Half the reason I picked up this series was because I watched the anime and wanted to know how it ended. The other half was because the manga cover art is so goddamn pretty 🤩
Things I Liked
- Did I already mention the cover art? Well, in particular, the use of colours is amazing.
- The Letter Bee uniforms, even if it’s stupidly overly fanservice-y on the girls
- Hair swords
- How it actually wasn’t possible for Gauche to regain his memories, but he still acted the part in order to make the children happy
Favourite Character
Cat-boy Zazie!! He has a cool dingo and is sufficiently tsundere.
Favourite Steak Moment
Things I Found Meh
- The use of music/alcohol/etc references from ‘our’ world was jarring, it broke immersion in the story.
- Dr Thunderland shut-up please.
- So no one knew or cared that the director of the Bee Hive was a test subject from the capital who obviously held a grudge/was out for revenge?
- The sweeping under the rug of the “5 children born on the day of flicker” subplot, this series got canned and had to half-arse it, didn’t it? 😑
- Related to above, Zazie being one of the candidates for Head Bee felt like they just needed someone/anyone to fill the role since they had to rush the last arc, or something like that
- If I were Sylvette I don’t think I would consider ‘returning as the rays of sunlight’ as acceptable fulfilment of Lag/Niche’s promise to come home
Conclusion
So while I picked up this series because I wanted to know what happened after the anime coverage, the anime actually adapted the best bits of the story. I quite liked the ‘delivery of the week’ format, where the intentions of a letter were made clear. Once it got plot/conspiracy heavy it really stumbled. Because the volumes were released quite far apart (the pain of a monthly series!), I thought that I was just forgetting/unable to string together the plot beats, but no, it turns out it was actually really shoddy to begin with (I’m particularly bitter about the 5 children not-thing).
Over the years I’ve gradually been culling my collection until now I’m at a point where I can safely say I love all the series I own…except for this one. But it’s really hard to part with it because it’s so pretty and a little bit nostalgic 😅 I don’t *need* to get rid of it for space reasons, so I will hold onto it for now, I guess 🙃
Categories: Series Review
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