Anime: Tegami Bachi

A wonderful setting and a wonderful atmosphere, but doesn't make full use of the plot.

Tegami Bachi is by far the most impressive series of the year when it comes to the fantasy setting and the incredible atmosphere it creates, but finds itself torn between being a strong plot-based show (1st half) and a small children's anime (about 10 episodes), only to choose the plot near the end.

Nevertheless, atmospheric wise it should be only rivaled by series like Haibane Renmei, and just like that one, this show shows tremendous potential in creating a world so unique and so full of potential plot.

Animation: Wonderful setting, wonderful atmosphere – but cheap tricks still show.

The good

There should be hardly anyone who would disagree that the setting and the atmosphere of the series is excellent. The character designs; the environment; the backgrounds of vast places you never see in reality; they all add to the atmosphere of the show and do it really well. The backgrounds are often outstanding – not particularly in terms of animation, but in terms of atmosphere. And while they are done much better than most other tv-series, they are not perfect – but not too far from it.

The CG backgrounds are fairly visible in most places, but I'm happy that they don't stand out like a sore thumb and take the focus away from the good parts. They always apply it subtly despite the surroundings not always lending themselves for it. There are many times where Lag's dingo makes use of the surroundings and that means the backgrounds have to be in the activity layer, or it would show. But despite that fact, it is hard to see whether they actually made the background active or that they simply merged them really well. Knowing that in one year time generally only one or two tv-series manage to do this properly, the creators may be proud that Tegami Bachi is among them.

The bad

Yet, despite the brilliant atmosphere there are sometimes some cheap tricks visible. A character who stays in the same position for too long; a move which is repeated a bit too often; re-used frames when running; backgrounds which lack just that final touch; while none of them are badly executed, sometimes you can't help but notice something like that which generally means cutting corners in terms of animation.

Another crappy aspect of the show is the appearance of the Gaichuu. They're simply CG-monsters who are of a similar quality what Vandread produced back in 2000. So this is a pretty heavy disappointment, since they could've made this much better. These monsters also stuck out like the previously mentioned sore thumb to the rest of the show, although they toned it down just enough to not feel completely ridiculous.

Sound: Excellent BGM to support the animation.

The OP/ED combination works really well for the show and the fact that they changed them halfway the show somehow felt bad to me. Not that the other combination doesn't work, but there was something unique for the first combination which suited the show so incredibly well that it was simply sad to see it disappear.

They apply the Next episode part during the first half of the ED-song, so for the people who don't like spoilers, you are warned. I haven't seen any epilogue parts after the song, so for the people who tend to skip the ending song, you're free to do so.

BGM is outstanding, it really is. There is hardly any scene which doesn't get proper BGM and together with the animation, it adds to the immense atmosphere the series emits.

The voice acting is done really well, although several characters are quite annoying due to the fact that the series tends to switch towards a child-audience. But I'll get into that later.

One particular voice you'll have to get used to is the one from protagonist Lag. From the start it is too clear that he is being voiced by a female voice actress and that distracts really much. However, after only 1 or 2 episodes I got used to it and it didn't bother me anymore, so I guess it works out after all.

Story: Great start, but gets lost in its own fillers.

It's hard to judge the story, as the good part is easily worth a 9, although the bad aspects can easily bring it down to a 5. So let me give you an explanation:

The great start and the great fall
The start of the series is really strong and it feels like a show which has a continuous plotline throughout the series. It manages to keep that up for quite a while, but once the Beehive comes into play, the series stagnate.

At first you don't notice that because it effectively introduces characters which appear throughout the rest of the show, which is good. But later on you'll notice that the magic of the first half of the show has disappeared and you're watching the simple tasks of a young bee – and that part tend to be fairly boring, if not flat-out annoying.

Truth be told, there are plenty of episodes which are really touching to the point of crying along with Lag, but unfortunately – especially in the ‘filler’ episodes – there are also plenty of episodes which are far more annoying than touching, due to continuous preachery and repetitive events like Lag always ending up shooting some important item one way or another to peek at someone's heart.

Turns into a childish anime
Don't get me wrong; there is nothing wrong with the characters and there is nothing wrong with focusing on character development (first half, plus start of the second half) or character confirmation (most of the second half), but the focus also goes from plot to non-plot. Standalone stories and jobs can still be good, but what bothered me mostly was how the story switched from Strong plot-based fantasy to Children's anime. And that's what the latter half feels like: Lag being the protagonist of a series aimed at small children.

Whereas the first half had strong, solid characters, regardless of their importance, the latter half seemed to be filled with characters who usually appear in anime for small children and the stories concerning them were not much different. Especially the episode where two lovers were eloping felt really aimed at small children. Some of you would probably nag at me that it is simply cute how Lag performs in these episodes and to that I will agree. Lag is always cute, regardless of what he does. But it simply feels like the show doesn't know exactly what it wants to be; a cute fantasy filled with a good plot and good characters, or a children's anime which is set in a fantasy world. And the latter one generally comes with stories which preach about what you may and may not do in real life as a person in a very simplified form.

