Shigofumi: ~ Stories of Last Letter ~

Information of Anime

Fumika is a Shingami postal worker that delivers letters from the departed.  These letters are final letters for people that have die & want to pass their final words to someone.  Fumika, along with her partner in the form of a cane Kanaka, makes sure that these letters get delivered to the right person & that they get it.

Storyline (CONTAINS SPOILERS)

Below is a summary of the storyline I've seen.  This section does contain some spoilers.  If you haven't seen the series yet & don't want to be spoiled, skip this section.  If you want to know the story & want to see how I viewed it, read on.

The show contains a series of short stories where Fumika is delivering these final letters to people.  She does see some of the incidents that lead up to the death of the sender as a watcher.  She doesn't interface nor judge people as she is only focused on getting her job done. Nearly the start of the show, the viewers are briefly shown a small background of Fumika.

Kaname Nojima recognizes Fumika as Mikawa Fumika, a student that he was searching for a long time.  He recognizes her from her gun.  He questions her on why she shot her father, but she doesn't answers & doesn't tell Kanaka about her past.  Another interesting note is how Fumika is aging when postal workers aren't suppose to as another postal worker named Chiaki points it out.

The show slowly goes into more depth as Fumika continues with her deliveries.  At the same time, Kaname continues his search on how to contact Fumika by going back to his middle school classmates.  We learn that Kaname tried to confess to Fumika but was rejected by her in middle school.  However, it turns out that Fumika actually liked him.  Kaname's work would lead him to Fumika in a coma in a hospital bed for three years.  This shocks Kaname as he doesn't know who the postal worker Fumika was.  The answer is revealed in the next couple of episodes when Fumika's father Kirameki Mikawa is introduced.

Kirameki is a writer that has lost his mind.  When Kaname & his old classmate Natsuka Kasai go to Kirameki's home where Natsuka's older sister Haruno is getting him to write a book for her publishing company, they find Fumika pointing a gun at Kirameki.  However, Kirameki shoots her & gets locked up later in one of his rooms.

Kaname & Natsuka is surprised to see Fumika awake.  However, Fumika doesn't remember her past.  Meanwhile, postal worker Fumika who I will now call Mika wants Fumika to shoot her to atone for her sins & finally rest in peace.  To prevent this, Chiaki tells Kaname & Natsuka about this.  While Chiaki is finding a way to keep Mika alive as a postal worker by looking at the laws, Natsuka takes Fumika to her home while Kaname keeps Mika away.  All goes well until Fumika finds a book in Natsuka's room.  The book is by Kirameki.

Looking at the book, Fumika recalls her memories & runs away to look for Mika.  When she finds Mika, she learns that it wasn't her that shot her father.  Mika tells Fumika that she was the one that shot him & wants Fumika to shoot her for it.  When Natsuka finds Fumika, she already has the gun that Mika gave her in her hands.  When Fumika is at the police station for questioning, she wants to press charges against her father & wants to be the one that shoots her father.

After telling everything about her father's abuse, it becomes a media havoc.  Fumika has her picture taken by many people & becomes a center of attention of the media.  Kirameki's new book is put on hold as the publishing company doesn't want to ruin its image of releasing a criminal's book.  Aizawa Kirai, Fumika's mother, refuses to take her in as she doesn't see herself as a mother.  As Fumika is losing it, Mika reappears.

Apparently, Mika wasn't shot to death.  Instead, she disappeared when Fumika decided to stand on her own feet.  However, her weakness caused Mika to appear again.  The two of them tell each other to kill themselves.  However, none can do it as both of them want to live & experience many things.

The ending shows after the credit roll Mika & Fumika being alive & moving on with their own feet.  They will do their own lives & not rely on one another.

My Personal Review

Shigofumi was something that I picked up randomly.  I had no idea what it was.  Decided to add more to my anime pile & create more problems to my HD space, I went for it.

Animation

The character designs are okay.  The characters look cute but somewhat plain.  They have the usual big eyes & same looking faces for most female characters.  For the clothing, Fumika's uniform is plain but give that appearance that she is a mail carrier.

The colours were very dull.  It looks quite natural to the anime actually.  It gives off that dark drama feeling of the show nicely.

In terms of the animation movement, the flow is mainly natural.  The movements are smooth with hardly any choppy frames found.

Sound       

The sound effects weren't bad.  The show uses realistic sounds & won't find much of those silly sounds here.  There are some sci-fi ones such as Kanaka doing something.

The seiyuus here are ok.  They perform their roles okay, but I didn't like them much.  The emotion & power is there, but I didn't really get drawn to the characters.

The music is soft ballads.  It fits the show's soft drama theme well. However, I don't remember what they sound like.

Story

At the start, it's a number of short stories of Fumika's deliveries; current & future.  The stories involved are quite dark & touching.  It can make you feel for the victim & killer at times.  You would get two sides of the story from Fumika's point of view.  You may feel annoyed with her at times for not stopping an incident from happening or save a person.  She acts as a neutral which is actually a good thing.  Because of this, it can feel like the show is moving slow.  The pace is actually just right when you think about it.

It was interesting that the show actually throws in a main storyline at the third episode & slowly builds on it.  The pace it goes for the main plot is stable & moves at very well.  It doesn't sidetrack a lot & keeps those delivery episodes in tact.

As for the ending, I felt it wasn't done well.  It manages to resolve the problem with Fumika & Mika, but there are still many more problems that were left untouched.  What happened to the Kirameki situation?  Did they actually release his new book & are the charges still being pressed?  Where is Fumika living now & is she going to do something about the situation with her mother?  Although there are some problems that don't really need to be touched, I felt the Kirameki situation was a big one.

Overall Conclusion

Shigofumi: ~ Stories of Last Letter ~ is a nice show to watch.  The stories are darker than I thought & quite emotional.  However, this drama isn't for everyone as it can feel slow & frustrating to watch as Fumika just watches things happen.  I would recommend watching this if you are heavily into drama.

Shigofumi: ~Stories of Last Letter~ receives an eight out of ten.  The show is pretty good as it present both sides of the story from Fumika/observer's point of view.  It can be upsetting to see some scenes happen which could have been prevented, but the show stands its ground in watching & trying to understand the motives behind each person's actions.  But the real main plot of the show doesn't move out from those episodes & stays on track.  However, the ending does leave a bad taste in your mouth a bit.  Although it fixes the Fumika situation, there are some more problems that the show failed to fix up.

Last updated on April 23, 2008