Letter Bee – 6

Boy did I need a good night’s sleep — I would have wrote about Monster yesterday, but a soul-crushing trip to the DMV coupled with a long day of work sapped all my mental energy. But I’ll make up for that by writing about Letter Bee right now and then posting about Monster in a couple of hours! Yay!

This episode kicks off right where the last one ended. As I expected, the Bees do have an ID system in place to prevent thieves from stealing the crossing letter and gaining illegal entry into Akatsuki. Poor Nelli barely makes it a few feet before she is found out and a giant lizard is let loose upon her. Harsh punishment. Lag and Niche quickly arrive to save the day, which leads to an assload of memories being unleashed upon everyone. For whatever reason, I am actually liking the use of memories to develop the characters, even though it really amounts to info dumping each episode. Maybe I am just a sucker for memories.

Turns out Jiggy Pepper is quite the badass dude. I’m not shocked — again, with a name like “Jiggy Pepper”, how could you not be a badass? He’s got all the requisites: A badass name, a badass cross-shaped scar, a badass motorcycle, a badass seiyuu (Kazuya Nakai) and he fist bumps like a badass. Jiggy f’n Pepper, ladies and gentlemen! The memories reveal him as a good deal more considerate than Nelli believed him to be. It was actually Nello who encouraged Jiggy to leave town and follow his dreams, because that is how a true badass rolls, and Nello someday wants to be a true badass like Jiggy. As thanks for how well the town has treated him, Jiggy works to have a church built there, and he personally pays for the bell to go in the bell tower. I thought there had to be something in the church that he provided, because it would be damn weird for him to look like the greatest person in the world one moment and then a total douche the next.

Some development with the nature of the shindan, which I kind of lol’d at. Lloyd claims the gun is just a channel for the shindan to take on a more bullet-like shape, but it pretty much looks the same whether Lag shoots it out of a gun or his hand, doesn’t it? The guy just really likes guns, I bet. Also, Lag must have some serious heart power, because he used enough shindans to give himself a mini heart attack in this episode. Egads.

As Scamp writes, it is sort of corny that certain objects have more “heart” stored in them than others, but it does work in the context of the series. Makes sense that something that relies upon heart power (the shindan) would react most to things that have zero heart (the gaichuu, destroying them) or a shitload of heart (the church bell, the letter and so on). If I were someone in this world, I’m not sure I would want Lag shooting my precious items and unleashing my memories upon everyone within a mile radius. What if he shoots something really embarrassing, and then everyone sees you doing naughty things with your loli-themed pillow cover? Reputation = dead. (Not that I ever do anything like this, of course . . .)

And we have more information on Lloyd — he is basically the leader of the Bee organization, although we don’t know enough about him yet to tell whether he is good, bad or just does whatever the hell he pleases. I am opting for that third option, myself. Don’t think he is going to be a cut-and-dry bad guy, but the way he acts makes it seem as if he does not have especially good intentions, either. Plus, he has a buddy named Camus, which just screams moral shades of gray, even though the guy reacts like, “Hey, man, don’t call me by that name. I don’t like existentialism.”

Appears as if Lag will finally arrive to take his Bee exam, and then the real shit will get started. I’d like to get some more on the nature of the capital city and why such a strict class/caste/whatever system exists in this world. Someone is doing some heavy things, that’s for sure. Also, maybe we’ll see Gauche again soon.