The return to the strong plot-based anime
Fortunately for the people who prefer a strong plot based series, after reaching the 20 episode mark, the plot kicks in again and the show gets rolling with a continuous story like it did in the beginning of the series, exposing plenty of opportunities to make this a really good show. And when the show ends, it doesn't try to wrap up the show; it simply doesn't wrap up anything, effectively telling you that Tegami Bachi Reverse will continue where Tegami Bachi left off.

A little sidenote though; for everyone who has seen the Tegami Bachi OVA from 2008, that episode also gets integrated in this series, which felt to me like I was watching a sort of recap.

Characters: Is a crybaby cute, or annoying?

One of the things which can make or break a series is whether you can appreciate the protagonist. Lag might be giving you a hard time, considering he is a crybaby. And while he is a really sweet protagonist in the first few episodes, after that he's still that sweet despite him being 5 years older. One might say that it is annoying to see a protagonist crying pretty much every episode, but I couldn't help but feel emotionally attached to him. So if you're easily attached, you'll find yourself sobbing along with Lag on a fairly regular base.

Lag also doesn't change all that much. He merely discovers the world and the hearts of people, so technically he mostly gets character confirmations rather than character development. Is that wrong? No, absolutely not. Lag is not the type of character to develop; he is the type of character that learns, just like a baby does upon seeing something different. This comparison actually makes more sense when you see Niche though, as she is much more of a small child who develops through encounters – and develops much faster since she's not an established character as Lag is.

The other characters also get plenty of developement, ranging from Zazie, the doctor and plenty of others. Don't underestimate the characters in this series, despite the sometimes slow pace. Because they are all worth being in this show.

So, is it worth watching?

Absolutely. The show is excellent in terms of atmosphere, in terms of characters and despite the high cuteness factor, the show also tries hard to keep up a proper plot. If you can get past the troublesome ~10 episodes in the second half where the show feels like an anime aimed at small children, you won't be disappointed if you're looking for a good anime with a good underlying plot, set in a well executed fantasy setting.

I found it hard to come up with proper ratings, since there were many aspects which made the show good and so many which made it bad. But still, I think most people will appreciate this show despite its shortcomings and you can actually skip episodes without really missing anything, so I'm leaning towards the more favorable rating.
If you want to know what the ratings would be when you also judge the show on the bad parts, then I'd like to redirect you to 8thsin's review. Those ratings convey my feelings really well.

"Tegamibachi" is about a boy named Lag Seeing, who becomes a "Letter Bee" to send letters across cities disconnected by vicious bugs that can only be defeated through weapons powered by amber of bees, and only the delivery service organization seem to possess such weapons. The protagonist was delivered as a package in his youth, and aspires to become a letter bee like the person who risked his life to make the delivery.

Animation: 5/10
The constant dark sky and desert-like lands generate great atmosphere as a fantasy world. The animation in general is pretty low quality with very little detail in backgrounds and relatively simply drawn characters. The characters did have smooth movement and there were cool battle scenes.

The CGI on Gaichuu were really blocky and poorly done.

Sound: 6/10
BGM was scarce or very ineffectively used. I didn't really notice it.

Voice acting for the protagonist was extremely poor since the voice was clearly female, and did not sound like a boy at all, even if he hasn't hit puberty yet. The remaining cast did very well though, especially that of Gauche.

The first OP/ED were so-so, but the second OP and ED were near-masterpieces. Lyric and tones perfect, and really catchy songs that worked very well as theme songs. The second half is one of very few occurrences where I didn't skip both OP and ED after few listens, and sat through the entire duration of the show.

Story: 5/10
The first few episodes were extremely strong. A nice background on the characters, and how they start their journeys. It turned into episode-per-conclusion after the protagonist became a letter bee though. Some of the episodes were very touching, but others were straight up flops for me.

One thing that really disgusted me was the use of protagonist's spirit amber memory projection as a deliberate plot device for melodramatic story development. Another thing that bothers me is that the protagonist keep violating customer privacy, but things keep working out, and he's always being thanked for it. Perhaps he should get into trouble, or at least be forgiven for his mistakes once or twice.

There are also many plot holes, but I guess we're supposed to have an open mind for fantasy series, and not think too much about it.
There's still a lot of mystery about the setting and Gauche, but I guess that's being saved for following seasons.

Characters: 7/10
The protagonist is a whiny kid who cries way too often, but he does mature up a bit as the story progress. The first season is probably only a small portion of the entire story, so I hope Lag Seeing will stop crying one day.

All the main letter bee characters are developed pretty well through the main story arc as well as episodic ones, where the sender or recipient often have same concerns or problems as letter bee delivering. I would liked to see more character development for Niche and Sylvette in the following seasons.

Value/Enjoyment 6.5/10
I really wanted to enjoy this show, or rather, hoped it would turn out well because the premise was so intriguing. I would expect "Tegamibachi" to be a very good manga, but it was very poorly executed thus far as an anime.

Viewers should be prepared for extreme corniness and repetitive themes. The episodic missions in middle of the series really tested my patience, but I was able to make it through it, and the show ended with pretty interesting turn of events.

It's difficult to rate 'Tegamibachi' at this point, but like my impression after first few episodes, the story is still very promising. Hopefully the second season would concentrate on search for Gauche rather than similar filler missions.