I'm uncreative right now. This is kind of lame. Also, sorry for the poor screenshot quality.
TAAN: You may have noticed that I didn’t have a post for the last ep. That’s because these two are better together, so I made them together (Lies, I was swamped w/ midterms and work, and also plagued by extreme lethargy). I really feel like going to sleep (and it’s 4:44 pm right now… wait, isn’t that bad luck?), and I slept until 1 pm or something (though I went to sleep at 5 or so…). Lately I’ve been absurdly tired for over half the day (the part that I’m awake), which is bad. I need therapy or something. Well, there’s your wall of text on how I’m doing, if anyone cares. Sorry about that, I’ll just get on with the review now.
Summary: Lag, now um… however old he is (old enough to be a Letter Bee at least), leaves his (new) home town, Cambell Litus, I think it was, to become a Bee. It turns out that after Gauche came (and left), the town’s become more open to Bees, and one particular Bee called Connor loves to go there for their delicious pizza (did I mention I’m also hungry since I haven’t eaten anything since lunch yesterday? I was just going to get food, but I noticed forgot my wallet once I got to the restaurant, and had to walk all the way back. I was too tired to go back after getting my wallet, too. Horribly depressing.). As Connor visits so often, he and Lag become friends, and (I assume) he introduces him to the Bees and their entrance examinations. Lag passes the preliminary examinations (which I assume are written, or just profile weeding), and is granted a pass into Yuusari to go take the real exam.
On the way there, at a train station, Lag notices a girl in one of those spaces for statues (she looks creepier and thus more awesome in the manga here). She has a delivery sticker on her arm, but apparently it was filled incorrectly, so she’s unable to be delivered. Lag sympathises with her, but can’t do anything since they’re about to miss their train anyways. No, I’m kidding. He decides that since she can’t be delivered officially, he’ll do it himself since he’s not an official Bee yet. Their destination and the girl’s delivery address are close enough anyways so he can still make it in time.
On the way, Lag learns that the girl never had a real name, so (for some reason for which the logic escapes me), he decides to add his own made up name to the list. He calls her Niche (which he pronounces exactly like Nietzsche, which is how I pronounce it too, oddly enough), which he explains (it was better when it was an end note in the manga, and thus less obvious) is because he found her in a niche. It has some kind of old religious significance, but it’s probably unimportant. Niche rejects the name anyways.
Lag also finds out that she doesn’t wear pants. Yes, that’s right. No pants. And Lag found out directly. So he does the only logical thing and offers her pants. ‘Course, she rejects this too. That is, until Lag empathizes with her (more like flatters her by calling her pretty). Then she begins to trust her a little and accepts both the name Niche and the pants. (oh, right. It’s also revealed that Lag only has a normal gun at the moment, and that Niche is incredibly powerful.) (Episode switch)
But anyways, after all that, they arrive at the destination, a rare-animal-freak-show circus-type-thing housed in a tent called Love-Someone-Down (sounds stupid, but that’s really what it is… I think). They wanted Niche as their newest attraction, see. Lag doesn’t know this though and hands over Niche. It’s only after he leaves and meets some travelers looking for the show that he finds out.
At the tent, the circus guys are trying to get Niche to reveal her “Golden Swords,” which would be proof that she is the Maka (or at least has Maka blood), which is a legendary creature, and thus would make her a rare animal worth extremely much. They’re also thrown off with the fact that she wears pants, which they couldn’t get her to take off (reminds me of the beginning of +Anima with Husky) (uh, I mean they’d probably get insanely rich for offering delicious cake they’re sick twisted lolicon bastards). Anyways, the head guy provokes her enough (by throwing a dagger at her) to get her to reveal her swords (her hair, much like many popular nano-machine wielding lolis), but she then proceeds to use them to destroy the entire tent and just about everything in it.
Lag arrives back at the tent right when she destroys it and escapes. He sees the guys and dispenses some semi-poetic justice, and then chases after Niche. Who went into the Broccoli Forest, a Gaichuu hotspot. In fact, when he runs into Niche, she’s already facing off against a mantis-like Gaichuu called Four Roses. Lag shoots it and Niche manages to slice off its head, but neither really does anything. The Gaichuu attacks them though, and injures Niche, which makes Lag go into an emotional rage and fire his gun with the spirit amber in his eye. This produces a red Shinndan, which destroys the Gaichuu, and also releases a bunch of Lag’s memories. Niche sees these, and there’s what should be a touching scene about the sorrows of partings and loneliness, but it’s really just fairly awkward to me (again, because I thought the manga did it better. Sorry for all you people who didn’t read it. It’s not my intention to tell you that you’re missing out or anything like that. I’d actually encourage you not to read it if you haven’t already, just so this will still be interesting.) 
