Shigofumi ~Stories of Last Letter~ episode 12 (Finale) + Final Impression

!Warning Spoilers Ahead! So the series has finally come to its last episode and it was really good! I’m still a bit uncertain to how I really feel about the episode because I find that some of the other ones were better. For the first half of the episode we were lead to believe that Fumi shot Mika. Also, Fumi ended up confessing about her father’s abuse towards her, which ends up getting him in jail (which is a very good thing because he definitely deserved it!). Though, as much as you would expect everything to be okay, it ends up worst than ever. Fumi comes back to school since her recovery to find that everyone in her class is only talking about her (in a bad way) and taking pictures of her. Everywhere she goes she ends up finding some sort of camera in her face, I don’t blame her for being so upset over it because I know I would have been annoyed. Also, considering her dad is in jail, she has no one to live with, so the police end up contacting her mom who lives far away. I ended up being right guessing it was her from the last episode at the end. She really just looks like a girl version of Fumika’s dad, except she ends up being even worse than him claiming that she doesn’t really want a child and ends up leaving Fumi without another word. I really didn’t expect to hate her as much as I did that moment. Fumi ends up running away to one of the only places she knows, her dad’s house, only to find Mika (yay!).

Lots of other things happen with the other characters as well like how we really realize that Matoma (Mika’s staff) really needs Mika because all the other mail carriers who get paired up with her end up really annoyed and just bringing her back to the staff sanctuary place. I found it funny how the only ever proof that there was another mail carrier in the world besides Mika and Chiaki was the one mail carrier bringing back Matoma, although we only saw the back of her head. I was kind of disappointed by the lack of Chiaki in the episode, but whenever she was there, it made the scene great. I just didn’t like how they didn’t continue any part about the person Chiaki found who was supposed to help them. The ending was good, I found it really cute how you see both Fumi and Mika crying non-stop together for no real reason. I was also so relieved in this episode when we found out that Mika was alive! The added touch during the ending credits were also very good because they showed the aftermath of each character that received a letter throughout the series. I’m very glad that both Fumi and Mika now get to live together in one world, even if that kind of was predictable…

Final Impression

Shigofumi really was an amazing series. I think I actually preferred the earlier episodes to the later episodes, but I’m not completely sure on that considering the second half of the series had some great episodes. The characters were all really good, but the best characters by far were Mika and Chiaki; I don’t think I can ever really learn to like Fumi that much. The series had a great plot that definitely stood out from other shows; I personally think that this could have easily been a longer series. It had a great development as we slowly learned about each character and what made them special. It also seemed that many of the episodes seemed to be trying to spread across a message. The animation may not have been top quality, but many of the background images were really beautiful and anyway I found that the animation went well with the series. I’m still not sure this series made that big of an impact on me, in a few years I’m not sure if I’ll remember this as a great series, but for now I would definitely stand y with the fact that I really did enjoy watching this and it was definitely one of my favourite series! It is for sure something that is worth watching!