Letter Bee episode 7

Well, I’d planned to do two episodes at a time because thus far Letter Bee had taken the route of a sorta double-episodic structure. Typical really that it should abandon that just when I decide to change format. The next episode preview after episode 8 was more Sylvette and was clearly a direct continuation of what had just happened. So I thought ‘screw that’ and so here I am, a whole week behind, blogging episode 7. *Sigh* I suppose I knew that as soon as I said I was going by a double-episode format that I’d jinxed it and Letter Bee would change. Oh, we also have these lovely author pictures now so you know which one of us is writing the post. They were made by Brian and by god are they infinitely superior to my shitty versions.

Bitfrost. The path that connects mere mortal humans to the realm of the Gods. The path that connects the outer reaches of Amberground to the middle level of Yuusari. The path that looks rather like that dragon path thing in Dragonball Z. Except instead of falling into abyss or whatever Goku was meant to fall into all that happens is that Lag and Niche get a bit wet. That lake/moat is clearly full of all sorts of horrible sea creatures and it’s a bit surprising that none of them came to attack our weary travellers. Do you think the gatemasters are able to keep control of them with their magic pipes? Where else would that yellow lizard from episode 6 have come from. I certainly didn’t see any sign of the gatemaster calling him in by opening a gate or anything. So they must have quite a degree of control over those monsters. The magical power of those small, spiky balls that look like underwater-mines is not to be under-estimated. Anything that powers Jiggy’s motorbike must be awesome.

When the two entered Yuusari central I must admit I was a lot less impressed than these two. There was a part of my mind that had thought they had entered the very centre city of Akatsuki and was expecting streets paved with gold and people bombing it about on segways. But all they had done was entered Yuusari, the middle rung of the land of Amberground. In fact, apart from the jolly atmosphere and brighter surroundings, it didn’t look that much different from anywhere Lag had visited thus far. I guess the social divide isn’t quite to the extent I expected, but we haven’t seen Akatsuki just yet so we may yet see segways and gold-plated streets. Ah well, Lag seemed mightily impressed and I guess his opinion is more important than mine. Lag is the main character of the anime, I’m just a behind schedule blogger.

We had a bit of a reunion back at the Letter Bee Hive. First off was Gauche’s old crush, Aria Link and oh my is she hot! I’ve gained a lot of respect for the potential hotness of an uniformed girl after Full Metal Alchemist and Aria falls straight into that category. The other returning character was Lloyd, who is the almighty Head Bee. I’ll admit that I was expecting Gauche to be holding that spot but this show has far more mysterious things planned for him. I’ve watched episode 8 already but I remember at this stage of the episode thinking to myself ‘so what spot does Gauche hold?’. He’s really turning into the mystery man of the series.

“Oh shit, it’s a horrible piece of CGI”

You know, judging by this guys introductory chat with Lag, I was expecting him to be a nice guy under a rough surface who had to fight his way to be appreciated. If you took this whole story from the assumption that he was a nice guy then it takes on a better light. Distraught that he had damaged the kids letter, he took it upon himself to perform the painstaking task of copying the letter out so it would arrive at its destination as perfect as it was when it was written. What a noble hero is was. If he had just taken better care to say different things while he was re-writing the letter than he might just have been portrayed as the hero.

One interesting thing from this episode was when Aria called Lag a ‘Albisian Child’ because of his eye and hair colour. So there’s a reason why he looked so similar to Gauche. What does Albisian mean? Is it just an Amberground version of albino? Considering the amount of engrish so far employed by Letter Bee I wouldn’t count that possibility out. So it doesn’t have anything to do with special powers at a guess. My theory is it’s something similar to the Ishbal people in FMA. Remember that Lag’s mum was taken away waaay back in the first episode? Something might be going on with Lag’s people and that’s where Gauche could have disappeared off to. Wild theories flying around here at Bokutachi no Blog.

When Gauche first explained the whole ‘firing your heart as a bullet’ thing, I felt the entire thing sounded awfully dangerous. My memory is getting a bit fuzzy but didn’t Gauche say something about it not being a great idea to fire off your Shindan too much or else you’ll lose all your heart power (ultra corny phrase right there). Therefore this rather laxidazical treatment by Zazie felt a bit weird. I could freely accept Lag running firing his Shindan all over the place because Lag isn’t exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer. But when I proper Letter Bee official asks him fire his Shindan for this little fact it seemed a bit off. Maybe I’ve totally misjudged the potential problems of firing your shindan. Then again, Zazie always felt like a bit of a prick to me.

No matter how bad the CGI is on those bugs, it’s almost worth it just to see these awesome explosions at their demise.

Eh, I can’t really sum up my feelings on this episode when I’ve already seen the next one. Oh noes, where is Gauche and all that. Instead I’m going to leave you with the translation the manga-scanlators had used for the freak show that Niche was sent to.

‘Rabusamu Wandaun’