Angel Beats! – 08

エンジェルビーツ Episode 08 review
Angel Beats! – 08

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

Angel Beats! - 08Tenshi-2 drops from the roof and Yuri engages her in combat. Her skills are superior so Tenshi battles Tenshi-2, getting injured in the process. Taking Tenshi to the infirmary, Yuri decides she needs time to investigate how to undo Tenshi’s Harmonics ability and remove the clone, which is not restrained like Tenshi was. As such, the SSS members attend class and pretend to be good students to keep Tenshi from going on the hunt. Yuri enters Tenshi’s room and discovers the clone has added more skills like Howling. Yuri makes a modification to the Harmonics program so that after ten seconds, the clone automatically returns to her (Absorb).

Yuri figures that the clone has hidden the real Tenshi in the Guild that they destroyed and so it is decided to go down and rescue her with no diversions. They soon encounter Tenshi-2 but she proves far superior to Tenshi in that she already has her skills active. Further, Tenshi-2 has activated her own clone and SSS is forced to retreat down a side tunnel. Naoi scoffs at the groups stupidity, stating that Tenshi-2 likely had prepared for this and made multiple Angel Beats! - 08clones of herself in preparation, thus there could be numerous clones waiting for them. Sure enough, another Tenshi is waiting at one of the door’s, so Matsushita sacrifices himself to trap this Tenshi beneath his body. All of the other members of SSS end up doing the same until it is only Yui, Yuri, and Otonashi.

Heading down to the pit ruins of the Guild, Yui is taken out by a plank on the way down. Yuri has Otonashi go Angel Beats! - 08find the real Tenshi while she battles the Tenshi clone. The Tenshi clone activates the Howling ability but Yuri was prepared with ear plugs and gets in a blow on her foe. Otonashi finds the real Tenshi and she agrees to activate Harmonics to create another clone. This clone realizes that the program has been changed and tells Otonashi that when all the clones are reabsorbed into Tenshi, they will incorporate their own wills with hers. The ten-second timer is up and all the clones return to Tenshi, causing her great pain as Otonashi embraces her.

Angel Beats! - 08
Thoughts/Review:

Angel Beats! - 08So, I was right about this being Tenshi’s use of Harmonics, but I still wonder why she didn’t make the clone return to her in the first place. The way Harmonics has been created, it is almost as if this is a last resort weapon since the clones obtain their own personalities. I tend to suspect that the clone personality is the original “core program,” if you will. We still know so little about Tenshi and yet she seemed to be both “human” and special. The human Angel Beats! - 08stuff we’ve seen in that she had to create her Guard Skill abilities as well as the fishing trip. The special stuff comes from her apparent role as enforcer of the rules to ensure folks pass on. As such, the clones have that and are determined to implement the rules no matter what.

What I don’t understand is why the clones decided to hide Tenshi in the former Guild site which SSS destroyed.Angel Beats! - 08

Regardless, the clones showed just how restrained Tenshi had always been with SSS. Now that she’s absorbed all of the clones back into herself, how will she react?

I still say that there’s more to Yuri than meets the eye. Look at how quickly she made programs for Tenshi despite the manual being in English. As the Angel Beats! - 08founding member of SSS, I figure she had to be the one to teach them weapon making skills, ’cause how many Japanese students even own a gun much less know how to build one, even with magic dirt?

As before, the trip down to the subterranean areas proved to be an excuse for dark humor (and maybe that’s why the trip was written). Everyone falling on the sword was funnier to me than Angel Beats! - 08some of the earlier black humor, mainly due to it being not very gory. Naoi’s disdain for everyone except Otonashi made me chuckle. The bickering between Yui and Hinata is always good for a smile at the minimum, especially their final fight and aftermath. They really are like siblings in that they enjoy picking on each other. Yui’s demise was predictable to me, but still funny, in part thanks to the traditional “bonk” sound effect when she smacked that plank.

So an interesting episode that manages to include a bit of fun but didn’t really move the story forward (at least, not that much).

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6 Responses to “Angel Beats! – 08”

  1. junior says:

    One thing that I noted at the end of 8 was that the two Tenshis had different colored eyes. The “normal” Tenshi that Otonashi befriended had yellow eyes, while the double had red. We see red eyes on all of the clones in this episode. Not sure what’s up with that.

    For some reason, the normal Tenshi appeared to be fairly weak when Otonashi found her. The episode didn’t provide any real explanation for it. I’m wondering if the multiple clones put a strain on her body. There’s also the question, as you note, of why Tenshi didn’t just recall the clone(s) when they started causing problems instead of having to resort to the forced “Absorb” command. Given Tenshi’s general passivity up until this point, I’m starting to suspect that the Tenshi we saw in episodes 1-8 had a fairly small ego and more or less went along with whatever was suggested to her. The contrast with the clones may be similar to the episode of the original series Star Trek in which a transporter accident splits Kirk in two – resulting in his personality split across the two Kirks (i.e. one principled but passive Kirk and an ambitious but unprincipled Kirk). It’s possible that Tenshi is suffering from a similar personality split, which would represent the wildly divergent personalities. It also might explain why Tenshi didn’t recall the clone – i.e. because no one instructed her to do so.

  2. Ultimaniac says:

    I would like to take a quick opportunity to say thank you for indirectly convincing me to watch this anime. Now I can’t wait for the next ep.

  3. evgenidb says:

    Off-topic: the 12th episode of “Isekai no Seikishi Monogatari” is ready. So, my command is: ATAAACK! Download the episode from http://hakubi.otakusden.net/ and enjoy it! Commence the assault… NOW!

  4. Manae says:

    I’m sure we’ll find out more before the series is over, but I think at this point we already have a pretty good idea of why Tenshi took her “enforcer” role. Specifically, while jailed with Otonashi, we got to know some of her back story in that she’s apparently been in this purgatory for a long time. Every friend she made would disappear supposedly due to the “being a good student” reason, but she herself didn’t.

    It’s a bit of an extrapolation from there, but basically I would assume she did her best to also be a good student. Because she didn’t disappear for some reason, it could easily lead to some depression, eventually winding up to the mostly emotion-mute state she’s in now. Of course, she was still being a good student that whole time, leading to becoming the student council president, where her good-student lifestyle leads her to the enforcer behavior against the misbehaving students. It’s not so much an antagonistic thing as simply habit.

  5. evgenidb says:

    Aaand… another off-topic: You can watch “Isekai no Seikishi Monogatari” Episode 13 as well. The quality is just 480p, so don’t expect much. Of course, you can always wait for Hakubi’s.

    Here’s the link: http://torrents.animes-bg.com/index.php?page=torrent-details&id=ac2753430ed49d526100e0cc2c80f7c19cac295f (you might need to register to download it, though! Or maybe not? I never tried to download a torrent without signing up.)

    P.S. But beware! There might be a deadly virus, called English Subtitles, which converts the bottom part of the screen into English letters! And till now, no Antivirus software is able to stop its mischievous deeds or spreading into the entire movie. You were warned!

  6. evgenidb says:

    Continuing the off-topic: The subtitles for “Isekai no Seikishi Monogatari” Episode 13 are crappy. Better to wait for a better release.

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