Maeda Jun interview:
About episode 7
Maeda:
Episode 7 was personally a really scary episode for myself. Because Otonashi had lost his memory all this time and when people see this episode they might go “Wha? That’s all?” or “All he needed to get his memory back was via Naoi’s hypnotism?” and think that the scriptwriting was too lazy or cheap.
If this was a game, when the player continues on he’d find out that there’s one deeper level to his memory that has not been revealed yet, but in an anime, it stops for a week after the episode ends.
So people will probably say stuff like “Maeda is bringing the sick sister out of the hospital and letting her die again, that’s no different from before. There’s no more to Maeda.” and that I’m just repeating the same stories again.
About episode 10
Maeda:
I really want to thank director Kishi for putting Yui and Hinata together in the ED (in earlier episodes).
Even I personally thought it was a little too sudden for Hinata to confess his love to Yui suddenly in episode 10, but the ED managed to help foreshadow this.
Kishi:
After knowing their relationship in the main story, I wanted the ED to look like that.
Maeda:
Yui doesn’t get to speak much in the main story, so a large part of this was saved by the presentation.
Also, episode 10 is personally where it’ll decide victory or defeat for me. If this episode doesn’t work, then it means I wasn’t able to live up to viewer’s expectations that they want to see a story that will make them cry, so I really want to know what people think of this episode when it airs.
source:
http://zepy.momotato.com/2010/06/07/...n-angel-beats/
In that sense, I guess Angel Beats! is a failed work to me. ~.~