The Angel Beats franchise is far from dead.
I still have a warm heart for Angel Beats years after I’ve seen it. The topic was heavy, yet very approachable. It made the series accessible to a wide audience, which consequently resulted in one of P.A. Works’ most successful franchises.
Hell’s Kitchen takes us back to our colorful cast with Yurippe tasking them with a backpacking trip to the mountains in order to the discover the demon among them.
The search for the culprit goes with Angel Beats tradition with over the top humor and interactions, that would be otherwise ludicrous outside the setting. The gags can become a bit repetitive at times, but nonetheless keep the variety going over the course of the OVA. It’s nice to see the characters put into ‘life threatening’ games by the command Yurippe, with each their signature style of coping with this.
I shortly touched the subject that this is P.A. Works most successful franchise and it looks like members of the board are pushing to keep the Angel Beats saga alive. I wonder how much the production team wants to keep expanding. The OVA’s had a pretty big time gap and the visual novel is in the works after years of speculation and outrages by fans.
As a fan of the franchise, I wonder if this OVA was even necessary. The anime adaptation was well worked out and the OVA couldn’t match the same production quality and therefore even a movie would be a better addition to expand the Angel Beats series.
The Angel Beats franchise was a visual spectacle with its bright colors and nicely blended in CG elements. Nonetheless were their some hick-ups during the OVA. Not all characters were as well drawn as you might expect.
P.A. Works has an interesting shell shading technique for creating characters as fill up in the background. This isn’t the first time they’ve used this technique as we’ve seen this in True Tears. The implementation of this visual design creates a blend between hand drawn and computer styled animation, which doesn’t necessarily blend within the overall design.
Nonetheless do I want to credit P.A. Works for creating dynamic backgrounds instead lifeless ones like J.C. Staff tends to do. A lot.
The Hell’s Kitchen OVA is a nice addition to the franchise, but it falls short in the overall experience. It’s exploiting the same gags throughout the run and isn’t on par with visual design of the anime series. I rate it an 7/10 out of 10 for giving fans more content to enjoy.
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