At first it looks like this episode will continue where the last had left off, with the Afterlife Battlefront planning another operation in their war against Tenshi. Yurippe plans to break into Tenshi’s domain to crack the computer system she uses and gather information on the enemy. There’s one problem however, as the Battlefront had tried once before to break into her domain and failed, mainly because, as Yurippe describes it, “we’re all idiots”.
Hence the recruitment of genius glasses wearing hacker Takeyama, “call me Christ”, to function as the brains of the operation, something resident idiot Noda immediately wants to test by challenging him to a duel. To everybody’s surprise, Takeyama defeats him easily — by reciting pi, quickly showing that Yurippe’s faith in him to lead this operation isn’t misguided. As with the first episode’s operation, the Battlefront’s band, Girl Dead monster, will provide a diversion luring Tenshi away, this time giving an official if unsanctioned concert. To lure the NPCs to the concert, GirlDeMo’s greatest fan girl plasters posters all over the gymnasium, but which are later removed by Tenshi. When several students object to this, she gives us a first insight into her personality, as she complains to herself that “now she’s the bad guy”.
It’s an important bit of foreshadowing, but the focus this episode is firmly on Iwasawa, the lead singer and guitarist of Girl Dead Monster. She’s the first person we see when the episode opens, demoing her latest song, a ballad, to the Battlefront, a song that will come back in the climax. Like Yurippe did last time, she tells the story of her life to Otonashi, of how she grew up in a dysfunctional family, how listening to and making music saved her, of how she died of brain damage sustained when she was hit by a beer bottle thrown by her father, how she was frustrated in not being able to sing a song that would reach others.
But now, in the most emotional scene in the series so far, she does manage. When the school security interrupts the Girl Dead Monster concert, their leader threatens to destroy the old guitar that had saved her back when she was alive, that she used to busk with, she erupts, takes it away from him and launches into “My Song”, the ballad from the first scene. Pouring her heart and soul into it, she comes to peace with her past life and vanishes. It’s a brilliant, emotional scene, and another example of how well the music is handled in this series.
It had been established in the first episode that you’d only vanish if you went along with the flow and engaged in school; this is the first indication that this isn’t quite the entire truth, that there’s more going on. Judging by Iwasawa’s and Yurippe’s backstories, the people in the Afterlife Battlefront have reasons to be angry at God, which is the real reason for why they fight. But now Iwasawa at least has found her peace, while the research the Battlefront uncovered shows that the truth behind Tenshi isn’t quite what it first looked like either. With this episode, Angel Beats! kicks things up a notch.
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