I can only imagine how different things must have been in the manga at this point, because this episode in particular pulled a few twists that gave a completely different dimension to a few key characters. Still, the manga has an unlimited time frame and the anime doesn’t, so I at least admire the balls of the creators to go with some of the twists in this episode.
The thing with mystery is that it tends to leave a void whenever it’s solved, unless a different hook is provided. That was was a pretty big problem of this series for the past number of episodes, save for the Connor episode. This episode provided that hook again, and it’s just in time for the finale here.
It was obvious that if the plot were to just revolve around getting rid of the Cabernet, it would end up rather boring. It needed some extra spice to be introduced. Thunderland being part of Reverse is definitely an interesting way to do it. He has the background and enough motivation to do it, and having foreshadowed in in the previous episodes would only have made it more shallow, although I do wonder what kind of logic went behind his decision to store the ones who couldn’t become a spirit… int he middle of the Bee Hive.
Meanwhile, Gauche is good again! This lacked some of the impact due to the previous episodes rather shallow reason for it, but nevertheless: that scene between him and Sylvette was an excellent climax between the two. I mean, Letter Bee has always been very character-centric, and now it comes with a plot focused final quarter. It’s great to see that they still have a number of moments dedicated to simply the characters for the finale.
Letter Bee has definitely been an interesting series, it went from good to tedious to charming to repetitive, to amazing, to captivating, to a bit less interesting to a bit more interesting again. It’s going to depend a lot on the ending here. This ending needs to be more than “and they defeated the bad guy and lived happily ever after”. That would be just a dull anti-climax after all that build-up.
Rating: ** (Excellent)
Seeing Lloyd traveling through a frozen region my guess is going to be a last minute intervention to save the day by the Maka and Niche’s sister.
The Thunderland revelation sure was a big one though. I’m still holding out that he’s some sort of double agent and will actually help treat Roda and the others.
I really hope they take a little bit of time to finish developing Niche before they end the series though. There was some foreshadowing in the episodes with her sister about needing some emotional trauma to kick start her maturation so I hope they manage to fit that into the anime at least since I doubt they’ll leave it out of the manga when they get to it.
Ok, so the legendary former head bee can’t even aim a gun? All I ask is for internal consistency. Why do you fail me so much Letter Bee?
PS: Perfect head shot moment at 13:00. Zazie needs to die.
I have to say I gave up on this show. It’s bad parts far outweighted the few good ones. It had promise and failed.
I know you liked it a lot and I could see why but I just couldn’t get into it. 🙁