You see, I wouldn’t mind believing that the Angel Beats! “Beat Series” was over and done with for good, but the issue is the staff from Angel Beats! and Summer Pockets are signalling something else.
Angel Beats! is Na-Ga design-wise, with help from other illustrators for CG’s and extra cast, and if the Angel Beats! Beat Series was done with, then it wouldn’t make sense that Na-Ga was sharing a position with 2 other people when he could do all of the designs. But then you could say that they’re using the 2 designers because Hinoue left Key, and they may need to build up more designers just in case if anything happens with Na-Ga, or if Na-Ga alone can’t do all the work. That is possible definitely, but it could also easily mean that Na-Ga is busy with the Beats!, to the point where he can only help design 2 of the 4 main heroines (along with him being Key’s now-main illustrator). Na-Ga has to be in this visual novel for marketing reasons in a mainstream title.
However, the problem lies in the fact that people think the project is done with, now that Maeda seems to be working on other things (such as albums and the new Last Operation manga), along with his current health, but people don’t understand that Maeda doesn’t need to be involved with the beats for them to be released. Leo Kashida was a part of the project, and he doesn’t have anything announced yet for future visual novels. This could signify that he’s working on the next beats, seeing as though he planned routes with Maeda.
There’s also the fact that they have 5 composers so far for Summer Pockets listen for the VNDB page. Don’t you think that’s a bit much for a story that seems around the same length as Kanon ? Now it could just be instances where people are listed and they only contribute to the OP/ED, such as Maeda for Rewrite, however, even so, I don’t think they’d need that many people, especially if Maeda is technically done with all the albums and has no major writing to do, meaning he’d have time for the soundtrack along with Shinji, but if they are working on tracks for Angel Beats! also, then that can logically explain the need for 5 composers. Though it could just be 4, since 1 of those composers seems to do mainly OP/ED tracks only.
Then we have the interview they did about it’s release. They didn’t avoid the question and said that they didn’t want to only release Angel Beats! Key would have announced something if plans changed. Instead of doing a big game, Summer Pockets seems to be on a lower scale similar to Kanon, even signifying that they’re not dedicating all their time on this project.
It’s only logical that the project isn’t dead just yet. I’m pretty sure the only problem was not knowing what to do once Maeda’s health kicked in. With Leo and Kai easily being able to work on the project, along with Na-Ga still doing CG’s, it makes sense. I also don’t think people realize how long it takes to make CG’s out of everything else. They had so many CG’s in the first release, and I don’t think they would want future releases to have less CG’s, or else it’d be awkward.
The big problem with the CG’s is that the first beat had the anime to base the CG’s off of, but from now until the 6th beat/final release, everything will be original content. They’ll need a lot of imagination to think about how the CG’s will look like, along with writing itself, and that’ll be a lot considering the quantity of the first release. Not to mention we know how many times the visual novel had been delayed beforehand. Key never manages to have enough CG’s, so it’s clear that if they’re going for the same quantity and quality of the first one in writing and CG’s, that it’ll take longer than the original 6 month plan.
This is all just analyzing the staff given and working on each project, so I could just be wrong and the project is actually dead. But I can’t accept people thinking that the project is dead because of Maeda doing his own things, nor the existence of the new Last Operation, or even Summer Pockets coming out when it’s only natural they wouldn’t fully focus all their time on Angel Beats!
