wouldn't watch it if you're in the middle of a deep depression, but it's a good pick, I think.
Further thoughts:
Tachibana is a tiny little thing, but it's amazing how threatening someone can be when you give them the _Terminator_ treatment of being slow but unhinderable.
An excellent choice, especially given that she gets rehabilitated (in the audience's eyes) later.
Many of the characters have back stories that would make them at home in the Monogatari series, or even worse. These kids are carrying a lot of trauma, and some of it can't ever really be solved. Only accepted.
I mentioned the Bodhisattva vow earlier, and I think that's a big hidden driver. Tachibana is basically already complete at the start, but she stays to help others.
Not very effectively, but hey.
This show has a much larger cast than most 13 episode shows. It doesn't feel excessively crowded though. I wonder if it's just that they give relatively minor characters billing in the opener or what.
I enjoyed the running gag of Otonashi and Hinata asking each other if they were gay* whenever they did something caring for each other. It seemed very high school.
* the subs have it as "are you that way".
Given that Otonashi is Tachibana's donor, but Tachibana arrived first, I think we can assume the Jeremy Bearimy timeline rule from _The Good Place_ is in effect.
I was hoping that the OVAs would be character focused episodes. We got a couple of those throughout the series and I think they were a high point. I think the pacing might have been better served if the show was slightly longer. 15-18 episodes, say. Sadly, the OVAs don't do that.
This is one of the few media that address the question: If God exists, why is there suffering, without deciding on either Theodicy (God has a reason and it's X/Y/unknowable) or Maltheism (God is evil and must be defeated.)
This is even made explicit in the show between Otonashi and Tachibana. No one has much reason to fight among themselves.
The doppelganger and shadow crises are actually opposition, but the real fight is between Yuri and God.