I have just now finished the 14th episode of your anime series, and have decided to review it in a letter format in this letter that I direct to you, to tribute the show. Unfortunately, I have come to regret this decision already at this point because it would seem that everyone and their mother had the same damn idea.
You have to excuse me, but I haven't written many letters in my life. In fact, the last time I "wrote" a letter was when I was 4 years-old. It was with the help of a girl next door who was 3 years older than myself. She helped me to send one to the Santa Claus, but that guy fucked me over and brought me the wrong Turtles toy. Since then, I haven't been much of a letter guy.
I will try my best, nevertheless.
There was one bigger issue with your anime and that was its quality differences. Some of the episodes were stunning visually and emotionally. Others, on the other hand, mainly worked as a prove that character-centric drama doesn't really deliver in the episodic format all that well. It's not the easiest thing to find emotional connection to characters who one has known for 15-20 minutes. The absence of depth had its toll.
Your 14th episode does few interesting choices. The first one being the duration of this episode as it's over 10 minutes longer than episodes 1-13 were, being over 34 minutes in length. Perhaps needless to say, but the extra time does miracles and serves the episodic nature of the series and its drama in a manner that I started to wish the other episodes had been as long as well. I know, it's so easy to say it now, but better late than never.. or something.
To state an another thing that stands out: the music. I personally do not remember a single song from the original OST at this point anymore. None of it stayed with me nor remained memorable. But this time, our very story centered around an opera singer, and she surely can sing! The whole episode even reminds me of Nier Automata's OST and the Opera Singer boss fight from it. What type of content presses someone's buttons and makes them emotional is obviously a very personal thing, but to me, this time the content was made in such a convincing manner that your 14th episode became my 2nd favorite of the whole series after the one where you went star-gazing. I wish I had been there with you. Call me corny and cheezy.
I still have to pity those (at least the tiniest bit) who were hyped over your 14th episode because it was rumored to be a sequel to the series, but was really episode titled as "4.5". That's hardly a surprise as we are talking about Kyoani here. This episode is still well worth of a watch to anyone who liked the original series. Not only that: I will go as far as recommend it to anyone who thought the show was average or bad even (I am sure you knew that people like this exist as well), but was able to find some beauty from some of its episodes anyway. There is a great chance that this special is what they wanted from the series in the first place.
Sincerely,
yours truly
Ps. is this how you end a letter? I have no idea.
pps (or is is pss), that doll around 9 minutes mark was still there. Nice meme.