After they get out of the forest, Niche reaches a decision and tells Lag that she’s going to be his Dingo (reminds me a lot of Munsu and his Sanda, Chun Hyang, actually.), and one of the rare animals follows them. Niche names him Steak ’cause he won’t taste good raw. And that is why we all love Niche (unless of course you’re a lolicon. Then you’d have other reasons, I’m guessing).
Thoughts: I realize I littered the summary with my thoughts already. It’s sort of annoying to me, since I don’t like that personally. It makes the summary long and it’s not that easy to read just what’s going on. Again, I apologize for that. But that’s not that important right now. Since I already have comments all over the summary, I’ll talk about something else important, not exactly context related: I’m not sure if this is exactly it, but I feel like it’s ruined for me since I read the manga, since when I watched it I felt like the pacing was horribly off and everything was kinda cheezy. I guess you could say the pacing of the story was changed to make it more shounen-ized. I dunno, maybe I’m wrong and it really is like that, but my manga bias gives it an excuse. Actually, now that I think about it, it may just be the more dynamic angles the manga uses, as compared to the anime. Especially in that scene after Lag defeats the Gaichuu and Niche starts licking his wounds.
Comment-Rating:
As far as the story goes, I’d say it’s pretty good right now. As I said above, I have issues with the pacing, but that’s not that big a deal. I think. I hope it picks up the pace though and becomes more interesting as it gets more episodes. I don’t expect the next arc to be too interesting, but it should get significantly better from here.
TAAN: Alright, that’s done. I need some sleep now… but there’s so much I have to do still…
I am liking these moments of memory release. The rest of the action (I mean in a literary kind of way) is just the set up to get these moments of truth. When this happens everyone can see right into who you are with no false front. These seem to be memories that define who you are — and maybe they say more than what we would realize for ourselves. What a terrifically intimate experience… and I guess, also, entirely freudian.
Niche and Lag both have their emotional wounds and both are introduced to us as human letters. (Is Niche human, though? I’m not clear on that, but anyway…) Both of them cross some threshold into legitimate being after they are delivered, as with birth. If letters are symbolically things that can’t live on their own, then Lag and Niche achieve birth when they’re accepted by someone else. The written letter achieves life by being received and read by another. So like the letter arriving in the hands of the reader. It seems like that’s what they’re saying; this is what makes us real. I mean I’m just guessing… but that’s how the metaphor of the letter comes across to me.
Lots of night time sequences in the episodes so far. The artwork is at its best at night. If the firing of the Shindan is Freud, then these night scenes are perhaps taken from Jung. Mythic beasts that must be battled emerge out of the night. There are primal images of fires, shadows, the star filled skies, and a vast unseen surrounding hidden by night. That all really feels like the unconscious — if I’m reading this at all correctly.
Now, following Taan’s comment, I wonder where Nietzsche comes in? But I’m way out of my element there. ^)^
Quite an interesting theory of letters you have there. It’s unfortunate though that Lag’s power (which should be revealed in next week’s episode) is going to become more of the focus and not the letters themselves. This is an action type anime and not psychological, after all. Still it makes me very happy that they include concepts like letters and heart. For those of us who want to see it as more of a psychological anime, it can be. You’ll see less letters, but there’ll still be memory releases, so it’s not like all of it is disregarded for the sake of action.
As for your theory itself, I think it’s more like this: letters are created to be delivered. They have no meaning and have a useless existence until they reach their destined location. It’s not so much as they are born/given life through being delivered , but more like they are unable to function properly before, with properly being the key word. If you look at both Lag and Niche, they’re able to function, but it’s only after being delivered do they have their true functions realized. (to summarize, they’re born/given life when created, it’s just that their life is imperfect or incomplete until they reach their destination. Once that happens, it is the key to them realizing their destiny. They are given their true purpose through realizing their original purpose, I guess. Though that doesn’t make much sense.)
