Note: I wrote this last year after I finished Bad Apple Wars and never got around to posting it. Since my brain power is rather tapped this weekend, I figured now would be a good time.
I'm now in the position where I've both watched Angel Beats and played Bad Apple Wars, and while there are no doubt other stories involving an afterlife trapped in a high school, nearly every blogger I checked out for Bad Apple Wars called it Angel Beats if it was an otome, and going in I wondered how fair was that actually.
So let's get the commonalities out of the way. Obviously there are going to be spoilers for both!
1) High School Purgatory
Both stories involve high school students who die in the prime of their life and awaken in a high school afterlife they cannot leave.
2) Rebelling Students
Both stories feature a group of students rebelling against the way the school is supposed to work. The SSS in Angel Beats knows that people who follow the rules eventually disappear, and conclude that disappearing is bad, so they fight against that. In Bad Apple Wars, the Bad Apples know that people who follow the rules lose their memories and individuality, eventually "graduating" to an unknown rebirth, so they break the rules to stay themselves.
3) There's That Good Student Enforcer
Angel is the initial antagonist in Angel Beats. Whenever the SSS get up to shenanigans she shows up to stop them. In Bad Apple Wars this role is handled by the Prefects as a whole, and they are led by White Mask, who is a particularly difficult individual to run into.
4) They Have a Band
Angel Beats has a full sized band called Girls Dead Monster that performs multiple times in the series, and lead singer Masami disappears (which we later know is a good thing) after her best performance ever. Bad Apple Wars does not have a full band, but the singer and guitarist of one, who had the misfortune of dying in the same bus accident together. Sanzu, the singer, gives the best performance of her afterlife, breaking not one but two of the school's unbreakable rules, after which she disappears (but it was not a good thing).
But there are differences...
Despite their similarities, I think Bad Apple Wars is enough of its own animal that comparing it to Angel Beats is only useful as a convenient shorthand for those already familiar with Angel Beats.
The stories handle their scenarios very differently. The SSS eventually learn that they aren't supposed to fight the system. Disappearing is moving on to a better place, and their high school purgatory is a stopping point for them to come to terms with their regrets before they move on. The problem with the SSS is that they were shooting themselves in the foot by hanging on to regrets of the past instead of learning to let go.
In Bad Apple Wars, the Bad Apples are supposed to fight the system, though they never learn the truth of the matter. The school is set up as a halfway point for students who died in despair. Those who play by the system gradually lose their memories so they can be reborn on graduation. But if students wish to return to the lives prematurely taken from them, they must challenge the rules of the school and earn their resurrection.
This means that in Bad Apple Wars if someone died regretting that they never did something, they could earn a second chance to fix that regret. And one of the characters ends up taking that chance even though he knows he's going to die again soon since the cause of his death (disease) won't go away with his ressurection.
Though nobody can die in either story, being already dead, Angel Beats plays the inability to die for laughs (and as a legitimate combat tactic). Characters will sacrifice themselves in a dramatic fashion knowing that they'll eventually revive, no worse for wear. Revival is not quick though, so it's usually something like they'll die in one episode and be back the next.
In Bad Apple Wars the characters know that "dying" is an impossibility, and they heal up from lethal wounds immediately. This prevents death from being much of an inconvenience and combat between the Bad Apples and the Prefects involves the Bad Apples' Soul Totems (which are unique to each person) and the Prefects' correction tools. Neither side expects to do any lasting physical harm to each other, which is why the Prefects' weapons alter the minds of those hit and the Bad Apples largely to expect to delay or inconvenience the Prefects while they execute their real objectives.
Also different is that the school staff has a role in Bad Apple Wars. While they're just props in Angel Beats, in Bad Apple Wars they are essentially the administrators of this afterlife. Though they are the ones who set up the prefects with their roles, they don't actively work against the Bad Apples and most of them are happy about their charges eventually leaving to go back to their previous lives (except probably Mr. Gas Mask).
I suspect, having watched and played both, that the only reason Angel Beats gets brought up is that it's simply the easiest reference point, given that they both take place in a high school afterlife and both came out of Japan. If you like one, you might not necessarily like the other. One is a romance, the other is a dramedy, and they have diametrically opposed messages about letting go of the past and moving on to reincarnation.
So I wouldn't call Bad Apple Wars an otome version of Angel Beats, because tonally it's not. If anything, I would like to call it another entry in the high school afterlife subgenre. And if that subgenre doesn't already exist, it really should, because there's more that could be done with it.
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