What a wonderful little episode about a lighthouse keeper. it was told in a completely different style than usual, with us as viewers thrown right in the middle of a story, only revealing bit by bit what’s going on. I love these kinds of episodes in which a series just abandons standard storytelling and tries out something different, and it worked delightfully well here.
The story itself was also excellent here. There have been stories about old men who are abandoned by their children who don’t want to succeed their professions, but it still stood apart as unique by making the old man dead for years, not solving anything other than ridding the world of another Gaichu, and having the man create fake stories and letters in order to escape the loneliness. It’s totally bittersweet, even for a ghost story.
Nichi was also as adorable as ever here. We never actually saw her attempts to get Lag back, other than a bunch of silhouettes, but based on the things she said, along with the bruises she left on Lag’s body we can only imagine what it must have looked like. On top of that, we finally got to see Lag, meeting Jiggy Pepper, and he really turned out to be much more of an interesting guy than I thought.
I know that episodic series are often looked down upon and all, but I love them, exactly because they can be able to pull off episodes like these: it’s something much harder for series with a continuous story, which have their own advantages. For that to happen of course, the series in question does need to have the guts to abandon these conventions, of course, and I’m really glad that Letter Bee belongs to the series who do.
Rating: *** (Awesome)
I envy ou a little bit, Psgels. Every new episode is a new discovery for you. But i’m spoiled as I was so excited to know about this story that i literally ate all the manga chapter avaible in one day. Now i’d need a gaichuu to reset my memories for good 😛
This episode completely threw me off. When Niche’s “silhouette” appeared for the first time over his bed, I literally jumped. Incredible…
This series is “episodic ad continuum.” Next episode, judging from the preview, will feature the two gray dudes from the intro, so the plot will advance anyway (whether you want it to or not, haha).
Wow, that was one really awesome episode, probably the best and most captivating so far (at least for me)… It rekindled my somewhat put out interest in this series, so now I’ll be eagerly looking forward to the rest of the story, hopefully not so heavily fillerized as the first season was…
I remember when you first looked at this show and was unsure as to whether to blog about it or not, and I told you that of all anime bloggers, you would be the only one to like it, because it seemed like a show you’d like (because I also love it as well despite it’s cheesiness) – you and I have many similar tastes, psgels! 😀
Yes, I remember this story in the manga, and watching it back in an anime, it really confirms that this was one of the episodic ones that I liked best. The movement and feeling it captured is great, a quality that this show delivers differently from others.