I must say, this episode caught me off hand. With the tons of random characterizations that never really progressed neither the story nor the characters forward, I was expecting this episode to be again one of those episodes that’s just there to flesh out the characters, without any real substance. But here this episode came and proved me wrong, it looks like things are finally getting a bit more interesting.
Seeing Gauche’s backstory animated was definitely the best part of Letter Bee so far since Gauche himself left. We’re finally getting to a bit of intrigue here: what was up with the government airship that crashed, and why of all things did Gauche’s memories of his mother get erased just like that? It was pretty sad seeing Aria in the middle of it, who couldn’t believe that Gauche just forgot the most important person in his life.
As for the rest of the episode… yeah, it was pretty typical. Sylvette turns out to be a terrible cook (like we haven’t seen those people enough in anime), Lag in true shounen fashion actually shoots with too much power (you can never have too much power in a shounen-series), and Nichi still refuses to listen to anyone but Lag. Still, I’m happy. That Gauche flashback was exactly what I was waiting for. What I’m hoping for right now is that the creators put such a thing in every single episode from now on, rather than creating very long build-up arcs, just for a few episodes of climax.
Rating: * (Good)
Just some comments.
I don’t know if you are aware of it but the sun in this anime seems to be artificially created. i.e “人工太陽”
The airship that crashed was indeed a government ship, but it was up in the air to investigate the artificial sun. However, the government claims that the accident with the crashing ship and the flickering of the artificial sun was unrelated. It’s pretty clear though that all the strange events that happened that day was somehow caused by whatever was done to the artificial sun. I think it can be pretty safe to assume that the government was meddling with something they did not fully understand or had complete control over.