Another way to look at it is that an undelivered letter represents a frozen heart. It’s not too apparent now, but in the later arcs, that seems to hold true. The delivery of the letter represents one’s feelings being realized and therefore the dissolving of the frozen heart to release life.
About the night time stuff, I don’t know much of actual psychology, so I don’t really know what Freudian and Jungian mean (though I have heard the terms before, and once studied the two long ago), but there’s a fairly good explanation for the whole night thing. Actually, it’s fairly important to the politics of the world of Letter Bee too, so I’ll include that:
The world of Letter Bee is in a constant night. Either there’s no sun (unlikely), or there’s some kind of messed up rotational resonance going on so the sun is never visible (unlikely too, because the whole backside of the planet would be a polar area. Actually worse than that. It’d be permanently frozen, though it would explain why no one knows or cares about traveling far enough to see if there’s light), or it may just be too dim (after all, without a sun, it’d be far too cold for anything to live). The land Letter Bee takes place in is a strange place, made of three distinct land masses forming essentially a bull’s-eye. The center mass is called Akatsuki, and is the Capital of the place. Above Akatsuki is an artificial star that shines constantly. It’s the only light source of its kind in the world. The artificial sun functions as a symbol of power of the Akatsuki, which also draws a lot of criticism from the outer areas. The middle band of land is called Yuusari, where I guess most common/middle class people live. The outermost area is called Yodoka, and is seen as the uncivilized countryside. The three land masses are seperated by large bodies of water that are uncrossable except for certain heavily-guarded bridges. Because of this extreme separation, there’s barely any contact from one area to another, except for Bees. Even then, to mail a letter across areas is prohibitively expensive, so that’s not a very viable form of contact, either. This has lead to extremely separated classes, since people from one area tend to generalize those from another and can’t prove much of what they say anyways. Being the only place with a constant light source, Akatsuki is both envied and hated, being seen as pompous, snobbish, and conceited, always looking down on the others. I assume Yuusari is seen as bourgeois, as well as better off by those in Yodoka, but you don’t see much of Yodoka people talking of Yuusari, except in the current arc. Finally, as I said before, Yodoka is seen as countryside, far off from high class civilization.
It’s worth noting that because Yodoka is the largest of the three land masses, it goes both the furthest north and furthest south. The northern end has a polar climate and is where Niche is from, but it seems the southern end is more temperate. Of course, none of this actually makes sense since it’s the rotation of a planet about a star that creates latitudinal climate differences, and there’s no indication of any star that the world is rotating around. I guess it’s some kind of crazy magic.
Some more on geology:
Actually, after skimming through some stuff again, I’m reminded of a few things. First off, the place is called Amberground. It gets its name from the spirit amber found underground. The spirit Amber is what gives the land its energy, and also apparently heat. The northern area coincidentally has no geothermal processes and so is cold. I think it would have to take a lot of geothermal energy (aka the ground’s going to need to be really hot) to keep a planet warm without a sun, but hey, apparently with anime-physics, it’s possible. And also, Spirit Amber is kind of a type of magic, so I guess I was right saying it’s all due to some kind of crazy magic.
This prompts a bit on spirit amber:
Ancient insects had high amounts of energy, or something like that. When they were preserved in amber, their energy was sealed and slowly radiated outwards. In one of the later arcs, a lot is revealed about the ancient insects and spirit amber, and the gaichuu and stuff like that. But that’s later
Now then, about Niche. I don’t remember how much is said about her already, but I’ll try to keep spoilers to a minimum. Niche is, as was stated in the pamphlet, a “child of Maka,” with Maka being a powerful being resembling a dragon in the northern regions. Make apparently has the ability to create “golden swords” of some sort, which has manifested in Niche as her hair. This is proof that she has Maka blood in her, though at this point, it’s assumed she’s human. Even at the point the manga is in, it’s not exactly clear if she is human or not, but I think it’s better to assume she is, just with special powers, and a special body. Regarding what one of the grunts said about a human with grafted arms, apparently there’s technology available in Akatsuki that allows for the grafting of the parts of one animal onto the other, and it’s not inconceivable that someone grafted some beast’s arms onto some kid to try to pretend she’s the child of Maka.
