Letter Bee | First Impressions

Letter Bee was the next new series to take the test. Was it up for the challenge?

Be careful with that gun now, Lag Seeing.

In all honesty, Letter Bee's first episode contained no surprises whatsoever. It covered half of the first manga chapter darn near page-for-page. It merely eliminated some of the manga's exposition about the setting and reworded a few things here and there. Other than that, it turned out to be exactly as I expected. I'd even watched the 2006 Light and Blue Night Fantasy special just to get a taste of what the anime would be like and the first episode of the TV series was exactly the same. Same voice cast, same production design, etc.; even the odd-looking CG used to portray the Gaichuu was brought back. The only real difference is the inclusion of an opening and an ending theme, and the fact that the TV series starts from the beginning, rather than adapting a later manga story.

All that said, this really doesn't make for a good "First Impressions" post, since nothing was new for me. It's just the same old generic storyline with pretty art that I talked about previously in my review of the first volume of the manga. Once the anime gets past the first volume, however, is when things should become interesting again. At least for me, and anyone else who has read the first volume.