Wen 丨 Hoshino Meow 0ww@bigfun community
When it comes to the KEY Society trilogy, even if you haven't seen it, it is at least familiar. After all, "KANNON", "AIR" and "CLANNAD", these three tear-jerking dramas have always been considered a must-see for anime fans. The reason why I mention this is because the well-known Japanese script writer Maeda Jun is the screenwriter of "KANNON" in these three films. For him, because he created many excellent tear-jerking works, he was often called the "Great Devil King".
So today, we're going to talk about an animation "Angel Beats!" that he has been practicing for so many years, challenging himself and earning a lot of tears from the audience. 》。
And it also has a very nice Chinese name, which is what we now often call "Angel's Heartbeat".
In fact, a long time ago, the author browsed the comments of this anime on Zhihu. But surprisingly, many people were indeed moved by the overly realistic depiction of this work, and gave it a high evaluation.
But it's worth noting that the animation itself is unreal, because the work is set in the "afterlife world", a group of students rely on a similar approach to game programming, through the data model to establish a way to fight, in the artillery battlefield, and fight against the student president Li Huasong, known as "Angel".
Of course, these characters are confirmed to be "dead" during the battle, and it will not be long before they reappear in the story. After all, it is a person who has already died, and naturally it will not be superimposed on the state of death.
Then everyone may feel a little confused, since it is a story full of fantasy, why will people read the sense of reality?
Because of this work, in addition to a series of excellent fight plots in the early stage, as well as the pictures that constantly stimulate the audience's attention, the plots behind them basically tend to be daily stories, and they are as if passers-by know it.
For example, in the anime, a young girl named Masami Iwasawa often thinks about how to find a way out for her band. Whether singing on the street on campus or performing in a class, it is an effort to achieve this goal. Her last wish was simply to hold a concert for the whole school.
So, this is a very everyday story!
But for these plots, a friend wrote on Zhihu, "I started learning guitar in junior high school, and today it is not a short day." I've sung on the streets, and it takes courage to tell the truth. But when I close my eyes, don't look at pedestrians, and devote myself to the song, I feel saved. And I also fantasized about standing on the stage, with the spotlight on me, facing everyone. So when Iwasawa's predecessors achieved this, I would feel very happy in front of the screen. ”
Have you noticed that although we think that forming a band is a very daily or normal thing, for many friends who have really loved these things, the overly detailed attention in the animation, as far as possible to restore the feeling of chasing dreams when they were young, will give the audience a feeling as if they are reflecting their own existence. And once the characters in the anime are successful, these plots seem to fill the gap in the musical path they once did not stick to, or failed for various reasons.
Therefore, we say that this phenomenon brings people to be moved by the substitution of the plot.
However, some friends will definitely feel that after all, not everyone has ever liked music so much, so for most audiences, we do not have this experience, why are we moved by the plot of the animation?
Yes, since there is no such experience, it is natural to talk about substitution. To that end, Angel Beats! The musical depiction of Masami Iwasawa in "Naturally, there is no way to resonate with us. However, when MaEda wrote this work, he not only used the experience of a guitarist to make a large number of music lovers cry, but also used the stories of other characters to restore the experience of more audiences and make everyone resonate.
For example, it tells the story of a good sports athlete who strives to make his team stand out and go one step further, and finally enters the major events and shows his style.
Another example is to set up a fishing enthusiast who likes pastoral life and is close to nature, or a timid but kind girl who is afraid of ghosts, hates horror stories, and is timid.
You can see that in fact, Angel Beats! As a group portrait drama, in a short 13-episode plot, it has made a very detailed description of the different daily lives of dozens of characters in the "afterlife", from the personality to the things that are being completed and the dreams in their hearts, and also give a more detailed portrayal.
What's more, for these contents, it is not like some of the works that are popular now with daily plots, which will be filled with utopian brain supplement stories. In turn, these contents are completely based on the observation of a personal life trajectory in real life, reproduced into the entire animation, and finally make the audience look at the animation as if sitting quietly in the cinema watching a life documentary. In this way, such a strong sense of reality will naturally allow us to see the experience of each character, and then get a kind of substitution feeling that seems to be looking at ourselves.
Of course, this portrayal of the trajectory of life is actually only the first layer of emotion that Ma Zhijun brought to the audience when he wrote this work. How to transform substitution into resonance needs to be further developed on the basis of the first level.
