Japanophile Isle

This will get spoilerish

series synopsis: Titular Shigofumi is a letter from afterlife. The last message a person can send, a chance to wrap up things in our world, because sometimes humans can be truly honest only after they’re dead. Delivering those letters is a job handled by dead persons. The main character is Fumika, a young girl who delivers shigofumis. Her partner is a talking staff called Kanaka. Fumika however is different from other shigofumi deliverers, as unlike them she ages with time, which means she is not fully dead yet

Shigofumi’s plot has two layers; first one is composed of stand alone stories (each centered on a single letter) and second layer is a story of Fumika herself. The second layer at first shows only in bits and pieces in each episode, but gets stronger and stronger as series goes by and finally takes the central stage in last few episodes.
In each series filled with stand alone episodes there’s bound to be weaker and stronger episodes and Shigofumi isn’t an exception.

The show starts with two episodes long arc. This story is exceptionally well done. It punches viewer into his gut so hard it’s difficult to breathe. We follow a young boy named Shouta, who’s dream is to built his own mini rocket. He’s in love with a girl named Ayase, who recently has lost her father. This episode’s shigofumi comes from the dead father revealing that he was killed by his own daughter. Refusing to believe it’s true Shouta confronts Ayase and in shocking twist she kills him without mercy.
I had my jaw on the floor when this episode ended. Shouta’s story wasn’t long, but it was enough for me to start to like him and to see him die like that was truly shocking, not to mention it made me hate the “murderous bitch”.
Second episode continues this story. We learn that Ayase was abused by her father and forced to pose in pornographic photos (what’s worse everyone in her school knows about) and she snapped and killed her father only when he informed her that her little sister is the next one to become a “star”. This episode’s shigofumi is from Shouta to her. Surprisingly he doesn’t blame her, he actually apologizes for not noticing her suffering and once again proclaims his love to her. By then the police is already looking for Ayase. The letter makes her break and realize what she has done. In an attempt of at least partial redemption she rushes to the rocket site and finds that Shouta has named the finished rocket after her and her young sister. In touching scene she also writes Shouta’s name next to hers and attempts to launch it. Just before the rocket starts the police appears. A large piece of cloth covers the rocket and Ayase rushes with knife to cut the rope holding it. Police officer takes it as act of aggression and shoots her. Essentially Ayase sacrifices her life to let Shouta/Ayase rocket fly.

Writers did amazing job here, in span of 20 minutes they turned my view of Ayase by 180 degrees. At the beginning of the episode I hated her and wanted her to die. 20 minutes later she has completely redeemed herself in my eyes. When the episode ended I was left hoping that just like their names on rocket reached the sky she will be forgiven and able join Shouta in Heaven.

I’m having troubles remembering the last series that started this strong. Unfortunately the show doesn’t manage to hold this quality in later episodes. Third episode is a story about suicide. It was nicely done, especially since the kid killed himself from quite original reason. It’s not however anywhere near as good the masterpiece that first two eps were though. The quality goes down even more in episode 4 and the silly cat-centric episode 5 made me doubt the series could redeem itself.
Fortunately I was wrong, the series improves in 6th episode with bullying story (with a twist) and continues to remain high quality till the end. We finally learn more about Fumika, her friends and her abusive father. I liked how he was shown. He is definitely a bad guy and yet he’s not stereotypical monster, in the end he just turns out to be a deeply sick and unhappy person.
The later stand alone shigofumi stories also shine. Especially the one involving Chiaki, another shigofumi deliverer who befriends Fumika. This is the one episode that actually matches the greatness of the first two.

The proposal from beyond the grave of a dead man to Chiaki (who’s been dead for 50 years already) is one of the most beautiful and touching scenes I’ve seen in anime in a very long time.

The characters are all nicely constructed and believable, even those that appear only shortly. This is very important in a show built around standalone stories, without believable characters it would all fall apart. Fumika herself grows and changes during the whole show, she both changes herself and with story revealing more about her past our perception of her also changes a lot

The ending episodes are all centered on Fumika’s and her return to life. They serve as satisfying closure to this deeply intriguing series. And I really liked how the ending scenes showed life of everyone who received shigofumi in previous episodes.

Ultimately Shigofumi is a story about sadness. However it’s strength lies in showing various colors of it. Sadness of loosing somebody, sadness of injustice of this world, of regret and also more peaceful, nostalgic sadness that turns into smile through tears. It’s all here and presented with class and beauty.

The animation is typical JC.Staff work, not overly flashy, but with great character designs, backgrounds and lighting. The music suits the scenes well and the ending song is just plain awesome.

Overall I’ve really enjoyed the series, the quality of the first two episodes makes the rest look less impressive, but after short drop in quality the series picks up fast and doesn’t let go till the end.
Hopefully this isn’t the end of Fumika’s job and we’ll see second season somewhere in future.

rating: 8.7/10