エンジェルビーツ Episode 05
Angel Beats 05 Anime Review

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

Yuri has the next operation set to take down Tenshi, this time using the exam time at school. She selects some of the normal members of SSS, including Otonashi and herself, to be in the same exam room with Tenshi. The goal is for Tenshi’s test papers to be swapped with a fake one whereby she’d be humiliated in the eyes of the student population and teachers. Takeyama is the only one to get a seat near Tenshi, so his job is to take her paper and swap it with a fake one. Unfortunately, no one knows Tenshi’s real name so Otonashi is sent to look at the class register. Tenshi stops him since the test is about to start and he confesses to being nervous. She assures him it will be OK and they introduce themselves to each other, thereby finding out her name is TACHIBANA Kanade.

The various guys Yuri has selected to create a diversion so that Takeyama can swap Tenshi’s tests fail, forcing Yuri to use some installed ejection seat rockets installed under that guy’s seat to go off, forcing them into the ceiling and thus creating the diversion. Only Oyama is spared a flight to the ceiling as Hinata takes his punishment and Otonashi has to run placate Tenshi after every one of these events. Otonashi wonders if what they are doing will actually matter and after the exam time ended, he runs into Tenshi leaving the teacher’s room and seeming a tiny bit down.

The next day, Yuri announces that the rumors are out about Tenshi’s scoring zeros on all tests. A few days later, a school assembly is held to announce that Naoi is replacing Tenshi as student body president. Yuri is pleased an announces another Operation Tornado to score meal tickets.

With Girls Dead Monster on stage that night, now lead by Yui, the concert goes as planned. Tenshi is spotted but Otonashi stops them from taking action since something’s not right. Tenshi enters the building where the concert is being held and Yuri is informed. She’s not happy but surprised to see Tenshi buying a meal ticket to purchase Mapo Tofu, a spicy meal no one else buys. Yuri orders the fans turned on to get the meal tickets and sees Tenshi lose her ticket.

The next day, Otonashi has the Mapo Tofu ticket since he had picked it up. Despite its hot spiciness, both he and Hinata find it to be good. They are surprised when Yuri says it was Tenshi’s ticket, causing Otonashi to feel bad about depriving Tenshi of a simple pleasure of her favorite meal. Yuri sees Tenshi as human, only cracking down on them when SSS got out of line and only developing Guard Skills in response to SSS’s Guild. Their meal is interrupted when Naoi arrives with a large group of normal students to take the SSS members to detention.

Thoughts/Review:

Well now. We have an episode that does a mix of comedy, yet manages to throw out some paradigm shifts as well.

On the humor front, the seat ejection propulsion systems installed in the chairs ended up being funny, with the slow-motion replay adding spice to the humor. I was reminded of the countless videos on the Internet were someone has an accident, then near the end of the video, things are replayed but in slow motion. So that was fun.

As expected, Yui took over as lead singer of Girls Dead Monster. Yay. However, no Hinata-Yui fighting though.

Now, for the meat and potatoes of this episode.

So, Tenshi’s real name is TACHIBANA Kanade and this episode should remove any doubts of her not being just like Yuri and company. Since Yuri did know her name at some point (or that’s the impression I was left with), why did Yuri have such a strong animosity to Tenshi? Why did she think Tenshi was in fact an angel? OK, so Tenshi had special abilities, but Yuri seems to have them as well seeing as how someone had to create those ejection seat devices. Someone had to start the creation of weapons if Yuri was the founder of SSS. In fact, I’m starting to wonder if Yuri didn’t actually create everything and in fact is the real villain, though unbeknownst to herself at this point.

I couldn’t help but feel badly for Tenshi in this episode. I do expect Tenshi to either ally with SSS or Otonashi to somehow get closer to Tenshi. As I said, her actions were always odd to me in that she was always 100% reactive to whatever SSS did. There was no fallout from their actions either, such as their previous Operation Tornado. Tenshi may have acted like a Terminator, but I suspect her actions were to protect the members of SSS from something worse. This would seem to be born out in the different tact Naoi is taking, when he comes after SSS the next day. I suspect Naoi isn’t what he seems either and that Yuri will wish she hadn’t dethroned Tenshi. We’ll see though.

I wonder why Otonashi remembers the answers to the test so well. It should be interesting to find out since this appears to be one of those blatant clues.

The series went back to the Tenshi OP, so I guess the Yui OP was just a one-time thing, though well used.

Finally, how do the globe lights shown in the OP fit into the story? They appear to be a carryover from Clannad and may only indicate this is a land of the dead. We’ll see though.

So, a rather good episode that mixed humor and serious story, with no “this is how I died” aspects.