A further note (a theory, really), this time on Gaichuu: As gaichuu are essentially heartless animate shells, when heart is shot into them, it destabilizes their existence and destroys them. You could say heart is the opposite of their existence. Also, if I remember correctly, when Gauche destroyed a Gaichuu, his memories did not appear. The reason they did when Lag killed one seems tied to his special ability. More on this later, I guess, since the latest episode hasn’t revealed it yet.
Finally, when I said Nietzsche, I was talking only about Lag and Niche’s pronunciation of “Niche.” It sounds exactly the same, which is due to the inability of Japanese kana to emulate English perfectly. That and it’s fun to say “Nietzsche.”
Taan, thanks for such a long and thoughtful response — and for filling in so much geographical and metaphyhsical context. I enjoyed getting more of a feeling for Niche’s… species. So cool.
On Guache, after destroying wave after wave of Gauichuu, there was a memory release, I think. Isn’t that where Lag learns of Sylvette and Gauche’s mission to become head bee?
I like the idea that “The delivery of the letter represents one’s feelings being realized” It’s interesting that, in a land where passage from region to region is so difficult, one of the things that can get across are these packages of feelings. The letter bees are agents of a transcontinental economy of the heart.
While night is prominent, I hadn’t realized that truly all the scenes were in darkness. I would have thought otherwise — but what a terrific backdrop for the story: tacit but completely encompassing. I definitely like the elements in this story.
I wasn’t trying to write an essay, but after a while, I just thought what the hell I’ll just write everything I know. It kind of became a contest to see how long I could get my comment, actually. Sorry about that. Actually, I wanted to write a bunch more, but that would include spoilers, as in a much later arc, Niche’s origins are thoroughly explored.
Now, to answer your concerns, Lag got Gauche’s memories after Gauche shot him with a healing bullet, right? I mean if he got them before, it would lessen the impact of him falling unconscious and having Gauche’s memories as dreams.
Also, as I said, although Bees can deliver letters, they’re prohibitively expensive to send. In a note at the end of one chapter, it was stated that the price rises fairly fast with distance, and jumps tremendously when crossing the areas is involved. Apparently, the cheapest letter you could send would be one from the Bee HQ to the Bee HQ, and the fact that even that would cost money should say something. As for why it’s so expensive, you have to remember that Bees use their own hearts to get through Gaichuu infested areas, as well as the typical dangerous terrain. It’s a highly dangerous job, so the compensation must be high. And the compensation has to come from somewhere.
Finally, I’m not so sure about this, but I think the eternal night gets turned from just fitting ambiance into a plot element. More like the Artificial Sun does, but I guess this goes for the night too. But anyways, I believe the reason it works so well is the fact that everyone accepts it as fact and don’t call attention to it explicitly, meaning we who actually do experience the cycle of day and night are the only ones who are affected by it. By having the characters ignorant of alternatives, it draws us in to their mindset too, which is so different from ours that it seems especially effective.
Also, since I’m feeling particularly nice right now, I’ll tell you that my response wasn’t made in thoughtfulness or anything like that but rather more of a sense that I can’t lose in comment complexity. Truthfully, it would not be lying to say that if you try to bring up theories on me, regardless of your intentions I will take that as a challenge and attempt to produce superior ones. Of course, whether or not what I’ve just said is a specially worded version of the truth, tailored to mislead, is up to your interpretation. You can assume that I was trying to protect my pride in my superior knowledge of the series by showing off. It’s certainly one way of viewing it, though again, I’ll leave the truth value of that statement ambiguous, as it’s far more interesting that way.
I especially appreciate that the series provides some depth in its psychological underpinning for the action and character development. I mean it may be enough to start with gundam-like robotic armor and have some determined badass aliens.
But a major score from my viewpoint is to have consonance between the environmental backdrop and the events — and when the metaphor connects to the characters. So, on these counts, Letter Bee is very satisfying, especially as they invest so much in the artwork
Ah, you see, I had already forgotten the healing bullet. As the huge battle transpired while Lag was asleep, I associated those events directly with the release of Guache’s memories since it was also battle that unlocked Lag’s memories. I may go back to see how they framed this. In any event, what an integral device to produce flashbacks!
As the Letter Bees expend fragments of their heart with each delivery, I am watching to see also if they lose heart and become less feeling with time. At this point I can’t see how that will play out.