While Angel Beats! In other words, in the school of the "afterlife", students either spend time in teams to challenge Lihua, known as "angels", as a club activity, or immerse themselves in their own good times, doing what they want to do, and enjoying a carefree life.
In this way, many friends may feel strange, if this animation is just like this, while full of fantasies to fight, while just living a daily peaceful life, wouldn't it feel a little different.
However, everyone found that since this work is a story about "after death", as a counterpart, in fact, a considerable part of the plot is describing the content of these characters before they die, and even said that many of their behaviors in the "afterlife world" are caused by various experiences before death.
As mentioned earlier, The young girl Iwasawa Masami who touched netizens and wanted to hold a concert. The reason why she was extremely enthusiastic about music in the "afterlife" was that she lived in a violent family before she died. At that time, Iwasawa was selling songs on the streets and working hard at convenience stores for her musical dreams. Under her efforts, when her musical path was about to dawn, she was deaf in both ears and unattended due to domestic violence, and eventually died in a hospital bed.
Also as a fan of Masami Iwasawa in "Afterlife", the teenage girl Yui has been chasing herself to participate in wrestling, soccer matches, baseball events, bands and even marriage wishes. These don't look like girls, and even some absurd ideals, in fact, because when she was alive, she couldn't walk because she was paraplegic from the neck down, so she was very eager to do some exercise.
This is true of both heroines of this work. The protagonist, Yuri Nakamura, wished she could become a competent older sister, but her beloved younger siblings were all killed within 30 minutes of the gangsters' burglary. So that's why she entered the "afterlife", did not trust anyone, and always hoped to change everything with her own hands and overcome everything.
The protagonist, Li Hua, accepted the heart of a donor before she died, so she very much hoped to express her gratitude to the donor, so she entered the "afterlife" to find this person.
The four examples given above, we should be able to find that in fact, in this work, Ma Zhijun's definition of death is very detailed. He doesn't just make up a bunch of people who leave the real world and enter another world. Instead, they chose to portray a group of young boys and girls who actually had great regrets before they died, and even when they died, they failed to fulfill their wishes.
Just, why do you want to do it?
Here's Angel Beats! " brought the second level of emotion. Because in the first layer, the kind of reproduction of real life, let everyone feel the sense of reality, the sense of substitution, these may not make every audience have a touch, after all, the sensitivity of different audience emotions is not the same. And furthermore, no matter how comprehensive the animation depicts, it is impossible to cover the life experience of every audience.
However, the only regret is that almost everyone will have, and you must have a lot of things that you hope to be able to do, but for various reasons, you have to give up. It's a fairly normal experience because in this world, it's impossible for any one person to always be satisfied.
However, Angel Beats! " deliberately amplifies this regret, emphasizing that the characters in it have entered the "afterlife" with regrets, in other words, to seal the possibility that these regrets may be completed in future lives.
In this setting, this animation is equivalent to forcibly pulling us into its worldview, resulting in a kind of: whenever we see these plots with regrets in life, we will first comfort ourselves and feel that this is the common sentiment of people, after all, life is not satisfactory. But the animation keeps reminding everyone that with death, you see these characters do not complete their wishes before they die, there will be no chance again, and this regret will always accompany you, even if you leave the real world.
So this is equivalent to stimulating the hearts of the audience again, making us feel that this regret is not indifferent, but needs to be paid attention to, needs to be thought about, and needs to be solved urgently. Under the influence of these emotions, we are reminded of our thoughts and memories of those regrettable experiences.
Maybe you will be annoyed that you have not confessed to the girl you like.
No victory was won in the final match.
Accidentally said hurtful words, but didn't have the opportunity to say sorry and so on.
And once we get caught up in these events filled with regretful memories, we start talking about Angel Beats! This work resonates. After all, the characters in the anime still have a chance to make up for it all in another world, but we may miss it and really miss it, and there is no chance to save it.
So this emotional progression from regret to regret, from regret to nostalgia, will eventually become an atmosphere of sadness and continue to infect us.
Dull, crying becomes a matter of course.
Of course, at the end of the day, Angel Beats! After all, it can be considered a work with a good ending. After all, in its story setting, as long as the "afterlife world" can be relieved of the things that happened before death, then everyone can successfully re-incarnate into the real world and form a reincarnation.
However, the reason why this work does not insist on telling their stories in the "afterlife" and let everyone return to reality may be to convey to us: even if everyone once had a hard time looking back and making it difficult to put down the past, in the end we still have to regain our spirits, cheer up, and start again!