Tegami Bachi (Letter Bee) episode 5 review; a bad apple in the Bees?

       This episode begins with Lag and Niche making it to Kyrie aka (Dead-End Town) with only one day left to spare before he has to be at his interview, all he has to do is cross the bridge tomorrow.  After asking for directions to an inn, the fact that they have a temporary crossing pass draws the attention of Nelli who was trying to get a Bee to take a letter to another Letter Bee (Jiggy) which he refused to do because of no postage or a proper address. Nelli leads them to the Cold Case hotel, a pretty run down place that charges a lot of money.

       In the lobby, Lag runs into a traveler who has returned from Love Someone Down, he was looking to buy the child of Maka. Well, Lag gets Niche out of his presence and tells her that he’s thinking of sending her back to his home town because it’s dangerous of a girl. Niche gets pissed off, takes off her pants, and walks out on Lag. Later, Lag finds out that Nelli has taken his bag which contains his crossing pass and is on her way to the church.

       When Lag catches up with Nelli he finds that she has his crossing pass and plans on becoming Lag Seeing. Lag tries to take his pass back but Nelli pulls out a knife and slashes his arm, and the sent of his blood draws Niche’s attention. They argue for a while then Nelli calls out the locals, and tells them Lag wants to become a government worker (Letter Bee). Nelli is pissed off because her brother Nello idolized Jiggy who left the town and became a Bee breaking his heart and causing his death.

       As Nelli is ranting about getting her revenge on Jiggy she gets cracked upside her head by another local who wants the pass for themselves. A huge brawl starts over the crossing pass, Niche leaves the hotel to find Lag and the traveller in the lobby notices that Niche is the child of Maka and sends a message to his master (Jiggy) to come pick her up. Niche enters the fray and disables the brawling mob while Lag tells her not to hurt humans. In the end, Nelli still has the pass and runs off towards the gate. Lag starts to go after her but Niche stops him demanding to know if she’s his dingo? Lag doesn’t want to argue right it right now so he tells Niche if he doesn’t get the pass back he can’t become a Bee and Niche can’t become a dingo. So, Niche and Lag give chase to Nelli.

      As Largo Lloyd (the traveler) watches the scene he thinks to himself that Nelli is in danger because the temporary crossing pass won’t be enough to get her through the gate, and he’s also astonished that Lag could tame a child of Maka. As Nelli is running towards the gate we get flashbacks of her brother, he loved and idolized Jiggy and was very sick, Nelli worked on the church and Nello continued writing a letter to Jiggy, but soon Nello became sick and died and Nelli swears revenge on Jiggy for breaking her brother’s heart. Well, that’s all for this episode.

         Well, this episode was pretty good, Lag continues his journey to his interview and they stop at Kyrie (Dead End Town) and Lag’s naive trusting nature causes him problems. I’m not going to comment much on lag’s youth or Nelli’s desire for revenge because I think this episode reveals a very important plot point. Up until now, all the Letter Bees seemed to be diligent government servants just doing their jobs, but we now have reason to suspect that at least one of them (Jiggy Pepper) is corrupt in some way, and where there’s smoke there’s fire. Also the name of the bridge to the capital is very interesting, Bifrost; in Norse mythology the name of the bridge linking our world to the world of the gods is also called Bifrost. The traveler made the comment that Lag’s temporary crossing pass would not be enough to get Nelli across the bridge, and if the nature of the bridge is similar to the Norse bridge she’ll be in trouble. In the Norse myth, Bifrost is guarded by a god called Heimdall who is rumored to have hearing and vision that can reach the ends of the worlds, he never sleeps, and he’s even rumored to be able to tell if people or gods are lying to him, so Nelli might be in real trouble. Overall,  a very a nice and enjoyable episode with Niche’s facial expressions and looks stealing the show.