Shigofumi – From Hello to Heart-Wrenching in 20 Minutes [TIL]

While watching Angel Beats yesterday I got to think of an anime I love, an anime I think is under-appreciated. Well, it seems appreciated by all those who have watched it, but it definitely seems like not enough people have watched or heard of it. This anime is Shigofumi, Letters from the Departed, Stories of the last Letter, or what have you.

Another anime that I thought of and also came up on Twitter a couple of days ago is Visions of a Distant Star, a thirty minute movie made by one person, who is so heart-rending it is not even funny.

So the point I thought of regarding Angel Beats, well, if you know anything of Shigofumi it might not be too hard to see why I thought of it. In Shigofumi we get to see the last letter someone wrote after having died, and we also see their life just before death, or someone’s life as affected by the story… In Angel Beats, we’ve thus far saw the life stories of I believe four people, and these are small poignant moments, which deeply affect me. They usually do not take more than 4 minutes, yet you find yourself all teary-eyed after having watched them, even if you did not bond with the character depicted in them before. This is also true for Shigofumi, whereas most characters, and certainly those who send or receive the letters do not appear before “their” episode. And yet, after an episode of merely twenty minutes, you feel connected to them, you feel related to them, and their stories have impacted you.

Media Consumption: August; Main Test Crunch.

Another monthly media consumption post. Yes, this month is rather lean, because I had a lot of studying to do. And I have a lot more studying to do until the 13th of September. After the 13th of September I could return to my wanton consumption of books and anime. Dependant on whether I get a job or not, of course.

Movies:

• Ever After: A lovely film. It’s not a great film if you compare it to movies in general, but as a cute fun movie, it’s very good. I enjoyed myself thoroughly. My favourite Drew Barrymore role.

TV:

• Californication Season 1, reviewed.
• Californication Season 2, aside from the last two episodes which aired in September. Feel free to head over and read the review post of season 1. Season 2 was not as good, but a thoughtful review is forthcoming.
• House M.D. reruns of season 4.
• Boston Legal season 4 and Damages season 2, one episode a week. Enjoying both.
• Didn’t watch it yet, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that I found out the last three episodes of Pushing Daisies were released, and I obtained them. One of my favourite series of recent years.

Books:

• Sabriel by Garth Nix. A bildungsroman (coming of age story) which is enjoyable. I notice the pattern in which it was built much more now, on my second read. I need the other two books in the series.
• Too many philosophy books to mention, and hardly enough.
• Reading Wheel of Time books 6 and 7 not in order still, when I feel like it I’ll spend the couple hours to fix the connecting parts and finish them in order (this happens when you are re-reading books you’ve read half a dozen times before, you skip to the juicy bits).
• Ribbon Drive RPG and Mix-CD(!). Not a book for reading, but here it is.
• No Quarter Magazine #25, for Privateer Press’s Iron Kingdoms setting and games.

Manga:

• Rurouni Kenshin 16. Need to step up and finish it this month, not to let it fizzle. Also planning to get back to reading Fruits Basket. Seeing the omnibus at the comic book store helped there I guess.

Anime:

• 07-Ghost episodes 1-21 (up to date). I thought the show was slow to begin, well, it was. I found it odd as I thought it’d be a 26 episoder, but seeing as it’s based on a currently running manga series, I understand. But at this rate, it’ll take 500 episodes, dude.
• Toaru Majutsu no Index(A Certain Magical Index) episodes 1-17. This series has different arcs in them, of varying lengths. It’s an enjoyable series, it has one of my favourite girls in anime (Misaka Misoto), but I’m not sold on it being anything special.
• Voices of a Distant Star. Short, beautiful. The animation is not as good as I rememebered, but then again, I remembered just the story :)
• Kannagi season 1. Reviewed.
• Element Hunters episodes 1-2, reviewed. It was horrendous.

I might still do a review of August in terms of how this blog did, but August, the first full month of posts on this blog saw it receiving 154 comments (including my own) and 1,955 hits. Thank you to all the readers :)