Category: Letter Bee

This pretty much was an aftermath, entirely dedicated to the twist at the end of the previous episode. And boy, was it worth it.

Nearly the entire episode showed a search for where the heck Gauche went, along with what happened to Roda after she fell into that canyon. We actually saw some scenes of the previous episodes, from her own perspective, and learn that even she had no idea what happened to him. On top of that, it was also very nice of the creators to bring some of the characters from the first season back. It’s great to see how they have changed.

In any case, Gauche’s eventual appearance at the end of the episode really was worth the wait. This episode built that moment up really well, and really established that the entire heartwarming part of the previous episodes… was just an act. At this point, I do believe that Gauche got his entire memory back, but at the same time also refused to let go of his identity of Noir, even after receiving Lag’s letter.

I also guess that Gauche himself spent this entire episode, looking for Roda, who he probably spotted somewhere in the previous episode. It just shows how different “losing your heart” is in this series compared to its conventional meaning of being heartless and incompassionate, because I think it’s now established that Gauche really cares for at least Roda, and probably Lag as well (otherwise he would not have chosen such a subtle way to run off during the previous episode). “Heart” in this show seems much more like memories and its combination with the meanings and values of those memories, rather than the usual cheesy definition.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

This episode was evil. The more I think about it, the more I want to curse the creators. To end with such a cliff-hanger, how are we supposed to wait another week for that?!

Seriously, the majority of this episode was so incredibly sweet. It was very sappy, but with this series it only makes sense for Lag to be overjoyed that he can finally spend time with Gauche, and actually carry out a number of deliveries with him. It’s finally time for Gauche to pick his life back up where he left of and the reunion to Aria and Sylvette was really sweet and emotional.

And then Thunderland came with the announcement that he just realized that Gauche might have been putting up an entire act. It was built up really well and worked as an excellent plot twist. What exactly went on in his mind though is a complete mystery. We know that he regained his memories of both his time as Gauche and as Noir: if he still was the old Noir he wouldn’t have gotten along with Lag this much; he could easily have smacked him in the head and ran off. At the same time though, the bugger found his duties as Noir more important than his family. I’m really dying to see his thought-process there.

On a completely unrelated side-note: it seems that Bleach is actually going to end (there is no way that that band would screw something like that up if it wasn’t true). Great news, because that means that Studio Pierrot finally have more resources available to make interesting stuff again. Having them adapt both Naruto and Bleach at the same time really hurt their output of interesting series. Perhaps Level E is the first sign of this. Or perhaps Beelzebub is going to take its place. To be honest, I hope that that last thing isn’t going to be true.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Okay. The mysteries behind the flying airship were revealed in this episode. I did not expect that at all. I really thought that it was just a small side-story, and that Aria’s adventure was mainly used as a way to spend the time for Gauche to wake up, just like the previous episode. And here this episode comes and it suddenly ties a ton of stuff together.

I mean, good mystery is about two parts: asking questions and revealing them. Series that are perhaps good at the former may not be as good as the latter, and vice versa. Letter Bee though… it’s awesome at both. This episode yet again was excellent, and the amount of depth that was just behind that airship really surprised me.

This episode also laid more and more links between Lag and that Artificial sun. Especially that eye… not only was it a major surprise for that sun to have… an eye (even though we already knew that it was made out of hearts), but am I the only one who is reminded to that dream Lag had in the lighthouse episode? Nichi’s shadow was drawn in the exact same style there. Also, my memory is rather blurry on this one, but remind me again: did Lag first meet Gauche before, or after that airship crashed?

I also never really noticed that there were quite a few people with eye wounds in this series. At the same time, that does make me wonder about the nature of that guy who couldn’t become a spirit: his scars were exactly the same as the one we saw from that human experiment. Could all of that be linked to Lag’s strange connection to that sun as well?

Either way, this episode was also really heart-warming at the end. Perhaps it was a bit forced to suddenly have Sylvette coming, but it worked really well.
Rating: *** (Awesome)
OP: I like the song, but indeed: why is it a clip show?
ED: Perhaps not the best song, but again it’s based on a great visual concept. It’s great to look at, apart from that annoying placement of the next episode preview, perhaps.

