Angel Beats! is set a high school that is a limbo place for those who have died. The students at this school can still feel pain as they did while they were alive and can die again, but they will reawaken without any injuries.

The protagonist of the series is Otonashi; at the beginning of the first episode, he awakens to find himself at the high school, and has no idea how he got there. He also has amnesia, and all he can remember is his last name. When he wakes up, he meets a girl named Yuri, and she invites him to join the Afterlife Battlefront. This is a group Yuri founded to fight against God and the cruel fates the members of the group experienced during their life. The group has a four-girl band called Girls Dead Monster that serves as a diversion during missions.

The only enemy of the Afterlife Battlefront is a girl named Angel. She has supernatural powers, which she uses to fight against the Afterlife Battlefront, and she is also the student council president of the school. The school is populated by a lot of "normal" students that Yuri refers to as "non-player characters"; they aren't human, but they look and act like it.

By the time I finished watching the first episode of Angel Beats!, I thought it had a bit of a strange premise. The animation was decent, but to me, the highlight of the show is the music by Girls Dead Monster. The song I heard in the first episode was very catchy, and I believe they are also the band that does the opening theme song.

The show also tries to mix comedy, action and music into one series. The combination seemed to work decently in the first episode, but since I haven't seen beyond that, I don't know how well the combination works together in the long run.

Angel Beats! isn't necessarily a bad series, but it's not the type of anime that I normally like to watch. While I wouldn't be adverse to watching future episodes of this series, at the same time, I'm not exactly motivated to watch more episodes to see where the series progresses.

Content-wise, the worst thing I saw in the visuals of the first episode was some blood. But with the subject matter and the age of the characters, I would personally recommend Angel Beats! to anime viewers who are 14 or 15 years of age and older.

Title	Episodes	Release Year(s)	Director	Studio	N.A. Licensor
Angel Beats!	13	2010	Seiji Kishi	P.A. Works	Sentai Filmworks
Angel Beats!: Stairway to Heaven	1	2010	Seiji Kishi	P.A. Works	Sentai Filmworks