This episode is entirely away from the main plot aside from a few scenes at the beginning and end of the episode. Instead, we get an entire Aria episode, which really was a neat way as the final Letter Bee episode of the year. Aria really benefited from this episode, and it made her a much more interesting character, which is bound to be useful as soon as Noir wakes up. Eventually.

Usually when a main character has this “sempai” he looks up to, it’s this sempai who has the most amount of parallels with his situation. Instead though, this episode showed that Lag and Nichi look much more like Aria and Bolt than Gauche and Roda: Lag lacks Gauche’s ambition or will to protect. Instead, both he and Aria are ridiculously innocent, they’re both running after Gauche like crazy, and both have some of the best dingo around, compared to Zazie or Connor, who rely the most on their own weapons.

The Gaichuu in this episode did suffer from the “Oh, those protagonists look very interesting while they talk to each other; let me just watch them and do nothing for a while”-syndrome, but granted we didn’t really have any clue as to what they were thinking. That is one of the minor flaws of this series: as Villains, the gaichuu have no depth at all, and they’re just a bunch of “Humans tasty”-villains so far. I really hope that the Cabernets will change this.

Also, whoa! I could have seen this coming, but for the artificial sun to consist out of human heart… that definitely gives a different spin to this story. For the first time, we actually get a glimpse of what the people from the capital actually did, and at this point it’s a lot more clear how valuable that sun is, and why people aren’t making more of them.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Ah, what a wonderful conclusion to this already wonderful arc. It was perhaps not the most surprising episode, but it came with developments that we’ve been waiting for for ages. Nichi became even cuter than she already was with her return here, she’s just too adorable with Lag. Roda on the other hand met with a very interesting end (okay, end: we haven’t actually seen her death confirmed yet) that definitely gave an interesting twist to her character: she’s actually Roda.

The main act however was Gauche. This really promised to be the episode to return his heart to him, which in a way did happen. And yet the way in which he lost consciousness immediately afterwards makes it not as one-sided as it sounds. It’s also interesting how the first shot through Noir seemed to return his memories of Lag to him, yet not change his character back. Also, if Lag has nearly used up his heart at this point, what is he going to be doing in the rest of the series?

Next week is going to be a major one: the second Christmas episode. For the first series, this was the very first filler. After that episode, we can be sure whether Letter Bee is finished with its fillers, or whether the creators are going for the same format as one year ago. It can go either way though, especially considering the fact that a different guy has been behind the series composition this time.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

I’ve sat here for more than ten minutes now, thinking of something sensible to say about this episode. It was completely amazing, and yet in completely different ways that I expected. And it’s one thing for the twists to be stunning here, but this episode really ended up shining because of the results of these twists. Talk about atmosphere here!

Of course it’s a bit strange that Hazel and Garrard sent this young girl to poison Connor because it wouldn’t cause suspicion, only to blow up the entire abbey, but apart from that I really loved this episode. Tings really started with that new piece of soundtrack with just a piano playing, and I’m still amazed at how well the creators did justice to the story of that cookie baking girl. The main event of this episode, the Gaichuu eating the hearts of all of the nuns, went off really well because of that.

And then Gauche suddenly popped up! And he actually got shot by Lag. I really hate the creators for pulling the cliff-hanger card in order to make us wait on what it exactly did to him for next week. In fact, this episode pulled a lot of cliff-hanger cards here: what will remain of the giant Gaichuu? When will Nichi come back? What will become of the nuns who lost their heart?
Rating: *** (Awesome)

Lag in a dress… a lot of series have had cross dressing, with sometimes disastrous results… and yet these cases continue to appear that just continue to surprise me. Lag as a girl works just way too well. Even Roda fell for his charms.

On a more serious note, one of the big unanswered questions of this series at this point is Akatsuki, with the question that’s most burning on my mind being to what extend it is corrupt. Are just a handful of assholes at the wrong place, or is the entire city basically the bad guy here. This episode in any case gave Roda more than a good enough reason to rebel against the government. It’s also clear that the Reverse have no intention to just cheesily destroy the world (otherwise they would have unleashed more of those giant gaichuu), yet they do use so-called “human sacrifices”, so where exactly on the moral scale is everyone?

Either way, Lag versus Roda was amazing, and it’s a shame that it ended on a bit of a cliff-hanger. This episode also revealed quite a bit about that thing that’s living inside Lag’s eye, and the strange thing is that these spirit ambers seem quite common, yet this was probably the first time Lag really talked about it. If my memory doesn’t serve me wrong, in any case.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Ah, a wonderful conclusion to the second part of Nichi’s arc. I expected this episode to delve into what happened to Nichi after she was thrown into the ocean, but instead this episode was all about her sister, and her feelings throughout the past 200 years. That too really worked, because she really is a great character. I also really want to applaud this episode for its portrayal of how she uses her hair as a weapon. Nichi looks like a bunch of chopsticks compared to how she’s able to use it.

Now, it’s obvious that the manga chapter in this case was a bit too short for 20 minutes, so there were quite a few flashbacks. The ones that were shown right after the OP and the break were just shallow, but I have to admit that watching the parts again in which Lag found Nichi really got to me. Flashbacks like that really work when they show exactly how much the characters in question have grown.

This episode also gave an answer to what those strange frozen Gaichuu were, but it still was rather vague, but at the same time it made it a bit more likely why Gauche went after them. I also really wonder what’s in store for Lag now that Nichi isn’t with him… something just tells me that he’s going to run into Gauche again…
Rating: ** (Excellent)

This episode just blew all of my expectations here. It was both gorgeous and really well told: it just kept revealing more and more about what happened to Nichi in her past. I loved how it used all these legends and stories, not to mention Gauche’s involvement which turned out to have nothing to do with all of those, to twist around this episode.

For once the villagers seemed genuinely helpful, yet their ancestors were so misguided that the stories of what happened became a totally misguided tale of what happened. The village chief seems to be the only one who knew the truth of how Nichi and her twin sister (the fact that Nichi has a twin sister also came as one hell of a surprise, by the way) were thrown into a frozen lake. This episode was already amazing, and we haven’t even seen the parts that really focus on Nichi yet: that’s left for next week (which really is going to be a very annoying wait here…).

Also, Gauche: what was he doing in that cave? And why didn’t he visit Maka? Was that Gaichu so important for his plans? What makes them so important and why don’t they exist anywhere else? And what the hell? Lag isn’t human? Talk about using Nichi as a red herring for that one: it was of course established that Lag is special because of the way he appeared in front of Gauche and all, but I never really took that much notice of it because of how strange Nichi was. Next thing you’ll tell me is that Steak is actually the long lost pet of the One who couldn’t become a Spirit or something…

It’s strange, but the more I write about this episode, the more I’m awed by all of its intricacies, and how much it deepens the plot of this series. It was a truly excellent example of how to do the reveal episodes in a mystery-series: answer a few key questions while creating a ton of intrigue around it, making the revelations creative and yet not too far-fetched.

The art in this episode was also absolutely gorgeous. It first started with that incredibly stylish background, but dear god: Maka’s designs were absolutely amazing. The entire color scheme of this episode formed such a wide contrast with the usual visuals of this series that it made them stand out even more.
Rating: *** (Awesome)

So finally, after thirty episode we learn what happened to Gauche, as he lost his heart. The question still remains how it happened, but this episode detailed the time right after it happened, which gave quite a bit of depth to his character. I really like the twists in which he was actually responsible for casting off his name, and how he actually visited some of the people closet to him, consciously deciding not to get back to them.

This episode also did a great job of showing how the One who couldn’t become a Spirit brainwashed Gauche: the only magic that was used was in the way that Gauche’s memories were lost, and instead he just showed Gauche the hypocrisy of the government. This episode showed that the government is also experimenting with combining humans to various life forms, and note how that mermaid had the same kinds of scars that the One who couldn’t become a Spirit had. What’s also interesting is that Noir keeps announcing his name whenever he shows up now: it’s like, he wants to be found or something.

Next episode should prove to be even more interesting: we’re finally getting to Nichi’s background. But to think that she’s already 200 years old. Apart from that though, it’s still a complete mystery of what she is, especially considering how old she already is, which should deny any links between her and the Marauders.
Rating: ** (Excellent)